ATW800/2 - A Mega adventure

[JezC]

Well, a little later than planned but it's time to start making some notes about the ATW800/2 board that is now installed in one of my Mega ST4s.

As always, time has been limited so I've not got much farther than fitting the card and using it to run TOS 2.06, install an SD card as a hard drive and revel in a 1920x1080x256 display.

The TRAM I was planning to fit is too big to go inside the case of the Mega so that's currently on hold (as is fitting the battery to use with the RTC until I buy a CR2032)...

I've had a very positive impression of the whole project so far and hope to get the s/w transferred onto the hard drive and then experiment with the Transputer functionality.

Hope to post more on this soon...but I think I need to make progress with my latest H5C build before I plough lots more time into this...

[frank.lukas]

I have one too and I'm excited to see the first pictures from you, an Atari Mega ST computer is my favorite from the Atari TOS computer series.

Fit with a AD-Speed card from ICD, I have only deselect the IDE Port in the HDDriver.sys ...

ADSPEED_eingebaut.jpg (789.65 KiB) Viewed 1162 times

ADSPEED.jpg (206.45 KiB) Viewed 1162 times

[PhilC]

I find the whole transputers thing quite interesting. I was speaking with @Steve about his yesterday and will likely get one for my Mega at some point.

[frank.lukas]

I have tested it with all types of accelerator cards and all works fine ...

My Atari Mega ST have original Pullups and no Patches only thing is a Floppy HD Modul.

Testaufbau.jpg (713.43 KiB) Viewed 1148 times

[Steve]

Some screenshots of mine running on my TT, I've got 2x T800 TRAM's with 4mb memory each installed.

FYI try not to run crazy resolutions, as most transputer software including Helios expects 1024x768x256.

Looking forward to getting a raytracer going

Compress_20250517_162254_4928.jpg (339.06 KiB) Viewed 1139 times

Compress_20250523_144445_5484.jpg (285.16 KiB) Viewed 1139 times

Compress_20250523_193907_7462.jpg (175.52 KiB) Viewed 1139 times

Compress_20250523_193907_7277.jpg (279.3 KiB) Viewed 1139 times

[agranlund]

Ah, I'm jealous!
I somehow managed to miss the first batch.

[mrbombermillzy]

Glad you are starting the adventure Jez.

As always, time has been limited so I've not got much farther than fitting the card and using it to run TOS 2.06, install an SD card as a hard drive and revel in a 1920x1080x256 display.

I dont see more than 1600x1200 as a resolution option on mine. What gives?

I have mine installed in the Mega ST4 now, but only with xVDI (havent put in all the transputer stuff on the HDD yet).

FYI, Im using an external ACSI2SD. (I figured the internal SD slot would be hard work to reach *and* setup).

[PhilC]

@mrbombermillzy you could get an SD card extension cable?

[mrbombermillzy]

@mrbombermillzy you could get an SD card extension cable?

From what I gathered from Axels comments on this not being 'the main selling point of the card', I had worries with the PPera image/drivers I was using not working (as only HDDriver was tested to work).

Besides, its easier to just use the ACSI2SD.

[Steve]

I dont see more than 1600x1200 as a resolution option on mine. What gives?

He must have booted off the floppy and not used the driver's from the repo. The floppy accidentally had beta drivers on. Those high resolutions were removed because they're buggy, can cause slow down of the entire FPGA, or cause instability.