TF536 on the ST

[agranlund]

Be good to see how you get on @agranlund but I also need to build your blitter adaptor now youve shared it :lol:

Haha! give us a shout if you want a blank board, I should have three or so left I believe :)
You'd need different programming in the 16V8 to disable the IDE if you want to chain the card with a TF53x, which reminds me, I should probably put that code+binary in the archive as well.

@terriblefire I have a ton of relocator boards that byte-swaps the ide if you want me to post one to you, I'm all out of 44pin headers though.
It's really not a good permanent fit for the 536 but for testing it's fine.
I have one permanently soldered to my 534 to rotate and move the CF adapter for a good fit inside the ST, and perform byte-swapping.

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[PhilC]

@agranlund yes please to the board, ill pm you tomorrow.

[agranlund]

tf536r2_2020_08_06_alpha.zip

@PhilC , now this is interesting.. with this firmware my machine hangs on a screen with garbage in EmuTOS memory detect routine.
The first read access >64MB Fastram is causing it, so that new firmware is absolutely doing something in the right direction :)


Does this firmware work fine on your machine, detecting 64MB and booting up EmuTOS?
Considering the differences and just general flakiness of the Ataris it's not entirely impossible this is only happening on my particular model or machine.
I tested it with official EmuTOS 1.0 and 0.9.11.


I am going to keep using this firmware though.

The custom built EmuTOS 1.0 which never tries to detect more than 64MB works fine of course.
TOS 2.06 works fine also because maprom already have an artifical limit of 64MB FastRam until mem detect on the 536 is verified working.

[PhilC]

@agranlund my H4 doesn't like EmuTOS and that version of firmware but I will retest it again later on and post the results as its been a couple of weeks since.

[Umberto1st]

tf536r2_2020_08_06_alpha.zip

@PhilC , now this is interesting.. with this firmware my machine hangs on a screen with garbage in EmuTOS memory detect routine.
The first read access >64MB Fastram is causing it, so that new firmware is absolutely doing something in the right direction :)


Does this firmware work fine on your machine, detecting 64MB and booting up EmuTOS?
Considering the differences and just general flakiness of the Ataris it's not entirely impossible this is only happening on my particular model or machine.
I tested it with official EmuTOS 1.0 and 0.9.11.


I am going to keep using this firmware though.

The custom built EmuTOS 1.0 which never tries to detect more than 64MB works fine of course.
TOS 2.06 works fine also because maprom already have an artifical limit of 64MB FastRam until mem detect on the 536 is verified working.

I have been using tf536r2_2020_08_06_alpha.zip for a while on a Mega 4 ST with no problems in Emutos. TOS 2.06 works with maprom but no autoboot off C:. The ASCI port is non functional on both OS's. Could you test your Satan drive?

[agranlund]

I have been using tf536r2_2020_08_06_alpha.zip for a while on a Mega 4 ST with no problems in Emutos. TOS 2.06 works with maprom but no autoboot off C:. The ASCI port is non functional on both OS's. Could you test your Satan drive?

Ultrasatan works fine here with that firmware on an 520ST.
Copied some files across on both the PC and ST, and started Frontier from a FAT16 card that was partitioned on Windows.
This was on EmuTOS.

Ultrasatan and the card is detected by HDDRIVER on TOS2.06 but it won't read the card.
I'm guessing I probably need to make one of those TOS/WIN hybrid partitions using HDDRIVER for it to work on Atari TOS?



Regarding booting from IDE, the FAQ for HDDRIVER has this to say about it:

Are there any limitations when booting from IDE?
TOS can only boot from a drive connected as master drive to the first IDE port if the drive was partitioned while being connected to the Atari's IDE port. This is caused by the wiring of the Atari's IDE port not having the same byte order used by other platforms for IDE.

The IDE interface on the TF53x has standard wiring, so it's different from an Atari IDE port.
Atari TOS boots fine off the IDE for me with an adapter, or twisted cable, to make the interface same as on the Atari.
(And with the IRQ tethering to ACSI10 to make Atari TOS happy..)
My CF-Card which was originally partitioned on an Atari IDE interface before I got a TF53x boots fine on both EmuTOS and Atari TOS.

[Umberto1st]

I have been using tf536r2_2020_08_06_alpha.zip for a while on a Mega 4 ST with no problems in Emutos. TOS 2.06 works with maprom but no autoboot off C:. The ASCI port is non functional on both OS's. Could you test your Satan drive?

Ultrasatan works fine here with that firmware on an 520ST.
Copied some files across on both the PC and ST, and started Frontier from a FAT16 card that was partitioned on Windows.
This was on EmuTOS.

Ultrasatan and the card is detected by HDDRIVER on TOS2.06 but it won't read the card.
I'm guessing I probably need to make one of those TOS/WIN hybrid partitions using HDDRIVER for it to work on Atari TOS?



Regarding booting from IDE, the FAQ for HDDRIVER has this to say about it:

Are there any limitations when booting from IDE?
TOS can only boot from a drive connected as master drive to the first IDE port if the drive was partitioned while being connected to the Atari's IDE port. This is caused by the wiring of the Atari's IDE port not having the same byte order used by other platforms for IDE.

The IDE interface on the TF53x has standard wiring, so it's different from an Atari IDE port.
Atari TOS boots fine off the IDE for me with an adapter, or twisted cable, to make the interface same as on the Atari.
(And with the IRQ tethering to ACSI10 to make Atari TOS happy..)
My CF-Card which was originally partitioned on an Atari IDE interface before I got a TF53x boots fine on both EmuTOS and Atari TOS.

I tried your inverter trick and it works great, The ASCI port is working now too. The INT signal was the one thing I didn't look at. What part of Sweden are you in? My Mon was from there. I still have family there.

[agranlund]

I tried your inverter trick and it works great, The ASCI port is working now too. The INT signal was the one thing I didn't look at. What part of Sweden are you in? My Mon was from there. I still have family there.

Brilliant! glad it worked for you as well :)

I'm originally from the middle/northern part (Dalarna) but somehow found myself now living in the most southern part quite close to Malmö.

[Umberto1st]

Brilliant! glad it worked for you as well :)

I'm originally from the middle/northern part (Dalarna) but somehow found myself now living in the most southern part quite close to Malmö.

Noticed that your using a 16 gig card. I can't get it to autoboot on any card greater than 8 gig in TOS 2.06 . I'm also having issues with the Ultra Satan, I cannot format or partition with the TF536, but it will read and write on cards formatted on a stock machine. Have you had similar experiences?

I have family in Stenungsund and the surrounding area. One day I would love to get there and see my cousins. They have been to the USA many times, I've not been there once.

[agranlund]

Brilliant! glad it worked for you as well :)

I'm originally from the middle/northern part (Dalarna) but somehow found myself now living in the most southern part quite close to Malmö.

Noticed that your using a 16 gig card. I can't get it to autoboot on any card greater than 8 gig in TOS 2.06 . I'm also having issues with the Ultra Satan, I cannot format or partition with the TF536, but it will read and write on cards formatted on a stock machine. Have you had similar experiences?

I have family in Stenungsund and the surrounding area. One day I would love to get there and see my cousins. They have been to the USA many times, I've not been there once.

That 16Gb card has only four 512MB TOS partitions on it. Back when I prepared it I figured that would be more than enough and I didn’t want to clutter the desktop with a billion drive icons :)
It’s been working fine with my own blitter/ide board, then the TF534 and now the TF536 :)
I believe the boot partition must be 512MB or smaller for TOS 2.06 to boot off it (and be readable by TOS 1.04 and later)

To be honest I haven’t used the Ultrasatan much until just now to test it because of this thread. I never had much luck with it with the TF534 but it appears to work fine now with the 536.
Using HDDrivers partitioning tool I was able to partition and format an sd card as Tos/Win hybrid which is readable by both windows and TOS.
It’s dog slow in this mode though, maybe due to it needing to software byteswap the data.. ~400Kb/s so I’m probably just going to keep using the NetUsbee for file transfers.
That ACSI data always has to pass through ST ram so it’s never really going to be blazingly fast.

The IDE interface on the TF536 benchmarks to about ~9.5 MB/s for me (when fully using fastram)

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