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A project log for Altair 8800 front panel Ardiuno shield

A very small fully-functional interface for an Arduino Due emulating an Altair 8800

justin-davisJustin Davis 02/24/2017 at 17:330 Comments

I downloaded the software code from Github to attempt to get the code working on my Due. I ran into a few problems, but was eventually successful. I had never gotten so large of an Arduino project up and running. The first problem I ran across was the missing library I needed to download - DueFlashStorage. But once I got that I was able to compile.

I also ran into a problem getting the code to download to the Due. I don't think it had anything to do with code - I think there's something flakey with the communication to the Due. It often seemed to program, and then fail in verification. So I figured out how to turn on verification, and everything seemed to work ok. There's no apparent error checking other than post-verify which is kind of a problem considering the size of the download.

A second problem I have is a strange 4200 Hz audible squeal coming from the Due. Pressing the reset button a few times and it will eventually go away. I can see this on the scope as a triangle ramp on the 3.3V supply. It also look like an RC curve on the 5V line. There's something broken with the board, but I can't figure out what.

But I was successful in getting the software to display to the terminal. And I could easily emulate button presses with jumper wires to ground. Since I have the software working, I'm fairly confident I can get the project running.

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