I am a little confused about installing Firmwares /Apps to my DSO Quad (HW 2.81).
From what I understand at this point, Firmware and Apps are used as synonyms (?). The DSO Quad has 4 App Slots for installing Firmware / Apps. Also, some Firmwares / Apps use one slot whereas others use two.
install the latest gabonator [github.com/gabonator/DS203] Firmware which apparently uses only one slot because it uses some undocumented additional memory in slot 3 (the one [github.com/gabonator/DS203/blob/master/Bin/GABOUI_3.hex] that installs into slot 3)
The problem is that this undocumented part of the memory now became documented and moved to the FPCGA (!?)
install QuadPawn [github.com/PetteriAimonen/QuadPawn] in slot 4 (seems to throw an error on HW 2.81 but work nonetheless)
Now my questions are:
is it possible to install those three Firmwares / Apps simultaneously without bricking my device ?
how do I determine / change which slot a Firmware / App is installed in ?
do I need to upgrade the stock SYS file for any of this to work ?
Note that Versions 4.xx of my program use 3 slots, not 2, so they need to be installed in position 1,
which will leave slot 4 open for PAWN. Original factory versions and all my earlier versions use 2 slots.
Gabonator’s version is not compatible with hardware 2.81, since it will overwrite the FPGA, disabling
the device, regardless of which slot it is installed in, so it cannot be used.
Different slot positions are selected by loading the appropriate HEX file: APP1.HEX = slot 1,
APP2.HEX= slot 2, etc.
The stock SYS will work fine. SYS versions in general are tied to the hardware/bootloader versions and need
not/should not be changed.
Just theoretically, according to this post of yours, the program area size now seems to have 10 slots (starting with HW 2.81) rather than 4. So if I understand this correctly, once you (this community) figures out how to utilize those 10 slots, HW 2.81 will allow to have 10 Apps installed instead of the 4 currently possible, correct?
First, a few things need to be (hopefully) clarified:
All hardware versions of the device have 512KB of memory. Prior to HW2.81, the factory
only recognized 256KB of it and put all it’s code within that, with the FPGA and LOGO
code at the very end. It was at one point discovered that another 256KB was also available
following the first 256, for a total of 512. This last 256KB is what’s referred to as “undocumented”
memory, and programmers started putting some of their code there.
With HW2.81, the factory recognizes the full 512KB and shifted the FPGA and LOGO to the
end of that, so now programmers that wished to make versions compatible with all hardware
versions had two areas of code to avoid, complicating things and reducing the amount of memory
available. There is not any more ROM available with HW2.81, the available area for programs is
simply all in a row rather than split in the middle by the earlier FPGA.
The “slots” referred to are actually 32KB segments of memory, 4 of which can be starting points
for different programs. Programs can span several of these segments or “slots”, for example
the latest of my versions uses 5 and Gabonator’s uses around 6. After the starting
segment, each program can then span several subsequent segments, or jump up to either
what was the undocumented area of the earlier devices or just several segments down on HW2.81.
The post you are referring to was written right after V2.81 came out, and was I was questioning
what changes, if any were made to the system files regarding “starting” slots. As far as I can tell,
V2.81 system files only have the same 4 starting points of the earlier versions, but the factory
has not published the latest sys source code, and I don’t have a test sample so I can’t verify it.
In conclusion, to answer your question:
In order to have more than 4 slots, this would have to be programmed into the bootloader/system files
Having 10 programs would reduce each one to 32KB, which is very small
V2.81 hardware would not have any advantage over the earlier versions since it doesn’t really have
any more memory.
I understand, thanks for the explaination. I find it hard to draw information out of this forum / wiki because of its garbled structure. So thank you for clarifying this in detail.
Unfortunately, I “bricked” my device and will have to wait for it to be replaced. Quotes, because I used the torch app in Pawn which allows to modify the screen brightness, which in turn obviously lead to some component to melt. I wouldn’t have guessed that I can drive this device beyond specs by using software which in essence only controls an integrated circuit.
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