Electronics > Repair
Vintage chip Programmer : " Micropross ROM 3000U "
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pcprogrammer:
Hi Vince,

I peaked at the executable with a hex editor and it indeed shows the commands near the end of the file. A lot of 4 letter commands so a bit of a guess which means what  :palm:

Not sure what your software skills are but with Ghidra it might be possible to gain some insight in the code. It can most likely also be used on the 6502 code, but for that to make more sense you would need a memory map of the programmer.

You wrote about someone having the original 6502 source code. That could make life a lot easier.
Vince:

--- Quote from: DC1MC on December 30, 2022, 08:12:59 pm ---OK, please zip the program and the associated files, if any, post it here and I'll give it the IDA Pro treatment, no promises, but we may be able to find what is expecting form the device to start sending commands, I have no idea what is the difference between U and B versions, but at least I may be able tell you what it expects to get from the machine.

 Cheers,
 DC1MC

--- End quote ---

I don't know that IDA Pro thing you are talking about, but it looks like you are much more capable than I a for sure, so have a go yeah  ! >:D

I have already posted the program here yesterday, it's a single EXE file, nothing else. 100KB or so.
OK I am nice... I attached it here again, to save you some scrolling back ;-)
Don't forget to rename the file to replace the PDF extension back to EXE.....

Ideally it would be cool to crack it so as to bypass the revision test, so it doesn't even asks the programmer for its identity.
This way the S/W would let us past the gates and we might actually see what the user interface loos like, what it can do for us....

Vince:

--- Quote from: pcprogrammer on December 30, 2022, 08:13:53 pm ---I peaked at the executable with a hex editor and it indeed shows the commands near the end of the file. A lot of 4 letter commands so a bit of a guess which means what  :palm:

--- End quote ---

All the commands are documented in the 5000 manuals  8)


--- Quote from: pcprogrammer on December 30, 2022, 08:13:53 pm ---Not sure what your software skills are but with Ghidra it might be possible to gain some insight in the code. It can most likely also be used on the 6502 code, but for that to make more sense you would need a memory map of the programmer.

--- End quote ---

Skills ? What skills  :-DD

A bit of embedded C and a bit of 8051 and PIC assembly language 15/25 years ago... that's about it.


--- Quote from: pcprogrammer on December 30, 2022, 08:13:53 pm ---You wrote about someone having the original 6502 source code. That could make life a lot easier.

--- End quote ---


Yes, he posted only once on that forum, 2 years ago, to offer his help

https://forum.system-cfg.com/viewtopic.php?p=176555#p176555

... but then he disappeared.... maybe he is dead. I will try pinging him anyway...
The source code, if it is well commented, would give us I hope the details of what the parameters mean in the message that the programmers sends back to the PC S/W. This way we could maybe crack the programmer's code, overwrite these parameters so that it returns a 3000B parameters instead of 3000U.... that would be cool.

Vince:
OK, I did as I said...  got rid of the scope and spaghetti cable, and used the previous cable that worked.

Fired up Windows HyperTerminal.... configured it with my findings, 9600 8N2, H/W  handshaking.... and what do you know ?

IT WORKS !!!!  :-DMM

For a change, it all went according to plan !  :popcorn:

I can talk to the programmer and it replies to me.

If I send a wrong command, or some garbage, or no command at all really.. the programmer replies with : " ERR #01 ".

So then I sent the same commands as the S/W does : BOOT and the HELO, and the programmer replies exactly the same thing as it did before... VICTORY !!!  :D

See for yourself :




So that's it !  My programmer works ! It's not a door stop anymore !!!

All the commands are documented in the 5000 manuals, so just need to spend the next 6 months studying all that to understand what I need to type to get it to do anything useful...

Then I can write a script to automate that, or better yet write my own little C program to replace the one we have now which is not cooperating very much, is it...

Wow... the grin on my face does not show, but it is there  >:D

So now, it's just a matter of time, and effort, before I can eventually program a chip with this thing, YES ! There is HOPE now !!!  :box:

What I don't understand though is.... this programmer can do so many things, and program so many different chips (can even program MCU's  like the 8051 and 68705 at least, I remember from the documentation)... it must take a lot of data space to store all the various parameters that tell the programmer how to work with X or Y chip, no ?
The MSDOS S/W weighs barely 100KB, no way in hell it contains that data.... it can't be in the 6502 EPROM either, too small. So it must be in the system disk ??
There is more space in there for sure. It's also the easiest way for customers, to add more chips as they come to the market.

Oh, EDIT !!! ==> the programmer replies with its ID to the PC S/W only once it's booted from the system disk... so the ID we need to modify must be on that disk, not in the 6502 EPROM... so no need to mess with that EPROM  :phew:

So in 2023 for season #2, we will focus on studying all the serial commands, and writing some little script or C program to help us hopefully..... program an EPROM !!!!   :-+

Vince:

--- Quote from: pcprogrammer on December 30, 2022, 08:13:53 pm ---
I peaked at the executable with a hex editor and it indeed shows the commands near the end of the file. A lot of 4 letter commands so a bit of a guess which means what  :palm:


--- End quote ---


Hmmm.... that must explain the " HELO " command instead of " HELLO ".... it's not a typo, it's just that they must have decided on a fixed 4 letter format for all their commands.... OK my bad, I was being a bad mouth... I apologize to all Micropross engineers....


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