Retrotroniks Forum - Recent Posts

RE: vp-Tools and Website almost ready

NIVBOT — Fri, 17 Apr 2026 16:10:50 +0000

Oh, no worries at all man, this is just something you are doing for fun. I appreciate it and I think it will be great and helpful for everyone but in the end it’s your project and you have no obligation to do anything. So, anything at all that you do is appreciated very much. Take whatever time you need and let me know when you want me to test.

RE: vp-Tools and Website almost ready

rbourque — Fri, 17 Apr 2026 11:37:47 +0000

Sigh, don't you hate when things work in development and break in production? I'll figure it out after work today.

Sorry for putting you through the hassle.

I'll send you an email with a temporary password that you can reset once I get things working.

RE: vp-Tools and Website almost ready

NIVBOT — Fri, 17 Apr 2026 05:34:10 +0000

I’m getting errors which I was getting before. I had to make a new account but now neither work. When I try to log in it tells me the credentials don’t match our records. When I able to log in before it was with a new account. But as I said, it won’t accept my credentials now.

RE: vp-Tools and Website almost ready

rbourque — Thu, 16 Apr 2026 22:02:19 +0000

Hmm, I gave your account access. It might be the emailer didn't send you an email to validate the account. I'll forcefully authenticate it and look into the email account validation glitch. It should work now.

RE: vp-Tools and Website almost ready

NIVBOT — Thu, 16 Apr 2026 21:21:10 +0000

I was able to make an account and I think login but I still can't download them. It says they aren't available to the general public still.

RE: vp-Tools and Website almost ready

rbourque — Wed, 15 Apr 2026 21:25:02 +0000

So I've found out that my pyinstaller isn't embedding python properly. I compiled it on a system with python 3.13, and when I ran it on a computer without python installed it threw errors and shouldn't have. When i did all my testing the utility used my locally installed python for the missing parts. I'll figure it out soon.

RE: vp-Tools and Website almost ready

rbourque — Wed, 15 Apr 2026 19:10:24 +0000

vp-Tools for Windows is now online. What a PITA! I managed to get all the build tools to work, so I don't have to maintain 3 versions of the source code.

I'll keep adding documentation, FAQ etc. Let me know if you get a chance to check the chips.json and opcodes.json files for errors. That was a lot of typing, so odds are there is a typo somewhere.

Fingers crossed it passes your inspection and I'll put up a disclaimer and open it to the public when you feel it's ready.

Regards,

--Richard

RE: vp-Tools and Website almost ready

rbourque — Wed, 15 Apr 2026 00:01:56 +0000

@NIVBOT, I've posted the zips for Linux and MacOS builds and granted your account access to downloading. Fingers crossed!

Everything is in beta, so any problems we encounter we will just call "undocumented features" for now. :)

Windows is causing me some trouble and will be up in a day or two. (No surprise there!) I had to drop pdf manual generation because it was too drastic between the 3 operating systems. I tested all 4 utilities successfully on both operating systems, and compiled and flashed, and flashed with save the 74LS00 chip. I have some basic instructions in the Getting Started and FAQ parts of the website, but it's FAR from finished. Writing docs for users isn't my thing, but I will persevere and get it done eventually.

I could use some help populating the "aliases" and "tags" field in the chips.json file if you can find the time. The json file is created on the fly from the database, but if you populate more data in a json file I can get it into the database.

There are still some minor discrepencies in the parameters (I use -- prefix on some, and not others) so I will but some effort into standardizing the parameters.

Future plans are allowing users to upload chip files to share. I was thinking of moderation, so they would be vetted before others can download, otherwise griefers could make fake chips and damage other peoples ic's. Also I was going to make a screen with filtering so users can reference the opcodes, instructions, examples etc like vp-man does, but online. Shouldn't be too hard since both of them will be coming from the Postgresql database, so maintenance will be a breeze.

I also have a dashboard for admins to edit the opcodes and chip data. If you make changes to opcodes (Like BLNKON changing to BLINKON) you will be able to make the changes on my site yourself. (Or at least tell me so I can do it)

Anyways we should move this conversation to email so that we can brainstorm together and get momentum behind your project. If we get a larger library online, and make it easier to access it should help your sales. Once we know the vp-tools are reliable I'll throw some stuff on youtube to help get more traffic for both of us.

--Richard

RE: vp-Tools and Website almost ready

NIVBOT — Sun, 12 Apr 2026 20:21:35 +0000

OK, no problem. thanks

RE: vp-Tools and Website almost ready

rbourque — Sun, 12 Apr 2026 17:58:03 +0000

Sorry, I've been away in Niagara Falls for a couple of days and just got back. I still have to package up the tools linux/windows/mac and change the default routes from my development vm's to the production site.

In the meantime, Register an account and once the files are posted the download links will be allowed for your account to give you a chance to validate if I made any mistakes anywhere...