Granlunds FrankenSTein

[thorsten.otto]

Ah oops yes, nopatch.h and patchdef.h and some others were missing, i've just updated the archive. localcnf.h should only be needed when you have set BINEXACT to 0 (so it does not create an exact copy of TOS 3.06 anymore). I assume that is the case for you since you have done already some other patches.

All the stuff was an attempt to integrate most of the patches from TOSPATCH (https://www.markusheiden.de/atari/tospatch.html) already when compiling, and in a safer way in case there are also other changes. Most of this should actually work, except for the WINX patches which are incomplete.

But note that, if you set BINEXACT to 1 again, it will ignore the defines, and create an "official" 3.06 version again. So depending on what you've changed, you might as well take the previous source archive. Some of the patches might be useful however, and some fix some actual bugs (take a look at common/patchdef.h for explanation).

Note also the i've split the archive, there is now one with the actual sources (http://tho-otto.de/download/tos306de.tar.bz2) that can used to compile it eg. on Hatari, and another one with all the remaining stuff (http://tho-otto.de/download/alcyon.tar.bz2, sources of the alcyon compiler etc.) That second archive also contains the various makefiles to compile it on linux. That split was needed to make the sources fit on a 16MB harddisk image.

I hope i didn't miss anything again

[agranlund]

But note that, if you set BINEXACT to 1 again, it will ignore the defines, and create an "official" 3.06 version again. So depending on what you've changed, you might as well take the previous source archive. Some of the patches might be useful however, and some fix some actual bugs (take a look at common/patchdef.h for explanation).

Brilliant! thank you so much

I was mainly tempted by being able to cross compile the new one, but I figured maybe I wanted some of those new patches as well. Plus I could add my patches with the same coding convention to keep things nice and tidy.

Failing the new archive yesterday, I frankensteined in those new gnu makefiles into the super old archive and with some poking about I was able to get it cross compiling and produce a good rom image. You weren't kidding about the speed difference!

I'll give the latest one a go tonight

[agranlund]

That updated package works great @thorsten.otto, I'm building from that one from now on

Here are two issues I encountered. Neither of them blockers but I thought I'd let you know.

vdi_fix.S was in a different location from what system/GNUmakefile expected.
aes/winx.h is missing (not a problem unless you want to use TP_WINX or TP_48)

[thorsten.otto]

That updated package works great

Good

vdi_fix.S was in a different location from what system/GNUmakefile expected.

Ah, yes. That is located in a subdirectory, and was copied to the wrong location when creating the archive. Should be fixed now.

aes/winx.h is missing

I've included that now, but as already mentioned, that feature is not finished. Some smaller parts are already there, but eventually i gave up on the larger part of ~8K of really ugly assembler code, where he replaced the whole window manager. The functions in winx.c are mostly stubs for now.

Thanks anyway for reminding me to clean that up again, and good luck with your project

[agranlund]

Finally got around to routing and sending off my replacement "backpanel" board
I've always been happy with Elecrow for PCB's but last time I ordered I got charged a pretty hefty "remote area fee" for DHL so I'm trying JLPCB this time around, they had much better shipping options.

It will sit where the monitor port and RF modulator used to be and has this stuff:

VGA connector and UBE switch circuit
Audio in/out connectors
Ethernet connector and header (the actual controller will sit on the CPU board, probably)
Waveblaster port - I plan on using the Dreamblaster X2
A header that accepts a small Adafruit mono amplifier to power an internal speaker

It has a VGA input header for when/if I ever manage to pack some kind of gfxcard in there
A video switcher IC can toggle the output between shifter/gfxcard using the GPIO pin.

Screenshot 2020-10-13 at 01.28.17.png (163.71 KiB) Viewed 4351 times

And I found a spot for the internal speaker - the case can fully close up when it sits on top of the mouse/joystick port.

_20201013_003704.JPG (87.94 KiB) Viewed 4351 times

[agranlund]

Not too shabby for an old 520ST

DSC_0664.JPG (112.24 KiB) Viewed 4305 times

Time for Eagle and to miniaturise the whole setup to get that sucker inside the case...
Have a smaller graphics card inbound that should make it easier if it turns out to work ok with the VOFA drivers.

First pass will be just getting things smaller and fit inside the machine but it would be interesting to experiment with putting the interface on the 68030 bus in the future..

_20201013_225529.JPG (104.37 KiB) Viewed 4305 times

And experiment with the driver and software, try to get MagiC working and so on.
I'm super happy to have a working setup to go from, thank you @frank.lukas !

[PhilC]

@agranlund you've beat me to it i have an et4000 and adaptor ready to go

[agranlund]

@agranlund you've beat me to it i have an et4000 and adaptor ready to go

If you snooze you loose!

[agranlund]

@PhilC, I just tried the ET4000 driver that comes with NVDI5 and I like it a bit better than the VOFA VDI+driver from Idek.
It's overall faster and the tool for creating & editing video mode profiles was much easier to understand for me

I'm going to write a TSR that switches to "game mode" when it detects certain PRGs are being launched - I'm thinking a simple textfile with filenames/folders or something like that.
It needs to replace a bunch of TOS hooks with non-gfxcard versions and set the shifter to ST-LOW before allowing the game to proceed launching.
(And in my case, flip the GPIO pin to toggle between shifter/gfxcard output on the VGA connector - this should be some kind of option I guess)
And then restore the whole thing as it exits back to desktop.

[PhilC]

@agranlund nicely done. I think I'll try it in one of my Megas first, then over to the STM.