Blitz 68030 (EmuTOS)

[Matej]

Nice opensource mATX board:
• Motorola 68030 @25-50MHz + 68882 FPU
• 4MB of static RAM + 64MB DRAM
•512k of Flash ROM
•VT8242 based PS/2 Keyboard interface
•AIC37C65CL based Floppy interface
•ATA hard disk interface
•3x 8-bit ISA expansion slots
•MicroATX form factor & PSU connector
•Glue logic handled by a single XC9572XL CPLD

https://github.com/ProbablyNotArtyom/Blitz

Maybe with fixed DRAM and ET4000 SVGA or ATI MACH drivers plus ISA soundcard (SB16 like) or own ATARI like YM+PCM or DSP ISA sound and some OS ST-software layer can be nice EmuTOS computer (50mhz, lot of RAM etc).

[Cyprian]

nice project,
I wonder why "3x 8-bit ISA expansion slots" instead of 16bit ISA

[Matej]

No idea. Probably He had only 8bit CGA card :) home. It was His school project maybe teacher gave Him specs 8bit ISA for example. But I think it can be fixed to 16bit on board and in CPLD. 3x is good one for SVGA graphics card, second for soundcard or MIDI dreamblaster or so, 3th for USB device or for future. Anyways sources are on GitHub its OpenSource so we can have EmuTOS board and best is 68030 is common on ebay not as 68060. And in good prices with FPU and 50mhz it could be good!

[NotArtyom]

Blitz was designed as a hobbyist project, and its incomplete nature reflects that. I wanted to implement the full 16-bit ISA bus, but decided to start with just the 8-bit variant since I had never done something like it before. I ended up implementing CGA video, IDE, floppy, and serial all on the 8-bit bus, which I was pretty satisfied with. The only cards a full 16-bit bus would have opened up for me at that point would have been VGA cards and sound cards, both of which introduced huge complexities for little real improvement over what i had (would have needed 8086 emulation to call functions in the VGA VBIOS and a DMA controller to make real use of the sound card). I just never got around to it since I was able to do everything I needed on the simpler bus

I am aware of emuTOS but had never thought of porting it to Blitz. I might look into it out of curiosity, it seems like a good match.

[Badwolf]

I am aware of emuTOS but had never thought of porting it to Blitz. I might look into it out of curiosity, it seems like a good match.

Good to hear from you!

Yes, I think EmuTOS would be an ideal match for your board. Vincent's (@BlankVector) Amiga port (already part of the EmuTOS source distribution) is probably the place to start as that avoids requiring the ST's MFP timer which is most obvious hurdle to having it running on non-Atari hardware.

Emutos can trivially drive a 1-bit framebuffer, or can use a serial console.

If you do look into this, please keep us (and perhaps the Emutos mailing list) updated!

BW

[NotArtyom]

Thanks for pointing me in the right direction, I think i will give porting emuTOS a try. Sounds like a fun project and a good excuse to get to know it a little better under the hood

[Cyprian]

Blitz was designed as a hobbyist project, and its incomplete nature reflects that. I wanted to implement the full 16-bit ISA bus, but decided to start with just the 8-bit variant since I had never done something like it before. I ended up implementing CGA video, IDE, floppy, and serial all on the 8-bit bus, which I was pretty satisfied with. The only cards a full 16-bit bus would have opened up for me at that point would have been VGA cards and sound cards, both of which introduced huge complexities for little real improvement over what i had (would have needed 8086 emulation to call functions in the VGA VBIOS and a DMA controller to make real use of the sound card). I just never got around to it since I was able to do everything I needed on the simpler bus

I am aware of emuTOS but had never thought of porting it to Blitz. I might look into it out of curiosity, it seems like a good match.

Great project.

EmuTOS has built in driver for ET4000 card ( mono mode atm) also there are acively updated drivers for it by Idek Tramielski for TOS (all video modes). Unfortunately both of theem need 16bit ISA slots

[viking272]

Wow, this is impressive, good work!