Raven. A homemade Atari-like computer

[bbisi]

1. i have an raven060 with Sound AWE64. But wich driver I can use.



Or is the picots the better sound card?

I mean the picogus

[luciodra]

I use Picogus with the SB firmware, I don't have the SB and I haven't yet tested Andreas' latest developments, but I believe that the SB works without drivers with the versions of DoomSB, TyrianSB and Scumm by configuring the SB with F5. With Picogus I find great benefit by starting OPLMIDI.PRG in AUTO especially when using Jam and MXPlay.

[agranlund]

With the ISA interrupt stuff in place I started to take a look at the special PIO-DMA feature that ES1868/ES1869 cards have.

The datasheet is pretty well written but somehow I still managed to misunderstand several registers :)
Eventually got there and I'm able to launch one-shot as well as "infinite" PIO-DMA, with the soundcard very politely throwing me an interrupt every time the fifo is ready to accept another block of 128 bytes.

This is awesome! It reduces the interrupt frequency by a factor of 128 compared to the way I need to feed a regular soundblaster.
And very similar to how I see the GUS driver also working when it comes to falcon xbios sound emulation.

Right now I'm only feeding the card with rubbish to get audible proof that the low level stuff is working. But with this it starts getting time to think about the higher level plumbing for PCM in the soundsystem as well as the falcon xbiox emulation layer.

[LarryL]

2. i want to make a smd rom with other files in this rom. I want to use uip to receive files over the network. How can I make this

Greetings from Bernd
the new one

Hi Bernd,

here we are discussing how to build a custom ROM - if you are still interested

Cheers
Michael

[agranlund]

1. i have an raven060 with Sound AWE64. But wich driver I can use. Or is the picots the better sound card?

Sorry, I seem to have missed that post.

Since you have the AWE64 I would use it :)
The biggest drawback I think is that those don't have Wavetable headers. But you can always use the oplmidi.prg driver for an OPL based software midi synth. (or hook up a hardware midi instrument to the midi jack)

If I were to get a new card I would go for an ES1868 or ES1869 based card.
Alternatively a YMF719 based one (commonly also called OPL3-SAx)

On Raven specifically, those ES186X cards has the potential for PCM playback with much lower cpu overhead and better quality, compared to most other soundblaster compatible cards which wants to have ISA-DMA for that.
This puts the ES as a solid first choice for me but if it hadn't been for that I would have kept using my YMF719 card.


I think Creative cards are all a bit iffy and it's hard to work out which models have the right combination of flaws I could live with.
Except for the nostalgia of getting an exact model you had as a youngster, I think it's just easier to get a better non-Creative card and chances are those might be cheaper too :)

- The nickname "Noiseblaster" is no fluke :)
- Early ones have OPL2 instead of OPL3. I would avoid.
- Middle ones use authentic OPL3 chips. nice.
- Later ones cost-reduced by using their own OPL clone (but it's a pretty good clone so I wouldn't mind)
- Some models lack wavetable header. I would avoid.
- MANY models have the hanging midi note bug that Creative cards are infamous for. I would avoid (if it's even possible?)
(It looks like someone on Vogons has developed a custom DSP firmware that fixes it, but I don't know how to flash soundblaster cards)


Another thing I'd consider when picking a soundcard is if it has internal headers for any kind of audio-input (cd-in, aux, or something like that).
Nice to have so that you can hook up the YM2149 output from the motherboard to an internal input on the soundcard.
I assume most or all cards will have this though.

2. i want to make a smd rom with other files in this rom. I want to use uip to receive files over the network. How can I make this

At the moment you'd have to build the rom+romdisk from source as there is no user tools for manipulating the final rom image post-build.
It would certainly be possible for someone to make such a tool though.
(Bootrom, TOS and Romdisk are distinct and separate parts of the image and there is a TOC. So I think the plumbing should be there to be able to manipulating a rom image; for example to replace the romdisk without rebuilding any of the other stuff)

[agranlund]

Updated the latest release zip.
https://github.com/agranlund/raven/rele ... .A1.latest

Code: Select all

20251226:
rom: updated EmuTOS (#24dff9a @ 20251225)
rom: enabled EmuTOS SCSIDRV
rom: include uip.tos in romdisk
software: fixed potential stack bug in all purec based programs
rvsnd: fixed missing PSG flag in SND cookie

The most interesting bit is EmuTOS being updated to latest as well as now being built with SCSIDRV support.

Apparently this can make it possible to use Extendos and have a CD-ROM connected and working. @LarryL holds all the details on that :)

Another neat side-effect is that you can now use the HDDRUTIL partitioning tool with EmuTOS's driver, without actually needing to run HDDRIVER itself.

If you don't have a need for TOS partition then it can also make FAT16 and FAT32 partitions, as an alternative to doing so on a PC.

hddrutil.png

With hardware byteswap adapter I left the "Byte Swapping" option alone.
Without the adapter I had to tick that checkbox for my PC to recognise the disk.

[luciodra]

While I wait to fix Raven...nice work! UIP.TOS in romdisk great thing.

With hardware byteswap adapter I left the "Byte Swapping" option alone.
Without the adapter I had to tick that checkbox for my PC to recognise the disk.

What does it mean ? Can I use HDDrivers without bs adapter? :?:

[LarryL]

While I wait to fix Raven...nice work! UIP.TOS in romdisk great thing.

With hardware byteswap adapter I left the "Byte Swapping" option alone.
Without the adapter I had to tick that checkbox for my PC to recognise the disk.

What does it mean ? Can I use HDDrivers without bs adapter? :?:

It means, you can use HDDRUTIL to do partitioning of the CF/HDD inside the Atari
You still use the EmuTOS driver and do not need to start HDDRIVER.PRG
EmuTOS does not care, if the byteswap adapter is used or not

[luciodra]

So, UIP.TOS in rom is crazy cool, just as HDDrivers usable without BS is beautiful, at least I feel like I didn't waste 50 Euros...

[bbisi]

Hi All
Here is my Autostart Order
"
RVBIOS
EMULATOR
XBOOT
RVNOVA
STA_VDI
ISA_BIOS
SETENV
AUTOEXEC
RVSND
MINT060
"

Can anyone give me the best order

Thanks
Bernd