Hey, all!
Last night I started my own project for documenting, line by line, the MacII-SE/30 ROM code. This all started because I have an SE/30 that is death chiming VERY early in the boot process, and I would love to be able to know what chips/traces to check in what order during these scenarios.
I looked at existing documentation for the startup process, but it wasn't detailed enough for me. Within a few hours, I had given myself a crash course in 68k assembly and started commenting the disassembled code to try to make sense of what circumstances cause death chimes and in what order.
I want to have a single document with an ordered list that shows what is tested, checked, and done in what order so when there are boot failures that are not obvious of a cause, we can have a document that says two basic things in plain English
1) the rom works by going here, checking this, jumping here, checking that, doing this.
2) When you have problem ABC, then you need to check items XYZ in this order. (in a way more detailed than Larry Pina's Dead Mac Scrolls but still understandable).
The problem: I'm in over my head!
I would like to crowd source this project. Basically, make a shared document that smart and 68k trained people could drop in, take a look around, and comment what everything is doing, so we can understand how the ROM works.
My biggest dilemma: how to share the code in a way that's easily editable for both armchair hackers and real 68k professionals. I thought of doing a shared spreadsheet with columns for address, instruction, functional documentation and contextual documentation. I don't know if that's the best way. I'm not a programmer or a documentarian.
Thoughts on how we can achieve this as a team?
Last night I started my own project for documenting, line by line, the MacII-SE/30 ROM code. This all started because I have an SE/30 that is death chiming VERY early in the boot process, and I would love to be able to know what chips/traces to check in what order during these scenarios.
I looked at existing documentation for the startup process, but it wasn't detailed enough for me. Within a few hours, I had given myself a crash course in 68k assembly and started commenting the disassembled code to try to make sense of what circumstances cause death chimes and in what order.
I want to have a single document with an ordered list that shows what is tested, checked, and done in what order so when there are boot failures that are not obvious of a cause, we can have a document that says two basic things in plain English
1) the rom works by going here, checking this, jumping here, checking that, doing this.
2) When you have problem ABC, then you need to check items XYZ in this order. (in a way more detailed than Larry Pina's Dead Mac Scrolls but still understandable).
The problem: I'm in over my head!
I would like to crowd source this project. Basically, make a shared document that smart and 68k trained people could drop in, take a look around, and comment what everything is doing, so we can understand how the ROM works.
My biggest dilemma: how to share the code in a way that's easily editable for both armchair hackers and real 68k professionals. I thought of doing a shared spreadsheet with columns for address, instruction, functional documentation and contextual documentation. I don't know if that's the best way. I'm not a programmer or a documentarian.
Thoughts on how we can achieve this as a team?
