testing (4)
Jig-Ulator
Sometimes an RC2014 has just one job. This one is to go Beep Whoop, Beep Beep Whoop, Beep Beep Beep Whoop! whenever a working Why…
Retro Challenge 2017/10 Testing
The initial testing of the ESP8266 board with the RC2014 was pretty good, and fundamentally it worked. However, it wasn't quite right, and I suspected…
HDMI and USB Keyboard Support
So, the RC2014 is a great little computer. We all know that. However, to communicate with it, it is easiest to use the serial port and hook it up to a laptop or desktop PC. This makes detracts from the fact that it is small, portable and cheap as well as missing the point of running code on such a basic computer. So I've been looking for a solution to this.
Back when this was still running on a breadboard, I hooked up an Atmel '328 that was connected to a keyboard and 4 x 20 LCD display. It communicated with the RC2014 over the serial port and kind of worked ok, although 4 lines was very restrictive and the Atmel couldn't really keep the screen running and listening at the same time. I have thought about using a '328 to drive a composite output, or maybe some kind of bigger LCD panel, but nothing really struck me as just right.
That is, until the kind people at Raspberry Pi released a cheap multifunction interface device a couple of weeks ago!
RC2014 SD Bootloader Update
Just a quick update to about the SD Bootloader I designed a few posts ago. Well, the PCBs have arrived and last week I took a soldering iron to one of them and gave it a quick test
One side of the board is effectively an Arduino, so without plugging it in to the RC2014, I connected up an FTDI lead and uploaded the Arduino Blink sketch. A quick check with a multimeter and one of the pins was altenating between 5v and 0v. So far, all good!
