Basilisk II Atari

[Badwolf]

Had a few more minutes to play with this last night.

Sometimes it boots up really quickly and feels really responsive. Other times it sits for ages with an empty desktop before the menu appears and is sluggish. Is this System 7 doing disc checking. perhaps? An equivalent to FSCK or CHKDSK, maybe? Not enough samples yet to figure out any common factor. It's been shut down correctly each time.

Anyway, some further information:

The odd screen corruption I saw on first bootup with TOS has not recurred, although I've since switched to VGA mode instead of RGB. Not sure that has any bearing.

The FPU is not recognised whenever I boot up with TOS. It is when I boot up with (software) EmuTOS. This one I do find interesting.

Speed-wise, my 030 at 50MHz with TTRAM Falcon compares favourably with the LC III+ which is a 33MHz 030. Which is pretty impressive, I think.

I also love that a lot of Mac games work in mono, although trying to play Civ in two colours hasn't gone very well so far.

Keep going, Anders

BW

61188CEE-F6D8-4044-91EE-1DCDFB36488D.jpeg (937.8 KiB) Viewed 2107 times

[JezC]

@Badwolf Looking forward to when your Falcon accelerator is available! My Falcon is feeling very unloved ATM given how most of my spare retro-hobby time has been targeted on the H4/H5 & STF/M repairs etc.

@agranlund Good to see how well this can work though - and it is definitely of interest to many of us on the forum! It's yet another motivation to get my TF536 back running in my H4 system as soon as I can make the time...

[Badwolf]

@Badwolf Looking forward to when your Falcon accelerator is available! My Falcon is feeling very unloved ATM given how most of my spare retro-hobby time has been targeted on the H4/H5 & STF/M repairs etc.

Cheers, Jez. Have an unopened pack of 5 boards sat in the shed awaiting soldering time. Hoping this is the one. The previous revision is stable and in use, but needed six bodge wires and a number of track cuts so not fit for release.

BW

[stephen_usher]

I'd love to know what the code's doing to upset the TT so badly though.

[Badwolf]

I'd love to know what the code's doing to upset the TT so badly though.

DMA a problem, perhaps? Try running it from a RAM disc?

Something amiss with the hard disc driver? How's it go under EmuTOS?

BW

[JezC]

Cheers, Jez. Have an unopened pack of 5 boards sat in the shed awaiting soldering time. Hoping this is the one. The previous revision is stable and in use, but needed six bodge wires and a number of track cuts so not fit for release.

BW

I'm not too worried about the tracks/bodge wires TBH...if it works as required then that is a massive boost over the standard product!

I feel the same about your alt RAM board...might not be suitable for a standard STF/M but it's probably fine for an H4 or H5...would be happy to test anything if you need it!

[stephen_usher]

I'd love to know what the code's doing to upset the TT so badly though.

DMA a problem, perhaps? Try running it from a RAM disc?

Unlikely, it's getting to the point of trying to start the emulation on ACSI before locking up. Kills the whole machine hard when it tries to access the SCSI disk.

The thing is the first publicised version booted into the Mac ROM as long as I didn't try to access a disk image. The test version dies even if I don't have an image listed in the configuration file. i.e. it crashes the machine even if I'm not trying to read from the disk.

It's more likely to be interrupts that the TT has and the ST and Falcon don't have which are being turned off. Either that or assumptions about hardware being at specific locations. Without seeing the source it's impossible to tell.

Something amiss with the hard disc driver? How's it go under EmuTOS?

BW

I'm not sure how I'd run EmuTOS.

[Badwolf]

DMA a problem, perhaps? Try running it from a RAM disc?

Unlikely, it's getting to the point of trying to start the emulation on ACSI before locking up. Kills the whole machine hard when it tries to access the SCSI disk.

The thing is the first publicised version booted into the Mac ROM as long as I didn't try to access a disk image. The test version dies even if I don't have an image listed in the configuration file. i.e. it crashes the machine even if I'm not trying to read from the disk.

I meant DMA on the TT side. I thought both ASCI and SCSI were DMA peripherals, hence the suggestion of trying to run the whole shebang from a RAM disc, but I don't know what sort of memory you have available.

Something amiss with the hard disc driver? How's it go under EmuTOS?
BW

I'm not sure how I'd run EmuTOS.

How'd you mean? Is the PRG version not TT compatible?

System 7 can see my FPU under EmuTOS but not TOS. One big difference is the hard disc driver. You were talking about interrupts. I think there's something about HDDriver and interrupts isn't there?

BW

[stephen_usher]

I meant DMA on the TT side. I thought both ASCI and SCSI were DMA peripherals, hence the suggestion of trying to run the whole shebang from a RAM disc, but I don't know what sort of memory you have available.

Well, when the new test version is started from either ACSI or SCSI it gets to the point of asking to press any key, after printing some initial messages. With logging to screen it should not access the disk at all after this point if there's no disk image referenced in the inf file.

I'm not sure how I'd run EmuTOS.

How'd you mean? Is the PRG version not TT compatible?

System 7 can see my FPU under EmuTOS but not TOS. One big difference is the hard disc driver. You were talking about interrupts. I think there's something about HDDriver and interrupts isn't there?

BW

Oh, I've not tried the PRG version.

In the new test version (private) the interrupt issues for HDDriver have apparently been worked around.

[stephen_usher]

OK. It seems that the 10 bombs happen when BASILISK.PRG tries to read the ROM image. Putting the ROM on a floppy allowed the system to start the emulation and then crash with 10 bombs when it tried to read the SCSI hard disk (which I see being accessed).

Running under EmuTOS 1.1.1 allows the booting of the Mac ROM but then fails to be able to read the floppy image, giving a GEM dialog of file not found.

P.S. Turning off logging and I get "Your output device is not receiving data." in a GEM dialog box, whether I run from SCSI or ACSI (EmuTOS 1.1.1), and it's not reading the keyboard to allow me to do anything at that point.