Page 1 of 1

Terrible Fire TF534S

Posted: Fri Sep 22, 2017 5:11 pm
by terriblefire
My new Amiga booster has some wiring designed to make use in an ST possible (if maybe not practical).

The board specs are as the TF530 ....

68030
68882
4Mb 32bit SRAM with burst.
SATA Port
SPI Port

Should be interesting to try this on the ST. Wondering if there is a better way to register RAM than the MonSTer driver? No hardware solution?

For more info have a look at my channel https://www.youtube.com/c/terriblefire

Re: Terrible Fire TF534S

Posted: Fri Sep 22, 2017 5:15 pm
by exxos
terriblefire wrote: Fri Sep 22, 2017 5:11 pm Wondering if there is a better way to register RAM than the MonSTer driver? No hardware solution?
I do not think so no. The extra memory has to be reported to the OS for it to recognise hand use it.

You do not actually need a driver, it actually isn't a driver, it is basically just one command to make GEM aware of the RAM. Or something very simple like that :)

I think the source code is available for the monster driver you wanted to take a look at that you could probably work it out is going on.

Re: Terrible Fire TF534S

Posted: Fri Sep 22, 2017 5:16 pm
by terriblefire
Yeah. It would be nice if i could supply the code on the board rather than needing software.

Re: Terrible Fire TF534S

Posted: Fri Sep 22, 2017 5:39 pm
by exxos
terriblefire wrote: Fri Sep 22, 2017 5:16 pm Yeah. It would be nice if i could supply the code on the board rather than needing software.
These are the functions for it

http://toshyp.atari.org/en/00500c.html

Re: Terrible Fire TF534S

Posted: Fri Sep 22, 2017 5:48 pm
by rpineau
You need to declare the extra Alt-RAM with the Maddalt function. But you also need to create the _FRB cookie and have it points to a 64k buffer is STRAM for DAM transfer. That's what the monster "driver" does.
On the TT for example you don't need it as the TOS is looking for the TT-Ram and if it finds it, it tests it and create the _FRB cookie and buffer.
TOS 2.06 doesn't, which is why we need this in the auto folder to declare the new Alt-RAM to the system.
It is also good practice on 32 bit CPU on Atari to have the Alt-RAM starting at $01000000
Some program will use MxAlloc to request a block of Alt-RAM and check if it's in the "correct" range when they get the pointer back. This is a rare occurrence but it does happens (I don't remember what app did that).
Rodolphe

Re: Terrible Fire TF534S

Posted: Fri Sep 22, 2017 6:59 pm
by terriblefire
Thanks. Its more a hardware question here.. is there an address range where the TOSes will pick up and run hardware autoboot code without interfering with the cart socket.

Re: Terrible Fire TF534S

Posted: Fri Sep 22, 2017 7:13 pm
by exxos
terriblefire wrote: Fri Sep 22, 2017 6:59 pm Thanks. Its more a hardware question here.. is there an address range where the TOSes will pick up and run hardware autoboot code without interfering with the cart socket.
I do not believe so no :(

I wanted to run a little bit of code display amount of ram on boot up with TOS 104, someone patched the ROM for me, he put a jump somewhere in the ROM early on to run some code at the end of the ROM space to do that and then jump back.

I actually have a similar problem with my current booster, that I need to read the NVRAM to set up various booster registers before the machine boots up. This could actually be done internally in the PLD to read NVRAM register and programme the internal booster registers before CPU reset even happens. I guess this is kind of like a boot ROM, which will run before it actually boots the OS up..

But really you can only really run code from the cartridge port on boot up. I guess you could run code there install the fast ram, but the code would still need to be stored somewhere to run anyway, i.e. a boot ROM, in which case it is probably just easier to have a small auto folder program to do it how it is done normally.

Aside from that I do not think there are any other options.. Unless anyone here has any more thoughts to this...

Re: Terrible Fire TF534S

Posted: Fri Sep 22, 2017 8:11 pm
by rpineau
terriblefire wrote: Fri Sep 22, 2017 6:59 pm Thanks. Its more a hardware question here.. is there an address range where the TOSes will pick up and run hardware autoboot code without interfering with the cart socket.
Nope. nothing like the Zorro bus autoconf on Atari.