I got new code from Jim to address the differences in the new floppy controller. It got past the floppy initialization stage just fine, but got hung up initializing the sound generator board. Turns out that the Xilinx XC9500XL series don’t have the same drive capability of the older, 5V XC9500 series. In theory, the existing pull-up resistors should have helped, but I’ve now had to make an add-on board with additional buffering cicruitry. This will just be for the prototypes, the production units will have them integrated onto the main board.

I’m getting quite a few inquiries about when the project is going to be ready; a number of people have checked in every month to see what’s happening. We’ve finally got the firmware loader written, so at least the main firmware can be updated by the end user. Assuming that the sound generator is the last major hurdle, I think that we are on track for an end of year release.