Exxos's PiStorm blog

[exxos]

Hoping to order one very soon too - might have to use a Pi 3B+ to start with (cat has had a few trips to the vet recently, so funds are more scarce than usual :() and get a Pi 4 when I can...

Ah that sucks. I think you need a working H5 first though..

[JezC]

Ah that sucks. I think you need a working H5 first though..

Indeed - he's not a happy puss at the moment :(

I do have the working H4, so the ST536 currently fitted to that can be removed to test the PiStorm until the H5s are sorted...
:coffee:

[stephen_usher]

It's a pity that the Pi connector is on the side of the board that it is. If it were on the other side I could have fitted two right-angle headers, one male and one female, and sat the Pi side-by-side with your board, had the Pi the right way up and it being lower profile and lots of space for a fan on the Pi too.

As it is if I do that on my relocator board the Pi is going to hang out the left side of the machine.

Oh well.

[exxos]

Yeah I don't get why they designed it upside down either.

[stephen_usher]

You could fix that, if you still want a tower, by flipping the Pi socket connector pins and having the pins on the Pi GPIO go down rather than up. The alternative is to have two right-angle connectors and the Pi will sit side-by-side with the system interface board

The current layout is probably to fit the Amiga A500

[exxos]

I was tempted to flip the pi connector but it's probably more trouble than it's worth as it's likely lead free solder.
I did wonder about removing The usb and Lan socket to make it smaller.
I don't like the idea of the heatsinks being upside down either. But companies been making graphics cards upside for years.. oddly..

As it's only going to really fit in the H4 or H5 and @Steve already showed it on a H5, so im not going to worry about it. @Badwolf has been working on a STE version , so id probably just support that venture ultimately. I'm more using a H5 to prove the thing is stable before giving myself headaches on original machines.

[Steve]

For anyone thinking of fitting inside a H5, here are shots of mine which fit like a glove. Fits perfectly in the space above the keyboard, between the PSU and Floppy.

viewtopic.php?p=113752#p113752

[exxos]

For anyone thinking of fitting inside a H5, here are shots of mine which fit like a glove. Fits perfectly in the space above the keyboard, between the PSU and Floppy.

viewtopic.php?p=113752#p113752

:thumbup:

So as I'm using WiFi and SSH login, do I really need the usb and Lan ports ?

For the basic CPU install, what else needs to be done after the PLD is flashed ?

[Steve]

After flashing PLD you need to run:

Code: Select all

sudo ./ataritest --memory tests=rw

To check the emulator can communicate with ST-RAM.

If that's all OK. You can then run the emulator. The setup for the system/graphics/fpu/drives etc will be inside /configs.

USB & LAN ports? They're still on mine, don't see any reason to remove them. There may be USB driver pass-through development one day to make use of USB, you never know.

Then once you confirm memory tests are working, you can run your CPU with the desired config.

Code: Select all

sudo ./emulator --config ../configs/atari.cfg

Once you have everything configured as you want, and are happy, you can then auto-enable the CPU emulator on Pi boot. Those instructions are here, but you won't need them yet:

To autostart pistorm...

Code: Select all

sudo cp boot_scripts/pistorm.service /etc/systemd/system

then enable it

Code: Select all

sudo systemctl enable pistorm.service

then activate it by

Code: Select all

sudo systemctl daemon-reload

[Darklord]

@Darklord If you mean 'spoken two sentences in the last month' I guess you're about right :) But in all seriousness, since his pi-storm died on him the project is in stasis at the moment. Probably until more dev's magically appear to help, as he did say he's achieved everything he can do by himself at this point.

Well... :)

Well, I think a person should correct themselves, if and when it's possible.

I realize now that my post may have been seen as "snarky". It wasn't meant to be so.

For accuracy's sake, Crypotodad did post this (as Steve mentioned):

Capture.JPG