Firmware Optimizing

[tuxie]

Hello,

now i have running a TF520 that i got,
But it runs very poor and very slow on Atari, i got it running with 16Mhz deliverd by the Shifter.

But its a nice piece of hardware and terriblefire did a lot of work with it, so why pushing away ?

So my question, is someone interested to optimize the Firmware for the TF520 to get it running better on the Atari ST ?
We could use the open GAL Listings from the PAK2 Port it to VHDL. But i havent the skills for it. So maybe someone is interested.
Regards

[exxos]

I don't think the TF520 was ever intended to run on the Atari. There have been a lot of changes since the 520 as it was only a stepping stone board. There are a lot of changes to the physical hardware not just a firmware update. If it was that simple to do, then it would have been pointless @terriblefire developing future boards. Happy to be proven wrong, but that's what I understand.

[chue]

Most of the speed gain comes from running software in accelerator ram. Since the 520 doesn’t have any accelerator ram, firmware changes likely won’t speed it up much.

As exxos pointed out, the 520 was just a stepping stone. The 530 was the board that added accelerator ram.

[8 Bit Dreams]

Yet Stephen has backported TF534 Firmware to TF520, this allowed me to run this card @32MHz..
It was necessary to replace all resistors to 1-2k to be able to run that firmware.
Not sure wich one do You have atm...
https://github.com/terriblefire/terribl ... tested.zip

Regards,

-V

[tuxie]

Most of the speed gain comes from running software in accelerator ram. Since the 520 doesn’t have any accelerator ram, firmware changes likely won’t speed it up much.

As exxos pointed out, the 520 was just a stepping stone. The 530 was the board that added accelerator ram.

Pak2 has no Fastram, 2nd LVL Cache! Just onboard 32bit ROM, what of course increase the performance, but TF520 is much slower then original ST

[tuxie]

Yet Stephen has backported TF534 Firmware to TF520, this allowed me to run this card @32MHz..
It was necessary to replace all resistors to 1-2k to be able to run that firmware.
Not sure wich one do You have atm...
https://github.com/terriblefire/terribl ... tested.zip

Regards,

-V

I will give it a try!! And post a feedback

[tuxie]

Its running with 16Mhz, what resistors did you changed to get it working with 32Mhz ?

[8 Bit Dreams]

All of them.
Have swapped all resistors to 2k
Also oscillator need to be swapped too..
Please keep in mind that CPU You are using need to support such frequency

[tuxie]

All of them.
Have swapped all resistors to 2k
Also oscillator need to be swapped too..
Please keep in mind that CPU You are using need to support such frequency

So you mean you changed the Resistors on the Atari Mainboard, the resistor arrays for address, data and control lines ?

[8 Bit Dreams]

No no no, i mean resistors on TF520 itself,
On initial build these was marked as 10k, but latest firmware will not work with these values, so these need to be swapped out to 1k or 2k