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Post by gurce on Dec 16, 2019 19:06:00 GMT
Not to worry Nick, I'm aware what the file is for and what it contains, but thanks for making doubly sure I do :-)
My q related more to if anyone with a modded mini/maxi was able to locate the file on their nand flashes anywhere? And if so, could they try the "extra joystick" settings I suggested in my post.
Jay Dalus got back to me on fb saying he wasnt able to locate them (on nandb?), but he suspected they may be on nanda?
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Post by jj0 on Dec 17, 2019 6:08:31 GMT
If I remember correctly I tried this some time ago and it didn't work,all vicerc settings are ignored.
You could try it with a snapshot from Windows vice 2.4 with the extra settings enabled.
<edit> I could be mistaken. The 'the64' program tries to open /root/.vice/vicerc.
<edit2> Put the following in the vicerc file:
[C64]
ExtraJoy=1
ExtraJoyType=0
The vicerc file is read by 'the64':
THEC64 ® Copyright 2019 Retro Games Limited.
theC64-1.3.1-argent | 13-12-2019 10:46:04 | cc1f6279
Reading configuration file `/root/.vice/vicerc'.
But with 3 joysticks plugged in even though I can control the carousel with all 3 joysticks I can only control the white and the red player, not the blue one.
Adding more joystick options:
[C64]
ExtraJoy=1
ExtraJoyType=0
JoyDevice1=0
JoyDevice2=0
JoyDevice3=0
proves that the options in the file are read but the additional options are not recognised:
THEC64 ® Copyright 2019 Retro Games Limited.
theC64-1.3.1-argent | 13-12-2019 10:46:04 | cc1f6279
Reading configuration file `/root/.vice/vicerc'.
Error - Unknown resource `JoyDevice1'.
Warning - /root/.vice/vicerc: Unknown resource specification at line 4.
Error - Unknown resource `JoyDevice2'.
Warning - /root/.vice/vicerc: Unknown resource specification at line 5.
Error - Unknown resource `JoyDevice3'.
Warning - /root/.vice/vicerc: Unknown resource specification at line 6.
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Post by gurce on Dec 19, 2019 14:08:13 GMT
Thanks for delving deeper into it JJ. Sorry I missed your later edits until now (didn't get notification for them).
I spent a fair bit of my night looking for answers in the shared source on github, but no luck myself, you got further than I did 
Sniffing into your insights, I see that these "JoyDevice*" entries belong to the "joy.c" file, which apparently isn't getting compiled into their binary yet (from what I saw of their "link-the-64.sh" script).
Ah well, I might be out of luck for now then, but thanks for sniffing out the possibility 
EDIT:
Aah, maybe your finding of the vicerc location might be a win for some people that were hoping to turn on the Warp mode though |
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Post by johno75 on Dec 20, 2019 2:24:32 GMT
On the mini how can you delete/rename games via FileZilla? I’m getting “anonymous users can’t rename/delete” error
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Post by jj0 on Dec 20, 2019 6:54:44 GMT
On the mini how can you delete/rename games via FileZilla? I’m getting “anonymous users can’t rename/delete” error I haven't tried, but instead of anonymous you could try as user root? |
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Post by johno75 on Dec 20, 2019 10:58:07 GMT
On the mini how can you delete/rename games via FileZilla? I’m getting “anonymous users can’t rename/delete” error I haven't tried, but instead of anonymous you could try as user root? Thanks. Got it worked out. I thought I bricked it as copied a game over by FileZilla and on boot it went straight to a black cover and couldn’t use joystick etc. can you not copy games over directly like that? Anywhere here on the forum we can request games set up with covers etc to install?? Would love to get manic miner, Jim Henson’s labyrinth, fire trap and the remakes of commando and ik+ showing on the carousel. |
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Post by jj0 on Dec 20, 2019 15:33:39 GMT
I haven't tried, but instead of anonymous you could try as user root? Thanks. Got it worked out. I thought I bricked it as copied a game over by FileZilla and on boot it went straight to a black cover and couldn’t use joystick etc. can you not copy games over directly like that? Anywhere here on the forum we can request games set up with covers etc to install?? Would love to get manic miner, Jim Henson’s labyrinth, fire trap and the remakes of commando and ik+ showing on the carousel. The Mini's rootfs is setup to aonly allow root write rights. So only root works. Regarding requesting games, maybe you can open a new topic. Also, popcorn created a collection of 84 games. |
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Rhialto
BASIC
VICE contributor
Posts: 9
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Post by Rhialto on Jan 2, 2020 14:53:50 GMT
Did any of the source for the Maxi already show up somewhere? In fact, the code I've seen at github.com/jj-0/C64Mini-FEL-boot/ only seems to be the Linux kernel, but there should be a whole lot more that's covered by the GPL. The (modified) VICE source, for example. Can the FEL boot for the Mini as presented at the start of this thread also work on the Maxi, or is it certain that it needs a different kernel (and/or other components)? |
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Post by jj0 on Jan 2, 2020 16:04:08 GMT
Did any of the source for the Maxi already show up somewhere? In fact, the code I've seen at github.com/jj-0/C64Mini-FEL-boot/ only seems to be the Linux kernel, but there should be a whole lot more that's covered by the GPL. The (modified) VICE source, for example. Can the FEL boot for the Mini as presented at the start of this thread also work on the Maxi, or is it certain that it needs a different kernel (and/or other components)? The FEL boot in this thread only works on the Mini, the Maxi has a different SoC (H3) so the Mini's (A20) kernel won't work. I haven't seen the source for the Maxi either, I guess someone needs to request it with Retro LTD. But there are many Allwinner H3 sources on github. |
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Rhialto
BASIC
VICE contributor
Posts: 9
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Post by Rhialto on Jan 7, 2020 21:06:18 GMT
I am rather a novice with these embedded ARM boards (but I do have lots of experience with running Unix), so this may be a silly question: does it help if I make the nanda image (from my Maxi) available? Supposedly it contains a kernel. But it seems to be in a different format than the uImage that comes in the FEL boot kit:
uImage: u-boot legacy uImage, Linux-3.4.39, Linux/ARM, OS Kernel Image (Not compressed), 11276000 bytes, Sun Jan 6 10:35:00 2019, Load Address: 0x40008000, Entry Point: 0x40008000, Header CRC: 0x41C26174, Data CRC: 0xAF1D42B9
nanda: Android bootimg, kernel (0x40008000), ramdisk (0x41000000), page size: 2048Or would the loader understand both, since the boot.sh script seems to upload an u-boot as well, so it could support both formats perhaps? (see, I'm a novice at this...)
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Post by jj0 on Jan 8, 2020 7:41:15 GMT
I am rather a novice with these embedded ARM boards (but I do have lots of experience with running Unix), so this may be a silly question: does it help if I make the nanda image (from my Maxi) available? Supposedly it contains a kernel. But it seems to be in a different format than the uImage that comes in the FEL boot kit: uImage: u-boot legacy uImage, Linux-3.4.39, Linux/ARM, OS Kernel Image (Not compressed), 11276000 bytes, Sun Jan 6 10:35:00 2019, Load Address: 0x40008000, Entry Point: 0x40008000, Header CRC: 0x41C26174, Data CRC: 0xAF1D42B9
nanda: Android bootimg, kernel (0x40008000), ramdisk (0x41000000), page size: 2048Or would the loader understand both, since the boot.sh script seems to upload an u-boot as well, so it could support both formats perhaps? (see, I'm a novice at this...) The kernel image in nanda is an Android Boot image which itself is a combination of a config file, the kernel (as zImage) and the initrd.img boot ramdisk. You can manipulate this image by using for example the abootimg tools in Ubuntu. The nanda is (highly likely) the same for all Maxi's so making it available isn't really necessary, though it might help someone who has bricked his Maxi. For FEL-booting the Maxi you can use the nanda image but you still need an u-boot-sunxi-with-spl (which initialises the system and then loads and runs the kernel) that is compiled for the H3 SoC and that has support for Android images enabled. You can also extract the image (abootimg-unpack-initrd), make changes to the initrd.img and repack (abootimg-pack-initrd) it again and then create a new boot image to use with FEL or even to replace the original nanda with. The nice thing about this is that if you e.g. want to load some custom modules they would be in the ramdisk which is discarded after boot so the changes would not take up space on the Maxi's nandb rootfs. You can of course also compile your own kernel from the various Allwinner SDK's that are available for similar H3 boards. There is a lot of information about the boot process, u-boot, kernel compiling, FEL booting for Allwinner SoC's on the sunxi wiki. |
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Post by spannernick on Jan 8, 2020 19:56:05 GMT
I finally got it to run a script today and auto mount nandb.. I change mnt to mnt2 and it worked.. but didn't see the script run on screen it just booted like normal with the IP address and prompt. ***Welcome to C64Mini running in ramfs *** root@c64mini (192.1668.0.5) /# Here is the script I put it in a script folder on the USB and on the root of the USB just in case so it could find it in 2 places. S04mount-nandb.zip (344 B) I was wondering couldn't we make a app around this so you could add a game to the app and press sync and it would send it to TheC64 Mini... ? Just a idea.. well no I guess, it would need a gui and send commands and able to send the games via ftp.A lot of work... |
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Post by bud1oo on Jan 19, 2020 22:47:29 GMT
I attempted FEL for the first time today after updating my Mini to 1.3.2 failed. When I switch the Mini on there is only a black screen. When I boot in FEL it kinda sorta starts up, but does not go beyond the "Starting Kernel" line. No shell to do anything useful. Any hints how I can unbrick my Mini in this state?
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Post by jj0 on Jan 20, 2020 7:05:37 GMT
I attempted FEL for the first time today after updating my Mini to 1.3.2 failed. When I switch the Mini on there is only a black screen. When I boot in FEL it kinda sorta starts up, but does not go beyond the "Starting Kernel" line. No shell to do anything useful. Any hints how I can unbrick my Mini in this state? Do you know what happened during the update? E.g. lost power? Worst case you would need to open up the Mini and connect via the UART. This will also allow you to see bootup error messages from normal startup and possibly more info from FEL mode. |
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Post by bud1oo on Jan 20, 2020 8:06:44 GMT
I attempted FEL for the first time today after updating my Mini to 1.3.2 failed. When I switch the Mini on there is only a black screen. When I boot in FEL it kinda sorta starts up, but does not go beyond the "Starting Kernel" line. No shell to do anything useful. Any hints how I can unbrick my Mini in this state? Do you know what happened during the update? E.g. lost power? I have no idea what happened. As far as I can tell the update went normally. Progressbar filling up and then the screen going black, supposedly the reboot. It just never came back on. I used the same USB as before but this time I got power from the television's USB which I hadn't done previously. Why won't the kernel boot? From what I understand the files provided for FEL are basically a linux rescue boot disk, i. e. the state of the Mini doesn't really matter? I used v1 and v1.1 of your C64Mini-FEL-boot packages with the same result and just discovered v1.2-ModMyClassic in a different repo. Is that any different from the other ones? And thanks for the help/info BTW. Hopefully the Mini can be fixed. Surprisingly I could only find very little info about bricked machines, it's all about the hacking. |
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Post by jj0 on Jan 20, 2020 9:38:14 GMT
Do you know what happened during the update? E.g. lost power? I have no idea what happened. As far as I can tell the update went normally. Progressbar filling up and then the screen going black, supposedly the reboot. It just never came back on. I used the same USB as before but this time I got power from the television's USB which I hadn't done previously. Why won't the kernel boot? From what I understand the files provided for FEL are basically a linux rescue boot disk, i. e. the state of the Mini doesn't really matter? I used v1 and v1.1 of your C64Mini-FEL-boot packages with the same result and just discovered v1.2-ModMyClassic in a different repo. Is that any different from the other ones? And thanks for the help/info BTW. Hopefully the Mini can be fixed. Surprisingly I could only find very little info about bricked machines, it's all about the hacking. If I remember correctly the v1.2-ModMyClassic was specifically for swingflip and didn't run any (or less) scripts. But v1.1 is probably best to use. You are right, the state of the Mini 'normal boot' doesn't matter for FEL. As long as you can get it into FEL mode it should work. Except if there's a hardware failure of e.g. RAM. There are some thread/comments about unbricking, but usually it's just restoring nandb from a backup. But the easiest way to proceed is to connect to the UART if you;re comfortable with that. |
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Post by bud1oo on Jan 20, 2020 18:50:01 GMT
But the easiest way to proceed is to connect to the UART if you;re comfortable with that. That's probably what I will do. Never used UART before, so a chance to learn something new. Thanks again. |
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Post by jj0 on Jan 20, 2020 20:15:59 GMT
But the easiest way to proceed is to connect to the UART if you;re comfortable with that. That's probably what I will do. Never used UART before, so a chance to learn something new. Thanks again. Good luck / have fun! Here are more tips for using the UART. |
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strud
Creatures
Posts: 18
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Post by strud on Jan 28, 2020 10:37:02 GMT
Do you know what happened during the update? E.g. lost power? I have no idea what happened. As far as I can tell the update went normally. Progressbar filling up and then the screen going black, supposedly the reboot. It just never came back on. I used the same USB as before but this time I got power from the television's USB which I hadn't done previously. Why won't the kernel boot? From what I understand the files provided for FEL are basically a linux rescue boot disk, i. e. the state of the Mini doesn't really matter? I used v1 and v1.1 of your C64Mini-FEL-boot packages with the same result and just discovered v1.2-ModMyClassic in a different repo. Is that any different from the other ones? And thanks for the help/info BTW. Hopefully the Mini can be fixed. Surprisingly I could only find very little info about bricked machines, it's all about the hacking. My Mini did the same thing during a firmware update - black screen after reboot. Found out that i had filled the RAM to almost full (new games on carousel, replacement menu tune) and the new firmware did not have enough space to install. However, the FEL boot mode worked fine and I was able to replace the NANDB with a backup I had recently made. I then deleted a few files and reapplied the new firmware with no further problems. I have the network adapter and use FTP to transfer files - very simple with FileZilla. |
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Post by bud1oo on Jan 29, 2020 6:13:50 GMT
My Mini did the same thing during a firmware update - black screen after reboot. Found out that i had filled the RAM to almost full (new games on carousel, replacement menu tune) and the new firmware did not have enough space to install. My Mini was untouched, never did anything out of the ordinary to it. Still black screen. I've been mailing with support since it happened. Right now we are down to "It's really unheard of but I'm going to talk to the programmer if he can think of anything that could have gone wrong". Can't wait to hear the result |
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Post by bud1oo on Feb 1, 2020 13:49:18 GMT
To finish my story... I got the UART device this week and was messing with it for the last 3hrs or so. What I found first was that /usr/bin/thec64 was not starting because of some faulty PNG. After further analysis I found out that it was one that is used for the menu. I replaced that with a PNG from one of my quicksaves and the Mini would boot up again. Weird looking with bits and pieces of a Skool Daze screenshot all over the place, but working. I backed up my saves and decided to rewrite the nandb, version 1.2.0, I think. When I ran the "dd if=x of=y" after like 5s there was some reoccuring output about "memory corruption" and "page allocation" followed by a kernel panic. I tried a second time but the same thing happened. With a partially overwritten nandb the system obviously is now broken again. Which doesn't matter because I assume that "memory corruption", etc. is very much a hardware failure. Would anyone agree?
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Post by jj0 on Feb 1, 2020 15:11:37 GMT
To finish my story... I got the UART device this week and was messing with it for the last 3hrs or so. What I found first was that /usr/bin/thec64 was not starting because of some faulty PNG. After further analysis I found out that it was one that is used for the menu. I replaced that with a PNG from one of my quicksaves and the Mini would boot up again. Weird looking with bits and pieces of a Skool Daze screenshot all over the place, but working. I backed up my saves and decided to rewrite the nandb, version 1.2.0, I think. When I ran the "dd if=x of=y" after like 5s there was some reoccuring output about "memory corruption" and "page allocation" followed by a kernel panic. I tried a second time but the same thing happened. With a partially overwritten nandb the system obviously is now broken again. Which doesn't matter because I assume that "memory corruption", etc. is very much a hardware failure. Would anyone agree? Yes, sounds like a bad nand chip or memory. But it could also be (grasping at straws) not good enough power supply. You could still run it off an USB drive, but you;d need to replace the nanda to make it boot from USB. So if it is bad nand that might not work. |
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Post by johno75 on Feb 3, 2020 2:17:51 GMT
Does anybody know why when I log into root on the c64 mini using the fel mode - root doesn't contain any folders and I can access the games folder?? it's worked for me before and I don't think I'm doing anything different.
I use putty and put username as root and password as manicminerrules! and thats work ok.
i then do these 2 commands which seem to work as no errors come back
/#insmod -f /opt/nand.ko
/#mount /dev/nandb /mnt
but then like I said if I do a directory list there are no folders in there and when I ftp in with filezilla root still doesn't have any folders so I can't get to the games folder.
Any ideas?
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Post by jj0 on Feb 3, 2020 8:12:32 GMT
Does anybody know why when I log into root on the c64 mini using the fel mode - root doesn't contain any folders and I can access the games folder?? it's worked for me before and I don't think I'm doing anything different. I use putty and put username as root and password as manicminerrules! and thats work ok. i then do these 2 commands which seem to work as no errors come back /#insmod -f /opt/nand.ko /#mount /dev/nandb /mnt but then like I said if I do a directory list there are no folders in there and when I ftp in with filezilla root still doesn't have any folders so I can't get to the games folder. Any ideas? The directory should be in '/mnt/usr/share/the64'. I assume when you switch it on as normal is still works OK? If you do: # mount | grep nandb
# find / -name "the64"What is the output? |
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Post by johno75 on Feb 3, 2020 8:49:49 GMT
Does anybody know why when I log into root on the c64 mini using the fel mode - root doesn't contain any folders and I can access the games folder?? it's worked for me before and I don't think I'm doing anything different. I use putty and put username as root and password as manicminerrules! and thats work ok. i then do these 2 commands which seem to work as no errors come back /#insmod -f /opt/nand.ko /#mount /dev/nandb /mnt but then like I said if I do a directory list there are no folders in there and when I ftp in with filezilla root still doesn't have any folders so I can't get to the games folder. Any ideas? The directory should be in '/mnt/usr/share/the64'. I assume when you switch it on as normal is still works OK? If you do: # mount | grep nandb
# find / -name "the64"What is the output? no when i switch it on it boots to the normal carousel but the first game is a blank cover and can't use the joystick and it's frozen. i'll try your ideas tomorrow. just want to delete one game i added which wasn't right and stuffed it up. will be all good after that. ive been through this before but can't remember how i fixed it |
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Post by spannernick on Feb 3, 2020 15:51:18 GMT
Is there a FEL Mode available for THEC64 Maxi..?
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Post by jj0 on Feb 3, 2020 16:12:24 GMT
Is there a FEL Mode available for THEC64 Maxi..? It works, but it is less useful than on the Mini as I have only been able to get a few serial2usb devices working and no ethernet devices. You're better off interrupting uboot and then do a 'setenv console=ttyS0,115200 ramfs;boot' to make it start in it's ramdisk environment. Or the 'run X-Windows via fake firmware update'. |
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Post by johno75 on Feb 4, 2020 23:04:23 GMT
The directory should be in '/mnt/usr/share/the64'. I assume when you switch it on as normal is still works OK? If you do: # mount | grep nandb
# find / -name "the64"What is the output? no when i switch it on it boots to the normal carousel but the first game is a blank cover and can't use the joystick and it's frozen. i'll try your ideas tomorrow. just want to delete one game i added which wasn't right and stuffed it up. will be all good after that. ive been through this before but can't remember how i fixed it All good now. I was looking in the wrong directory. Thanks for your help! |
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Post by darbyram on Feb 9, 2020 0:47:23 GMT
Is there a FEL Mode available for THEC64 Maxi..? Use a usb male to male on the back port usb whilst holding the button on the board to get into FEL. But as jj0 said it don't quite work like it does on the mini. |
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Post by leolaus on Jun 2, 2020 16:13:21 GMT
How do I mount the USB flash drive, and can I access the NAND without a USB2Ethernet adapter?
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