Thursday, November 5, 2020

Book of Sigmarion II: Chapter 5 USB Mutation (Part 2)

Previously, in Book of Sigmarion II:

The Champion was contemplating on different possibile battle plans to add USB support to the good old rare Sigmarion II. In the end, he came up with the idea to replace the FOMA port with a regular USB port. This is certainly a brave move especially due to his low soldering skill level and poor knowledge in electronics.

And now, the quest goes on...

Not willing to back down before the fomadable foe, the Champion gave the beast a powerful clean sweep, chopping off the head of the FOMA connector!


But that was not the biggest challenge. The real game was to solder the four thin wires to the teeny pins on the mainboard. The trick here was the arrangement of the connection was different from that on a regular USB connector. In short, if the USB connector has pins 1-2-3-4, then the wires should be soldered to 1-3-2-4 on the board. This combat tooks quite some minutes. Despite the rusty soldering skills of the Champion, with extra care and patience, the wires and the corresponding pins were eventually soldered together.

And then the Champion got to create a suitable space for the USB connector. Parts of the wall of the original FOMA port was removed, and gone with the door as well.

The USB connector also needed some trimming to fit it into the rather limited space. 
.
Part of the plastic got cut off, and the legs got straightened up.

Here came the real test. With the machine powered back on and the cl_m3112.cab installed, the Champion inserted an USB key to the custom made USB port. The machine detected the hardware change immediately and a window popped up. This was certinaly a good sign, meaning that the wiring and connection were done properly!

The Japanese program seemed to be asking for the name of something. At first the Champion was thinking it was about naming the USB device itself. Having tried a few times, the program kept saying the hardware setup failed.

Then the champion produced the Japanese blog post and took a closer look. He came to realize that what the program was looking for appeared to be the name of the driver (DLL) instead of the device. The Champion decided to put things on hold to investigate the content of the installed CAB and see if he would manage to come up with a new clue.

My suspicion was confirmed after installing the English MUI:

The Champion tried usbd(.dll) and usbclik(.dll), but no luck.
This twist altered the course of the adventure. 
A side quest was generated: Go find the missing DLL as the key to unlock the secret of USB on Sigmarion II!

[Quick update] Thanks again for stingraze's hint, I managed to download a proper usb driver from https://web.archive.org/web/20070103091648/http://www.softclub.jp/~zoro/ce/usb020522.lzh

The Champion stroke the first success! So excited!!
More testing are called for. Will keep updating soon.


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