MT32 PiHat and Mister

[futurevariant]

Hi,

Thanks for the project it’s amazing :)

Thought I’d share an issue I had when setting it up with a MiSTer; although the hat and Pi were being powered by the IO board (v6.0) on the MiSTer, the MT-32 menu did not appear, nor did the hat acknowledge the presence of the MiSTer, in either pwm or i2s mode (unlike the other post here on a similar topic)

The USB is one tested in the documentation, and the pihat was receiving power so I was puzzled.

It was only when I compared my analogue IO board with an assembled one on misterfpga.co.uk did I notice the issue; there is a header missing from my io board (p7).

Once I soldered all 10 pins in place and reconnected the board, did the pihat acknowledge the MiSTer and the sound started to work.

fwiw the io board was bought ‘fully assembled’ from ebay.

[dwhinham]

Thanks for the project it’s amazing :)

My pleasure, I'm glad you're enjoying it!

It was only when I compared my analogue IO board with an assembled one on misterfpga.co.uk did I notice the issue; there is a header missing from my io board (p7).

Once I soldered all 10 pins in place and reconnected the board, did the pihat acknowledge the MiSTer and the sound started to work.

Wow, all of P7 was missing? That's pretty bad!

Thankyou for this valuable information, I'm glad you were able to fix your board.

There have been reports of similar issues with I/O boards (e.g. #75) purchased from AliExpress, and for many people this is the first time the User I/O port has been tested, so issues like this haven't been noticed until they've tried mt32-pi.

I've added an extra note the the MiSTer wiki page and the FAQ.

Thanks!

[fhoedemakers]

Hi,
I have the same problem as described above. I checked my I/O board and the fourth pin from the right looks like not soldered. This can be the reason then?

[futurevariant]

Hi,

My problem was that none of those pins were present. I’ve actually just checked the eBay listing it came from, and, well, at least it’s honest:

Once I’d soldered those on (I had some pin headers from a few arduino projects lying around - they were perfect) it all worked as expected.

If we take a look at the schematic; we see P7 is critical for the UserPort so all of those pins have to be electrically connected.

Of course, another worry is that if this has been missed or not built well, there could be other quality issues with the board.

[rpc72]

Had the same issues with the MT32-pi not being detected by the MiSTER. Checked P7 on my I/O v6.0 board and sure enough there was a pin missing.