SVN Repo @ rev49 - full emulation with the teensy++ and miniSD see here: Forum Announcement <-Follow progress there

update

SVN repository online:

SourceForge:

Teensy++

EVK1104

Custom Board

Feel free to check it out or "check it out" using your favorite svn client.

Teensy++ uses lufa (older 11-09) and avr studio 4

EVK1104 uses avr32 framework 1.6 and AVR32 studio

Custom Board uses avr32 framework 1.7 and AVR32 studio

Want to join the development? Let me know in the forum

Want to know more about the project checkout the site here

Please bear with me on the state of the svn, the teensy++ code will be rewritten with the current lufa code, plus cleaned up.

Update...

Have ignored this blog for a while, sorry folks.

The board went together without any disasters, My first designed and soldered board with a qfp144 cpu and I nailed it :) - a couple issues, but hey its beta-ish .

Wrote a bunch of new code, most of which is to conform to the different hardware.
screen:   was vga(320x240) now 4x20 lcd
buttons: was qtouch controlled now 4 tactile switches
Still need to work more with the finer points of the iso to cd emulation. It works but theres allot of room for  growth to fine tune the code and include some of the ignored routines.

Change the way I handle iso files. Before I couldn't support fragmented files, Now can handle fragmented files with only about a 8% loss in speed. Plus with the new setup will easily be able to handle split iso's that are over 4gig's in size( get around the fat32 size limitation).

Looking into svn hosting with sourceforge.com, have started the setup process.
in the mean time check out the forum

Tracking waisted time on cd's

Over at the official site http://renosite.com the next 60 days of wasted time playing with cd's will be recored. Every time a cd is looked for plus the load time for each cd's.

This way once the production unit is up and running then will start to compare times - I bet I'll even be surprised at the saved time.

line to page: Tracking info here

Well I have time on my hands...

Nothing to do but wait for the board..... Started a full revamp of renosite.com. Hope to have alot more info hosted there as this project continues.

ordering board this weekend

The layout looks good will be ordering my first prototype board this weekend. If everything goes as planned will be assembling the fist avr32 high speed cd emulator within a few weeks. The boards from batchpcb.com takes a few weeks to process. Then some firmware tweak and ill be up and running!

Current progress

Ordering the parts for my first fully assembled prototype. Ended up deciding on a 4x20 lcd screen, sd card (iso storage) interface, 4 pushbutton interface input, AVR32 cpu (for the high speed interface), including a misc assortment of pcb parts. As soon as the parts come in i'm going to compare placement with the eagle pcb printout. If everything lays out correctly then I'll get the board printed through BatchPCB.com

Ordered a decent soldering station and all the misc items - good magnifying desk lamp, solder wick, solder paste, couple kinds of fluxes, etc... Been practicing soldering qfp packages. Its easer than I thought. The qfp144 pin package of the AVR32 scared me at first. Been mostly working with through hole. But hey now I know I can assemble the boards.

Currently parts and pcb cost for 1 off runs are about $120, but once It's all working I'll start making them in bigger batches to bring cost down.

Also tossing around the idea of bringing out the unused io pins for a cheap devel kit working with Atmels AVR32 framework - just modified to work with the lcd and switches the rest of the layout is based off of the EVK1104 (avr32, sd interface, usb hs, jtag, reset / gp - DFU Bootloader). Once the project is done, ill be deciding how far I want to explorer this route. If interested drop me an email: creno@csuoberlin.com

Till next time, thanks for your interest...

To open source - or - To Not open source

I don't know, would like some input. I really think this needs to be developed - and open to everyone.
There has already been a device realeased to the public for purchase( search iodd ). I'm thinking that selling something new like that would just slow the spread of knowledge - give it away.

New devices or new thoughts patterns should be shared. And being that all of the code used in this project is either created by me or code borrowed from public domain....... Why not share this?

I'm not 100% there yet - it's kinda my baby... I would like some input - Please share your thoughts.

Peace,
CReno

I'm still here.

Have not worked on the project for about a month now. Got a little burned out! But in the next couple of days I will start again. I got to the point where there where only a couple of bugs left to figure out. One big bug is within atmels MassStorage framework code. On certain op codes combinations it would cause an infinite loop within the usb out stall routine, unfortunately I don't have a 100% knowledge of the inner workings of the usb  protocol and just putting some sort of counter within the loop to drop out fixed it - or I should say patched it. Being a patch I have noticed a couple of glitched where the scsi op codes that should have processed correctly doesn't here and there. unfortunately being who I am - I cannot live with "mostly" working code.... I need to dive deeper into this bug. The other minor bugs are just cleanup from within my code no biggie. It sure would be nice to have a couple people working on this project with me, but for the time being I would like to keep this closed source.

It's that time again.

Haven't posted in a while. Well figured out where I had a major slowdown. The qtouch routine to read buttons was slowing down USB comms. Rewrote the routine and gained some speed - alot of speed. Average throughput went from 4MB per second to 13MB per second. Running a benchmark program the cdrom's raw i/o went from around 20x cdrom to 85x cdrom speed. Booted Ubuntu Live in about 40 seconds flat!

Remember even though the raw i/o is 85x speed there is no mechanical overhead - no moving parts so seek speed is way faster than a normal cdrom drive. Equivelant speed probably ends up well over 100x cdrom speed.

Emulation on new EVK1104 board going good

Have almost all the code done on the X2 version of the emulator. Once I'm done I'll start working on the hardware end - Will be developing an AVR32 devel board of my own, Without all the extra hardware not needed. So it will be cheaper to sell these things. Besides It's next to impossible to find avr32 devel boards for under $100.00 - I figure the board itself will sell for anywhere between $40 and $65. Where else can you get a USB High-Speed AVR32 devel board for that price! Once the board is done, then I'll add the qtouch and video interfaces. I can see the light at the end of the tunnel.... It's been a long ride so far so good.

Emulation running on evk1104

Well got the emulation running a few minuts ago. the code i'm using for the sd card is not the fastest about 4mb per second. I have played around with faster, but already started down the path with this. but it's booting cd's faster that the fastest internal cdrom I have played with. good sign so far. will post back once tested further......

I'm still here

Figured I'd post something, it's been a while.

Still working on the EVK1104 board, if anyone tells you it's easy to switch from AVR 8bit to AVR32 bit processors they are lying!

I'm finaly getting the hang of the internals of the processor. It takes alot of read of spec sheets and reading the framework code to get a grasp of things.

The current dev is going to use the SD card slot for MassStorage, the LCD for display and the QTouch buttons for input. So far I have the MassStorage portion of the CD Emulator and some menu commands working. Within a couple of days I'll have the CD emulation code working.

Got the new EVK1104 dev board

Received the new board on sunday, awsome device - Full graphics LCD, sd/mmc/ce-ata interfaces and tones of ram. oh yeah - high-speed usb interface and on-the-go usb hosting support. The qtouch buttons are kinda cool too.

But unfortunatly the DFU bootloader is corrupted - so I have to use a jtag programmer to get the bootloader reloaded. From what I read it's a common problem. BUT I don't have a jtag progammer! Well ordered that yesterday. (I feel like a kid at christmas that got that awsome new bike, only to realize that I cannot ride it till sommer!)

PS: this board is overkill for this project, but once I have it running on this platform and find out what I don't need i'll make my own boards for a fraction of the price.

EVK1104 AVR32

Well I pulled the trigger tonight. I ordered an EVK1104 dev board. It's pricy but will give me alot more growth.

Alot more memory and program space.
Plus as an added bonus - High-Speed USB 480mb/s !! Can you say fast cd rom emulation!
The graphic display is an added bonus.
SD memory card - maybe I could do something with that.
CE-ATA interface - interesting, That would use alot less data lines than the HDD IDE interface.

I'll post info once I get this board and do some testing. It will take a little while to get fully operational. Code porting from the 8 bit will take some work, i'll have to check out Dean's site and see if LUFA is ported to avr32 - I though I cought somewhere where someone was working on it.

Website up and running

Well started a web site - I am not a web site designer! The site sucks right now but it will get better.

http://renosite.com/

Sense Data - Thorn in my side!

Ok, figured out how to handle the switching of cdroms the proper way.
Now instead of programming a usb disconnect / reconnect to have the system scan for a cdrom change, I handle it through sense keys -  Unit requiers attention / No media / Tray open, Media has changed.
Able to switch cdroms in Windows in about 2 seconds. And no more cdrom disconnects.

This issue was bugging me!

Found the lockup boot issue w/ random systems

On boot some systems would issue the Read TOC with a SCSI allocation length of less then the 20 or so bytes i'd normaly output. So adjusted output to transfer only the allocation length of  bytes and not all by default.

One less bug to think about...

Just in case anyone is wondering...

The USB dev board I'm using is a Teensy++ from: http://www.pjrc.com/

In the video the blob over half the board is JB Weld. Broke the usb interface twice - second time I ripped the interface right off the board. Ended up having to rebuild the Power, Ground traces and had to replace one of the usb resisters. But it still works!

PS: The interface breaking was my stupidity, the board is well designed and works wonderfuly. I don't want to send the wrong message. These boards are great and I would by another one without a second thought.

Video

Added video of CD Emu in action. And found a bug in the code that caused files past the 32 gig limit to not load (DUH!) forgot to add the lba + lbahighbits for the file start address. But all in all testing is going good so far.