Suska board

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troed
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Re: Suska board

Post by troed »

exxos wrote: Fri Apr 20, 2018 8:28 pm From what I can tell, the CF card Wolfgang supplied as a demo version of HD8 on it. I can do a 1MB partition with TOS box selected, and Suska will boot to desktop that way..BUT..

If I format as DOS & TOS , still doing the same 1MB partition, Suska just comes up with four bombs after the Atari logo appears..

Does anyone know this is normal behaviour for TOS206 or not ? Or some bug in HD8 or something ?

I have emailed Wolfgang again and asked if he can create a CF image which is DOS compatible...
TOS 2.06 will four bomb if no floppy is attached and no boot drive, I think. I would test with something newer than HDDriver 8.
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Re: Suska board

Post by exxos »

troed wrote: Fri Apr 20, 2018 10:27 pm TOS 2.06 will four bomb if no floppy is attached and no boot drive, I think. I would test with something newer than HDDriver 8.
I can't get anything on the SD card thats the problem ;) I'm stuck with a demo of HD8 on there.. ( I have HD 10.01 in fact)

If I take the card Wolfgang supplied, format it as a 1MB TOS only drive, it will boot up... if I format it as a DOS & TOS partition, it gives 4 bombs..

So the only thing which can access the card is the suska.. and I need to get PC compatible partition to use my PC to copy files to it.. :roll:

So I don't know if its a bug in TOS, HD8, or Suska which doesn't like booting to DOS compatible CF card.. of course no floppy, it can't see the IDE.. so it bombs... Wolfgang says use Gigafile.. mine broke after a few days, and dont really want to buy another one, and spend another £100+ just to copy files to suska.. I could build a cable to adapt Ultrasatan, but I guess Suska never been tested with it and probably won't work. So I pretty much have a £500 doorstop at this point :(

I understand Suska is more of a dev-board, but it seems a lot more "W.I.P" then I expected. Of course Wolfgang did the whole thing on his own and likely had little help, so I can expect there will be some problems, but it seems to be one problem after another... though hitting a brick wall with simply trying to copy files to it is a bit of a issue.. Sure if I had gigafile it likely work fine.. Though I wish it had been stated on his website that the CF has issues, or only works with TOS partitions .. I expected to just copy files to the CF with a DOS partition so I can use on Suska and PC.. but seems not.. and I have no idea where or what the problem is :( Maybe IDE doesn't work with DOS partitions for some reason.. but ASCI does :shrug:

So unless Wolfgang can come up with some fixes, I just can't use the thing :(. I think going back to the original plan of trying out each core on a real ST one by one is the best way to go.. Then any bugs or problems can be fixed one by one, Wolfgang can update the cores for suska as well.
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troed
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Re: Suska board

Post by troed »

exxos wrote: Sat Apr 21, 2018 8:18 amMaybe IDE doesn't work with DOS partitions for some reason.. but ASCI does :shrug:
Is the SD card over an IDE bus? Then yeah, those need to be byteswapped for TOS and will then not be visible to the PC. Unless you run a patched TOS that can boot from non-byteswapped media. ACSI doesn't have that issue.

(I think, this is really PPera's field)
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Re: Suska board

Post by exxos »

troed wrote: Sat Apr 21, 2018 8:35 am Is the SD card over an IDE bus? Then yeah, those need to be byteswapped for TOS and will then not be visible to the PC. Unless you run a patched TOS that can boot from non-byteswapped media. ACSI doesn't have that issue.

(I think, this is really PPera's field)
I assume IDE.. I've not looked.. though likely is a problem with TOS I think like you say. I never thought about it really :(
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viewtopic.php?f=17&t=1585 Have you done the Mandatory Fixes ?
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Re: Suska board

Post by exxos »

If I can find my original AH IDE interface I might be able to access the card on my STFM, then use USatan.. worth a try, but a bit long winded.
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viewtopic.php?f=17&t=1585 Have you done the Mandatory Fixes ?
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Re: Suska board

Post by mfro »

If you need help with your Suska board, just ask. I do own one myself and I'm a happy user ;)
And remember: Beethoven wrote his first symphony in C.
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Re: Suska board

Post by exxos »

I haven't done a thing with mine yet. I can't simply plug in a ST floppy drive or hard drive to get programs onto it. Of course I only had a working IDE interface until recently. So if I setup the CF card on my ST with some software on it, I can plug it into suska and hopefully get something to boot. Though it's not high up on my to do list. I did have a gigafile but the card slot broke after a few uses :( So somewhat reluctant to buy another one, just for basically the use on suska. I do remember having a lot of issues with the monitor and always fighting suska to actually reset. I half recall it being documented about resetting issues :shrug: I think I had a lot of issues getting the mouse and keyboard working as well. I think the PS2 ports wasn't working right, IIRC I ended up using a original ST keyboard.

I'm not trying to sound negative to suska which is a great project of course , though it backs onto design choices with the STF remake also. That the problem with suska is, buying it simply isn't enough, you have to buy a new floppy drive, hard drive etc for it to work. I'm not saying there is anything wrong with that by itself, but when most of us have ST floppy drives and ultrasatan etc already, we basically end up buying the same type of hardware twice. I personally would rather have some old style upgrade options and re-use "older" hardware on a "new ST" system. Give the user the choice what to use, not force them to buy more hardware to use it.

But I also understand its probably better in some respects to have a USB floppy drive etc in recent times. Its all trade-offs with everything. Though I just wish I could just plug in a ST floppy drive and that would get me going, but I can't, so it just frustrates me that something simple like that can't be done (at least AFAIK) .
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viewtopic.php?f=17&t=1585 Have you done the Mandatory Fixes ?
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Re: Suska board

Post by mfro »

exxos wrote: Wed Aug 07, 2019 11:35 am I haven't done a thing with mine yet. I can't simply plug in a ST floppy drive or hard drive to get programs onto it.
Hmmm.

The board has more interfaces an original STE has: ACSI, floppy and even a 'Putnik-compatible' IDE interface.

It just does not have the original connectors (so you have to provide your own cables). Other than that, you should be able to operate an original ST floppy drive, a 2.5" IDE or an ACSI disk just as you would do on any 'real' ST.

There is even an Ethernet interface on the board (that currently lacks software support, however).
exxos wrote: Wed Aug 07, 2019 11:35 am I do remember having a lot of issues with the monitor and always fighting suska to actually reset. I half recall it being documented about resetting issues :shrug:
I do not have access to the manual right now, but I think I had to adjust some DIP switches on the board to make a standard TFT (VGA) work.
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Re: Suska board

Post by exxos »

troed wrote: Sun Apr 15, 2018 9:17 am I've just had a reply from Wolfgang saying that the chosen FPGA cannot run _slower_ than 16MHz*. While I don't understand how this mean the cores could've been tested in-situ during development, it definitely means that very few demos (and some games) will run correctly.
Would ROM access speed likely break anything demo or game wise that you know of ?
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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.
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Re: Suska board

Post by MasterOfGizmo »

I'd assume that a low level dump of the suska SD card can be mounted in hatari and you could then just copy files from the host fs or a floppy image to it within hatari. You can even do things like byte swap on the image in between if necessay or modify the partition table or just extract a single partition or ....

Did things like that many times while getting he MiST to deal with all those images.
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