TF536 - Atari firmware - Rev2 TF536

Other boosters or variants.
Locked
User avatar
agranlund
Posts: 777
Joined: Sun Aug 18, 2019 10:43 pm
Location: Sweden
Contact:

Re: TF536 - Atari firmware - Rev2 TF536

Post by agranlund »

Badwolf wrote: Thu May 26, 2022 9:52 pm
agranlund wrote: Thu May 26, 2022 7:56 pm - ST-RAM shadow will not work if using DMA devices, and I don't really have any intentions of trying to remedy that.
Nicely done! That damed pesky DMA strikes again.
All loading done from IDE, I presume?
BW
Yep, I normally don't use DMA devices so for me it's not an issue having the L2 enabled most of the time.
The only time I use the Ultrasatan is if I want to transfer something very large that would take a long time with ParCP.
I made L2 for ST-RAM disabled by default though and you'll have to enable it using a newly exposed register.

The plan is to write some maprom replacement that can do all the things maprom currently does + support these new features.
I'd like it to be able to take command line parameters, or read a config file if no parameters are given. That'll be nicer than having to make multiple different maprom builds I think.
User avatar
agranlund
Posts: 777
Joined: Sun Aug 18, 2019 10:43 pm
Location: Sweden
Contact:

Re: TF536 - Atari firmware - Rev2 TF536

Post by agranlund »

L1+L2 makes a noticeable difference over just L1 depending on the game, although to be fair just L1 is really quite good and will work with floppy etc.

No caches:



L1 cache:



L1 + L2 cache:

User avatar
Badwolf
Posts: 2231
Joined: Tue Nov 19, 2019 12:09 pm

Re: TF536 - Atari firmware - Rev2 TF536

Post by Badwolf »

agranlund wrote: Thu May 26, 2022 10:34 pm The plan is to write some maprom replacement that can do all the things maprom currently does + support these new features.
I'd like it to be able to take command line parameters, or read a config file if no parameters are given. That'll be nicer than having to make multiple different maprom builds I think.
How about if SHIFT is held down during execution you get a menu? Was thinking of something similar for my Altram.prg as I dislike conf files on Atari. What kind of ruddy OS has no text editor, eh?

Just musing on DMA. This FRB buffer. I understand it's used to relay DMA data to AltRAM. Could TOS be patched to use it for all transfers? I mean, it's in RAM already. Then you could just elect not to cache the FRB area.

But I admit I don't really know how it works, but I figured searching the TOS sources for 'FRB' would be a start. :lol:

BW
DFB1 Open source 50MHz 030 and TT-RAM accelerator for the Falcon
DSTB1 Open source 16Mhz 68k and AltRAM accelerator for the ST
Smalliermouse ST-optimised USB mouse adapter based on SmallyMouse2
FrontBench The Frontier: Elite 2 intro as a benchmark
User avatar
Badwolf
Posts: 2231
Joined: Tue Nov 19, 2019 12:09 pm

Re: TF536 - Atari firmware - Rev2 TF536

Post by Badwolf »

agranlund wrote: Thu May 26, 2022 10:55 pm L1 + L2 cache:
Woah!

BW
DFB1 Open source 50MHz 030 and TT-RAM accelerator for the Falcon
DSTB1 Open source 16Mhz 68k and AltRAM accelerator for the ST
Smalliermouse ST-optimised USB mouse adapter based on SmallyMouse2
FrontBench The Frontier: Elite 2 intro as a benchmark
User avatar
agranlund
Posts: 777
Joined: Sun Aug 18, 2019 10:43 pm
Location: Sweden
Contact:

Re: TF536 - Atari firmware - Rev2 TF536

Post by agranlund »

How about if SHIFT is held down during execution you get a menu? Was thinking of something similar for my Altram.prg as I dislike conf files on Atari. What kind of ruddy OS has no text editor, eh?
Ohhh. yeah I like that!
And easy to remember since both MiNT and the ET4000 resolution thing are also using SHIFT at bootup to bring up their menus :)

(For the text editor problem, I like QED and have assigned it to open common textfiles using the TOS program associations option)

Just musing on DMA. This FRB buffer. I understand it's used to relay DMA data to AltRAM. Could TOS be patched to use it for all transfers? I mean, it's in RAM already. Then you could just elect not to cache the FRB area.
Haha we think alike!
The exact same thought crossed my mind earlier today, and it feels like it should be fairly doable, but then you'd have patch or build a custom TOS which might not be ideal?
User avatar
Badwolf
Posts: 2231
Joined: Tue Nov 19, 2019 12:09 pm

Re: TF536 - Atari firmware - Rev2 TF536

Post by Badwolf »

Hi @agranlund,

I know this isn't TF536-related, but I thought I'd feed it back:

MAPROM_C 2.2 with TOS4.04 & DFB1 often hangs during execution (from the AUTO folder). Initially I thought it only worked on cold boots, but actually it seems it can hang from power up too. Nothing printing on the screen and the disc LED remains solidly illuminated.

When it does work I get ROM scores in excess of 400%, so it's doing its thing. FASTRAM 2.2 exhibits no such problems.

Not a request for support as I'm more than happy with FASTRAM.PRG and I'm not the target audience for this, but thought it worth flagging in case it's not Falcon-specific.

BW
DFB1 Open source 50MHz 030 and TT-RAM accelerator for the Falcon
DSTB1 Open source 16Mhz 68k and AltRAM accelerator for the ST
Smalliermouse ST-optimised USB mouse adapter based on SmallyMouse2
FrontBench The Frontier: Elite 2 intro as a benchmark
User avatar
agranlund
Posts: 777
Joined: Sun Aug 18, 2019 10:43 pm
Location: Sweden
Contact:

Re: TF536 - Atari firmware - Rev2 TF536

Post by agranlund »

Badwolf wrote: Tue May 31, 2022 2:26 pm Hi @agranlund,

I know this isn't TF536-related, but I thought I'd feed it back:

MAPROM_C 2.2 with TOS4.04 & DFB1 often hangs during execution (from the AUTO folder). Initially I thought it only worked on cold boots, but actually it seems it can hang from power up too. Nothing printing on the screen and the disc LED remains solidly illuminated.

When it does work I get ROM scores in excess of 400%, so it's doing its thing. FASTRAM 2.2 exhibits no such problems.

Not a request for support as I'm more than happy with FASTRAM.PRG and I'm not the target audience for this, but thought it worth flagging in case it's not Falcon-specific.

BW
Thanks! It could point at some generic problem so I'm glad you brought it up. Would be nice if it also worked on TOS4.04 & DFB1 too.

I'm a bit fed up with maprom as it is so I'm slowly working on a new thing a bit on and off. Mostly off tbh.
I basically think I want a single application thats configurable plus has a few TF536 specific features when a compatible firmware is detected. To me it'll be easier to start over in C instead, especially for if/when I want to add some GUI or control panel type thing too and share code.
I'll probably just call it TF536.PRG but I'm hoping it may be useful for other cards too so maybe that's not a good name after all.
Another benefit is the ease of adding separate and specific-use programs like before - a new "fastram.prg" equivalent ended up being just a few lines long.

I think the current plan is something along the lines of the TF firmware having ST-RAM L1+L2 disabled on startup and <somename.prg> does what fastram / maprom does as well as being able to tell the TF to enabled caches if requested. Or something of that sort. L2 should absolutely be disabled until specifically enabled from software at least.

Plus a few other things that are interesting to me at least (*), specifically having the option to set up rom->fastram mapping on the TF instead of using the MMU, either with the actual rom as source or using a file on disk.
Leaving the MMU free can have some benefits in some certain scenarios. Mint memory protection comes to mind, or other software that use the MMU. Currently, maprom is setting the "_PMMU" cookie to indicate that it's in use and no-one else should mess about with it.
(*) to be honest, most of the stuff I make is usually because of some selfish goal with the hope that it can also benefit others.
Markus608
Posts: 12
Joined: Tue May 03, 2022 4:22 pm

Re: TF536 - Atari firmware - Rev2 TF536

Post by Markus608 »

Hello,

i have got a question concerning IDE...

I have the latest Firmware with IDE1 enabled flashed to my TF536.

Now i wanted to try if it works together with the already existing IDE0 (Lightning ST IDE/USB-card).

HDDRV2.gif
HDDRV2.gif (24.02 KiB) Viewed 1090 times

As you can see both CF-cards and the USB stick are seen by HD-Driver 11. IDE 2.0 and 2.2 should be correct since both adapters are set to master.
(IDE2.0 = IDE0master and IDE2.1 = IDE0slave; IDE2.2 = IDE1master and IDE2.3 = IDE1slave)

I can't get the IDE2.2 drive (CF card) selected for partitioning. As far as i understand, the INT10-wire is no longer needed for 2.06 or EMU 1.1.1?

what am i missing ?

thank you for any suggestion

Markus
User avatar
agranlund
Posts: 777
Joined: Sun Aug 18, 2019 10:43 pm
Location: Sweden
Contact:

Re: TF536 - Atari firmware - Rev2 TF536

Post by agranlund »

Just so that it doesn't rot away on my hard drive, here is the experimental firmware with L2 cache:
This is for the old rev2 board.
tf536_2022_07_19_ATARI_Experimental.zip
(109.74 KiB) Downloaded 33 times

So.. what's new then?
Without userfriendly support tools, nothing really. you'll get 6MB less fastram..
This firmware gives no benefit for "mainstream" use until support tools are written.
It *should* behave like the old normal ones and be compatible with maprom and so on, but this is experimental so maybe there are issues.


I do realize it'll be of limited use even when/if it has proper support tools.
ST-RAM L2 is not compatible with Floppy or ACSI devices. Plus, TF536r2 is old and superseded by the TF536 ST Edition.
Still, it's useful for me. I wanted to make some proper and nice tools but I'm not sure I'll ever get around to it so I may end up just making some simple "enable go-fast mode" type thing. But in case I never get around to making any software at all for this, then someone else now can.


If you still want to give it a whirl, then you'll want to grab "mon.tos" from the tftools repository.
It's just a generic commandline utility for peeking and poking the machine.
You can run it from the EmuTOS console, some other console, or just rename it to .TTP
https://github.com/agranlund/tftools


So... what's actually new then?

- 6MB ram is reserved for ram/rom shadows
- There's a control register to toggle L1 and L2 individually for both ST-RAM and ST-ROM
- It's possible to retrieve some basic firmware info

L1 cache is not new, it was enabled in previous firmwares too.
The only thing new here is that they can be toggled using the control register

L2 cache for RAM & ROM is new.

ROM-L2:
Put a copy of the ROM in Shadow, then enable ROM-L2 for fast ROM access.
Same result as maprom, except built-in and not having to use the PMMU.
Not needing to use the PMMU can have some benefits in certain scenarios.

RAM-L2:
Writes to ST-RAM are always written both to ST-RAM and the Shadow.
Enabling L2 will make it read from the shadow instead of real ST-RAM.
Very fast, but not compatible with disk DMA.

You can set ramsize to 0 and enable L2 to only cache the first 2048 bytes.
This is *probably* compatible with disk DMA but will only accelerate
vectors + mmu table.


Example on how to enable all the go-fast stuff:
(assuming existing ROM is at e00000, machine has 4MB ST-RAM, and the card is a 64MB TF536..
modify as needed using the technical info below if that is not the case)

Copy 256kb of ROM at 00e00000 to Shadow at 04b00000:

Code: Select all

MON.TOS c 04b00000 00e00000 262144
Enable L1+L2 for both ROM and RAM, ram size is 4MB:

Code: Select all

MON.TOS pb fffd10 80

Or if you already have ROM in RAM due to maprom and just want to enable ST-RAM L1+L2:

Code: Select all

MON.TOS pb fffd10 83

Instructions for MON.TOS:

Code: Select all

mon <cmd> {options}
  pb <addr> {value}           : peek or poke byte
  pw <addr> {value}           : peek or poke word
  pl <addr> {value}           : peek or poke dword
  d  <addr> {len}             : dump memory to screen
  l  <addr> <filename>        : load memory from file
  s  <addr> <len> <filename>  : save memory to file
  x  <addr> <len> {value}     : set memory
  c  <dst> <src> <len>        : copy memory
  e  <addr>                   : execute from memory

TF536r2 technical bits:

Code: Select all

ST-RAM shadow is located at $04C00000 on 64MB cards, $08C00000 on 128MB cards
ST-ROM shadow is located at $04B00000 on 64MB cards, $08B00000 on 128MB cards

 * -------------------------------------------------
 * control register $00FFFD10 (read / write)
 * -------------------------------------------------
 *
 * bit 76543210
 *     eeeedcba
 *            a = Rom L1  : 0 = enable, 1 = disable
 *           b  = Rom L2  : 0 = enable, 1 = disable
 *          c   = Ram L1  : 0 = enable, 1 = disable
 *         d    = Ram L2  : 0 = enable, 1 = disable
 *     eeee     = Ramsize : 0 = 2048 bytes (vectors + mmu table)
 *                          1 = 0.5 MB
 *                          2 = 1.0 MB
 *                          3 = 1.5 MB
 *                          4 = 2.0 MB
 *                          5 = 2.5 MB
 *                          6 = 3.0 MB
 *                          7 = 3.5 MB
 *                          8 = 4.0 MB
 
 * -------------------------------------------------
 * info registers $00FFFD00 - $00FFFD0F (read only)
 * -------------------------------------------------
 *
 * 00FFFD00 : T
 * 00FFFD01 : F
 * 00FFFD02 : 5
 * 00FFFD03 : 3
 * 00FFFD04 : 6
 * 00FFFD05 : r
 * 00FFFD06 : <revision number>
 * 00FFFD07 : 0
 * 00FFFD08 : <version hi>
 * 00FFFD09 : <version lo>
 * 00FFFD0A : <year hi>
 * 00FFFD0B : <year lo>
 * 00FFFD0C : <month>
 * 00FFFD0D : <day>
 * 00FFFD0E : <config>
 *            000baaaa
 *                aaaa  = ide channel
 *               b      = ram (0 = 64, 1 = 128)
 * 00FFFD0F : 0
Hard Drivin' should fly, Frontbench will be faster, and Memspeed should give you speeds like this when ST-RAM L2 is enabled:
IMG_6371.jpg
IMG_6371.jpg (76.32 KiB) Viewed 927 times
User avatar
exxos
Site Admin
Site Admin
Posts: 23499
Joined: Wed Aug 16, 2017 11:19 pm
Location: UK
Contact:

Re: TF536 - Atari firmware - Rev2 TF536

Post by exxos »

Great stuff thanks :cheers:
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.
Locked

Return to “EVERYTHING ELSE”