Looking for a tester with an Amiga CD32

[saimo]

A while ago I wrote some code that accesses the Amiga CD32 NVRAM directly. Unfortunately, I don't have an Amiga CD32 and UAE, in this case, doesn't make for a good reference: in fact, the code worked right away on UAE, but it never worked on a real machine. Until now, a friend made lots of tests, but I caught him in a very busy period and, moreover, running tests is a huge hassle to him.
I don't want to bother him anymore, so I need an Amiga CD 32 owner who can easily trasfer files from/to the machine (i.e. without burning CDs or plugging/unplugging expansion hardware) and run tests for me. The tests consist in small programs (under 2 kB) which run for a couple of seconds and output text and/or dump files to RAM:.
Can anybody help? Thanks in advance.

[videofx]

I can help you out

Bill

[saimo]

Hi Bill,

thank you! I've seen your reply only now; in the meanwhile, two other persons contacted me, so, for the moment being, I won't disturb you, too Should I need more help, I'll get in touch. Thanks again

[saimo]

@all @videofx

I'm looking for somebody to test an update that I've been working on for a while now. It seems that the custom NVRAM code doesn't work fine on all the Amiga CD32 machines, and I don't have that machine to make tests myself.

Requirements:
 * Amiga CD32 machine with a 2.5 V or less version of the EEPROM chip (it's marked "AT24C08" and, among various other codes, it has also the voltage printed on it - for example, the chip at the middle bottom of this picture, just under the Alice chip, has a "25" meaning that it's a 2.5 V chip);
 * easy storage support (HD/CF/floppy/etc.) - CD-ROM alone won't do;
 * knowledge of AmigaOS, some basic technical skills, ability to provide clear reports and patience.

If interested, please send me an email to postmaster at retream dot com.
Thank you!

[saimo]

This remained frozen for a few years. Eventually, I managed to get the code to work on a real Amiga CD³². Now, before I release it officially (and before releasing an updated version of SkillGrid which makes use of it), I'd like to have it tested on more machines, so if anyone around here has an Amiga CD³² with a writable drive (required to save a backup for recovery from disaster), I'd be glad if they could make a test and let me know the result. All that's needed is to download this package, put it on the drive and run a script - here is a video that shows what happens.

[saimo]

I just got a confirmation from another person that the code works fine on his machine equipped with a TF328. Given the care poured into this, the amount of tests performed and the positive response from different machines, I consider the code fully working.
Therefore, I have released the code in a package that contains also a command line tool to read/write arbitrary chunks of the NVRAM. It can be downloaded freely from https://retream.itch.io/amiga-tools.