LisaList2

Advanced search  

News:

Want an XLerator? Please participate in the market research thread: https://lisalist2.com/index.php/topic,594.msg4180.html

Pages: [1] 2 3 4   Go Down

Author Topic: ESProFile - A Powerful ProFile/Widget Emulator and Diagnostic Tool  (Read 81365 times)

AlexTheCat123

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Karma: +100/-1
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 335

I've just released my new ProFile emulator and diagnostic tool on GitHub, called ESProFile.

A couple years back, I developed the ArduinoFile ProFile emulator, with the goal of coming up with something that was inexpensive and easy to build. While I believe that I succeeded in accomplishing both of those things, ArduinoFile had a lot of shortcomings that made it impractical for a lot of Lisa users.

ArduinoFile worked great with the Lisa 2/5 (and presumably the Lisa 1, although I'm not sure if anybody's ever tested it on one), but things started falling apart if you tried to use it with a Lisa 2/10, a parallel card, or an XLerated Lisa. The Arduino was already being pushed to its limits on the 2/5, but the faster strobe pulses on these other Lisa configurations were just too much for it to keep up with. With some help from ArduinoFile users, I was able to come up with a couple patches that made ArduinoFile kind of work on the 2/10 and parallel card, but it was still really unreliable. And it still doesn't work with an XLerator at all!

So I decided to develop a replacement that's based around the ESP32 instead, hence the name ESProFile. And wow, it's a massive improvement! Emulation now works with every Lisa configuration I've been able to get my hands on, including with the 16MHz XLerator, and the cost is even lower than with ArduinoFile because of how cheap ESP32s are.

And, in an attempt to make things more accessible to people who don't know how to solder (and also easier for those of us who do), I've designed everything with JLCPCB's assembly service in mind. Just upload the Gerbers, the pick and place file, and the BOM to their site, and they'll fabricate and assemble 5 boards for you for about $30 or $40, including the cost of parts. You just have to add the ESP32, an interface cable, and an SD card, and you're ready to go!

ESProFile also comes in two different board versions: an internal one and an external one. The external one is designed for use outside a Lisa like a ProFile, while the internal board mounts right inside your drive cage like a Widget.

Porting the emulator mode over was fairly straightforward, although there were several major roadblocks and I also added quite a few quality-of-life improvements. However, ArduinoFile also had a very rudimentary diagnostic mode that allowed you to connect it to an actual ProFile and send over a couple basic commands for troubleshooting a drive (although it was pretty buggy). ESProFile's diagnostic mode has been greatly improved over ArduinoFile's, to the point that it now supports pretty much every command in the ProFile command set, including the 5MB and 10MB diagnostic Z8 command sets and all of the Widget's special commands. And it also has a lot of useful utility functions like drive backups and searching your disk for a particular string.

ArduinoFile didn't have enough flash to hold both emulator mode and diagnostic mode at the same time, so you had to upload new firmware to the board to switch between the two modes. But this has been solved on ESProFile, and you can change between modes by simply flipping a switch on the board!

If you think you might want to build one for yourself, feel free to check it out!
Logged

jamesdenton

  • Administrator
  • Sr. Member
  • *****
  • Karma: +76/-0
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 213
  • ArcaneByte
    • ArcaneByte
Re: ESProFile - A Powerful ProFile/Widget Emulator and Diagnostic Tool
« Reply #1 on: January 20, 2025, 08:55:16 pm »

Fantastic work, sir! Looking forward to putting one together!
Logged

AlexTheCat123

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Karma: +100/-1
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 335
Re: ESProFile - A Powerful ProFile/Widget Emulator and Diagnostic Tool
« Reply #2 on: January 20, 2025, 10:39:47 pm »

Thank you!
Logged

stepleton

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Karma: +155/-1
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 500
Re: ESProFile - A Powerful ProFile/Widget Emulator and Diagnostic Tool
« Reply #3 on: January 21, 2025, 03:43:26 am »

Congratulations! Looks like a fantastic little gizmo. I've thought a few times how there ought to be an ESP-powered ProFile emulator, and it sure looks like you didn't just do it halfway!

The docs and the design for production are impressive. Now, I've always been bad at arithmetic, but do I have it right that (without the cable) we're looking at a unit cost of below fifteen dollars?
Logged

AlexTheCat123

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Karma: +100/-1
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 335
Re: ESProFile - A Powerful ProFile/Widget Emulator and Diagnostic Tool
« Reply #4 on: January 21, 2025, 05:06:18 pm »

Quote
Now, I've always been bad at arithmetic, but do I have it right that (without the cable) we're looking at a unit cost of below fifteen dollars?

Yeah, that's right! I was pretty shocked that it ended up being that low; one of my biggest goals was to make it cheap, but I wasn't expecting it to be quite that affordable. Granted, if you're doing assembly through JLCPCB, you'll have to end up paying $30 or $40 for the minimum quantity of 5 boards, but that gives you 4 extra assembled boards that you could give (or sell) to your friends!
Logged

Verault

  • Jr. Member
  • **
  • Karma: +3/-0
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 14
Re: ESProFile - A Powerful ProFile/Widget Emulator and Diagnostic Tool
« Reply #5 on: January 22, 2025, 11:38:07 am »

If anyone is building a batch can you count me in for one?
Logged

Lisa2

  • Administrator
  • Sr. Member
  • *****
  • Karma: +78/-0
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 193
  • See why 1983 was more like Y2K...
    • Lisa2.com
Re: ESProFile - A Powerful ProFile/Widget Emulator and Diagnostic Tool
« Reply #6 on: January 23, 2025, 12:52:34 pm »

If anyone is building a batch can you count me in for one?

I have large batch in production now, PM me. 

Rick
Logged

sigma7

  • Administrator
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Karma: +177/-1
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 604
  • Warning: Memory errors found. Verify comments.
Re: ESProFile - A Powerful ProFile/Widget Emulator and Diagnostic Tool
« Reply #7 on: January 24, 2025, 04:13:17 pm »

I've just released my new ProFile emulator and diagnostic tool

An impressive amount of work for sure -- I'm looking forward to trying it out!
Logged
Warning: Memory errors found. ECC non-functional. Verify comments if accuracy is important to you.

anotherLISAguy

  • Full Member
  • ***
  • Karma: +9/-0
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 35
Re: ESProFile - A Powerful ProFile/Widget Emulator and Diagnostic Tool
« Reply #8 on: January 31, 2025, 01:31:46 pm »

This is great news - I was interested in your original emulator.
Am I correct to think I can effectively create a monster drive of test programs - basically all the different tests available for the Lisa 1 through XL.
I think the obvious answer is yes, but how would do we handle those running programs that are intended to run upon boot.
A review of the github didn't show anything obvious how this could be handled.
Anyway, thanks again for the work - I will definitely want to get a couple one way or the other.  :)

Logged

jamesdenton

  • Administrator
  • Sr. Member
  • *****
  • Karma: +76/-0
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 213
  • ArcaneByte
    • ArcaneByte
Re: ESProFile - A Powerful ProFile/Widget Emulator and Diagnostic Tool
« Reply #9 on: January 31, 2025, 01:35:21 pm »

If it works like ArduinoFile and Cameo/Aphid, the SD card would potentially have multiple drive images, with the one named 'profile.image' being the one that gets loaded by the Lisa and presented as a real ProFile.

If you use the Selector image (Tom's program) and name that as profile.image, it will boot into a custom "boot menu" of sorts, allowing you to choose a bootable image to (re)boot from.

All of this is VERY slick and much appreciated.
Logged

AlexTheCat123

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Karma: +100/-1
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 335
Re: ESProFile - A Powerful ProFile/Widget Emulator and Diagnostic Tool
« Reply #10 on: January 31, 2025, 08:47:08 pm »

James is absolutely correct!

The SDTemplate folder in the ESProFile repo is already set up with a disk image of the Selector (and backup images of it in the rescue folder), so you just copy that over to your SD card and you're ready to go. I don't talk about how to use the Selector in the readme since Tom already has some great documentation about it, but I did link to his documentation somewhere in there. But if you don't feel like going back through the readme, you can also find his Selector manual here.

With the Selector, you can put as many images as you want onto your SD card, and then just pick one to boot from whenever you start up your Lisa. It's really awesome; thanks again Tom for making such a great program!
Logged

Lisa2

  • Administrator
  • Sr. Member
  • *****
  • Karma: +78/-0
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 193
  • See why 1983 was more like Y2K...
    • Lisa2.com
Re: ESProFile - A Powerful ProFile/Widget Emulator and Diagnostic Tool
« Reply #11 on: February 01, 2025, 04:51:51 pm »

If anyone is building a batch can you count me in for one?
I have large batch in production now, PM me. 
Rick

I have had several requests to get in on this batch.  All of the boards are accounted for now.
Thank you,
Rick
Logged

Lisa2

  • Administrator
  • Sr. Member
  • *****
  • Karma: +78/-0
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 193
  • See why 1983 was more like Y2K...
    • Lisa2.com
Re: ESProFile - A Powerful ProFile/Widget Emulator and Diagnostic Tool
« Reply #12 on: February 06, 2025, 12:56:25 pm »

Last night I had a small production line going building these.. ;)
Logged

jamesdenton

  • Administrator
  • Sr. Member
  • *****
  • Karma: +76/-0
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 213
  • ArcaneByte
    • ArcaneByte
Re: ESProFile - A Powerful ProFile/Widget Emulator and Diagnostic Tool
« Reply #13 on: February 06, 2025, 01:05:46 pm »

I also have a handful of each, should someone want one.
Logged

AlexTheCat123

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Karma: +100/-1
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 335
Re: ESProFile - A Powerful ProFile/Widget Emulator and Diagnostic Tool
« Reply #14 on: February 06, 2025, 10:04:10 pm »

It's nice to start seeing these things out in the wild! If anybody runs across any problems or has any feedback, please let me know. I want to be sure that ESProFile is as reliable and easy to use as possible!
Logged
Pages: [1] 2 3 4   Go Up