Agranlunds TF534 Build

TF534 - 68030 + More RAM Board (More compatible with amiga hardware)

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Re: Agranlunds TF534 Build

Post by exxos »

ah yes I see your running in fast-ram now, thanks for clarification :)
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viewtopic.php?f=17&t=1585 Have you done the Mandatory Fixes ?
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Re: Agranlunds TF534 Build

Post by 8 Bit Dreams »

agranlund wrote: Sun Sep 22, 2019 5:42 pm I think we've seen enough of Elite Frontier running on TF equipped Amigas, so here it is finally running really quite well on the Atari ST :)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6bHiThFE05I

(No sound, and washed out colours.. I'm using a temporary quickly hacked together VGA cable)
Nice and smooth! My compliments, i like that!!!! :dualthumbup: :dualthumbup: :dualthumbup:
Any chance to get IDE running?
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Re: Agranlunds TF534 Build

Post by agranlund »

Any chance to get IDE running?
I think digging deeper into that will be next on the agenda. I really want my CF card to work with the TF as I am running out of stuff I can comfortably run from floppy :)

So far I the only thing I've really done to the TF is to make the IDE interface appear in the correct location for Atari.
Then I made a build of EmuTOS that spits out a lot of relevant debug information.

What I could see was that it recognised the device, and all of the 4 partitions that I had on them - the partition sizes appears to be correct.
But it complaints that none of the partitions are valid Atari partitions.
(HDDriver util was also able to recognise the device but info such as names and partitions are garbage)

I am thinking read/write timing issues, but I only really scratched the surface yet.


What I could see is that there are a couple of differences in the EmuTOS IDE code depending on if target is Amiga or Atari. When I get a chance I will explore this for possible clues on what I might need to change in the TF firmware.
One of the differences between EmuTos Amiga/Atari had something to do with timings.


(On a side note, if I plug the CF card into my own expansion board, thus into the ST bus, it will work if the TF is running at ST clock speed but not with its own oscillator - but I rather focus on getting the IDE on the TF board to work, and worry about IDE expansions that goes in the ST bus later, or never... :) )
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Re: Agranlunds TF534 Build

Post by agranlund »

Finally! IDE is a success!

I noticed on the TF534 schematics that the data lines for the IDE interface are byte-swapped.
Apparently this is standard on the Amiga, but that is not the case on Atari.

So I swapped the lines on my cable and hey, presto!
(I had already modified the TF firmware to present the IDE bus at the correct address for Atari)
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Works fine in EmuTos but not in Atari TOS 2.06 and I don't know why (maybe because I haven't hooked up the interrupt to ASCI pin 10?)

The modified IDE cable:
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The IDE situation on Atari is a bit confusing, and I may have understood things wrong.. but I think it might be possible to get the IDE interface on the TF to work with a stock cable. "twisted cable" is apparently a thing in the Atari world, and is necessary if you want full speed on drives partitioned for PC compatibility? The IDE interface on the TF basically does this.

However, my CF card is partitioned to be TOS-only compatible, meaning I get full speed on a standard Atari IDE interface (me twisting the cable now basically "untwists" it).
Maybe you don't have to modify the cable if you use a different partition scheme than I am.
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Re: Agranlunds TF534 Build

Post by 8 Bit Dreams »

Wow!!!
That's impressive! Will crimp a twisted cable and do tests @weekend! :thanksyellow: :thanksyellow: :thanksyellow:
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Re: Agranlunds TF534 Build

Post by czietz »

With a PC-compatible (= not TOS-only-compatible) partitioning scheme, EmuTOS should be able to recognize the TF's IDE interface as is, i.e., with a regular cable as "twisted" interface. Of course, after changing the IDE IF's address to be where the Atari expects it, like Agranlund did.
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Re: Agranlunds TF534 Build

Post by 8 Bit Dreams »

Does the firmware listed above has fixed IDE already, or there was some improvements done after?
Thinking about to test TF534 with some relicators i have here (three different types) maybe it will fit at least on one revision...
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Re: Agranlunds TF534 Build

Post by chue »

Really great work you are doing here! Keep it going!
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Re: Agranlunds TF534 Build

Post by Cyprian »

great job Agranlund

agranlund wrote: Mon Sep 23, 2019 8:51 pmThe IDE situation on Atari is a bit confusing, and I may have understood things wrong.. but I think it might be possible to get the IDE interface on the TF to work with a stock cable
Since 0.9.8 EmuTOS supports twisted cable. Also it is supported in Pera Putnik's driver and modified TOS.
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Re: Agranlunds TF534 Build

Post by agranlund »

Does the firmware listed above has fixed IDE already, or there was some improvements done after?
Not sure, so I attached a new firmware which has the FastRam and IDE changes.
Hopefully these changes can be implemented in the official Atari firmwares.


Also included in the zip is a build of EmuTOS 0.9.11 that runs from FastRAM - it's quite nice and quick!
Just start emutostf.prg.


And also, I included a faster-booting and silent build of EmuTOS for burning to ROM. You don't need this, but it's a nice optional and I use it.
I have emuboot.img burned to my roms, and emutostf.prg in my auto folder. This makes my Atari boot straight into EmuTos running from FastRAM.
(both builds are made from unmodified 0.9.11 sources)

I plan on tweaking emuboot.img some more so this is more of a proof-of-concept.
Mainly thinking about these two things:
- Make it as a 192Kb image to get rid of the need for ROM decoding hardware.
(should be doable, we hardly need anything from this first stage EmuTOS except for being able to start emutostf.prg in the auto folder)
- Don't run anything from the auto folder except for emutostf.prg (because emutostf.prg will run the autofolder itself when started)
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TF534r2c_Atari_20190923.zip
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