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Roadmap Standalone for AMIGA and ATARIpage  1 2 

Captain Zalo

Posts 71
26 Oct 2016 20:15


I agree on the MiniITX/MicroATX form-factor. That would make fitting a power and stuff a lot easier, and the range of choices would be great.
There's always The C4Labs on Etsy if you want a fancy schmancy looking box for your non-standard size machine with a flare. I've bought several products from them. Fast delivery, great builds and good looks. That way you don't have to settle for some shitty looking aluminium box or nasty looking spray-injected mold.

If you send the guys on C4 an STL or AutoCad-like model, they can make you a layered box in wood, plastic, plexiglass or something else.


Vincent Rivière

Posts 87
27 Oct 2016 09:22


Hello, I'm the guy who ported EmuTOS to Amiga. I will happily help to run EmuTOS on Apollo machines - even if as far as I can see, it already works on Vampirized A2000 out of the box :-)


Simo Koivukoski
(Apollo Team Member)
Posts 601
28 Oct 2016 09:58


Vincent Rivière wrote:

    Hello, I'm the guy who ported EmuTOS to Amiga. I will happily help to run EmuTOS on Apollo machines - even if as far as I can see, it already works on Vampirized A2000 out of the box :-)
   

Hi and thank you. Quickly tested floppy and harddisk works (with V500V2 IDE) on an Amiga.
 

 
Vimeo video: EXTERNAL LINK


Vincent Rivière

Posts 87
28 Oct 2016 12:57


Many thanks, Simo, for this great report and video :-)
It works exactly as I would expect.
As IDE works fine, you can easily test other software.

I notice a few minor issues:

1) On the EmuTOS welcome screen, the boot time is incorrect. Currently, EmuTOS only supports the A600/A1200 battery backed up clock. Your one may be different hardware. Or maybe, it is just not set up correctly ;-)

2) SYSINFO says "TOTAL ST-RAM: 2048 Kbytes". I don't know where it gets this bogus value, because by definition it should be the value of the PHYSTOP variable at $42E. And we clearly see just below that the value is 1 MB there. This look like a SYSINFO bug, I can't understand how it could be something else. On the other hand, the EmuTOS welcome screen displays 1 MB of ST-RAM, which is correct. The "FREE ST-RAM" value looks good, considering that the actual total is 1 MB. Note that SYSINFO is a very outdated tool (even if it is my favorite one), it should only be considered as reliable on ST and TT.

3) All Atari time measurements expect an OS system timer running at exactly 200 Hz. On Amiga, I use the CIA A timer B to emulate that timer. Currently, it is only initialized correctly for PAL/50Hz Amiga chipset. If the chipset is NTSC/60Hz, the timer will not exactly run at the expected frequency, so the measurements will be wrong. Of course this could be fixed to support both 50/60 Hz chipset.

4) The QINDEX values compare measured values with Atari TOS. But even running on Atari hardware, the values obtained with EmuTOS are different, because Atari TOS and EmuTOS use different implementations. This is true for OS functions (character drawing speed, etc), but should not be relevant for raw CPU tests. In other words, to get useful CPU benchmark values, you should only compare QINDEX results between EmuTOS for Atari and EmuTOS for Amiga (not Atari TOS).


Vincent Rivière

Posts 87
28 Oct 2016 22:42


Vincent Rivière wrote:

2) SYSINFO says "TOTAL ST-RAM: 2048 Kbytes".

Definitely: that SYSINFO "TOTAL ST-RAM" value is only reliable on Atari ST/TT hardware. It must be considered as completely bogus on any other hardware, including newer Atari computers or Amiga. Do not trust it.
On the other hand, the PHYSTOP value is always valid and provides the right ST-RAM total size (Chip RAM on Amiga).


Simo Koivukoski
(Apollo Team Member)
Posts 601
29 Oct 2016 18:03


Bootscreen looks good and Amiga 2000 battery clock is found.




Vincent Rivière

Posts 87
29 Oct 2016 19:16


Excellent!
Did you change something regarding to the clock? Maybe just correctly set the date/time from AmigaOS? I didn't change anything regarding to the clock in the EmuTOS code.


Philippe Flype
(Apollo Team Member)
Posts 299
29 Oct 2016 19:32


Yes, he just set correct time.


Vincent Rivière

Posts 87
21 Nov 2016 10:40


We have somehow messed the topics. This one is about creating a standalone board compatible with both Amiga and Atari hardware.

I have posted some information on the other topic, regarding to special 680x0 features used on Atari hardware and OS:
CLICK HERE 
If the Apollo Core 68080 is compatible enough with those
specificities, then it will certainly be suitable to build a new Atari-compatible machine. Or even to make current Vampire boards compatible with existing Atari computers.


Vincent Rivière

Posts 87
21 Nov 2016 12:20


To build a new standalone Atari-compatible computer based on an FPGA, the easiest way is to start from the Suska project:
EXTERNAL LINK 
Suska is a complete and open source implementation of Atari ST inside an FPGA. It features both the 68000 CPU and the Atari ST chipset. Theoretically, you can take the Suska VHDL code, replace the 68000 implementation with Apollo Core 68080, and you're done. I'm sure that FPGA experts could do that easily :-)

The second useful project is the FireBee (ACP). Very roughly, it can be seen as an extension of the Suska project, with the following major differences:
- remove the 68000 CPU from FPGA, and use a real ColdFire CPU instead
- add Falcon hardware implementation to the FPGA. VIDEL (Falcon video) is supported, while DSP and Falcon sound are still missing.

The sources of the FireBee's FPGA firmware (including Suska's code) is freely available there:
EXTERNAL LINK 
Really, by reusing the work of the above projects, adding the ST chipset to any FPGA board should be a piece of cake.
NB: I have absolutely no FPGA skills myself, so I can't help in this area.


Thierry Atheist

Posts 644
21 Nov 2016 13:27


Someone once told me this fable; "the standalone 68080 Apollo Core'd AMIGA is expensive, very expensive"....

Then I stumbled upon an interesting post, look at the A4000 reference here:

http://amigaworld.net/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?forum=25&topic_id=41386&post_id=789828&viewmode=thread&order=0#789828

Continue along to and take a gander,
EXTERNAL LINK 
!!!??!?!?!!!!


Kolbjørn Barmen
(Needs Verification)
Posts 219/ 2
22 Nov 2016 02:04


@Thierry
What is your point?


Alan Haynes

Posts 140
22 Nov 2016 04:30


Kolbjørn Barmen wrote:

@Thierry
  What is your point?

I think Thierry's point is that compared to the cost of add-ons for current Amiga's with their ageing hardware; a brand new Stand-Alone will be much cheaper than the sum cost of Network card, Graphics card,Old Amiga (unless you already own one), Hard drive interface card and the list could go on and on.
Cheers from OZ


Thierry Atheist

Posts 644
22 Nov 2016 06:27


Alan, you are correct!


Thierry Atheist

Posts 644
22 Nov 2016 07:35


So it's 121 UKP for the card, and just now reading the whole product description, there's an add on option of an USB socket.

Then there's tax, shipping and more than likely, exchange rate + duty too! PAINFUL!!!


Thierry Atheist

Posts 644
22 Nov 2016 07:38


Any idea what case a standalone will fit in yet? I guess I mean what form factor it will be?


Asaf Ayoub

Posts 26
22 Nov 2016 10:27


@Gunnar

great news !

However some clarity for the target user would be interesting.

For example the Raspberry Pi targets home grown developers and users for education.

We could do the same.

The Rasberry Pi 3b gets desoldered so large parts are removed so they fit into a gamepad.

If a standalone could be created with minimal parts, eg the core surrounded with pins - then this could allow developers to use the board in any area.

Just plug on a connector/part or card as needed. eg Arduino compatible.

YouTube The Ben Heck Show - Ben creates projects for people for a fee - this could help us.

EXTERNAL LINK (Build Your Own Portable Raspberry Pi)

What I hope for is small hand held gaming device with screen with option to use micro DIGITAL-VIDEO.

Or a mini Amiga that fits into a medium sized backlit keyboard (like an all in one Amiga).

hard drive or CD/DVD drive is not required as one could use very fast micro sd cards or ssd for larger devices.



OneSTone O2o

Posts 159
22 Nov 2016 17:23


Vincent, est-ce-que tu peux m'envoyer une message (pm) par atari-forum.com? (1ST1) Merci!


Stefan Niestegge

Posts 33
23 Nov 2016 18:43


slightly off-Topic, sorry..

EmuTOS also works un unmodified Amiga 600:
 
  I replaced KS ROM with 27c4100 EPROM, containing EmuTOS 0.9.7
 
  EXTERNAL LINK 
 
  Now waiting for my Vampire ...

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