Raven. A homemade Atari-like computer

[Oldskool]

Tried 50 mhz. thats indeed not stable. It starts but it crashes when for instance doing a mem test.
48 mb is not yet supported it seems it does not boot (serial output does work and shows the mem module). 32 mb does work.
Was trying to get somewere with quake so therefore was adding some memory..

[agranlund]

Tried 50 mhz. thats indeed not stable. It starts but it crashes when for instance doing a mem test.
48 mb is not yet supported it seems it does not boot (serial output does work and shows the mem module). 32 mb does work.
Was trying to get somewere with quake so therefore was adding some memory..

I'll solder up some more Simms and will give 48mb a test here this weekend too! :)

For Quake, I used Mikro's version as the base, added Nova support and disabled ACIA direct hardware access.
That's about the extent of my quick-and-dirty Quake endeavour thus that version has no input, nor any way to exit back to TOS.
For proper support one would want to add input support through xbios, proper shutdown of Nova stuff when done, sound and music and so on.

I'm not sure what state everything is in but I did commit what I had locally to here: https://github.com/agranlund/quake
That should be cleaned up at some point..

I think the Atari port tries to allocate 32MB up front by default. Not sure what it wants all that for but you can override it on the commandline. The original Pentium version of Quake required 8MB in _total_ installed in the computer, so the game would have used even less than that.

You'd also want to run it without sound since the game wants to do direct hardware access to STe/Falcon DMA sound otherwise.

"quake.tpp -nosound -mem 8" or something like that.


The Nova code should try and switch to a closest matching resolution, putting the games render viewport in the center and filling the surrounding with black borders.
Chances are there is no 320x200-ish resolution in the STA_VDI.BIB that came with your driver so I'd recommend using the VMG tool to create a 320x200x8bpp and/or a 320x240x8bpp mode so you get things proper fullscreen.

320x240 may look better in terms of aspect ratio, at the expense of 20 pixel border at the top and bottom of your screen (Quakes actual viewport is 320x200)

Nova support in SDL behaves very similar so having that resolution in your .BIB comes in handy for SDL things too, as well as CaSTaway ST emulation.

[Oldskool]

Thanks for the comment.
Was just playing around. Doom indeed works then I thought lets give quake a try as well.
Not for playing just to get it going and see some fps…
Then I saw that 48 mb did not work for me..
Lets see what your results are..

[agranlund]

Doom indeed works then I thought lets give quake a try as well.

Rebuilt against the latest SDL should provide better Nova fullscreen support in the "xbios" video driver, and performance increase that comes with that.
And also much better input handling.
Sill no audio though. It would be nice to add GUS and MIDI support to it some day. Same for Tyrian, I used to love that game on MS-DOS.

Or an xbios sound emulation layer in the GUS driver is perhaps the most sensible first step, just to get audio in many things for free even if it isn't optimal.

Not for playing just to get it going and see some fps…

Haha, that exactly mirrors my own motivations for many things :)

[DrZiplok]

Finally put it in a box...

Screenshot 2024-08-17 at 10.09.07 AM.png

[chronicthehedgehog]

Finally put it in a box...

:bravo: :coolpics:

[Cyprian]

it looks great

[viking272]

Finally put it in a box...

Nice! What are the two ISA boards you have?

[Oldskool]

Finally put it in a box...

Do you have boot with 48mb?
The computer part seems stuck here. No video and or Hd activity. (But it seems you have an ati card instead of a et4k)

[DrZiplok]

Finally put it in a box...

Do you have boot with 48mb?
The computer part seems stuck here. No video and or Hd activity. (But it seems you have an ati card instead of a et4k)

It boots to the monitor with all 48MiB installed, 48MHz crystal and a rev6 '060. With a rev1 '060 it needs a slower crystal; I had success with a 32MHz crystal, faster might have worked but I did not have one handy.