exxos's Atari, Amiga & retro forum

planned features of the riser:
1. DB23 out
2. 2 USB slots, one for KB+mouse, another for 2 pads?
3. RTC w/ battery
4. onboard audio decoder chip?
5. maybe wifi too? (or did you drop that?)
6. flashfloppy support via USB? (is that "only" software?)

I'd be super happy with 1, 2, 3
4, 5 would be nice to have
Don't care for 6 at all

Will a standard psu be enough for all this + TF330?
Do you have a rough estimate for cost? (I'll get one anyway)

Thanks guys

wairnair wrote: 01 Dec 2020 23:15 planned features of the riser:
1. DB23 out
2. 2 USB slots, one for KB+mouse, another for 2 pads?
3. RTC w/ battery
4. onboard audio decoder chip?
5. maybe wifi too? (or did you drop that?)
6. flashfloppy support via USB? (is that "only" software?)

I'd be super happy with 1, 2, 3
4, 5 would be nice to have
Don't care for 6 at all

Will a standard psu be enough for all this + TF330?
Do you have a rough estimate for cost? (I'll get one anyway)

Thanks guys

Wifi can be done via the ESP modules so that was never a feature... Really its up to Arek what features end up in there but the riser has the wiring for the rest we think.

The riser itself is just an ARM and a CPLD and in total that will draw very little (yet to be measured under load but the ARM is famously low power). So the PSU will depend on your peripherals.. eg. does my mouse draw 2 amps. etc. I suspect for a wireless KB/Mouse and a joypad you will not need a power upgrade.

wairnair wrote: 01 Dec 2020 23:15 planned features of the riser:
1. DB23 out
2. 2 USB slots, one for KB+mouse, another for 2 pads?
3. RTC w/ battery
4. onboard audio decoder chip?
5. maybe wifi too? (or did you drop that?)
6. flashfloppy support via USB? (is that "only" software?)

I'd be super happy with 1, 2, 3
4, 5 would be nice to have
Don't care for 6 at all

Will a standard psu be enough for all this + TF330?
Do you have a rough estimate for cost? (I'll get one anyway)

Thanks guys

1 . Buffered DB23 out - DONE
2. Two USB HID slots
- HID KB support - DONE (working on refactoring to non blocking code to allow better use of ARM resources)
- HID Mouse - DONE
- Support for Keyboard+Mouse combo - DONE
- Support for standard HID Gamepad :
*. In Joystick mode with 3 buttons - DONE
*. In CD32 Gamepad mode - DONE
3. RTC - M6242 emulation - DONE
4. Soundcard - mp3 decoder - Not yet prove of concept.
- Limited support I think is possible, and I am working on 2i) point to allow this
- All example are on beefier chips, but all examples target DEV boards with display, so this might be the factor
5. WIFI - This feature was never on my list - possible via TF330 SPI, so it really doesn't make much sense to do it.
6. Gotek - Technically possible, but not practical in current hardware revision:
- No display (to allow adf image browsing)
- No buttons to change image
- Not enough USB slots (one for mouse/keyboard, one for gotek and no spot left for gamepad), but stm32f722 has SD controller, but do we have enough right pins free to use it? Don't know.
- FlashFloppy is not written using HAL library, so porting it may take a while. It is surprisingly complex piece of software.

Price : I simply don't know.

Current PCB revision is mature enough to build it and use it.

arkadiusz.makarenko wrote: 02 Dec 2020 16:21 6. Gotek - Technically possible, but not practical in current hardware revision:
- Not enough USB slots (one for mouse/keyboard, one for gotek and no spot left for gamepad), but stm32f722 has SD controller, but do we have enough right pins free to use it? Don't know.

We have an SPI bus between the CPLD and the ARM that is not used. An SD card could be wired up with that.

But actually we're running out of physical space on the damn board. I will need to have a think about where to place the SD card. It will need to be microSD.

The video buffer i really like because it protects the Amiga (thats its main purpose). It only adds £2.

The GoTek/FF needs a think. I really think that having buttons on the riser is daft because its supposed to be a living room type device.

So either a button combo or keyboard combo.. But we still need to display.

So probably some kind of SPI controllable video overlay and 2 SPI CS. One for the SD card and one for the overlay.

I guess we need to count how many INTSIGs we really need and trim them down too.

@terriblefire

INTSIG on CPLD side looks busy, it could be cut down, but I don't have enough Address lines to decode address for some of the register addresses. They do overlap unfortunately.

A5 is wired direct to pin 11 on the ARM on rev2.

PIN 34 on the arm could be used for a chip select ... its just used to flash an LED right now... it could do both.

The UART on ARM pins 53/54 .... do you ever use these? i imagine they're useful for debug? Otherwise they can be repurposed.

We may aswell wire A3 direct also.. I just missed this on the last version.

Also ACTIVE is not used.. it flashes the drive light on the front of the CD32 ... Might be useful in the future.

terriblefire wrote: 02 Dec 2020 23:04 ...
The GoTek/FF needs a think. I really think that having buttons on the riser is daft because its supposed to be a living room type device.
...

Have you seen FF-OSD? I use this on my A500 and it works really well. I'm guessing your riser has all the needed signals.

dalek wrote: 03 Dec 2020 02:00

terriblefire wrote: 02 Dec 2020 23:04 ...
The GoTek/FF needs a think. I really think that having buttons on the riser is daft because its supposed to be a living room type device.
...

Have you seen FF-OSD? I use this on my A500 and it works really well. I'm guessing your riser has all the needed signals.

I don't think it would be possible to add additional so time specific interrupts to our arm.
Issue with FF is that need to be ported, to this project, we cannot use it in current form. Hardware connections and signals are really not relevant, and could be adapted if needed.

terriblefire wrote: 02 Dec 2020 23:58 A5 is wired direct to pin 11 on the ARM on rev2.

PIN 34 on the arm could be used for a chip select ... its just used to flash an LED right now... it could do both.

The UART on ARM pins 53/54 .... do you ever use these? i imagine they're useful for debug? Otherwise they can be repurposed.

We may aswell wire A3 direct also.. I just missed this on the last version.

Also ACTIVE is not used.. it flashes the drive light on the front of the CD32 ... Might be useful in the future.

UART is not used, and I am not planning to use it. (initially I was thinking to use it to allow programming chip, but ST Link knock offs are cheap enough and easier to use!)

FIRE are not used as well, as I override registeres.

terriblefire wrote: 02 Dec 2020 23:04 We have an SPI bus between the CPLD and the ARM that is not used. An SD card could be wired up with that.

But actually we're running out of physical space on the damn board. I will need to have a think about where to place the SD card. It will need to be microSD.

The video buffer i really like because it protects the Amiga (thats its main purpose). It only adds £2.

The GoTek/FF needs a think. I really think that having buttons on the riser is daft because its supposed to be a living room type device.

So either a button combo or keyboard combo.. But we still need to display.

So probably some kind of SPI controllable video overlay and 2 SPI CS. One for the SD card and one for the overlay.

I guess we need to count how many INTSIGs we really need and trim them down too.

I've a suggestion on the real estate issue going forward.
The FB-32R was conceptualised not only to allow plugin Dev "Hat" boards, but also since whatever board is plugged onto it doesn't have the 2x AMP edge connector pins taking up the vast majority of the board space, so may be helpful in fitting more features such as the Gotek/FF components (SD card slot etc)?