My eyes are going crazy tonight with all these lines and boxes. Working through the schematics
BLITTER RE-CREATION THOUGHTS
Re: BLITTER RE-CREATION THOUGHTS
Meanwhile I found the issue why the blitter from Suska is slow, and even fixed the FC output from user to supervisor data (that allows write to the Shifter palette registers). Hell, it runs some demos now (like 20 years megademo, the Happy Birthday scene)!
Just need a bit more work on the state machine, and will upload the code soon.
Just need a bit more work on the state machine, and will upload the code soon.
Re: BLITTER RE-CREATION THOUGHTS
Nice! Not sure if Icky mentioned, though he sort-of had it running last night... got a bit more in speed, but still 42% which is still running half speed basically than it should.slingshot wrote: ↑Thu Nov 14, 2019 9:14 am Meanwhile I found the issue why the blitter from Suska is slow, and even fixed the FC output from user to supervisor data (that allows write to the Shifter palette registers). Hell, it runs some demos now (like 20 years megademo, the Happy Birthday scene)!
Just need a bit more work on the state machine, and will upload the code soon.
https://www.exxosforum.co.uk/atari/ All my hardware guides - mods - games - STOS
https://www.exxosforum.co.uk/atari/store2/ - All my hardware mods for sale - Please help support by making a purchase.
viewtopic.php?f=17&t=1585 Have you done the Mandatory Fixes ?
Just because a lot of people agree on something, doesn't make it a fact. ~exxos ~
People should find solutions to problems, not find problems with solutions.
https://www.exxosforum.co.uk/atari/store2/ - All my hardware mods for sale - Please help support by making a purchase.
viewtopic.php?f=17&t=1585 Have you done the Mandatory Fixes ?
Just because a lot of people agree on something, doesn't make it a fact. ~exxos ~
People should find solutions to problems, not find problems with solutions.
Re: BLITTER RE-CREATION THOUGHTS
Good, it could be integrated then. The speed problem is basically the state machine have some extra states besides the bus cycles (S0-S7 in terms of 68000, also written similarly in the VHDL code - that's exactly 4 clock ticks), and when the Blitter is in these states, it will miss the next CPU cycle of the MMU - then it has to wait for the next. That's why the effective performance is only about 50% - the blitter loses every second memory access opportunity.
Re: BLITTER RE-CREATION THOUGHTS
We did fiddle with all sorts in the code, including the state machine. I removed a lot of changed states, we got around 80% speed, but everything was corrupted. We have no idea about FPGA stuff, but we tried So thanks for your efforts so farslingshot wrote: ↑Thu Nov 14, 2019 11:59 am Good, it could be integrated then. The speed problem is basically the state machine have some extra states besides the bus cycles (S0-S7 in terms of 68000, also written similarly in the VHDL code - that's exactly 4 clock ticks), and when the Blitter is in these states, it will miss the next CPU cycle of the MMU - then it has to wait for the next. That's why the effective performance is only about 50% - the blitter loses every second memory access opportunity.
https://www.exxosforum.co.uk/atari/ All my hardware guides - mods - games - STOS
https://www.exxosforum.co.uk/atari/store2/ - All my hardware mods for sale - Please help support by making a purchase.
viewtopic.php?f=17&t=1585 Have you done the Mandatory Fixes ?
Just because a lot of people agree on something, doesn't make it a fact. ~exxos ~
People should find solutions to problems, not find problems with solutions.
https://www.exxosforum.co.uk/atari/store2/ - All my hardware mods for sale - Please help support by making a purchase.
viewtopic.php?f=17&t=1585 Have you done the Mandatory Fixes ?
Just because a lot of people agree on something, doesn't make it a fact. ~exxos ~
People should find solutions to problems, not find problems with solutions.
Re: BLITTER RE-CREATION THOUGHTS
I've started to look at the schematics more thoughtfully.
Anybody has an idea if a Blitter interrupt is generated when it's restarted in non-hog mode? It should because of how the busy bit implemented: it's cleared when the operation finishes _and_ when the register containing the busy bit is selected. So when the CPU writes a '1' to busy to re-start it in non-hog mode, it should create a high->low edge on the INT output.
2nd question: 4082.pdf is much more readable than 4051.pdf. Is there any known difference between the timings of this presumably newer blitter? (functionality wise I assume it's the same).
Anybody has an idea if a Blitter interrupt is generated when it's restarted in non-hog mode? It should because of how the busy bit implemented: it's cleared when the operation finishes _and_ when the register containing the busy bit is selected. So when the CPU writes a '1' to busy to re-start it in non-hog mode, it should create a high->low edge on the INT output.
2nd question: 4082.pdf is much more readable than 4051.pdf. Is there any known difference between the timings of this presumably newer blitter? (functionality wise I assume it's the same).
Re: BLITTER RE-CREATION THOUGHTS
4021 is the basic blitter chip. 4051 just has bunches of "double inversions" to fix noise on some lines. So no different than 4021 really.
4082 I believe is part of the STE combel or some other versions of it, so its of no use to use really.
https://www.exxosforum.co.uk/forum/viewt ... =29&t=2302
https://www.exxosforum.co.uk/atari/ All my hardware guides - mods - games - STOS
https://www.exxosforum.co.uk/atari/store2/ - All my hardware mods for sale - Please help support by making a purchase.
viewtopic.php?f=17&t=1585 Have you done the Mandatory Fixes ?
Just because a lot of people agree on something, doesn't make it a fact. ~exxos ~
People should find solutions to problems, not find problems with solutions.
https://www.exxosforum.co.uk/atari/store2/ - All my hardware mods for sale - Please help support by making a purchase.
viewtopic.php?f=17&t=1585 Have you done the Mandatory Fixes ?
Just because a lot of people agree on something, doesn't make it a fact. ~exxos ~
People should find solutions to problems, not find problems with solutions.
Re: BLITTER RE-CREATION THOUGHTS
Just asked because seems it uses a more modern ASIC library, just compare the first pages (which is the most important part - the state machine). No negative clocks for each flip-flop, much more human consumable.exxos wrote: ↑Thu Nov 14, 2019 1:07 pm
4082 I believe is part of the STE combel or some other versions of it, so its of no use to use really.
https://www.exxosforum.co.uk/forum/viewt ... =29&t=2302
That was the same with the GSTMCU, there were 2 PDFs, looked similar in functionality, but the older was more cluttered, with normal and inverted clocks everywhere. I've chosen the more modern one for my Verilog implementation, and turned out it was a good decision. So maybe 4082 is just as good as 4021/4051. At it's surely not part of a combo chip in this form, all the ordinary input/output pads are there.
Re: BLITTER RE-CREATION THOUGHTS
Yeah I go into the negative logic in various places in this thread already. Though we are not using the 4082 as we don't know if its even a working design. 4082 is a "BLIT CELL" likely for 4081 combel ... from the other thread..slingshot wrote: ↑Thu Nov 14, 2019 1:14 pm That was the same with the GSTMCU, there were 2 PDFs, looked similar in functionality, but the older was more cluttered, with normal and inverted clocks everywhere. I've chosen the more modern one for my Verilog implementation, and turned out it was a good decision. So maybe 4082 is just as good as 4021/4051. At it's surely not part of a combo chip in this form, all the ordinary input/output pads are there.
https://www.exxosforum.co.uk/atari/ All my hardware guides - mods - games - STOS
https://www.exxosforum.co.uk/atari/store2/ - All my hardware mods for sale - Please help support by making a purchase.
viewtopic.php?f=17&t=1585 Have you done the Mandatory Fixes ?
Just because a lot of people agree on something, doesn't make it a fact. ~exxos ~
People should find solutions to problems, not find problems with solutions.
https://www.exxosforum.co.uk/atari/store2/ - All my hardware mods for sale - Please help support by making a purchase.
viewtopic.php?f=17&t=1585 Have you done the Mandatory Fixes ?
Just because a lot of people agree on something, doesn't make it a fact. ~exxos ~
People should find solutions to problems, not find problems with solutions.
Re: BLITTER RE-CREATION THOUGHTS
regarding timings, the only known difference is Mega STE, where each blit pass takes one more bus cycle for bus mastering (cache management is suspected of that delay).
regarding functionalities - no differences, no one has tried yet to explore that are. But would be cool to verify that.
Lynx I / Mega ST 1 / 7800 / Portfolio / Lynx II / Jaguar / TT030 / Mega STe / 800 XL / 1040 STe / Falcon030 / 65 XE / 520 STm / SM124 / SC1435
DDD HDD / AT Speed C16 / TF536 / SDrive / PAK68/3 / Lynx Multi Card / LDW Super 2000 / XCA12 / SkunkBoard / CosmosEx / SatanDisk / UltraSatan / USB Floppy Drive Emulator / Eiffel / SIO2PC / Crazy Dots / PAM Net
http://260ste.atari.org
DDD HDD / AT Speed C16 / TF536 / SDrive / PAK68/3 / Lynx Multi Card / LDW Super 2000 / XCA12 / SkunkBoard / CosmosEx / SatanDisk / UltraSatan / USB Floppy Drive Emulator / Eiffel / SIO2PC / Crazy Dots / PAM Net
http://260ste.atari.org