LowerROM Swapper

[Bryce]

It should work on a 464 that's running 6128 Firmware/BASIC as long as it's installed in position 15 as it should be.

Bryce.

[qbert]

Yes Bryce, I suppose, but while I am not the happy owner of a low-ROM switch (yet) and I can see no reason why the Booster ROM would not work on a vanilla 464 except the extra initialization starting at 8 instead of 16, I'm requiring help from your software specialist : TFM !!!

[TFM]

It should work on a 464 that's running 6128 Firmware/BASIC as long as it's installed in position 15 as it should be.

Bryce.

Yes! Absolutely!

Yes Bryce, I suppose, but while I am not the happy owner of a low-ROM switch (yet) and I can see no reason why the Booster ROM would not work on a vanilla 464 except the extra initialization starting at 8 instead of 16, I'm requiring help from your software specialist : TFM !!!

Well, the Booster+ was done by the Inicrons. I may can access it's source in two months. But you can contact them at inicron.de and ask them for a 464 version :-)

@Bryce: Got my LowerROMs - Thanks' a lot 

[Cholo]

Got mine as well, thanks 

Time to fill some frames on my 464 

[qbert]

Well, in fact, I was asking you about that 'cause everybody know you manufactured a merged version of inicron's booster and your MF-RomManager. So I supposed the ROM initialization had no secret for you. 
Booster is hanging the 464. Can you imagine another difficulty that expanding the indexing range for initialization from 16-31 to 8-31 ?
That's mainly by curiosity, TFM. Whatever your answer is, it does not engage yourself into future activities...  .

 
Well, the Booster+ was done by the Inicrons. I may can access it's source in two months. But you can contact them at inicron.de and ask them for a 464 version :-)

[TFM]

Well, in fact, I was asking you about that 'cause everybody know you manufactured a merged version of inicron's booster and your MF-RomManager. So I supposed the ROM initialization had no secret for you. 
Booster is hanging the 464. Can you imagine another difficulty that expanding the indexing range for initialization from 16-31 to 8-31 ?
That's mainly by curiosity, TFM. Whatever your answer is, it does not engage yourself into future activities...  .

Well, I used the Booster+ ROM and added the ROManager using the ROM Editor of Softbrenner 1.27. I did a disassembly, but I don't have it here. So I don't know for which reasons it reacts different on a 464. Can just assume the it's connected to the addresses where it stores the extra information of ROMs 16-31.

[Bryce]

BOOSTER.ROM won't work on a 464 because it needs to be in position 15 not position 7. With the LowerROM swapper connected and 6128 Firmware/BASIC initialised the BOOSTER should work as normal.

Bryce.

[TFM]

Boiled down to a nutshell: Exactly!

[Cholo]

Tiny Review of the G540 USB Eprom programmer:

I think someone else mentioned that they had troubles burning eproms with their old hardware, and i must admit i too had gotten a bit tired of having to drag my old XP computer out every time id need to burn a eprom with my old willem board who use the parallel port that no modern pc has anymore (and the software and driver probably dont work on a modern pc either).

So i had a quick search on ebay and noticed that USB programmers (the cheap chinese ones) has dropped a lot in price so i ordered a G540 about a month ago.

The Unit:
The G540 is as easy a programmer as you can get em. No buttons to press or jumpers to set .. the only port it has is the USB one that is both used to power it and connect with the software. And just 1 light to show the power is on and the grid&lock to hold the eprom itself.

Installing:
Included was mini-cdr with the software (and pdf manual) and a nicely printed 40 page (20 pages in english) paper manual with pictures and in a fairly ok understandable english. Clicked on the usbdriver-installer and it installed itself in about 1-2 min. on my Vista 64bit. The programming software was the usual program installer and about 30 sec. Afterwards hooking up the hardware for the first time was painless as well.

The programming software:
Pretty straight forward with the usual big easy buttons in english (very similar to the Willem software actually). Even tho the programmer can be set up to do a bunch of tasks in a row it really isnt rocket science to read/write a eprom.

Example on Reading a eprom to file dump:
1. Click the "select" to choose eprom/size (aka AM27C128 or AM27C512),
2. Insert your eprom in the programmer (the software will show a picture of the right orientation in the adapter) and lock it in with the lever.
3. Click "Read" to read the data from the eprom into the program's memory.
4. Click "Save" to save the data to a file.
Writing is equally simple and "automated" (aka "select", place it, "load", "prog").

Price: £30-ish (+£17 in import tax). I had calculated the tax but not that it would take a freakishly 5 weeks to arrive. Only took the pack about 10 days to travel tho .. the rest was because the sender was a bit of a clown and didnt write the "worth" on the pack so ive spend nearly 4 weeks waiting on ye ol import tax people who wanted a copy of the invoice etc.

In the pack:
It didnt come in a nice shiny blue box but it was in a smaller "hard" box instead. The unit itself was nicely wrapped in bubblewrap. The printed manual (slightly bend to fit in there), a usb cable (1metre-ish) and a scratched but readable mini-cdr with software v5.2 (not that it really matters today as you can download everything).

All in all:
Im quite happy with it and it fully does what i expected it to do. Very plug and play too. Quite a lot of chips it support as well (that id probably never use, lol). I got mine from this fella (but remember he is a bit of a "muppet"):
G540 USB universal programmer EPROM FLASH MCU GAL PIC | eBay

But i strongly suggest looking on ebay.co.uk first as im sure you can find a cheaper one as there is a lot of sellers for the G540. Ive noticed that there is also other and perhaps even cheaper chinese brand usb programmers up now, just so you know 

Ive uploaded the software (8mb)(+manual) here as the official site seem to be down:
G540.zip - 4shared.com - online file sharing and storage - download

Old link to the Willem guide as its got the basics about eproms:
Willem Programmer - CPCWiki - The Ultimate Amstrad CPC Community & Encyclopedia!

[00WReX]

Got my Lower ROM board today...Very nice work as always.
Thanks Bryce for once again taking the time to continue to support the mighty CPC with your great hardware.

Cheers,
Shane

[Gryzor]

Thanks, cholo, nice review, and it's quite cheap as well!