TF536 - Atari firmware - Rev2 TF536

[stephen_usher]

Well, the latest MAPROM_C.PRG does give quite a speed boost and the floppy works. :dualthumbup:

[exxos]

Well, the latest MAPROM_C.PRG does give quite a speed boost and the floppy works. :dualthumbup:

:bravo: :girldance: :girldance:

[stephen_usher]

Hmm... Floppy formatting isn't working properly.

The format process is incredibly slow (EmuTOS 1.0) and then reports that 0 bytes are available.

Switching over to TOS 1.04 and the 68000 and the system formats fine.

Similarly, with MAPROM.PRG, formatting is fine.

[exxos]

MAPROM_C version 22. REV5 ST536 TOS :

FCOPYIII formats 1.88MB fine.

GEM 720K:

IMG_0598.JPG

EMUTOS 1.1.1 - but oddly MAPROM doesn't seem to be doing anything with it now :shrug: ROM doesn't seem to get copied to alt-ram. Also oddly EMUTOS is reporting TTram in KB not MB . It might not being launched from ST536 TOS which stuff already allocated :shrug:

IMG_0599.JPG

[stephen_usher]

If you’re running the .PRG version of EmuTOS then it’s running in RAM and not ROM and hence MAPROM won’t be able to do anything, surely?

[exxos]

MAPROM should still enable the caches AFAIK, which is where most of the problems are. All I can say is with my setup it all works and think Anders had it working fine with EMUTOS.

[stephen_usher]

I’ve just tried under TOS 2.06 and floppy formatting works. Maybe it’s a problem with EmuTOS 1.0

[agranlund]

this is the fastest recorded Frontbench score on a regular tf536...

Hmmn.. I see your 3211.. and raise with my current development firmware in "ludicrous speed" :lol:

IMG_6018.jpg

Frontbench in TT-RAM: 4108
Frontbench in ST-RAM: 4066 (*)

(*) actually in a huge L2 cache but as far as the Atari is concerned it's addressing st-ram.
Speed of ST-RAM according to Memspeed:

Code: Select all

Read: 47.1 MB/s (L1) 31.6 MB/s (L2)
Write: 3.8 MB/s (L1)  3.8 MB/s (L2)

The actual reason for this was actually something completely different :lol:
I got fed up with burning ROMs and wanted to load and reboot into rom images from disk without touching the PMMU.
So I brought back an old ST-RAM cache experiment and updated it to support ROMs too.

Whether or not this will reach a release or not depends on if/when support software is done.
It's just a crude commandline tool at the moment and it would need to be something more user friendly.
Probably also integrate the existing maprom functionality into the same program -- would be nice to replace maprom with something written in C anyway.

The pro's:
- It can shadow ST-RAM in fastram
- It can shadow ROM in fastram
- Rom images can be loaded from disk into the rom-shadow.
Without using the PMMU, which is important for being able to cold boot into another soft-loaded rom.

The con's:
- 6MB is reserved by the firmware. A 64MB card will show 58MB available.
- ST-RAM shadow will not work if using DMA devices, and I don't really have any intentions of trying to remedy that.

[Steve]

dangit ;D

[Badwolf]

- ST-RAM shadow will not work if using DMA devices, and I don't really have any intentions of trying to remedy that.

Nicely done! That damed pesky DMA strikes again.

All loading done from IDE, I presume?

BW