Subject:
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Re: Robotics in Aussie
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.robotics
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Date:
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Mon, 14 Dec 1998 15:40:32 GMT
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Original-From:
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Peter Ljungstrand <peter@informatik.gu.STOPSPAMse>
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Viewed:
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1410 times
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> The way I understand it is that the firmware which needed to be
> downloaded to the Mindstorms chip, allowing Lego to issue any fixes or
> new versions, is now burnt into the Cybermaster chip and cannot be
> changed.
Yes, this appears to be so. There might be some secret sommand to gain more
access to the CM, but I doubt that you can change the entire firmware in
it, especially since the CM lacks a RAM chip on the circuit board, as the
RCX does.
> So if you mean can it be altered, the answer is no. Or you could mean, "
> Is the firmware code readable ?". Good question! I assume it is a
> different version of OS to that used in Mindstorms as it has Tacho
> processing added. The Spirit.OCX is the same however.
Atleast the firmware cannot be changed without some hardware modifications,
such as replacing the original H8 microcontroller with a new one, plus some
extra RAM. Perhaps we have to make custom hardware to be able to read the
current firmware as well.
But what we can do, is write programs for our Cybermasters that is based on
Lego's bytecode language, eg using Dave Baum's NQC, or Lego's Spirit.OCX,
in almost exactly the same way as for the RCX. It is true that the CM has
less memory available than the RCX, but they are both using the same
bytecode (with some minor differences). See the reference manual at
www.legomindstorms.com.
If you refer to "hackable" as being able to program using something else
than Lego's original software, the answer is yes, CyberMaster is hackable.
---------------------------------------------------------
Peter Ljungstrand, Viktoria Institute
http://www.viktoria.informatics.gu.se
Email: peter@informatics.gu.se
Phone: +46-(0)31-7735543 Mobile: +46-(0)708-302251
Fax: +46-(0)31-7735530 ICQ: 6820636
Visitors: Viktoriagatan 13, 7th floor
Snail-mail: Box 620, 40530 Göteborg, Sweden
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Message is in Reply To:
 | | Re: Robotics in Aussie
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| (...) One quick question, is the Cybermaster software as easy to "hack" as the Mindstorm OS. Any sense in buying both Mindstorm and Cybermaster ? Thanks. -- Kin W. Lau Teaching Associate, Communications And Signal Processing Group, Electrical (...) (26 years ago, 14-Dec-98, to lugnet.robotics)
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