exxos's Atari, Amiga & retro forum

What's in the box...

:dualthumbup:

Looking great!

exxos wrote: 19 Jun 2023 13:30 What's in the box...


IMG_0702.JPG

:-D :dualthumbup:

I hope these will start appearing in store in about a weeks time! I have not yet had chance to work at the final price yet.

Currently I have decided to only ship them totally complete with the FPU & CPU which will all run at 50MHz (unless it becomes too much of a pain to find 50MHz parts).

The reason for this is, it's literally the first batch. People's Falcons are all different even in stock configurations which is throwing a bunch of random stuff into the mix right at the start. I think allowing people to use their own FPU & CPU is going to turn into a total nightmare. So the first batch of about 20 boards will be complete,In ready to plug in and use. If there is a second batch done (I hope so) then I may consider "unpopulated" boards, No FPU/CPU. But if you break something or it doesn't work, then you're own your own!

There are of course going to be some caveats here:

It has only been tested with one of my own clock patches. I'm not going to test other people's. So if you run into problems with someone else's patch, then you are basically on your own.

It is also assumed your Falcon is working properly a stock configuration to start with. If you do not have a clock patch or have one of the original Atari ones then again, I cannot guarantee results!

It is assumed you have at least re-capped your power supply and it is correctly outputting 5V. If it does not then I suggest you fit one of mine voltage adjustment boards.

I don't know if this will work with bus speeders, or any other hardware whatsoever. So please do not ask me! I have a stock Falcon and that is it! anything outside of the setup you are on your own!

You should also be fairly confident in doing firmware updates should there be any future releases. I don't have time to write guides or answer people's questions on how to flash the firmware etc. So you will need to figure this out yourself if needs be.

I also suggest that some clever person come up with some sort of fan for cooling the CPU. While I have not yet had any problems CPU does get rather hot after a while. A heatsink (sold in my store) can be used but I assume there will be little clearance from the underside of the keyboard. The simple solution would be to use the carbon conductive sheet stuck on top of the CPU internal shielding to use as a heatsink.

Also there is a known "bug" where you can't use 8MHz mode anymore. Realistically I don't know why anyone would want to do that anyway when the accelerator runs at 50MHz anyway. But I feel I should mention this is a known issue which is likely not going to be resolved.

Overall, all I can say is all these boards will work perfectly well in my machine but I cannot guarantee everyone will have a problem-free install. In theory there should be no problems.. But when are things ever that simple..

exxos wrote: 22 Jun 2023 14:13 Also there is a known "bug" where you can't use 8MHz mode anymore.

For clarity, you can't set the motherboard CPU speed to 8MHz whilst operating in 50MHz mode.

You can disable the board entirely and use the onboard 030 at 8MHz, or you can disable accleration and use DFB1 at 8MHz.

You can't currently have an 8MHz motherboard clock and a 50MHz DFB1. I mean that would be weird anyway.

BW

There looks like there will be 2 prices, 40MHz or 50MHz capable board.

40MHz CPU & FPU £227
50MHz CPU & FPU £252.

Currently its a PITA to get the CPU's in and out of the sockets to find 50MHz parts. So easier for me to sell the 40MHz ones cheaper.

All boards come with TOS404 flashed in one bank (the flash has 2 banks selectable by jumper).

All boards come with 128MB TT-RAM as standard.

All boards will be soak tested using GB6, YAARTTT, FPUTEST before shipping.

I hope they will be in the store in about a week's time.

:dualthumbup:

exxos wrote: 23 Jun 2023 15:00 All boards come with TOS404 flashed in one bank (the flash has 2 banks selectable by jumper).

Might I suggest flashing EmuTOS 512 in the other bank? That way the customer will have the option of an out-of-the-box-no-software TT-RAM-enabled fast machine to show off with in GB6.

TOS4 requires software to declare the TT-RAM (FASTRAM/MAPROM) and NVDI to avoid the blitter.

BW

NB. I have a patched TOS4 I use in my machine to autodeclare the TT-RAM, but without NVDI you crash at desktop as the blitter gets involved and Bad Things happen. You could flash this, but I suspect it would lead to more tech support calls than 'where's my memory, then'? which you'll get with vanilla TOS4.

Badwolf wrote: 23 Jun 2023 15:37 Might I suggest flashing EmuTOS 512 in the other bank? That way the customer will have the option of an out-of-the-box-no-software TT-RAM-enabled fast machine to show off with in GB6.
....

I did consider it, but not sure how far EMUTOS got with the Falcon support. I haven't tested EMUTOS at all either, and really do want to end up giving technical support for different OS's either if there are some odd problems. Certainly nothing I can fix anyway. It would be down to the EMUTOS team. Though I never get the impression they are really interested in my stuff anyway. I am not a coder and indeed I cannot code much anymore because of my RSI. So adding stuff myself to EMUTOS basically hits a brick wall in multiple respects. So I just kind of avoid it all now.

Plus whatever version I flashed could probably have been superseded by the time the board sells, so the user would have to update themselves anyway. There may be stuff fixed or stuff broken for all I know. I don't really want to test every single version every time it comes out either. I just don't have the time.

Also,If people think I can flash custom stuff for them, then it opens the door people thinking " can I flash this or that for them" which I can't do because once they are all flashed up, im not going back to redo it all when its simple for people to flash it themselves with whatever they want.

So basically I just thought of saving myself some potential headaches and just flashing TOS404 as I know how it all works in that configuration. If people want to flash EMUTOS, then fine by me, but if something doesn't work, I can't help, sorry!

Currently I am just thinking of zipping up a C: drive install that people can copy to get them running, MAPROM, NVDI etc. NVDI is needed as the blitter will screw up like you say.

I did do a custom TOS206 for the TF536 stuff, sets up TTram automatically. Though I don't have the blitter to content with. I guess really in TOS404 it needs completely disabling.. but again like you say, is getting into another OS in the mix of it all.