Are we allowed to submit hardware additions / mods along with our entries? I wanted to add an SD card via the I/O connector on the bottom of the unit.
Thanks!
You can but this maybe negative because it is important to make what you create can be done by others. I suggest not to mod and if you do then document really well.
@ cfavreau - This is from the contest rules page
Nevertheless: If you do get the SD-card working, it opens up quite some interesting possibilities (eg. exchange of game-scripts).
Have you already tried connecting an SD adapter and did you manage to read files?
I tried to connect one to mBuino, but didn’t get it working (yet).
I am going to give it a go this weekend. I do not have a proper socket so I am going to just use a micro SD card adapter to do it. I have more than a couple of them around. I do not necessarily need it to complete my “game” entry however it would be nice as it is one of the things I mentioned in my entry to get the Retro in the first place.
The only other thing I could think of was to use either the USB CDC or USB MSD driver code things from Mbed however they do not seem to be in the Retro’s library. If all else fails for maximum compatibility the script will get flashed along with the main program and I will leave the stubs for an external loading interface.
More news on Sunday hopefully.
Before going too far make sure you can get the code to fit.
The SD card & FAT file system support takes up 10-15k of flash space. Once you add drivers for the display and sound you may not have enough code space left to fit a game.
Generally getting an SD card to work on an mbed is simple enough, just connect up the SPI signals and pull in the library. However while most SD cards support serial mode operation it’s not a required part of the spec so if you have issues try a different card.