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Running ATARI On 68080page  1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 

Simo Koivukoski
(Apollo Team Member)
Posts 601
13 Oct 2016 19:17





Thierry Atheist

Posts 644
13 Oct 2016 21:26


How totally ! ! A W E S O M E ! !

We'll also do Sega Genesis and Apple Lisa/MacIntosh, NeXT after that LASER PRINTERS too!!! WOOO-HOOOOO!!!



Lonny Pursell

Posts 7
13 Oct 2016 21:36


Thierry Atheist wrote:

   
Uros Vidovic wrote:

    Maybe even GFA Basic could be adapted to compile 68080 code in the future.

    That would be EXCELLENT!!! Even though, I am only able to code in AMOS Professional... I am inclined to believe that ANYONE could learn to code in AMOS Professional... however, yes, I'm biased in this view.
 

 
Hello, I am current maintainer of GFABASIC for the Atari ST series. Stumbled on this thread. GFA for the Atari is still actively maintained. I don't foresee trying to support a 3rd CPU, fixing it for the Coldfire was quite a chore. However, that does not stop someone from writing hand tuned assembler and calling it from GFA. In that way one can take advantage of a new CPU. ;)


Gunnar von Boehn
(Apollo Team Member)
Posts 6207
13 Oct 2016 22:19


Hi Lonny,
 
 
Lonny Pursell wrote:

  Hello, I am current maintainer of GFABASIC for the Atari ST series.
 

 
Your BASIC should work just fine.
Apollo 68080 is 100% compatible. Not like the Coldfire..
Also Apollo runs _very_ fast with normal 68K code.
There is really no real need to change anything.
 


Thierry Atheist

Posts 644
13 Oct 2016 22:19


Hi Lonny.... Are you aware that the 68080 also supports some new 64 bit instructions as well?!!!

I wonder if you can incorporate that into GFABASIC somehow?

It's excellent to know that BASICs are still "a thing", as in, the win-dos world, they've nearly vanished altogether. I've used DARK BASIC on win-dos. It is "good" but has many flaws as well, being built to work on top of win-dos; junk "os".

P.S. Also intel's SSE, calling it AMMX (I believe) is being put into the 68080!!!


Lonny Pursell

Posts 7
14 Oct 2016 03:55


Thierry Atheist wrote:

Hi Lonny.... Are you aware that the 68080 also supports some new 64 bit instructions as well?!!!
 
  I wonder if you can incorporate that into GFABASIC somehow?
 
  It's excellent to know that BASICs are still "a thing", as in, the win-dos world, they've nearly vanished altogether. I've used DARK BASIC on win-dos. It is "good" but has many flaws as well, being built to work on top of win-dos; junk "os".
 
  P.S. Also intel's SSE, calling it AMMX (I believe) is being put into the 68080!!!

There is a version of GFABASIC for the amiga, however it was ported to the amiga too late in it's life cycle and with many bugs. It's no trivial task to support another cpu, take it from someone who hand fixed every bad line of assembler in GFA for CF. It's a lot work and I don't get paid. ;o)


Amiga 4Life

Posts 101
14 Oct 2016 07:15


@simo
thanks, thats a good one..Atari Vampire 520st...soon Atari Vampire(standalone)...and if that happens its a
good chance that Vampire will bump heads with FireBee for users...



OneSTone O2o

Posts 159
14 Oct 2016 15:46


Hello, as longtime mainly ATARI but also Amiga user I welcome the 68080 Vampire on any of these two computer series. I already plan to get a Vampire 1200 as soon it's available.

And now you come with this announcement. Thanks a lot. !!!

A difference between Amiga and ST is, that in Amiga the 68000 runs in asyncronous mode, while in ST syncronous. Does 68080 already support sync mode?

Hardwarewise ATARIs are more complicate to support by accelerator card in general as there are so many different mainboard layouts, it's obviously not only 260/520 ST, 1040 ST, Mega ST, 1040 STE, Megea STE, Stacy, TT, Falcon (and ST-Book), but even inside one machine the position of the CPU can change based on board version, for example on different versions of 1040ST board. So I am asking you to take care on this point that the board can be inserted in as much of different versions as possible in a way that the original chassis can still be used. STE and Mega STE (and ST-Book) is special, it would need the same socket as Vampire 600. TT and Falcon are two other cases. No idea if you can support that in a way that the orginal case can still be closed in 1-2 vampire board layouts. Very elegant would be a Mega ST version.

I know that Vampire is not only a CPU accelerator in Amiga, but also graphics card, memory, SD card interface as harddisk interface. The Atari "world" has also this kind of extensions, so please consider to be compatible to these. I think instead of the enhanced Amiga graphics the "Supervidel" (this is already VHDL code) could be added, this is an enhanced version of the Falcon graphics chip (videl) which supports even FullHD. SD-Card-interface should be AHDI compatible like in Falcon and ST-Book. Memory might be configurable, how many memory can be configured as "ST RAM" and how many as "TT RAM", probably also "ALTRAM" (8 MB above 4 MB ST-RAM) or Falcon-RAM (14 MB of ST-RAM). ST/Falcon-RAM must be accessible for Shifter and DMA-Chip (ACSI harddisk, Floppy).

For Amiga Vampire you also consider about new soundhardware. If this is already prepared in the layout, it also might be possible to use that also for STE/TT-DMA-Sound in standard ST, and/or Falcon-Sound? Maybe even Falcon's DSP 56001 for full Falcon compatibility???

Maybe it's even possible to integrate USB and Ethernet on such a board, it would make sense for ATARI and Amiga. (On atari side, compatible to NetUSBee-card?)

Kickstart for sure must be replaced by TOS. You need one which is 68020++ aware and can boot from IDE. Originally this is TOS 2.06 (Mega STE) and 4.04 (Falcon). But there are some issues, 2.06 can't support TT RAM or more than 4 MB ST-RAM (Altram, without driver), 4.04 maybe won't boot if it does not find many of the Falcon's typical hardware (Videl, DSP, F-Sound, ...). In atarai-home.de there are experiments to make TOS 3.06 (TT) booting on 680(2/3)0 accellerated STs with AHDI IDE interafce, or even on TT with addon IDE interface, but there is little reboot trouble in MiNT under some conditions. Another possibility could be EmuTOS, fully opensource TOS for standard ST with IDE support and 68020++ compatibility, but desktop looks unusually (as it comes from PC-GEM which is open source).

Above someone writes about MMU and that this is present in all STs. That is only partially true. The MMU chip in ST/STE is not the MMU as it is an addon chip for 68020 or integrated in 68030 (TT/Falcon). Such an 68020++ MMU is very usefull for MiNT, Linux 68K and virtual memory driver "Outside" or Calamus own virtual memory enhancement, but the ST MMU is just a kind of Gate Array which contains a lot of TTL logics to control the memory adressing and refresh logics, there no memory remapping and protection feature in standard ST/E. Anyhow, the 68020++ MMU functionality would be very welcome to support MiNT and Debian/NetBSD on an 68080 based ATARI.

Software. Above I can read that someone says, 68080 would be nonsense for ATARI. Nope. There is enough serious software which would profit from such fast CPU in the ATARI. We have MiNT as alternative multitasking-operating system (MiNT is Now TOS), that means an GNU enhanced OS, on the one side compatible to standard ST TOS/GEM, and on the other side it has a full GNU-Unix subset with bash and all GNU tools, scripting ... and X-Window system. Maybe with such fast CPU and a lot of memory we can see Gnome and KDE soon on a 1040ST..., and then Libre Office and Gimp just besides Calamus (2015 version) and Cubase?

My favourite for a 1st step would be a Mega ST with the Vampire with all these features. Mega ST has 68K bus based Mega ST slot for easy plugin. The second thing should be a Vampire card for the Falcon, it has system bus connector for such things. TT might also be interesting, it should be possible to plug in an accelerator in the TT RAM slot, only a way to stop the onboard 68030 must be found.

Peoples in the ATARI scene to talk with to get some of the ATARI specific things done:
- The FireBee team
- The MiNT maintainers
- If still exist, also Debian/NetBSD68K guys
- The 68K gcc maintainers for your AMMX commands to be supported
- Inventronic (Suska Project, Falcon clone in VHDL, FireBee)
- Above the GFA maintainer, he can add an swith for optional support of the AMMX commands. It's not a new CPU, its additional opcodes only on standard 68K CPU line.
- Some guys of atari-home.de forum
- some guys in atari-forum.com
- some more I might have forgot.

I also welcome a standalone version of Vampire, compatible to Amiga and ST mode, a kind of "Super-MiST"...!!!

ST and AMIGA is fun. Commodore and ATARI rulezd by Vampire.

Ps: Sorry for long text. Hope it fits in thsi forum without splitting.


Lonny Pursell

Posts 7
14 Oct 2016 16:47


oneSTone o2o wrote:

  - Above the GFA maintainer, he can add an swith for optional support of the AMMX commands. It's not a new CPU, its additional opcodes only on standard 68K CPU line.
 

 
Not gonna happen. You make it sound trivial. GFABASIC is over 3mb of assembler in devpac format, that's the compiler, linker, library, and interpreter. It might build with VASM, but I'm not interested in switching my tool chain. Be prepared to write your own assembler add-ons for GFABASIC in the future. :D


Simo Koivukoski
(Apollo Team Member)
Posts 601
14 Oct 2016 20:00


Vampirised Atari 520STFM teardown : EXTERNAL LINK


John Heritage

Posts 111
15 Oct 2016 02:47


Simo Koivukoski wrote:

Vampirised Atari 520STFM teardown : EXTERNAL LINK 

That's awesome!  How much different is the software on Vampire 500 V2 for the ST?  Is TOS seeing any extra RAM yet?


Gunnar von Boehn
(Apollo Team Member)
Posts 6207
15 Oct 2016 15:13


oneSTone o2o wrote:

  Hello, as longtime mainly ATARI MIGA is fun. Commodore and ATARI rulezd by Vampire.
 
  Ps: Sorry for long text. Hope it fits in thsi forum without splitting.
 

 
 
Thanks very much for all the details.
 
First, certainly Apollo 68080 can make a fine CPU accelerator for many ATARI systems.
 
To set expectations for the near future clear.
We at the moment do not plan to produce several ATARI cards for different models. We are right now very busy getting out production ramped up.
So our focus today is getting Apollo-Accelerator production to a level where we can produce 200+ cards per month.
 

That Vampire in ATARI fits right now is nice and gives us today the free option to try out Apollo with ATARI TOS.


OneSTone O2o

Posts 159
16 Oct 2016 20:35


Hello, ATARI TOS in an Amiga? The only thing you can use is EMUTOS, sourcecode is available, so you can modify everything to get it work, for example new VDI driver for graphics. But this will be the hard way to do it. And it will not be game/demo compatible. Better getting the Vampire to run in ST. I think there would be some ATARI peoples which would be able to help realizing all of this. At the end, you take an 520ST or Mega ST, plugin Vampire and get a kind of Super-Falcon...


Gunnar von Boehn
(Apollo Team Member)
Posts 6207
17 Oct 2016 06:17


oneSTone o2o wrote:

Hello, ATARI TOS in an Amiga?

TOS in ATARI - as you see in photos.

I was saying the current Vampire fits in ATARI.
This enables people can try out 68080 CPUs which are faster than 68060 in ATARI.
 


Christian Z

Posts 14
17 Oct 2016 11:25


Now that you've got some people's expectations up, can you please comment a little bit on the current status?
 
  Since you write that Vampire "fits in ATARI", I assume it doesn't *run* in an Atari, yet. Otherwise you'd surely have posted a video of that, too.
 
  Do you already know what is missing to make your "68080" run in the ST? I understand your focus is on Amiga, obviously, but more details on this are still appreciated.


Gunnar von Boehn
(Apollo Team Member)
Posts 6207
17 Oct 2016 11:54


Christian Z wrote:

Do you already know what is missing to make your "68080" run in the ST? I understand your focus is on Amiga, obviously, but more details on this are still appreciated.

There is nothing missing.

The 68080 is 100% compatible.

All what we need to do is load a 020 compatible TOS and to config our Bios-memory setting Atari like.

I'm expected to get an ST next week together with a patched TOS.
So you can expect more screenshots soon.


OneSTone O2o

Posts 159
17 Oct 2016 15:18


Hello Gunnar, as I wrote, there is no need to patch TOS. Ok, the old TOS 1.00, 1.02 and TOS 1.04 from 260/520/1040ST and Mega ST are NOT able to run on 68020 and higher, but there are alternatives:
- TOS 2.06 from Mega STE. But this one has some different hardware adresses. On a standard ST this needs little modification with the ROM adapter to be mapped correctly on the mainboard. This is because it needs 256 instead of only 192 kB. It's a question of adress decoding which is different between TOS 1.0x and 2.06.
- EmuTOS open source alternative, you can build it in a way that it fits in original 192 kB adress space. Maybe there are ready files online.
- KAOS TOS 1.04. This is a heavily modified TOS version, based on 1.04. Under other it's also capable to run on 68020++. But it's not very compatible to games, demos and other strange stuff, but that's not the target of a such vampirzed machine.
- Additional Hint: Instead of Kickstart-ROM, TOS is "nationalized" and peoples want to have the TOS in their language. Is there a way that user can flash his own TOS language ROM?
The ATARI community is looking very interested at your doings. It is very welcome to get such a turbocard (we know it's even much more than this). Let us help you, there are some little traps where you can fall in when trying to get Vampire to run on ST. We have very experienced peoples in the ATARI community which can assist you.
An important question is: Does the 68080 Apollo Core support syncronous bus protocol of the ST? In Amiga 600/600/2000 the 68000 is running in asyncrounous mode. Some of our guys looked at your Vampire specs and they see that on the CPU socket there are a few signals missing which are necessary for sync mode. Can you tell something about this?


Gunnar von Boehn
(Apollo Team Member)
Posts 6207
17 Oct 2016 16:40


oneSTone o2o wrote:

Let us help you, there are some little traps where you can fall in when trying to get Vampire to run on ST. We have very experienced peoples in the ATARI community which can assist you.

This sounds good.
We look forward to you guys helping us here.
 
oneSTone o2o wrote:

An important question is: Does the 68080 Apollo Core support syncronous bus protocol of the ST? In Amiga 600/600/2000 the 68000 is running in asyncrounous mode. Some of our guys looked at your Vampire specs and they see that on the CPU socket there are a few signals missing which are necessary for sync mode. Can you tell something about this?

This must a misunderstanding or there must be something lots in translation?

The 68000 supports 2 protocols
a) async with AS/DTACK
b) sync for legacy 8bit with e-clock

The Amiga uses both.
Normal DRAm uses async protocol.
Legacy 8-bit Chips like the CIA use e-clock.
And of course both protocols are working fine on Apollo too. :)




Ian Parsons

Posts 230
17 Oct 2016 17:53


A500 uses _VMA and _VPA with the CIA chips/Gary but Gayle handles access to the CIAs using different signalling as far as I can see.


OneSTone O2o

Posts 159
17 Oct 2016 19:24


This sounds good. One more thing you need to know to get TOS up:
 
  68000 reset vector is at adress zero. I think you know this. But TOS ROM is at upper end of 68000 adress range. (I don't know where in Amiga adress range the Kickstart ROM is located) So when decoding ROM adress, you need to decode the first bytes (reset vector) of the ROM to adress zero, and the rest to upper adress. What I don't know is if these reset vecor bytes are also decoded again to the original adress of the ROM ("16MB minus ROM-size (192/256 kB)"). (I think it would be better to do so)
 
  Some of the better ATARI Turbocards with onboard TOS-ROM, like several versions of the PAK series don't do this decoding for Reset vecor. That means that these turbocards need a TOS sitting in the mainboard socket to just start the ROMs on the turbo card.
 
  You can refer to the memory map in Profibuch (http://www.atariprofibuch.de/).
 
  Another important ressource of technical informations, specs, circuit diagrams, etc. is EXTERNAL LINK

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