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From: fredm@media.mit.edu (Fred G Martin)
Subject: Re: Miniboard assembly questions
Message-ID: <1992Nov5.033621.12859@news.media.mit.edu>
Sender: news@news.media.mit.edu (USENET News System)
Organization: MIT Media Laboratory
References: <1992Nov4.122214.52525@gmuvax.gmu.edu>
Date: Thu, 5 Nov 1992 03:36:21 GMT
Lines: 43

In article <1992Nov4.122214.52525@gmuvax.gmu.edu>
klambrec@gmuvax.gmu.edu writes: 

>I'm almost finished putting my Miniboard together, and I have the
>following questions:

>1)  There is a block of 4 holes labeled  Rxd  GND  Txd  that I don't seem
>    to have a component for.  What is supposed to go here?  (Yes, I checked
>    the parts list.  I don't have any left over.)

From Section 1.8, "RS-232 Serial Port":

If the functionality of the high speed serial bus (see following) is
not required, the Mini Board can be shortened so as to remove the
board area required for mounting J2, the triple RJ-11 connector.  In
this case, an RS-232 RJ-11 jack can be wired to the four holes
immediately above the PWR LED labelled {\sl TxD}, {\sl RxD}, and {\sl
GND}.

>2)  There is a hole labeled 12.5 XIRQ PGM.  This is apparently the place to 
>    apply voltage when writing to the EEPROM.  What sort of connector should
>    I use here?  I thought of using a single pin from a male or female header
>    strip, but that looks fragile.  What was intended to go here?

This is an undocumented feature!  But it's only of concern if you want
to program 'hc711 chips (EPROM 6811s), in which case 12.5v must be
applied to the XIRQ pin to do the programming.

The downloader program would need to be modified to program EPROM.
The current version only knows how to program EEPROM, in which case it
is not necessary to apply a special programming voltage.

>3)  Has anyone written an assembly program to test the Miniboard?  I really
>    am not looking forward to debugging code, an assembler, a downloader, and
>    a board all at once.

I suggest you download the HEXMON monitor program and use a terminal
emulator to interact with the Mini Board.  Also, there is a test
program for HEXMON on the FTP server, contributed by Alan Kilian, in
pub/miniboard/unix/hexmon-tester.c.


	-Fred
