REV 3 - REV 5 - The beginning (ST536)

[exxos]

I reckon at this point you should just declare it an EmuTOS product and pre-load that on the chips.

Yeah,TOS206 while it works is not quite there in terms of compatibility with a 030. Of course I'm not selling the complete thing and probably never will unless there is sufficient demand.

Also I am trying to avoid "selling" EmuTOS chips.. Just trying to avoid all the potential arguments and abuse about doing all that kind of stuff.

[exxos]

@agranlund Trying EMUTOS now...

This one is pretty bizarre as well. I'm using your 4K MAPROM test PRGs. long story short, the "Cache" versions don't work with EMUTOS. Seems to stop the floppy drive from working. The "non-Cache" version works fine.

Not really sure if EMUTOS copies lower ROM variables automatically into alt-ram anyway ? think that maybe only copying ROM into alt-ram may be useful for EMUTOS ?

Current scores.

EMUTOS 1.1.1 - MAP4K - MAPROM.PRG (no ST-RAM caches enabled in MAPROM) and blitter not fitted.

IMG_0511.JPG (64.44 KiB) Viewed 2448 times

Bizarrely EMUTOS seems to totally block the blitter from working it shows up in TOS206 and works fine. Also odd EMUTOS resets if I change resolution with the blitter installed. I also am not entirely sure if BLITFIX is needed for EMUTOS ?


TOS206 - MAP4K - MAPROM_C.PRG - BLITFIX.PRG - BLITTER ON

IMG_0512.JPG (64.57 KiB) Viewed 2448 times

TOS206 - MAP4K - MAPROM_C.PRG - BLITFIX.PRG - BLITTER OFF

IMG_0513.JPG (61.64 KiB) Viewed 2448 times

So the bottom line as it stands is that :

EMUTOS doesn't like ST-RAM caches enabled and does not like the blitter fitted.
TOS206 works fine with the blitter and cached ST-RAM, but the desktop caches need to be turned off if using the floppy drive.

[Badwolf]

EMUTOS doesn't like ST-RAM caches enabled and does not like the blitter fitted.

EmuTOS will disable blitter by default if you have TT-RAM, that's intended. Blitfix tries to mitigate that, but it's a bit of a moving target so I wouldn't be surprised if it didn't always work.

I'm not sure it's worth ET+MAPROM.

ET is fully cache compatible, so something else is awry there.

The advantage to running ET over 2.06 is that you shouldn't need any AUTO folder programs. It should just work, including caches, but without blitter (as things stand).

BW

[exxos]

There seems to be some intermittent graphics corruption still I have a feeling it is down to the ST-RAM caches. So just compiling 2 new sets of firmware to see if these screwing things up somewhere.

I am wanting to push the current firmware out later today. I really do not want to spend the rest of my life messing around with this stuff

[Badwolf]

There seems to be some intermittent graphics corruption still I have a feeling it is down to the ST-RAM caches. So just compiling 2 new sets of firmware to see if these screwing things up somewhere.

I'm pretty confident of EmuTOS's cache handling (I run it on a Falcon). Those CPLD timings are critical, though, and there's been some hacking around to make things fit!

BW

[exxos]

I'm pretty confident of EmuTOS's cache handling (I run it on a Falcon). Those CPLD timings are critical, though, and there's been some hacking around to make things fit!

Yep. I might have broke something trying to get it all to fit.. I need to look into that as well

[agranlund]

EmuTOS will disable blitter by default if you have TT-RAM, that's intended. Blitfix tries to mitigate that, but it's a bit of a moving target so I wouldn't be surprised if it didn't always work.

Yep, Blitfix will mitigate it a little bit even on EmuTOS.
It cannot do it to the full extent that it does for TOS206, which it patches so it can use the blitter even for Gem stuff (when possible, it checks at runtime if blit src+dst is in ST-RAM to decide if it should do a hardware or software blit).

This type of runtime patching isn't really possible on EmuTOS, but blitfix is still useful on it to get some "polite" games/demos working.
Basically the ones that first ask TOS if the blitter exists before using it with direct hardware access (yep, there are instances of those)
Without Blitfix, these kinds of programs would not use the blitter at all under EmuTOS + TT-RAM.

[agranlund]

Not really sure if EMUTOS copies lower ROM variables automatically into alt-ram anyway ? think that maybe only copying ROM into alt-ram may be useful for EMUTOS ?

The official builds don't really.
But if you build it yourself with -DSTATIC_ALT_RAM_ADDRESS=0x01000000 you'll get a pretty fast EmuTOS

(That'll make it use tt-ram for its own internal memory)
The stuff in page zero which is common for all TOS's remain in st-ram though (vectors, all of those fixed tos system variables, line-a, etc) but then maprom would put these in fastram as well if you used it.

Another advantage of these builds is that it uses very little low region st-ram and that makes it more compatible with games that overwrites TOS area, or assumes that the OS isn't using any more ram than what TOS104 did.
(or in the case of PP's adapted games, a bunch of those "too little low ram available" ones will start just fine with such an EmuTOS build)


(I'm pretty sure I tested PAK3 version of TOS306 on my TF536 before and it worked fine. It was burned to ROM though, and I can't remember if I ever tried a floppy with it)

[exxos]

(I'm pretty sure I tested PAK3 version of TOS306 on my TF536 before and it worked fine. It was burned to ROM though, and I can't remember if I ever tried a floppy with it)

I burned a ROM with it on.. But its 512K and assume nobody could run past 256K ROM images ?

[exxos]

I have put the updated software / Firmware my website.

https://www.exxosforum.co.uk/atari/last/TF536/index.htm

As TOS206 & EMUTOS malfunction with the ST-caches enabled, I suggest people only use them if they want to try it. I don't really plan on investigating these issues any more. It is beyond my skill set unfortunately. So the official stable release is the "no cache" versions of the firmware and software.