Raven. A homemade Atari-like computer

[peters]

I think I had problems installing NVDI on the Milan 26 years ago !

I might have just copied it from the ST eventually.

[agranlund]

A second adventure in PicoGUS land :)
MOD plugin now working with the GF1 chip, or at least PicoGUS's implementation of the GF1 -- I don't have a real one of those old and crazy expensive cards to test.

Flashed with the latest PicoGUS firmware 2.1.0 and updated the Atari port of pgusinit to match it.
I'm really happy to have this card. Not only does it come with a ton of cool features but it forced me to find and fix a couple of ISA related bus issues.
Stuff will end up on Github in a day or so, want to make sure ISA changes aren't breaking anything else first.

[mikro]

I really don't need one, and it's quite pricey, but it does have all the things on a single card instead of two.

Oh man, 350 EUR. That really discouraged me from thinking about it, too. :-)

@Oldskool that illegal instruction is suspicious. Apparently it crashes outside mxPlay but I'm not familiar with Raven's memory map so I'm not sure whether 0x00Cxxxxx represents ROM or something else.

[agranlund]

@Oldskool that illegal instruction is suspicious. Apparently it crashes outside mxPlay but I'm not familiar with Raven's memory map so I'm not sure whether 0x00Cxxxxx represents ROM or something else.

Very peculiary. The basepage etc for mxPlay looks fine, it's at around the 4MB point in TT-RAM range.
User PC at 0x00Cxxxxx is not expected, it basically executed code from gfxcard ram and blew up since those pixels weren't valid instructions :)

@Oldskool, does the machine pass memory tests of the YARTT application (or similar)?
Is there any difference if you use the very latest plugin binaries?
https://github.com/agranlund/atarisound/tree/main/bin


ISA-RAM gets set to both 0xFEC00000 and 0x00C00000 to satisfy existing ST and TT drivers. It does equivalent things to satisfy those Mach32 drivers too.
The logical memory map is similar to most Ataris. You'd have 1MB of ST-RAM starting at 0x0, the rest as TT-RAM at 0x01000000+.
ROM at 0x00E00000, and the usual repointing of 0xFFxxxxxx -> 0x00xxxxxx.

ST and TT ram are the same physical stuff of course but the differentiation can be used as a way to selectively disable some of the more exotic cache-features that a few programs may not be aware of.
Gembench for example appears to trash the instruction cache after VDI related tests when copyback is enabled but forcing it to run from st-ram would circumvent that issue.

(at the moment though, I believe copyback may be disabled on both types of ram. It's a flag in the bootrom code)

[Oldskool]

Just tried yaarttt.
It finds no errors at least not in 30 minutes or so of testing (both tt and st).

I think I tested the latest plugins. Can have a look later today.
Yam works with the latest plugins at least if isa bios has been executed before (tried midi and opl).
MXplay crashes in mint and emutos. If I remove all plugins it runs.

[agranlund]

MXplay crashes in mint and emutos. If I remove all plugins it runs.

Oh, on startup, not when playing with a specific plugin?
Will it crash with both the midi and opl plugin installed or just a specific one of these?

The default ones wont work. I’m using the sndh plugin but with code changes for 060.
In general I prefer snd_play for sndh files though, it plays some songs that mxplay dont like.

[Oldskool]

Thanks did a reinstall of mxplay as it always crashed even with no plugins strangely.
Just installed isa opl and midi (only two plugins) and now it works (latest versions of the plugins).

[agranlund]

Thanks did a reinstall of mxplay as it always crashed even with no plugins strangely.
Just installed isa opl and midi (only two plugins) and now it works (latest versions of the plugins).

Great to hear!

On the topic of audio. I uploaded a bunch of what I changed while playing with the PicoGUS.

Plugins:
Mod: Support for GF1 based Ultrasounds, tested on PicoGUS.
All Jam plugins: no longer loads and inits songs twice
https://github.com/agranlund/atarisound

Updated pgusinit to latest, for PicoGUS with firmware 2.1.0
https://github.com/agranlund/raven/tree ... s/pgusinit

Updated ultrinit with better support for GF1
https://github.com/agranlund/raven/tree ... rivers/gus

Updated Raven 'Nessi' firmware with fixes related to PicoGUS.
It's the wip version, simply called 'nessi.jed'. It'll be named to some proper version after more test.
- Slowed ISA-IO access a bit
- Fixed 16bit IO access to 8bit cards
https://github.com/agranlund/raven/tree ... w/a1/Nessi


Be aware that PicoGUS sample upload is significantly slower than on a PnP Ultrasound.
Partly because GF1 lacks a few handy features added to those later AMD versions, and partly because you're on half bandwidth being an 8bit card.
It's still not bad, and being a 1MB card you're not going to be loading huge mods anyway.

[Oldskool]

Coool.

And it has midi enabled and ultrasound.

Tried the picogus and a “real” homemade AMD one.

In my system ultrasound playback is not stable and it will crash the system. The AMD one is a bit worse.
Playback on the Picogus sounds better. With the AMD one the mod files don’t sound correct.
In both emutos and mint and jam and mxplay it will crash during playback..

But it could maybe again be related to the 68150…(will get the 40 version prob. tomorrow)

But the good thing it plays a mod file for a minute or so…
I have the feeling it is a bit more stable in b/w 640x480. The higher the resolution the more unstable but maybe that’s just my imagination.

IMG_2842.jpeg

IMG_2841.jpeg

IMG_2843.jpeg

[agranlund]

Coool.
And it has midi enabled and ultrasound.
Tried the picogus and a “real” homemade AMD one.

Yep and even opl2 though not at the same time. It's really a marvel of a card and especially at the price.
I recon it probably wouldn't take much effort to make TOS drivers for gameport joystick and serial mouse. Especially interesting with being able to use a modern usb gamepad through the picogus, but also even for real gameport stuff like the Gravis Gamepad.

In my system ultrasound playback is not stable and it will crash the system. The AMD one is a bit worse.
Playback on the Picogus sounds better. With the AMD one the mod files don’t sound correct.
In both emutos and mint and jam and mxplay it will crash during playback..
But it could maybe again be related to the 68150…(will get the 40 version prob. tomorrow)
I have the feeling it is a bit more stable in b/w 640x480. The higher the resolution the more unstable but maybe that’s just my imagination.

The 68150 does feel like the suspect based on the above, or at least something not working as it should related to that bus.
Graphics, the sound stuff, and those MFP timer interrupts used during playback are all passing through that chip.
Will be interesting to hear about the result with the 40mhz rated one.