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Markus (mfro)

Posts 99
28 Feb 2017 19:15



This was indeed confirmed by me. You just left out what I said as well: additionally to its 512 MB main memory, the FireBee has access to 128 MB "FPGA-memory". Which is just as much as the Vampire has.
I wouldn't consider having USB and PCI on the ColdFire side a drawback - it would be rather easy to use the ColdFire as I/O processor to whatever lives in the FPGA driving these peripherials.

Sorry for bothering you Amiga guys with that, but for some reason our friend tries to blacken the FireBee image wherever he can...


Grzegorz Wójcik (pisklak
(Apollo Team Member)
Posts 87
01 Mar 2017 08:28


I am sure Firebee is a nice piece of hardware. And nobody here have any intention to bash it (beside a discussion about general CF performance and usefulness as 68k replacement).
  We just say that for some less hardcore Atari users Vampire may be seen as some kind of Firebee alternative. And a chance for another OS to toy for us amigans :-)
  I realy have hope that Atari community will want do some accel boards with Apollo inside - that would be cool IMHO.


Markus (mfro)

Posts 99
01 Mar 2017 11:22


Grzegorz Wójcik (pisklak wrote:

  I realy have hope that Atari community will want do some accel boards with Apollo inside - that would be cool IMHO.

Very true.

Unfortunately, we have some guys that apparently can't help doing everything to create an (unhealthy) competitive situation for no apparent reason.



Grzegorz Wójcik (pisklak
(Apollo Team Member)
Posts 87
07 Mar 2017 14:20


Well... reading some Atari forums I see that overall community not active working in that direction it seems, they just want wait and see. If they wait for us amigans to make VampTari.... well waiting may be  "just 2 more weeks" ;-)
  Well situation may be a little different perhaps with next boards, we will see.
 


Markus (mfro)

Posts 99
07 Mar 2017 16:38


Grzegorz Wójcik (pisklak wrote:

    Well... reading some Atari forums I see that overall community not active working in that direction it seems, they just want wait and see. If they wait for us amigans to make VampTari.... well waiting may be  "just 2 more weeks" ;-)
   

   
    Well, that's true, and I guess it's true for pretty valid reasons (from an Atarian's perspective). Months ago we've seen pictures of a vampirized ST on a stack of sockets, but never heard anything more substantial since then.
   
    I guess you can't expect anybody to jump the train if this (or any other) ST didn't show at least remote signs of life.
   
    If you want to see development, you need hardware to work with.
   
    Vincent proved impressively (I didn't expect otherwise from him) that EmuTOS can run perfectly well on a Vampire. Vincent is one of the EmuTOS core developers and EmuTOS for Amiga is his baby since long time, so this was pretty natural development (although I strongly assume it caused him to catch not enough sleep during recent weeks and months ;) ). But actually, it's still "just" an Amiga ;).
   
    You'll probably need something more substantial to convince the rest of us Atari boneheads, however ;)
   
    There's a (promising) accelerator that runs in an Amiga, but just photos of it in an ST. Everything else that's needed to run it as an ST addon (or preferrably, at least for me, standalone) is pretty much unclear. It clearly would need HDL development, but open sourced HDL components connected to a closed source processor core? How is this supposed to work?
   
    Would developers need to sign an NDA, would they be expected to just deliver HDL components for "final assembly" to the Apollo team or is there a way to handover a "precompiled" Apollo core?
   
    I guess that's the questions that need to be answered.


OneSTone O2o

Posts 159
07 Mar 2017 19:22


Markus, I told you and others  already, and Gunnar will confirm it again. He told me, that it's not a problem to put open source VHDL code together with a binary Apollo core in one chip.

The community should take the existing modelled ST chips from Suska, MiST, Firebee and check them for compatibility with the Altera and ARM system bus wich is used by the Apollo VHDL components, with correct adress decoding. Then it's already pssible to attach them on the Apollo core. (Shifter etc and Sound should be reworked to support Vampire's DIGITAL-VIDEO output)

The other thing is that SAGA itsef is very flexible in graphics modes, it can support all kinds of resolution and pixel arrangements (color depth, RGB tripples, bitplanes, ...), only a memroy and regster-mapping (adress decoding, function of the bits/ bytes to the corresponding of SAGA, that means a kind of translation on logic level from Atari to SAGA) would be necessary to make SAGA behave as a shifter, TT-Shifter, Videl and even Super-Videl, or even ET4000 or whatever...

As I wrote in the other forums, it also depends on us. If we only wait, maybe these Amiga guys serve us with something, sooner or later, something good, or not so good (compatible), or the Atari community brings in it's knowledge, it's skills and helps to make it true. Vincent is a good example what could be possibe.


Grzegorz Wójcik (pisklak
(Apollo Team Member)
Posts 87
07 Mar 2017 19:50


I think there is nothing wrong with mixing closed Apollo core with open Atari chipset FPGA reimplementation. As for more technical details... ask BigGun :-)

PS. "just Amiga" ? :P


Markus (mfro)

Posts 99
07 Mar 2017 19:59


oneSTone o2o wrote:

Markus, I told you and others already, ....

Yes, you told me (and others) a (whole) lot. But maybe you better just take your time, read again my questions above and try to understand them.

If you do, you will recognize that nothing you wrote answers anything asked.


OneSTone O2o

Posts 159
07 Mar 2017 20:19


Ask Gunnar or any other of the team to get informations, ask him to get developer hardware, get core, get... Just ask.


Markus (mfro)

Posts 99
07 Mar 2017 20:38


I refuse.


Grzegorz Wójcik (pisklak
(Apollo Team Member)
Posts 87
07 Mar 2017 21:27


While I can understand Atarian's POV, they should understand ours - we just do not have enough manpower to fight on two sides. We focus on Amiga part, maybe we can do some simple Atari stuff. But for real VampTari I think we will need some help from ppl that know VHDL.


Uros Vidovic

Posts 31
07 Mar 2017 21:36


@1st1: You are doing a lot of damage to Apollo project and Apollo team among Atari community!!! Please shout up!!!
Let Apollo team and the others do their work and bring us correct informations about the state of the project and their plans for the future. Your specatulations, lies, assumptions about the project just puts bad light to the team who is doing great and hard job! Please dont polute Atari forums with your nonsense! We (Atari users) know Apollo forum and can read understand and ask what we need!

Yes you are enthusiastic but with your attitude are really doing damage to this team among Atari community!


Ingo Uhlemann

Posts 35
08 Mar 2017 11:04


I am working on some Atari Hardware developments too, and it would be a great deal to profit from each others.

There are more then one part:

1. Is the CPU Accelerator
2. Memory Expantion
3. Video DIGITAL-VIDEO Output
4. ....

Only what we can do is to bring it running step by step on ST. What we need on the Atari side is,

1. Hardware
2. The Core files (as jedec or what we can get)
3. Some Descriptions.

To bring the CPU running on an ST there are few thinks necessary to check.

1. Are there all Controll Signals available
    VMA, VPA, E, BERR, FC0-FC2, IPL0-IPL2
2. Is the statemaschine inside the core 100% the same like on a Original 68000.

With EmuTOS it should be Possible to get the Vampire working (at first) there is also the Source Code for Real Tos, and i think its possible to get 040 Command Support).

For Plain ST is no MMU/FPU needed. Also Mint should work without MMU, maybe memory protection isnt working.

So my question is. How could we come together (Apollo Team and Atari Developers ?

The Vampire Core would be also a great thing for the Atari TT but for this FPU and true MMU is needed.

regards

tuxie



Markus (mfro)

Posts 99
08 Mar 2017 11:31


Ingo Uhlemann wrote:
... 2. The Core files (as jedec or what we can get)...

 
  To my knowledge, there is no such thing like a jedec file usable for Quartus II.
 
  I'm not an expert when it comes to design interchange, but the only way I know of on how to export a given design without having to give away the source HDL (which is, at least as far as I understand, not in the interest of the Apollo team) is to export this as separate design partition (AKA .qxp file).
 
  As this (again, AFAIK) would require design partition support on the sending as well as on the receiving side, this would likely exclude most hobbyists since this feature is only available on the commercial (and pretty expensive) Quartus II release.


Ingo Uhlemann

Posts 35
08 Mar 2017 11:38


How it should work is a task what we have to talk about..


OneSTone O2o

Posts 159
08 Mar 2017 11:55


Uros, nonsense!


OneSTone O2o

Posts 159
08 Mar 2017 15:31


Ingo Uhlemann wrote:

  1. Are there all Controll Signals available
    VMA, VPA, E, BERR, FC0-FC2, IPL0-IPL2

The logics for these signals is already in the core. The point is that they could not test most of the mechanisms as Amiga board does not use them. Vampire 1 board does not support the signals on the 68000 socket, for Vampire 2 board Gunnar was not sure and he wanted to check the diagrams. But V2 is not the last revision and there it will be. For that he was sure.


Ingo Uhlemann

Posts 35
08 Mar 2017 16:35


So send me a Card and I will start, have also an Logic Analyzer with 36Channels ;)


OneSTone O2o

Posts 159
08 Mar 2017 18:29


Ingo, go to their IRC channel (that the way they do...) and contact user BigGun. That's Gunnar. EXTERNAL LINK (the login procedurs is quite annoying over the webclinet)

Ps: Thank you for starting !!! :)

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