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2020-09-15 Progress Update - Firmware update v0.7

A project log for BlueRetro

Multiplayer Bluetooth controllers adapter for retro video game consoles

jacques-gagnonJacques Gagnon 09/15/2020 at 23:110 Comments

Release v0.7

Much smaller update in scope this week. Firmware v0.7 adds support for Arcade JVS interface only.

I only own one arcade system so testing was very limited. But It works very well with Tatsunoko vs. Capcom (TVC). I wanted to do a JVS controller adapter for a really long time and I quite happy with the result.

Here the specification reported through the JVS interfaces:
12 players 16bits switches
12 coin counters
24 analog channel 16bits

My TVC board only support 2 players but I can see with my logic analyzer trace that the other 10 players are reported correctly. I got no quick way yet to test the analog channel, I'll try to setup MAME to talk over PC-serial for JVS. (Probably already exist??). I'm starting to think about using a BlueRetro board as a Testjig (interfaced with another BlueRetro via a DB25 male-male adapter) to simulate all the protocols via a Python interface a bit like the serial bridge of Cube64.

This is the first interface I've build with the new adapter board PCB and it's really nice and clean.
This one requires a special board only for JVS as it requires a RS485 PHY. (JVS specify use of USB connector & cable but it got nothing to do with USB beside that.)

PCBs v1.1

Took a whole day this weekend to assemble 6x v1.1 BlueRetro DevKit PCBs. I still haven't had the time to validate/rework/test them. Most likely the last batch I assemble myself! I'll pay to get them assembled next time.

Cable Adapter PCBs

I received all 3 cable adapter PCBs Monday. JVS is already partially tested (still got to test the 5V step up, I injected 5V directly for testing). I'll build NES, SNES & Saturn cable next.

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