gloriouscowThe current state of PAL dumping kind of sucks.
I aim to do something about that..
hkz@gloriouscow wonderful! I did something similar with the dpeeper (https://github.com/DuPAL-PAL-DUmper/dppeeper) but this is much more flexible and does not require custom hardware!
@hkz oh wow, that is nearly identical.
@gloriouscow it's an evolution of a previous tool of mine that was a bit more automated but also more limited in potential.
I have not ported everything over the new board and tooling, but this has served me well up to now to dump PROMs and other weird devices. And also to reverse a PAL for the Mac Plus. Ended up defining a TOML format so every user can build their own IC definition to help them analyze the device.
Should you see any interesting idea in there for your project, be my guest.
@hkz I'm even using TOML for pin definitions, but we went about it completely differently. I have an array of pins with attributes, you have attributes with arrays of pins. Funny.
@gloriouscow heh :) Well anyway, I'm happy someone else is tackling the problem, and using the T48 is a great approach: one instrument less on my desk and pretty easy to obtain and useful hardware too.
Beside, I now have less guilt in letting that thing rot :D
@hkz I am unsure if I can detect tri-state pins without an additional adapter, but at least if one is needed it will simply be a mostly passive backplane with a few resistor packs.
@gloriouscow yeah that can be an useful feature, especially for GALs or more complicated PLDs
@hkz I was using PALDump https://github.com/rpocc/PALDump but the code (and breadboard/pin layout) makes a lot of assumptions, like exactly six outputs. The Chameleon has tons of PAL variants with everything from 2 to 10 outputs so I was facing a complete rewrite of that in any case.
@gloriouscow yeah my first version of the dual made assumptions too (a bit more flexible than that, but still). And it bit me in the back rather soon. So planned for something a bit more flexible in the end. No power supply beside 5v though. Unless a specific interposer is used.
I went ahead and made a GpioProvider abstraction to support different boards.
Do you have any assembled dupico boards you could send my way perhaps? I'll happily pay you whatever.
I'd like to add support for it.
@gloriouscow nope, ended up assembling just one rev.1. It wasn't a commercial endeavour.
I should still have the PCBs around.
You can choose: if you wish I can send a PCB to you directly, as soon as I find where I hid them, or... If you're not in a hurry, you can wait once I place my next mouser and I will assemble and ship one for you. It's a rather cheap card.
And don't worry about paying.
I might end up regretting calling this thing PALchemy if I end up making it a generic pin-poker.
I'm not going to risk any of my (currently) irreplaceable Chameleon PALs testing this thing, so I made a definition for a 74LS04.
