Steve wrote: ↑Wed Sep 02, 2020 9:41 pm
I heard EmuTOS has display drivers built in for ET4000 cards, does it also have Mach64 drivers built in? & are there any caveats in using it on a TT, I am wondering about Thunder/Storm compatibility.
Being both a member of EmuTOS development team and the Thunder/Storm/Lightning team, I can answer that question: I've been using EmuTOS (512k ROM version) as sole operating system on my TT for years. The Thunder IDE interface and Storm TT RAM card are both fully supported by EmuTOS.
EmuTOS has built-in support for ET4000 and Mach32 cards, for example, in a Nova VME adapter. Mach64 is planned for a future release.
Excellent, well as soon as Mach64 is added I will switch over for sure. Does EmuTOS have its own IDE driver also? It would be nice to completely remove the need for my 3rd party drivers.
Steve wrote: ↑Wed Sep 02, 2020 10:38 pm
Excellent, well as soon as Mach64 is added I will switch over for sure. Does EmuTOS have its own IDE driver also? It would be nice to completely remove the need for my 3rd party drivers.
You will still need Nova drivers for extended resolutions and yes it auto recognizes IDE but then again you need 3rd party drivers to format and partition
Why would you need HD Driver? You can partition the card on your PC and directly use it with EmuTOS. That's one of its best features!
You're completely missunderstanding me. What I mean is currently my machine runs HD Driver on boot, as well as it's graphic drivers. This is what I meant by 3rd party. What excites me is the idea of not needing such drivers and having them built in to EmuTOS. Hope this makes sense?
Ok, let me untangle some possible misunderstandings here.
EmuTOS has a built-in harddisk driver. Therefore, you don't need HDDRIVER (or ICD, or AHDI, or another driver) to use a harddisk with EmuTOS. EmuTOS also has a much improved compatibility with PC-partioned media compared to Atari TOS. So, if you're using for example a CF card for data exchange with the PC, I would partition/format it on the PC, as @mikro suggested. Make sure to use FAT16 and EmuTOS will be able to use it. No 3rd party tools required!
EmuTOS does not come with a dedicated HD partitioning program, however. If you're using e.g. an old-school ACSI HD that cannot be connected to the PC and you want to re-partition your HD on the Atari, you have to use appropriate SW. For example, I setup my SH204 with HDX (that comes with AHDI) and now I use the HD with EmuTOS.
EDIT: No directly EmuTOS-related but let me add that the unique smart-swap feature of the Thunder and of the Lightning ST further improves compatibility with PC-partitioned IDE media as it takes care of the required byte-swap. (EmuTOS would work without smart-swap, though, just slower because then it would need to swap the bytes in software.)
EmuTOS's Nova/Vofa graphics card support is not meant to replace a 3rd party VDI, such as the Nova VDI. EmuTOS initializes the external graphics card to 640x400. This was mainly done so you would already see the boot screen and an optional boot manager (like XBOOT) without having to switch between video outputs. It's also helpful as a fall-back (in case of boot issues), for trouble-shooting, or to use the boot-time EmuCON shell, as EmuTOS fully works without any drivers with the ET4000 or Mach32, albeit only at 640x400. You still need to load the Nova VDI (or another VDI) for higher resolutions or color depths.
czietz wrote: ↑Fri Sep 04, 2020 12:25 pm
Ok, let me untangle some possible misunderstandings here.
Oh wow, this is really good! I never thought of using EmuTOS on my real machines before, but now I can't wait to start playing with it! Thanks for such a great explanation. I heard I shouldn't try on my Falcon due to DSP issues though, could you confirm? thx
czietz wrote: ↑Fri Sep 04, 2020 12:25 pm
Ok, let me untangle some possible misunderstandings here.
Oh wow, this is really good! I never thought of using EmuTOS on my real machines before, but now I can't wait to start playing with it! Thanks for such a great explanation. I heard I shouldn't try on my Falcon due to DSP issues though, could you confirm? thx
EmuTOS doesn't yet support the XBIOS DSP functions, or the 16-bit VIDEL modes for the VDI. If you have NVDI, the VDI stuff should not be a problem (I think), but the lack of DSP support means that for many people EmuTOS is not (yet) a good choice for a Falcon system. We do plan to add DSP support, but these things take time ...
