✧✦Catherine✦✧Feb 25

do you need to work with SPI flash a lot? do you hate the unreliable clothespin clip style clips? do you want a clip that actually works and is cheap?

aliexpress has you covered! check this product out [not sponsored]

there is a bit of a learning curve (you need to push on it quite strongly to make a connection) but after that it just works. do note that the pin 1 marker on the 8-pin DIP connector isn't placed in the right spot, but it is marked correctly on the probe itself and the little adapter board it has on the other end.

I tested the WSON-8 and SOIC-8-W versions so I'm quite sure the other two work also

Show threadellyFeb 25
@whitequark I got one of those recently, paired with fast flasher (like PiPico) it's a godsend. No more f#$%ing around with clips that never get reliable reads or being pretty much screwed in case of WSON.

(I have shaky hands most of the time, holding them at an ~80 degree angle helps. You can also use a rubber band to make it stay in place.)
Show threadTim SmallMar 1
@elly @whitequark How fast it is to iterate whilst doing coreboot dev? Is flash erase and program time still the bottleneck (or am I out of date)? Dunno if this is viable, but could you emulate SPI flash using a small FPGA (maybe even Pi Pico PIO) like this? Write data out to a pair of "mirrored" PSRAM ICs. Get around refresh-induced latency spikes by routing reads to one PSRAM while the mirror pair is doing its refresh? Simpler than implementing DRAM in an FPGA? Program from dev box via USB.
Show thread✧✦Catherine✦✧
@tim @elly this is viable, you could do it on a #GlasgowInterfaceExplorer most likely; main concern is that PSRAM doesn't have all the commands that QSPI hosts may expect. eSPI solves this entirely by letting the device inject wait states, IIRC
Mar 1 at 8:56pmWeb