TF536 - Atari firmware - Rev2 TF536

[agranlund]

I've been using mine in a similar machine as yours (the smaller original 520ST with external PSU & floppy) and it's been very stable here.
I did change the ST bus pullups long ago based on recommendations in this forum but I'm not sure if that matters or not?

You're running TOS2.06 I assume? Did you try disabling the cache in the options menu? TOS2.06 does not do well with fastram and cache enabled..

[ctirad]

Probably YAART TT.

It doesn't recognise TF536 FastRAM when TOS2.6 + maprom/fastram is used.
Also, it seems that Mint does not recognise any fastram in the same setup, too.

[agranlund]

Probably YAART TT.

It doesn't recognise TF536 FastRAM when TOS2.6 + maprom/fastram is used.
Also, it seems that Mint does not recognise any fastram in the same setup, too.

What's the boot order of your auto folder programs?
If you're booting mint from Atari TOS then you need to have fastram.prg before mint.prg/mint030.prg

But it seems something is not quite right if YaarTT isn't recognising the ram for you either. In that case I assume Sysinfo isn't either?
Does it show up fine in EmuTOS?

[ctirad]

TOS 2.6 in ROMS
Sure I have the fastram.prg first in AUTO then everything other. Also tried with maprom.prg and both possible orders of maprom.prg and fastram.prg. The result si allways the same:
- under plain TOS some apps and sysyinfo shows amount of fastram properly
- doom (pmdoom last version) crashes with an fmalloc error
- when Mint enabled, its boot ends with out of memory error (i have only 2MB of ST RAM). I also tried to enable/disable memory protection just for the case.

EmuTOS 1.0 loaded from disk (form either floppy image or PRG) won't see any alt ram at first boot. I have to boot with fastram.prg and make soft reset to appear.

With the EmuTOS 1.0 installed into ROMs, everything works as expected.

I'm going to try your patched version of TOS2.6.

[ctirad]

I've got two 33MHz 68030s ordered from ali (right one). After I replaced my former 50MHz 68030 CPU (left one) all issues magically dissapered. Too weird. I spent hours by trying various patches, ROMS, PSUs, two different machines, multipoint grounding and additional power filtering without any success. I was barely able to boot without crashes. And now everyrthing is rock stable just by replacing the CPU by another lower spec one.

Anyway, the old CPU is 100% functional. I borrowed it from a perfectly working PAK68/3 + FRAK + PANTHER2 machine.

TF_68030.jpg

[agranlund]

Not sure if this is technically the correct thread but seeing as they are support programs for the TF53x's it felt like a good fit.

Here is maprom/fastram v1.8

tftools-201202.zip

Or from here: https://github.com/agranlund/tftools

Version 1.8 changes:
- It should no longer fail to register fastram on Atari TOS after warm resets, or quick cold resets, basically those cases where it skips the bootup memory check.
- In the interest of safety and ease-of-use, Maprom will now inhibit caching of the entire ST-RAM range. Plus the usual graphic card ranges (C00000-DFFFFF)


This has a small performance penalty of course.
Gembench display performance is 96% compared to maprom v1.7 on both Atari TOS and EmuTOS, without NVDI installed - I think I can live with that.
Didn't bother measuring with NVDI enabled because that speed is crazy no matter what, plus it takes advantage of fastram so I doubt there's a big difference anyway.

The upside of this change is that, well, the floppy drive works even if you have cache enabled in the Atari TOS options.
I did not try any other DMA device but I'm assuming they will have better luck working under those same circumstances too.

[stephen_usher]

So, there's been no sign of @agranlund on the 'Net since 23rd December last year. I do hope that he's not been got by the virus.

@exxos, your copy of the source may be the only version available now to develop from.

[exxos]

So, there's been no sign of @agranlund on the 'Net since 23rd December last year. I do hope that he's not been got by the virus.

@exxos, your copy of the source may be the only version available now to develop from.

He posted here a few weeks ago.. He's busy etc ..

My code isn't compatible with the original TF536 anyway. I stopped work on it all as like most things, just no interest.

[stephen_usher]

So, there's been no sign of @agranlund on the 'Net since 23rd December last year. I do hope that he's not been got by the virus.

@exxos, your copy of the source may be the only version available now to develop from.

He posted here a few weeks ago.. He's busy etc ..

My code isn't compatible with the original TF536 anyway. I stopped work on it all as like most things, just no interest.

Really?! I though that hs last login was 23rd December. Anyway, it's good to hear that he's well.

[exxos]

Really?! I though that hs last login was 23rd December. Anyway, it's good to hear that he's well.

https://www.exxosforum.co.uk/forum/viewt ... 285#p61285