exxos's Atari, Amiga & retro forum

Is there a way (flashing the CPLD, in case) to disable the onboard RAM of the TF530 so that the CPU can be used with Fast RAM from another card?

I think you should be able to just wipe the RAM CPLD on the TF530 to disable the RAM.

kludge wrote: 13 Feb 2019 15:25 I think you should be able to just wipe the RAM CPLD on the TF530 to disable the RAM.

That will kill IDE support.

Sorry no you can’t do this.

EDIT: the latest firmware is compatible with other fastram. Just the autoconfig will clash if the other board is over 4Mb and ZII.

terriblefire wrote: 13 Feb 2019 16:00 That will kill IDE support.

Ah, crap. In my defense I wrote “I think” ;)

Would just say it’s rather (not completely but somewhat) pointless to use the TF530 without it’s fastram because the board inserts wait states such that it’s running at 7Mhz effectively. So all you gain is IDE. It’s no longer an accelerator.

I see your point.

I've tried to get it working with mkl's board, he made a special 4MB-only firmware for me, but I never succeeded. Always black screens.

SukkoPera wrote: 13 Feb 2019 17:26 I see your point.

I've tried to get it working with mkl's board, he made a special 4MB-only firmware for me, but I never succeeded. Always black screens.

Start with DiagROM. Does this 4Mb firmware allow for the OS to place the RAM at $600000 ? Because the TF530 grabs the first slot at $200000.

Then figure out if you have the latest TF530 firmware.. older firmware wont work with this kind of fastram at all..

Finally it may just not work at all... with or without the onboard fastram.. but I have already spent a year on this making it work and TBH I dont want to work on it anymore.

The Kipper2k RAM does work and i presume those are very similar timings.

terriblefire wrote: 14 Feb 2019 07:56 Does this 4Mb firmware allow for the OS to place the RAM at $600000 ? Because the TF530 grabs the first slot at $200000.

I reported that bit of information to mkl and he came up with a new firmware. I tested it and we have some major improvements! At last the board gets detected!



Although, when I run the memory test, it fails. It fails differently if I run a test of the whole memory...:


... or if I only test the $600000 region:


Other regions test fine. So it seems we're getting closer... Any more hints? ;)

PS: Please ignore my sh*tty video quality.

PS2: Haven't tried diagrom so far, but I can, if that could help.

Diagrom would help.

Which firmware do you have and which TF530 revision/speed

Latest firmware I'm aware of on a rev.2@50MHz built by Viktor.