Granlunds FrankenSTein

[agranlund]

@agranlund the TF536 seems a little more fussy with CF cards but the ones I've managed to get to work are fine in either Atari format or PC format without the need for a twisted cable.

What did you change the pullups to to get it to boot?

Ah, that's good to know! Thanks!
Did you partition the cards connected to the TF536 or was it done on another machine? Also which program(s) did you use? :)

The pullups were already changed to 2.2K a good while ago so I never had any issues booting with the TF536.

It's just misbehaving when executing code from fastram (the machine resets as soon as Gembench or Frontier has done loading and starts running, if loaded to fastram)

Oh and I'm not having any luck with IDE but I am writing that down as lack of trying, and user errors for the time being :lol:

[PhilC]

@agranlund i burned an 8gb image file from my ultrasatan to one card on the pc and using an already fat formatted card on the pc I copied stuff over that way on the second card but that won't boot under tos2.06 obviously.

No driver required under EmuTOS as you know.

[agranlund]

keb1.jpg

After an awesome holiday, and a few hectic weeks at work, I finally got time to start up the ST again :D

So I built a temporary contraption to byteswap the IDE interface on the TF536 and my old CF card booted straight up :yay:
I'm not going to bother with the floppy drive.. it apparently didn't work all that well in my machine with TF534 either. I never use it so it's a none-issue for me.

EmuTOS 1.0 + NVDI 2.51 or 5.03 runs nice and fast executing from Fastram.
Now that my HDD is working I tried out Devpac3, Atari Works and my ScummVM port and they also run great from Fastram.

Gembench and Frontier still have the problem with resetting the machine as soon as they start executing from Fastram but they work when running from ST RAM - basically same issue as before vacation when I tried these from floppy.
A bit odd.. maybe related to the ram detection issue? If for some reason they access the top of the memory, but seems like a long shot. I figure I'll make an EmuTOS build which is limited to 64MB fastram and see if it helps.

I should also probably catch up with the forum about what's been happening in the last month or so :)

[PhilC]

@agranlund nice to see you making some good progress.

I'll send you a version of Frontier that runs fine from Fastram if you'd like? There's a few out there than won't run.

[agranlund]

@agranlund nice to see you making some good progress.

I'll send you a version of Frontier that runs fine from Fastram if you'd like? There's a few out there than won't run.

Cheers mate, the version I have runs fine from Fastram on my TF534.
It's just with the 536 my machine crashes with some applications (Frontier and Gembench so far)

I'd still take that version if I could though, it never hurts to test :)

[PhilC]

@agranlund no worries, will pm you it tomorrow.

[agranlund]

@agranlund no worries, will pm you it tomorrow.

No need, I found the issue and made a temporary workaround here locally :)

The issue was due to Fastram size being detected incorrectly.
When something then writes outside of the actual Fastram top it trashes the beginning of ST-RAM possibly overwriting something important.

I rebuilt EmuTOS to detect a maximum of 64MB Fastram as a temporary workaround and that did the trick - both Frontier and Gembench now run happily from Fastram on the TF536.

If terriblefire agrees, I think a proper fix should eventually end up living in the TF536 firmware by throwing a bus error when accessing memory beyond 64MB.

[agranlund]

I managed to get TOS 2.06 booting with the TF536 :yay2:

IRQ signal from CF adapter (pin 31) to ACSI pin 10, negated with a 74LS03
I also needed to break the connection between the TF536 and pin31 so I just stacked another female 44pin connector (with pin31 removed) between the IDE connector and the CF adapter.
This became trivial in my setup since I could just route a wire from the CF adapter to pin31 of the unused and disabled IDE interface on my blitter board which already sits beneath the TF536 :)


Edit:
I have no idea which firmware version I am running on the TF536 and if there are later, better, versions available and booting TOS 2.06 is old news? (PhilC do you remember which one I got?)
I'm also using a byteswapped cable because I am under the impression the IDE interface has to be in Atari standard for TOS to be able to boot from it but I could be wrong.



Also, my NetUsbee which refused to play nice with the TF534 appears to be working fine with the TF536! This is brilliant, I love this card!
It's insane seeing 4MB ST + 64MB TT Ram on an old 520ST :lol:

[JezC]

@agranlund Great result! When I (finally!) get a way to boot EmuTOS on my H4 so tha tthe TF536 is running, I will have to try and replicate this...

I think you mentioned somewhere that you originally had some minimal boot image in the onboard ROMs to start up EmuTOS (or something similar)...can you point me to the pertinent info please? I can't find it at the moment... :roll:

I have a couple of the Exxos v1.1C IDE boards to build up at some point (which will allow for decoding the 256k ROMs) but I'm still waiting on some parts for those, so am hoping to find a quicker way to get the TF536 running in an H4.

I do have a programmer & some 27C4096 UV EPROMs, so if I can find a suitable image to program in then I'm hoping to try the TF536... :D

[Umberto1st]

I managed to get TOS 2.06 booting with the TF536 :yay2:

IRQ signal from CF adapter (pin 31) to ACSI pin 10, negated with a 74LS03
I also needed to break the connection between the TF536 and pin31 so I just stacked another female 44pin connector (with pin31 removed) between the IDE connector and the CF adapter.
This became trivial in my setup since I could just route a wire from the CF adapter to pin31 of the unused and disabled IDE interface on my blitter board which already sits beneath the TF536 :)


Edit:
I have no idea which firmware version I am running on the TF536 and if there are later, better, versions available and booting TOS 2.06 is old news? (PhilC do you remember which one I got?)
I'm also using a byteswapped cable because I am under the impression the IDE interface has to be in Atari standard for TOS to be able to boot from it but I could be wrong.



Also, my NetUsbee which refused to play nice with the TF534 appears to be working fine with the TF536! This is brilliant, I love this card!
It's insane seeing 4MB ST + 64MB TT Ram on an old 520ST :lol:

How did you wire up the 74ls03?