Really odd question.....

[bienville]

Hello, I realize that this is an unusual request, but I would like to program my Genesis in Forth, and I need a tethered system to do it. My question is can I send code to my Genesis over a cable without moding it, and can I make a cartridge that can be written to while it is in my Genesis? If so I would be very grateful if you could give me an idea of how to do it.

Sincerely,
Sieur de Bienville

[GiGaBiTe]

If you have a genesis with a serial port on the back, you can send data to it at 9600 baud, but you need a program running on the genesis to look for data on the serial port for it to work

You can also send it through one of the genesis controller ports with a bit of circuitry, but again you need a program running on the genesis to see it.

As for reading / writing data on the cartridge port, it's probably possible to do, but again programming is needed to do it.

[oompa loompa]

yea, it's possible. if i were you, i would make myself a flash card using some old, 5 volt programmable flash memories, or use some battery backed up sram (you can steal the sram from 486 motherboards with cache). you just need to program your cartridge with a bootloader that will communicate with the outside world, and then copy your program to your cartridge in real time.

if you don't want to mess with building complicated hardware, you could also get yourself a sega cd, then use MOD's SCDloader (just burn the iso to a cdr, no modding of the sega cd) to load homebrew programs to word ram

[evildragon]

gigabite said:

If you have a genesis with a serial port on the back, you can send data to it at 9600 baud, but you need a program running on the genesis to look for data on the serial port for it to work

You can also send it through one of the genesis controller ports with a bit of circuitry, but again you need a program running on the genesis to see it.

As for reading / writing data on the cartridge port, it's probably possible to do, but again programming is needed to do it.

um, i don't think they are serial ports. I have one, and it seems to be wired exactly like a controller port, just with a female port and not a male port..

[oompa loompa]

some of the pins on the controller ports can be switched to rs232 signals through the use of software

[jlf65]

admin said:

some of the pins on the controller ports can be switched to rs232 signals through the use of software

Uh - asynchronous serial. It'd take a level converter to make them into RS232 signals.

[bienville]

Thanks that was very helpful, but how do I copy my program to the cartridge? Is there a special memory location I need to write to?

[oompa loompa]

copying a program to a cartridge is all up to you , depending on the hardware that you build

note that you cannot just send any data over to genesis without writing the software to actually handle the data

[evildragon]

since no one has mentioned it, use Sega Transfer Suite..

retrodev.com/transfer.html

As looking at the wiring, it's not serial, that's for sure, it's parrelel..

[bienville]

Thanks for the help. Someone on #Forth sent me a cool article on making a very small tethered forth, and I am going to model my bootloader after that. And according to the Sega CD Transfer page it is a serial port, but you use a RS-232 to parallel adapter to connect it to your computer.

Now is there any way to change the thread name, because I want to post my progress here.

[evildragon]

bienville said:

Thanks for the help. Someone on #Forth sent me a cool article on making a very small tethered forth, and I am going to model my bootloader after that. And according to the Sega CD Transfer page it is a serial port, but you use a RS-232 to parallel adapter to connect it to your computer.

Now is there any way to change the thread name, because I want to post my progress here.

the page means that it uses DB-9 but it's parallel.. serial means, one input, one output, it's a series.. if you look at the pinout, it has many outputs and inputs, it's parallel..

[oompa loompa]

bienville said:

Now is there any way to change the thread name, because I want to post my progress here.

Just edit your first post, and then change the subject name to whatever you want