sy.factory supports direct integration with Sector 101's WaveBlade programmable Wave Card and WaveBlade Programmer. It allows you to directly program SY Wave Card Format Images that you have created using sy.factory (or other suitable software). This is complementary support to Sector 101's own WaveBlade toolset (which still provide a little more fine control for some tasks).
The WaveBlade Dialog is found on the Tools menu, but only if you have enabled WaveBlade support in the WaveBlade Tab of the Preferences Dialog.
WaveBlade support is currently provided via a simple dialog. Before opening the dialog, please ensure that:
When it comes to baud rates, 115,200 is the default rate for the programmer, and this is a good "safe speed" to start with. However, you can experiment with setting it faster to reduce upload/download times. I can run at 460,800 on two computers but on a third one, whilst the uploads are OK, I get download errors. So this does seem dependent on the local setup. It is safe to experiment with speeds as sy.factory checks the uploads and downloads against the computed checksum for a file, so if there is an error in transmission, you will be alerted and you can retry the operation. If you consistently get errors at a certain speed then it is best to drop to a lower speed. Or you can experiment with setting the WaveBlade DELAY parameter, which can be set in the Preferences Dialog from between 0 to 9 microseconds. This delay setting will insert a delay of the specified value between each byte transmitted by the WaveBlade
When you select the WaveBlade menu option, the dialog will open. The initial WaveBlade card data will of course be blank, as the WaveBlade function is still initialising
As sy.factory initialises the connection to the WaveBlade Programmer, you will see in the status bar the current step in the progress to establish connections and read the WaveBlade Card data, the progress indicator will be "sweeping" to show that an operation is taking place. The initialisation steps are:
Step | Description |
Connecting to WaveBlade Programmer |
sy.factory attempts to open the serial port using the port name and BAUD rate set in the the WaveBlade Preferences Tab. If connection is successful, you will briefly see a "WaveBlade Programmer is connected" message displayed before the next step. If the programmer is not connected then you will see the following error dialog:
Ensure that the WaveBlade Programmer is connected before trying again. |
Setting WaveBlade QUIET mode |
The WaveBlade needs to be set to QUIET mode (see WaveBlade manual Section 6) to remove all of the "pretty formatting" that the WaveBlade programmer sends to provide the character based user interface when you are using a terminal emulator. All of this information is not needed in a program like sy.factory, and setting QUIET mode will remove all the extraneous information. When the sy.factory WaveBlade dialog is dismissed, the WaveBlade Programmer will be set to VERBOSE mode so you can use it with a terminal program again If setting QUIET mode is successful, you will briefly see a "WaveBlade QUIET mode is SET" message displayed before the next step. If QUIET mode cannot be set an error dialog is displayed and the connection process terminates. |
Checking for WaveBlade Card |
Checks to ensure that a WaveBlade Card is installed on the Programmer. If this check is successful, you will briefly see a "WaveBlade Card is ready" message displayed before the next step. When you select the WaveBlade menu option, if a WaveBlade is not installed on the programmer then you will see the following error dialog:
Ensure that a WaveBlade is installed on the Programmer before trying again. |
Requesting WaveBlade status |
Requests the current status from the card. If this command is successful then you should now see your WaveBlade Card contents in the dialog! The status bar is now clear showing that no operations are currently in progress. |
Once communication is established with the WaveBlade Programmer then the WaveBlade dialog is shown below:
This dialog shows a table for the 8 1MB slots and the 4 2MB slots. In this example, I am using the 2MB slots and have data in the first two (A and B). The second two slots are empty. You will of course see data in slots 1 to 4 as the 1MB slots and 2MB slots overlap.
Each row shows (from left to right):
To perform operations upon a slot, simply select the slot and right click over it to get a context menu.
The menu allows you to perform the following actions.
Checksum... |
Computes the checksum of the Slot and displays the following dialog.
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Erase... |
Erases the selected Slot. Note that a slot must be blank (erased) before you try and upload data to it. |
Upload... |
Uploads a card image file to the WaveBlade Programmer. When you select this option, sy.factory will check and see if the slot is blank. If it is not then you will get the following error dialog.
Always Erase a slot first before uploading to it. If the slot is blank then you will get the following file open dialog.
Select a BIN file and press Open to upload the file or Cancel to stop the upload. Note that no checks are made regarding the validity of the file other than it must be the right length: 512KB or 1MB for Slots 1-8 and 2MB for slots A-D. If you try and upload a file of the wrong size then you get the following error dialog (in this example a 2MB file has been selected for a 1MB slot).
If the file size is valid for the Slot then the upload will commence, and the progress of the upload us shown in the status area.
After the data is uploaded, sy.factory will request the checksum from the slot and check that against the data it sent. If the upload was successful a short success message is briefly displayed in the status area. If there is a checksum mismatch the the following error is displayed and you will need to try the upload again.
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Download... |
Allows you to download the contents of a Slot to a BIN file, which you can archive or open in sy.factory for editing. When you select this option, you first get a File Save Dialog.
If you select a name and click the Save button then you will get the following dialog
sy.factory is now waiting for you to initiate the data transfer on the WaveBlade Programmer. Press the Programmer F1 button to start the transfer or the F2 button to cancel the transfer. If you pressed the F1 button then the download will start and the data will be saved to the file that you specified. The status area will show the progress of the download.
If you press F2 to cancel the download, or if not all expected data bytes are received then, sy.factory will report the following error
After the data is downloaded, sy.factory will request the checksum from the slot and check that against the data it received. If the download was successful a short success message is briefly displayed in the status area. If there is a checksum mismatch the the following error is displayed and you will need to try the download again.
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