Practical TT upgrade?

[mrbombermillzy]

Ok, with discussion recently about the practicalities (or lack of) of a TT accelerator, perhaps a different approach could be tackled..

As a software programmer, I would like to take full advantage of as many projects as possible when coding for the Atari systems.

Unfortunately, the more diverse the upgrade, the longer it would take me to code for that particular feature. And if the actual hardware developers themselves may not be creating any libraries or programming tools for their hardware, there would be more time needed to get to grips with that particular hardware, which may limit the adoption.

So with this in mind, how about creating something that has already been explored and can therefore benefit from the Atari communities familiarity with the product, if not working code for it.

With this in mind, would it be possible for something like a VME card with a 56002, enough of its own non WS RAM, 16 bit audio subsystem and perhaps a Videl clone in there too?

F030 stuff could possibly be re-arranged or patched (PPera Im looking at you! :mrgreen: ) and certainly new software could be made aware of the changes in address mapping, etc. (TOS 5.01 anyone? :D )

If the main CPU cant be a 060 then a much faster DSP would be a great alternative, surely?

[KyleB]

I wouldn't do anything that requires all the programs patching. Looking at the TT the two things I'd say is IDE controller and graphics card.

[frank.lukas]

VME StarTrack Soundcard for Atari TT -> http://www.stcarchiv.de/stc1997/03/startrack

[mikro]

VME StarTrack Soundcard for Atari TT -> http://www.stcarchiv.de/stc1997/03/startrack

Virtually impossible to buy / find / see.

[mrbombermillzy]

Well, yeah, thats the sort of angle I was looking at.

The Startrack though, is:
1.) As mentioned above, impossible to find and ..
2.) has a 'regular' 56001.

I was given the impression that putting a Motorola DSP on a VME bus was almost trivial. If thats the case, I was thinking of an upgraded, but still backward compatible 56002. The (super)Videl and 16 bit audio subsystem was more a Falcon crossover pipe dream.

However, a straight DSP card could be used as a nice co-processor and Im sure the techniques used by Doug Little and whatever F030 DSP demos there are can be scrutinised and converted.