Gigatron Hackers

I've just built my gigatron with my kids. We had a blast, and they're enjoying the games and I'm slowly tricking them into learning how it works.

I've got a pluggy reloaded, and I'm trying to figure out how to use the sdcard functionality and running into problems. I've got a FAT32 sdcard loaded with all the *.gt1 files from the https://github.com/kervinck/gigatron-rom repo and I installed it into the pluggy reloaded. I boot the gigatron (ROM v6) and select "LOADER" from the menu, and it just spins there. Are there any instructions for how to load up GT1 files from sdcard? Do I need a custom ROM?

[EDIT}: I'm wrong. I can use control-F2 to launch the SDCARD loader without using a serial connection. I don't think this was working for me earlier, but I may have initially programmed the arduino with the 3.3v/8mhz setting and have since reprogrammed it making sure to select 5v/16mhz.

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I was able to get something working, but not as I expected:
- I connected to the serial port (ie. via arduino's serial monitor)
- I select the loader (or "L" from serial)
- from serial I run "P0" and it loads the sdcard browser
- I can select GT1 files from this listing and run them.

what is confusing me is that instructions I see elsewhere suggest that just entering the loader should cause the sdcard browser to load so that I can run files from the sdcard without having a computer attached to the serial port.

Welcome to the forum! As you have figured out, the loader is different from the SD Card Browser. The loader uses the serial port of the Arduino to transfer a gt1 from a PC, and the SD Card Browser uses a similar mechanism to load the gt1 from an SD Card FAT partition, and is what it sounds like you're really looking for. The forum search doesn't seem to be cooperating with me, so in case you haven't seen it, there is a dedicated thread for that at viewtopic.php?t=279
This video was done with SDROM (a custom ROM based off ROMv5a that has SD Card Browser baked in), but might be useful https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ozaQTK0C2vM . It is also baked into ROMvX0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WZUtJ3UePTg