Granlunds FrankenSTein

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PhilC
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Re: Granlunds FrankenSTein

Post by PhilC »

agranlund wrote: Wed Jul 01, 2020 9:11 am
I might be interested in buying one of your built-and-tested ones if you still have one available :)
I'm waiting on a couple of parts but should be ready soon.
If it ain't broke, test it to Destruction.
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agranlund
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Re: Granlunds FrankenSTein

Post by agranlund »

PhilC wrote: Wed Jul 01, 2020 9:23 am
agranlund wrote: Wed Jul 01, 2020 9:11 am
I might be interested in buying one of your built-and-tested ones if you still have one available :)
I'm waiting on a couple of parts but should be ready soon.
Brilliant! No rush, just ping me which direction I should throw the monies when you're ready :)
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DoG
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Re: Granlunds FrankenSTein

Post by DoG »

Just a quick question.

In the PAK68/030 manual it says that if installed in a MegaST you should remove the blitter if runs at 32-50MHz. Since it will out preform the blitter anyway so it unnecessary.

So, the question is, how are you using the blitter? Just for fun and poking around or do you deactivate the TF534 sometimes?
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agranlund
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Re: Granlunds FrankenSTein

Post by agranlund »

DoG wrote: Sat Jul 04, 2020 5:10 pm Just a quick question.

In the PAK68/030 manual it says that if installed in a MegaST you should remove the blitter if runs at 32-50MHz. Since it will out preform the blitter anyway so it unnecessary.

So, the question is, how are you using the blitter? Just for fun and poking around or do you deactivate the TF534 sometimes?
Well, it does allow you to run software which require the blitter for start :)
And stuff like the blitter-enhanced Hard'n'Heavy game for smooth scrolling.
But sure, there aren't really that much software that use the blitter so it's not a big deal to just remove it I suppose.
I want it there since it's neat to have one in an old short-model ST, and I went through the work to make the addon for it.
I might also want to code something using it.

But looking at a stock TOS2.06 (without NVDI) it performs quite a bit better with the blitter enabled even though my machine runs at 50Mhz.
The screen buffer has to be in ST-RAM, and read/writes to ST-RAM will go at bus speed no matter if the CPU is 8Mhz or 800Mhz..
NVDI is another matter and it makes the blitter irrelevant for the TOS desktop.
I suppose it's all about how the software was written.

Certainly, if you have TT-RAM, I figure it's going to be better to compose there (50Mhz) and write the dirty regions to ST-RAM (8Mhz) rather than compose in ST-RAM using the blitter at constant 8Mhz.

If you don't have TT-RAM.. or at least a cache, well then the accelerator is crippled to 8Mhz most of the time anyway and I'd keep that Blitter in there :)

This was longer than I intended.. In practice, just install NVDI it's better than how TOS uses the Blitter :)
Unless you want to play some game that requires or is made better by the Blitter.

Just be prepared that if something tries to blit from Fastram to ST-RAM you are going to end up with issues.. which in itself is a very good reason to recommend removing it.
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Re: Granlunds FrankenSTein

Post by agranlund »

Received the board yesterday @PhilC , thank you ! :)

It behaves exactly like the one I built so presumably it´s something with my machine causing the issue. Great to be able to test with a known working card!

And I guess the good news is that I wasn’t as bad at soldering as I thought then :lol:

The machine does run, but if I load something into fastram to execute from there it does a soft-reset. Tested with Gembench and Frontier, both resets the machine after finishing loading.
Perhaps a power issue when being able to run at full-tilt?

Putting emutos in fastram works in that it doesn’t reset the machine at least, but anything floppy related is complete wrong in that case.

I’ll try some different bus pullups, they are already in sockets anyway :)
Will also grab latest Emutos sources and build it to limit fastram to 64mb and see if that bogus 4MB extra is the issue (i doubt it, but it’s an easy to eliminate unknown so I may as well test)

This is all tested with my gotek. Still haven’t connected up the CF adapter. I would need to make a twisted cable for my old CF card to work but I guess I could probably set up a new card while connected to the TF536 interface just for testing.
Those HDDriver docs are confusing when it comes to IDE but it appears I should be able to directly use that PC/Amiga style connection without cable trickery as long as it’s partitioned for such.
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PhilC
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Re: Granlunds FrankenSTein

Post by PhilC »

@agranlund really happy you got your board and I guess ots good news that the one you made is just the same.

I'm going to be watching your progress carefully as I've just bought a slim case ST and plan to do a similar upgrade to yours.

Keep up the good work.
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agranlund
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Re: Granlunds FrankenSTein

Post by agranlund »

PhilC wrote: Thu Jul 16, 2020 12:37 pm @agranlund really happy you got your board and I guess ots good news that the one you made is just the same.

I'm going to be watching your progress carefully as I've just bought a slim case ST and plan to do a similar upgrade to yours.

Keep up the good work.
:thumbup:
Awesome! Let me know how it works on your machine, I’ll be away for a couple of weeks so you’ll probably get yours up and running before me :)
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Re: Granlunds FrankenSTein

Post by PhilC »

@agranlund gotta make a power supply first, then hope it works, then in with the TF536 and then to look at a blitter upgrade
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Re: Granlunds FrankenSTein

Post by agranlund »

Had a quick test connecting up a fresh CF card to the 536 with just a normal cable and I suspect that I still need to twist the interface to Atari standard for it to work.

The HDDriver partitioning utility is able to see the interface and a card but it can't read out card info correctly or partition it in any way.
Could be that the HDDriver utils expects it to be an Atari IDE interface and wont work with PC/Amiga pinouts.
I should have the P.Putnik utilities here somewhere so I'll give those a go and see what that one says.

Maybe if I partition the card on the PC.. I have about zero hope Atari TOS would be able to boot from it but maybe EmuTOS can.

The HDDriver package has some information about byte-swapping and making these dual TOS+Windows compatible partitions but in the same sentence a lot of warnings about not being able to boot from the disk (with Atari TOS) if doing so.
I know very little about IDE on the Atari so I'm just guessing and messing about for my own amusement. The IDE relocator pcb I made for my 534 worked fine and it swapped the interface from Amiga/PC to Atari standard, so I'll make a similar one for the 536 after vacation.
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PhilC
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Re: Granlunds FrankenSTein

Post by PhilC »

@agranlund the TF536 seems a little more fussy with CF cards but the ones I've managed to get to work are fine in either Atari format or PC format without the need for a twisted cable.

What did you change the pullups to to get it to boot?
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