My new toy :)

[DrF]

Funny looking Amiga that

Also option to install FPU on the board. And we know how much exxos loves FPUs!

Ahhh the Flippin'PointlessUnit. Yeah everyone's gotta have that.

Won't the FPU just get in the way cause issues when your trying to meddle with the CPU upgrades/memory and other stuff anyhow?
I mean how much stuff actually uses it?

[stephen_usher]

Time for some super-dooper Exxos VME based upgrades?

How's about a VME-PCIx interface? Hehe.

VME slot for a Raspberry Pi co-processor to give ethernet, USB and maybe graphics?

Wishful thinking I know.

[exxos]

Won't the FPU just get in the way cause issues when your trying to meddle with the CPU upgrades/memory and other stuff anyhow?
I mean how much stuff actually uses it?

Theres no room in the STFM for it.. choices have to be made what is more useful like flash-rom etc... Its a long story, but the FPU in with 68000 works totally different than a FPU with the falcon for example. totally different software methods for both, even though the FPU might be the exact same one. There is very little software which uses FPU, just better things to spend time on.

[exxos]

Time for some super-dooper Exxos VME based upgrades?

How's about a VME-PCIx interface? Hehe.

VME slot for a Raspberry Pi co-processor to give ethernet, USB and maybe graphics?

Wishful thinking I know.

My new motherboard will be easy to upgrade.. there is already a lot of talk already about it other things..

viewtopic.php?f=19&t=71

[stephen_usher]

Just to mention that Mega STE has some other extras: VME bus, Apple Talk type LAN port (if I remember correct) . ACSI-SCSI adapter - what is not from fastest ones . HD floppy support - but not HD drive in all by factory .

Indeed. The fast serial ports use a very standard serial chip which was very widely used in high-end workstations at the time. Unfortunately Atari didn't buffer it so it's very easy to fry when connecting to modems etc. My TT's on it's third SCC.

The VME bus should make creating exansions a doddle, but I guess that the market for MegaSTE/TT030 add-ons like that would be quite small and a VME card circuit board quite big and hence expensive to produce, even if it were merely a simple adapter board for a smaller form factor module to fit on top and providing the functionality.

I was only half joking about the Raspberry Pi. I can see a an R-Pi Zero-W being able to act as a very useful co-processor, possibly even pretending to be an NE-type ethernet chip so as to minimise the need for new drivers to be written. It shouldn't be too tricky to write the code on the R-Pi end for this, using the GPIO as the data bus. Address decode etc. would have to be on the VME card side of things though. Probably not as fast as the ROM port though.