Granlunds FrankenSTein

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agranlund
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Re: Granlunds FrankenSTein

Post by agranlund »

frank.lukas wrote: Thu Dec 03, 2020 8:53 pm NVDI ET4000 is a little bit faster than the nova driver but the nova driver is rock stable and more cards work with the nova driver ...
I should probably give that one a try again and compare how it works on my setup. It’s probably a little less confusing to me now that I’m slowly starting to get a hang of how all this stuff works :)
If it hadn’t been for your expertise on all things gfxcard related I doubt I would have been able to get anything working.
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Umberto1st
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Re: Granlunds FrankenSTein

Post by Umberto1st »

frank.lukas wrote: Thu Dec 03, 2020 8:53 pm NVDI ET4000 is a little bit faster than the nova driver but the nova driver is rock stable and more cards work with the nova driver ...
Hey Frank bad news, the internal vofa died again. Going to swap out the 245's and try again.
3)1040 stf/m, 2)Mega 4 ST, 1)STE, 1)Mega STE, 1)STacy, 2)Falcon 030
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agranlund
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Re: Granlunds FrankenSTein

Post by agranlund »

Umberto1st wrote: Thu Dec 03, 2020 6:56 pm I would love to see the Schem for VGA switcher at some point. Im going to make a CPU switcher/FPU/VGA switcher board for my Mega.in place of the CPU relocator that is present

20201127_094819.jpg
Absolutely, I’ll send you those schematics when I get a moment. The board has a bunch of other stuff you probably aren’t interested in but you could easily rip just the switching stuff.

By the way, what is that start menu thing you have on your freemint desktop, and that calendar application? Are they available somewhere?
(Before I dug my ST out from the attic I had only used the stock Atari Tos without harddrive, so all these ”new” kernel and desktop replacements are all very new and exciting to me but I am little bit out of touch with what’s available etc.. i do have xboot and configs for Tos, Freemint and MagiC and I’m especially impressed with MagiC)
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Umberto1st
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Re: Granlunds FrankenSTein

Post by Umberto1st »

agranlund wrote: Thu Dec 03, 2020 11:34 pm
Umberto1st wrote: Thu Dec 03, 2020 6:56 pm I would love to see the Schem for VGA switcher at some point. Im going to make a CPU switcher/FPU/VGA switcher board for my Mega.in place of the CPU relocator that is present

20201127_094819.jpg
Absolutely, I’ll send you those schematics when I get a moment. The board has a bunch of other stuff you probably aren’t interested in but you could easily rip just the switching stuff.

By the way, what is that start menu thing you have on your freemint desktop, and that calendar application? Are they available somewhere?
(Before I dug my ST out from the attic I had only used the stock Atari Tos without harddrive, so all these ”new” kernel and desktop replacements are all very new and exciting to me but I am little bit out of touch with what’s available etc.. i do have xboot and configs for Tos, Freemint and MagiC and I’m especially impressed with MagiC)
It is the start menu that came with the vanilla mint distro. Joska didn't author it

https://atari.joska.no/VanillaMiNT/

I just stole it and installed on the latest mint. The calendar in from the Falcon system disk by Atari.

http://www.atari.org/services/systemdisks.php

the desktop is Jinnee

https://www.atari-forum.com/viewtopic.php?t=32323
3)1040 stf/m, 2)Mega 4 ST, 1)STE, 1)Mega STE, 1)STacy, 2)Falcon 030
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Umberto1st
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Re: Granlunds FrankenSTein

Post by Umberto1st »

agranlund wrote: Thu Dec 03, 2020 11:34 pm
Umberto1st wrote: Thu Dec 03, 2020 6:56 pm I would love to see the Schem for VGA switcher at some point. Im going to make a CPU switcher/FPU/VGA switcher board for my Mega.in place of the CPU relocator that is present

20201127_094819.jpg
Absolutely, I’ll send you those schematics when I get a moment. The board has a bunch of other stuff you probably aren’t interested in but you could easily rip just the switching stuff.

By the way, what is that start menu thing you have on your freemint desktop, and that calendar application? Are they available somewhere?
(Before I dug my ST out from the attic I had only used the stock Atari Tos without harddrive, so all these ”new” kernel and desktop replacements are all very new and exciting to me but I am little bit out of touch with what’s available etc.. i do have xboot and configs for Tos, Freemint and MagiC and I’m especially impressed with MagiC)
My first ST was a 520 ST, I got it from an Atari rep. in Dallas Texas. The rep was in Texas showing off the ST and swung by a friend's Atari store and gave a special showing. I bought it right there, a few months before it was released to the US market. I probably was the only guy in Texas with a 520ST. It had TOS on disk and a single sided floppy that sounded like a coffee grinder. I was happy as a clam. I ended up selling it to my uncle some years later and bought a Mega ST when it came out. I wish I still had it, I would then do what you did to yours. I do like the small form factor of the 520.
3)1040 stf/m, 2)Mega 4 ST, 1)STE, 1)Mega STE, 1)STacy, 2)Falcon 030
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agranlund
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Re: Granlunds FrankenSTein

Post by agranlund »

Teaching the TF536 new tricks!

The next Atari firmware + software utils for the TF536 will be able to load TOS images from disk into fastram.


Initial tests seems promising but it all has to come together in some sort of proper and user friendly package - after the holidays :)

My machine cold boots 256k EmuTOS from ROM but if you don't have a TOS decoder it could just as well be the 192k boot rom version instead.
Unlike the old maprom.prg it does not use the 68030 MMU but instead gets help from the TF536 firmware.
This leaves the MMU free, and it prevents bad things from happening if you soft-load an OS that reinitialises the MMU on boot (EmuTOS, PAK3, FreeMint.. anything but TOS2.06 really)
EzdineG
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Re: Granlunds FrankenSTein

Post by EzdineG »

Anders, what of our blitter if installed on your adapter? Seems it’s pretty much universally deactivated if there’s a TF installed.

Perhaps I just need to move away from the TF534 to see the newest goodies?
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Umberto1st
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Re: Granlunds FrankenSTein

Post by Umberto1st »

agranlund wrote: Thu Dec 17, 2020 2:53 pm Teaching the TF536 new tricks!

The next Atari firmware + software utils for the TF536 will be able to load TOS images from disk into fastram.


Initial tests seems promising but it all has to come together in some sort of proper and user friendly package - after the holidays :)

My machine cold boots 256k EmuTOS from ROM but if you don't have a TOS decoder it could just as well be the 192k boot rom version instead.
Unlike the old maprom.prg it does not use the 68030 MMU but instead gets help from the TF536 firmware.
This leaves the MMU free, and it prevents bad things from happening if you soft-load an OS that reinitialises the MMU on boot (EmuTOS, PAK3, FreeMint.. anything but TOS2.06 really)
Awesome thanks for the great work
3)1040 stf/m, 2)Mega 4 ST, 1)STE, 1)Mega STE, 1)STacy, 2)Falcon 030
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agranlund
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Re: Granlunds FrankenSTein

Post by agranlund »

EzdineG wrote: Thu Dec 17, 2020 5:44 pm Anders, what of our blitter if installed on your adapter? Seems it’s pretty much universally deactivated if there’s a TF installed.
Perhaps I just need to move away from the TF534 to see the newest goodies?
It's a bit of a complicated mess, but the short answer is to use blitfix.prg and it should help with letting games & demos use the blitter.
TOS cannot actually disable the hardware, it can only lie to programs that are politely asking - blitfix tries to stop those lies.


You'll usually find three different types of programs.
1. The ones that only interacts with the blitter exclusively through TOS (ex: TOS itself or desktop applications such as Gembench)
2. The polite ones that will first ask TOS if the blitter exists and/or is "enabled", but after that it will use the hardware directly (ex: BLITB.PRG)
3. The ones that ignores TOS completely and just talks to the hardware (ex: Blitter enhanced Hard'n'Heavy)

The last category is never a problem since TOS cannot prevent anyone from talking to the blitter directly.

blitfix.prg attempts to help with the other two:

For the second category it will make sure the asking program is getting the truth about the hardware instead of TOS's filthy lies :lol:
(as long as the asking program is running from ST-RAM which should be the case for any old game or demo)

The first category will only be helped under TOS2.06, unless you are using NVDI in which case the blitter will be "disabled" for the desktop anyway.
On EmuTOS or TOS3.06 these wont be able to use the blitter.
Blitter on the desktop is really not that interesting on an accelerated machine anyway. NVDI in fastram will accelerate the desktop many times more than the blitter will - I'd almost go as far as saying it's borderline a bit of a waste of accelerator not running NVDI :)
But if you don't like NVDI for some reason then well, blitfix will make TOS2.06+blitter+fastram actually work.


I'm not very interested in blitter under the desktop but I do appreciate that the blitter expansion & blitfix.prg is letting me launch blitter games/demos even if TOS & EmuTOS are trying their best to stop me :lol:

I wonder what other non-STE games or demos there are that are using the blitter.. anyone know of some list somewhere?

Edit: to be 100% clear, I am not in any way disagreeing with why EmuTOS by default is "disabling" the blitter when fastram exists - it's the safest thing to do. However, when a program from ST-RAM is asking about it, it's probably a safe-ish assumption that it should be allowed to use the blitter, most of the times at least.
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agranlund
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Re: Granlunds FrankenSTein

Post by agranlund »

All the brands getting along, just like it should be.. Atari computer, PC graphics card, Amiga mouse & Nintendo gamepad :lol:
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