I was thinking of asking you as well. I know he has a way to update the OS. It's plain with the SD2SNES since you must copy it to the microSD card or it won't work. Well, I was hoping the hardware is there and it's a matter of implementing the memory mapping, software changes, but you would know better. If there's zero chance, that's too bad... :/
Haha ... I'm still new here, I have a LONG way to go before my opinion has any weight next to someone like Bonknuts!
And the reality of this situation, is that Bonknuts has an infinitely better idea of the Arcade Card's subtleties than I do ... and TailChao has an infinitely better handle on the practicalities of using an FPGA like the TED2's iCE40HX1K.
I'm still a newbie to both.
But the basic hardware details of both are pretty easy to understand ... and I'm used to ferreting out the implications of design choices.
I can imagine a way of wiring up the TED2's FPGA so that the PCE's CPU could upload a new configuration to it after the TED2 boots up ... and KRIKzz
may have done something like that ... but it would be a significant effort, and would probably require a bunch of extra components on the TED2 ... and I just can't see why he would bother to do so.
I'd be
really happy to be wrong on that.
We won't know until we actually get hold of the boards, and then someone with more skill than I have actually looks at them.
I'm not "in-the-know" here, I'm just trying to keep all our hopes within the bounds of reasonable plausibility.
Now ... the TED2 OS is a different issue. That's just booted off the SD card once the hardware itself has been configured from it's internal "program". That's trivial to change (unless KRIKzz has encrypted it).
As for the SD2SNES ... that's not KRIKzz's design (not that that makes any difference) ... and AFAIK the FPGA on that is configured by a separate microcontroller, a PIC chip.
To the best of my knowledge, the PIC chip loads up the FPGA configuration from SD card, and then programs the FPGA to emulate different SNES mapper chips.
That is very different from the TED2, and takes a lot more hardware ... thus explaining it's high price in comparison to the TED2.
If we attached a PIC chip (or an ATMEL chip) to the TED2's programming port, we could probably achieve something similar. But that's where you need someone like TailChao to wade in.
Again ... this is all deep technical stuff. What I'm trying to say is ... take the TED2 for what it is right now, and if that's not enough for you, then don't buy it.
