exxos's Atari, Amiga & retro forum

rubber_jonnie wrote: 02 Apr 2019 11:57 Damn, somebody had another idea, I'm going to have to build one of these too! Takes mental note to buy a mainframe to maintain complex list of 'projects in flight'.

I hear they have Ernie up and running at Bletchley park, so your locks in. (Original premium bond random number computer)

I'd be happy to have an experiment doing one of these boards but wouldn't have a clue how to do the footprint of the chip in eagle libraries.

PhilC wrote: 02 Apr 2019 11:53 I know I've asked before but why hot choose the combined blitter,glue,mum you have on the STE?

Is it just a matter of knowing the pin out etc? Was especially thinking this when doing the Mongrel board. One chip instead of 3 SMT ones.

Because its likely not going to be simple and it will likely need GLUE logic to patch it into the bus. Busgrant I assume is done internally, so would be no way to integrate it onto another bus if thats the case. Feel free to try it out though ;)

Possible or not, its not really relevant for the direction I want to move in. As said before many times, we are looking for a 50MHZ MMU & BLITTER FPGA cores, we can't do that with Atari chips.

While this new blitter can run on STFMs, its really a prototype for the remake boards and a step in the right direction to replacing the Custom chips with FPGA cores which we can improve on.

I'll start by checking the bus wires as you said, I was wondering if this would be internal or not, or if Atari had just been lazy and put 3 chips into one.

PhilC wrote: 02 Apr 2019 12:02
I hear they have Ernie up and running at Bletchley park, so your locks in. (Original premium bond random number computer)

Begins hunt on eBay for valves...

Ok, so ignore me, I was thinking that there would be more external interconnects from the blotter on the combined chip but as you said, it's all internal.

So it would have to be a case of implementing all chips at once, which would make this an STe remake and not an STF remake.

Still, has been interesting finding that out for myself.

rubber_jonnie wrote: 02 Apr 2019 12:15

PhilC wrote: 02 Apr 2019 12:02
I hear they have Ernie up and running at Bletchley park, so your locks in. (Original premium bond random number computer)

Begins hunt on eBay for valves...

Everyone should have a mainframe in their living room....... kitchen.... front bedroom......

PhilC wrote: 02 Apr 2019 12:18 So it would have to be a case of implementing all chips at once, which would make this an STe remake and not an STF remake.

The suska cores are STe, so the remake is heading towards a STe.. but the STe DAC circuit needs a rebuild.. that's another epic project by itself..

The MMU, GLUE, BLITTER will likely be all integrated into 1 FPGA and basically become a STe chipset.

exxos wrote: 02 Apr 2019 12:23 The MMU, GLUE, BLITTER will likely be all integrated into 1 FPGA and basically become a STe chipset.

Yes I'd figured as much, which would be cost and speed effective. No problems with external signal noise, lack of pullups or unf*ck boards :D

PhilC wrote: 02 Apr 2019 12:20

rubber_jonnie wrote: 02 Apr 2019 12:15

Begins hunt on eBay for valves...

Everyone should have a mainframe in their living room....... kitchen.... front bedroom......

:dizzy:

Update: Have just placed an order for some Blitter Boards to start prototyping