New IO-ARCHITECTURE.md, derived from the v4.2 image, the U7 GAL decode and schematic sheets 1/3: - $A010 control-latch bit map (CCK / D_OUT / WR_SB / RD_SB / SEL0-2) - the 50-byte script format the firmware replays, and the ROM table map - full port/address population: 9 buttons boards + 2 keypads across all 8 ports; the 0x00-0x6F logical map and its 0x48-0x4F gap - the keypad engine ($CC53/$CC7E): 4-row matrix scan, row-patched RAM scripts, the $DC14 key-code table, message type $8B - lamp readback ($21C2) and the 72-byte lamp-fault mask at $DFA8 -- fault reports are type $03 with the lamp index in $2519 - scan cycle budget: 1.91 ms/pass, 17.3 ms/scan, ~58 Hz; demux is 60% - expansion: one spare buttons board, and nothing further without a protocol revision Corrections to existing docs: - $CC53 was cited as the encoder sweep; it is the keypad-1 scanner. The sweep is $C8CC-$C9A7, driven from $C0CB. - U31 is on sheet 3, not sheet 1, and is completely uncommitted: no address, data, strobe or pod-bus signal reaches it. Not an expansion hook -- populating it does nothing without new wiring. - No spare HCTL-2016 footprints exist. The decode has 3 free selects on U9, but the PCB carries exactly 5 positions and sheet 1 draws 5. More analog axes need hardware, not firmware. Also carries the previously-uncommitted standard-rate (16550) feasibility analysis and baudscan.py, plus a note that the FastRIO "FTDI-class adapter" rule really means arbitrary-rate generation: CP2102N qualifies, classic CP2102 snaps 31250 to 38400. Bench-measured 2026-07-26; on-cockpit latency check still pending. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
RIO board firmware
Pod owner, not an engineer? Read wedge-explained.md — a plain-language account of the "stick died mid-battle" bug that RIO 4.3 fixes.
How the board moves buttons and lamps: IO-ARCHITECTURE.md — the pod-bus control latch, the 50-byte script format, the full port/address population of a pod (9 buttons boards + 2 keypads), the scan cycle budget, and what expansion headroom is left.
RIOv4_2.bin— RIO cockpit I/O board firmware v4.2, dumped 2026-07-04 from one of our own boards' EPROM: an AMD AM27C512-150 (64K x 8 UV EPROM, 150ns — the image fills it exactly). sha25660a88718835c654b6135dbec7721c40ef99dca07df2ad4b57eedeb24037a5f73. For the eventual patched burn: a pin-compatible Winbond W27C512 (electrically erasable, TL866-friendly) drops straight into the socket; the original AMD chip gets labeled and preserved unmodified.
First-look analysis (from the image alone, confirmed on hardware)
- MCU: Toshiba TMP68HC11 (read off the chip; the code fingerprint
agrees — 6800-family opcodes with writes into the 68HC11 internal
register block at
$10xx). - Memory map: image is FF up to 0xC000; 16KB of code occupies
$C000-$FFFF(EPROM mapped at the top of the HC11 address space). - Startup at
$C000:SEI; LDS #$8000; STAA $1024 (TMSK2); STAA $1022 (TMSK1); ...then a longJSRinit chain — textbook HC11 bring-up. - Vector table (
$FFD6-$FFFF, big-endian):$FFFERESET →$C000$FFD6SCI (serial) →$D630— the entry point of the board's receive/protocol interrupt handler. The suspected board-side DISABLE_AND_DIE-style wedge (see RIO-NOTES.md: the board mirrors the game's PCSPAK state machine, and mash-stress leaves the reply path dead while the button/event path stays alive) is reachable from here.$FFE4→$C1B2,$FFE6→$C18E(timer output-compares); most other vectors →$DB07..$DB3Dstubs.
Why this exists
The remaining RIO reliability issue is board-side: under button-mash
stress the board's reply/analog state machine wedges (RX dead, TX alive;
a button press or power cycle revives it), reproduced identically on two
different USB serial adapters. The game-side half of the protocol was
binary-patched for tolerance (BTL4OPT patches v2-v4); the board firmware
is the other half. Plan (RIO-NOTES.md "Board firmware patch plan"):
disassemble as 68HC11 from $C000 with the vector entries as roots, find
the SCI state machine (protocol constants FC=ACK FD=NAK FE=RESTART
FF=IDLE, idle-reload-4 patterns), patch the early-ACK/error wedge path or
widen its window, burn a new EPROM, keep this original safe.
RIO 4.3 — RIOv4_3.bin (current production firmware)
Christened 2026-07-19 after full on-hardware certification. Built
by make_patch.py --e0thresh=5 --checkrepaint --reportversion=4.3 RIOv4_2.bin RIOv4_3.bin; sha256
6d67a2fc77130b601fdb0ac02042dd4d0a98ac7e29a8077d588987a81073939c
(69 bytes changed vs stock). 9600 baud, native-game compatible. On the
stock v4.2 base it carries:
- Reply-latch wedge fix (edits 1-2) — bench-certified.
- E0-display threshold, N=5 (edit 5) — certified: display holds
F0000000through sub-threshold error events, flips to the liveE0readout at the 5th teardown (E0000105on the bench). - Check self-test display repaint (edit 6) — certified both ways:
version+check leaves
F0000000when healthy, and re-renders the E0 readout when counters are over threshold (E0000305on the bench) instead of stock's stale04000000. - Version bump (edit 7,
--reportversion=4.3) — the VersionReply now announces 4.3 (one operand byte at$C6FF). Nothing host-side validates the value (native games verified not to check it). The certification runs below were made on the pre-edit-7 bytes; the only delta is the version literal. Chips burned before this edit report 4.2 — re-burn to announce 4.3.
Certification runs (all in testlogs/ + RIOv4_2-ANALYSIS.md): two
--e0test acceptance passes (display verified by eye at each step) and
a 120 s mash at 549 presses/min sustained — zero wedges, board
counters flat, zero NAK, 247 resends all healed
(riomash-rio43rc1-9600-20260719-164901.log).
FastRIO 4.3 — RIOv4_3_fastrio.bin
Same generation for the RIOJoy-only cockpits: make_patch.py --baud31250 --widen-ackwait --e0thresh=5 --checkrepaint --reportversion=4.3 RIOv4_2.bin RIOv4_3_fastrio.bin; sha256
ee807831fe0df9dc147eb5cdc3302672ae21f6ff349da30babea27fc863234b9
(71 bytes vs stock — differs from RIOv4_3.bin in exactly two bytes:
$D62B baud 30→02 and $D9E7 ACK-wait 04→28). 31250 baud,
FTDI-class adapter required, not native-game compatible.
Disassembly-verified; run the acceptance ladder on the FastRIO cockpit
before deploying (--e0test COM1 auto-probes 31250, then a mash
spot-check at --baud 31250).
"FTDI-class" is really "arbitrary-rate" — CP2102N qualifies
Bench-measured 2026-07-26 on a Silicon Labs CP2102N (VID_10C4/
PID_EA60; identify by the bus-reported string "CP2102N USB to UART
Bridge Controller" — the REV_0100 hardware ID is not diagnostic).
It generates the whole HC11 ladder — 20833 / 31250 / 41667 / 62500 —
each tracking its request within measurement noise, so the adapter
requirement is about arbitrary-rate generation, not the FTDI brand.
Classic CP2101/2102/2103 do NOT qualify: they quantise to the AN205 table, where a 31250 request snaps silently to 38400. The part on test was verified not to snap — 31250 and 38400 measure as distinct wire rates.
UNVERIFIED: absolute rate against an independent clock, and
round-trip latency against the FastRIO ACK window ($D9E7 = $28,
40 ticks ≈ 12.8 ms at 31250). The certification rig used an FTDI with
its latency timer at 1 ms; CP210x exposes no latency-timer setting
— though it also has no FTDI-style 16 ms coalescing default to defeat.
Confirm on-cockpit before deploying a CP2102N in a FastRIO seat.
Measurement trap. On Silabs driver 6.7.0.0,
SerialPort.BytesToWritereaches 0 while ~640 bytes (the CP2102N TX FIFO) are still in flight; driver 6.7.6.2130 waited for a true drain. Timing a bulk write toBytesToWrite == 0therefore over-reads the baud rate — at 31250/3 s it reported a bogus +7.15%, which looks exactly like a rate fault but is pure bookkeeping. Measure instead by the slope of elapsed-vs-bytes across several transfer sizes; a fixed buffer only moves the intercept.
Standard-rate (16550) future — the oscillator-swap path
FastRIO's 31250 is FTDI-only by arithmetic: from the stock 8 MHz
oscillator every SCI rate above 9615 sits +8.5% off the nearest
16550-standard rate (exhaustive proof: baudscan.py).
Swapping the board's 4-pin oscillator can (8.000 MHz, by U4) for a
7.3728 MHz part makes the entire standard ladder exact — 9600
(still native-game compatible) through 115200 — at the cost of a
mandatory one-byte BAUD retune per rate. Recommended target: 28800
"FastRIO-Std", which keeps the exact per-byte CPU margin of the
certified 31250 v2 while being reachable by any UART, including the
period pods' 16550s. Full analysis (the closed-form impossibility, can
options, margins, required edits, and the why-8-MHz design hypothesis):
RIOv4_2-ANALYSIS.md "Standard-rate (16550) feasibility". Unbuilt as of
2026-07-24 — needs the can, new BAUD_OPTS/ACK-wait entries in
make_patch.py, and the acceptance ladder.
Archive
All prior generations live in archive/ with their
disassemblies: RIOv4_2_patched (wedge fix only), _31250/_31250v2
(FastRIO speed builds), _62500/_125000 (speed-ladder science runs),
and the _e0t5 pair (threshold without check-repaint). Bench verdicts
and per-edit history: RIOv4_2-ANALYSIS.md. The pristine dump
RIOv4_2.bin stays at top level — it is the source every patch builds
from. RIO 4.3 is in the cockpit socket as of 2026-07-19; the original
AMD chip and the retired e0t5 burn are labeled and preserved.