#Computer Cores

1 messages · Page 3 of 1

waxen nymph
blazing wraith
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Thanks! I'll check that out

gloomy bolt
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And now I've seen Bad Apple on an Acorn. Thanks for the tip @waxen nymph

blazing wraith
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I get not ready error 102 when I hit shift f10

gloomy bolt
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Do you have a VHD mounted?

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Sent you a link to the one I use.

blazing wraith
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Nope..I figured that might have something to do with but couldn't find one..thanks!

gloomy bolt
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NP!

thick pendant
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good thing i was not doing a livestream of me "testing and fixing etc" this thing at work today...

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there was a lot of "etc"

blazing wraith
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When I got the mister I got it for the console cores didn't expect I would use the computer cores so much of course I didn't know they had stuff like this to make them so easy to get games up and running

thick pendant
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Similar for me, although exactly backwards. Never experienced TG-16 until MiSTer

blazing wraith
undone anvil
thick pendant
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haha, never, but in this case I'm definitely glad i was not streaming my rants

vestal ginkgo
undone anvil
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just made sure I'm subbed

honest stratus
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x68k core is nice but Quarth's sound is a little bit off

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the music is pitched up

tall grotto
blazing wraith
vestal ginkgo
undone anvil
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Awesome!

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btw, isn't there a channel on this server where people can announce MiSTer streams?

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I thought there was

chilly rain
undone anvil
vestal ginkgo
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I had to restart completely. new stream...

undone anvil
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no worries

vestal ginkgo
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ok back

copper slate
stiff steeple
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tthe mac guy doesn't look hipster enough

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everything else spot on

clear meadow
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Funny thing is that Justin Long (the actor who played "Mac") would later defect to Intel and PC later

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He did a campaign for Intel PCs when the M1s started happening

stiff steeple
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everyone has to grow up eventually

gloomy bolt
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When the '150K buyout for 13 weeks, reup negotiation on expiration' comes rolling it, we all grow up.

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That's a swing at a commercial rate for an A-list actor based on scale mid-late 00s. Those are GOLD gigs. Every time the ad plays after that, they have to negotiate a new contract and generally just write you another check. Mariners bought me out for 13 weeks and bought another 9 after. Free money.

stiff steeple
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you're an A list actor?

gloomy bolt
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I'm an actor. So I know the pay structure.

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I did get over scale though. Which rocked.

stiff steeple
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Oh neat, have you been in anything i've heard of?

gloomy bolt
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1-2 Switch?

stiff steeple
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Not familiar

gloomy bolt
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The Gamers movies. A few commercials for a midwest US place I've never seen called Mr. Hero. Starr Mazer, Starr Mazer DSP, Gibbous, a Cthulhu Adventure.

stiff steeple
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is that a movie? google just brings up a game

gloomy bolt
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The game.

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It was a Switch launch game. Should have been a pack in.

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Oh, Devolver Digital. I was in every one of their Big Fancy Press Conference E3 videos until last year.

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I'm "Your Uncle who Works at Nintendo" on camera, the voice for Devolver Direct in another... some other voices. It all runs together with them.
And I'm in Dynamo Dream, which you may have seen a very viral green screen video of, but like 1/100th of the views on that went to the actual show. Hehe. So, technically I guess I've been on Corridor Crew since they did show my clip.

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And the odds are VERY low, but my highest paycheck has come from Warner Bros for 3 Busy Debras. But I don't know ANYBODY who has watched that show.

stiff steeple
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that seems like an adventure, I hope you get a big break

gloomy bolt
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I'm happy enough a lot of my friends are. The chaos is too much for a career. Plus I live in Seattle, not LA. So I'll never get benefits or anything. We're too small a market.

lunar trellis
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Justin Long got together with Lauren Mayberry from Chvrches, so he did alright for himself there

copper slate
gloomy bolt
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Until it wasn't.

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And I should be very clear, I did voices only. About 60% of the English male voices and "fire" so technically I've been in a Super Bowl commercial. The on-camera actors are all French I believe.

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(And not Grey DeLise as a bunch of folks insist. She had nothing to do with it and the picture on the front is not her)

hollow ice
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Gamers movies? As in dorkness rising?

gloomy bolt
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Yep

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I'm actually missing the big reunion we do every year because I'm sick. 😦

hollow ice
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Hate to hear that and hope for a speedy recovery.

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We still quote that movie all the time in our gaming sessions.

gloomy bolt
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Love to hear it! And thanks. It's not covid at least. But my wife and her parents both got it, too and it doesn't spark a fever. Sneaky sneaky. So my wife has been sick for 3 weeks now. But is FINALLY starting to clear up.

pallid cradle
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regarding X68000 - is the Japanese-language documentation that is serving as the chokepoint online? I have a friend who can read Japanese, and while we were talking about it yesterday he mentioned he might be up for helping with that if the materials already exist on the internet

tall grotto
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But yes that is the main chokepoint for furthering work on the project. Not many people that understand both Japanese and VHDL/Verilog (well, isolated to people that know about the MiSTer project I mean)

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I should mention that reading Japanese and translating it is an entirely different beast

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It does not translate directly to English a lot of times... which makes that more difficult than simply reading it.

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With all the technical documentation, that's why we've mainly needed to find someone that knows Japanese and can actually fix up the core themselves... hence the dilemma

pallid cradle
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he does some paid Japanese translation on the side

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but yeah, even though he's a programmer I don't think he knows VHDL or verilog

tall grotto
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I mean, he's welcome to try, but there's a lot

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And translating to something that could be understood by any programmer is the rough part, especially since they may not be able to contact the translator for clarification

pallid cradle
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well he's indicated to me that whenever he's able to actually get the bits to have his own mister he wants to get in on the forum/discord so that may be an option yet lol

tall grotto
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well anyone is welcome. There's a lot of people that have hopes for the X68k core getting finished some day but it's just been in hiatus since the last person halted his work.

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I think he's just busy with other projects

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Someone has mentioned his name before. I haven't been here that long to remember who it was. Just joined like 8 months ago

void belfry
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Puu-san. Think now he is working on FM-Towns core

tall grotto
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Wasn't it a case of just being a bit too complex for him or something?

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Just a lot of work to try and understand the hardware?

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I think there's another issue of there not being a lot of documentation there to begin with

lunar trellis
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The other issue is Puu-san doesn't work out of Github, and his cores need a lot of work to bring them into Main, so with the x68000 work was done to get it released, which is the core you have, and since then he has made updates but he hasn't worked from the core in Main so it will be a pain for anyone to bring those updates over, and as far as I know nobody has yet.

copper slate
lunar trellis
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No they are made for MiSTer but I don't think he uses the framework

copper slate
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How odd, well either way appreciate the people who update it to work within the framework.

lunar trellis
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Yeah, it is a funny one with Puu being in Japan and their rules about emulations and GitHub, it is a real shame, but good he is doing these. I wouldn't hold out for there being solid, easy to use, cores in Main for PC98 or FM Towns anytime soon, maybe never.

crimson fulcrum
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IIUC there's no actual rules about emulators and githubs it's more suspicions that people have. Like somehow hosting the code on your blog makes it less likely to get arrested (over something you can't really get arrested for) than hosting on github

lunar trellis
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Or fired seems to be the other fear

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It's a moot argument though, as he doesn't use GitHub and that doesn't look like it will ever change

crimson fulcrum
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yeh. しょうがない as they say

lunar trellis
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Not as sexy, but if anyone is a fan of older Japanese machines I would expect a good number to trickle out this year

crimson fulcrum
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ooh might we get some of the older sharps?

lunar trellis
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X1 almost certainly

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Are there any others you are interested in?

gloomy bolt
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Sho-Nuff ...ganai.

crimson fulcrum
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X1 was what I was thinking of. PC6000 would be interesting too (NEC not a sharp), and probably just a lot more I don't even know about

woven lava
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how good is the pc88 core at the moment?

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I know pc98 is still worked on

lunar trellis
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I think pc88 is in a decent state, has been in Main for awhile, Alan and some others did a decent bit of work getting that one into Main

crimson fulcrum
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yeah PC88 is rough, but lots of play if you want to wade into it

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IIRC I got snatcher booting on it at one point at least

lunar trellis
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Ah, is it still unstable?

crimson fulcrum
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I mean, it works and stuff plays, but ADPCM sound is still half done and some games don't work or have graphical problems.

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nothing really that I would tell people to hold back on trying it. A lot of stuff does work and plays

lunar trellis
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Hitachi Basic Master Jnr. and PC8001 are both bootable, but need ability to load files added. PC6001 there is a starting point from another core but needs a lot of work.

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Was PC88 originally a Puu core?

woven lava
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I think so

crimson fulcrum
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pc88 100% originally puu

lunar trellis
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Hmm, well people excited about PC-98 and FM Towns cores should probably base their expectations on the current PC-88 and x68000 cores

opal void
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But I think the Japanese ROMs are already there

granite umbra
opal void
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So smooth

night shuttle
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I expected seeing something like 5fps

stiff steeple
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gross

hollow ice
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if you look further down the thread where he captures from a real computer you’ll get your 5fps video

night shuttle
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Now I am disappointed

hollow ice
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wasn’t there talk of running pcxt at 40mhz or so? can get your full speed wolf3d cga fix that way!

thick pendant
hollow ice
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Because what fun is that? 😉

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The person who did the conversion went out of his way to strip the code of things that would prevent it from running on an 8088

woven lava
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AFAIK real PCXT have been overclocked to 15Mhz but more makes them unstable or overheat; the core can do better but it's still pretty low in relative terms of PC speeds

stiff steeple
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sounds like a game that was made to play on a fantasy machine only

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and apparently only for people who enjoy torturing their eyes? That video above is almost offensive, it's like a recording of roadkill

woven lava
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its for those who enjoy the ASCII renderer

hollow ice
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yeah, I mean, I think there would be work needed to update the assets to be a little more visible, but having spent my childhood with those 4 colors, I have nostalgia to thank for making it look cool

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and if 10 mhz can make it do 5fps…then 25 should definitely be old school fps playable!

thick pendant
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As I recall there was very little improvement reported on the PCXT core at 20mhz vs 10mhz

vestal ginkgo
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and it very much breaks things like floppy access

clear meadow
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Wait
Doesn't Wolf3D require a 286 to run?

stiff steeple
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I would expect it to require a 386

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286 with >640k or 8mhz cpu are kind of rare

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maybe you could torture it into running on a 286 but probably not in a productive way

honest stratus
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I should try the DOS core but I dunno if it could handle Wing Commander

thick pendant
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They were a good alternative to the 386sx as they ran pretty much the same speed

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I had a 25mhz one

stiff steeple
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in the united states I have never seen any like that

thick pendant
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They really were common in the home-built computers like you'd make from parts ordered from Computer Shopper

stiff steeple
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this must have been well into the 386 era

thick pendant
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yeah, like I said they were an alternative to the 386 machines which were still pretty expensive

stiff steeple
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I remember wanting to upgrade a 286 ram so it could run windows 3.1 and it was exhorbitantly expensive to take it from 640k to a megabyte

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and that was 1992

thick pendant
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my 286 board just came with 4mb

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or maybe I had to buy the SIPS separately, can't remember

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but it had 4 slots

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SIPPs were like SIMS but with pins

stiff steeple
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386's apparently were released in 1985

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I dunno when these 286s with 4mb of ram ever entered the picture but it sounds weird

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I think home built computers in general were pretty rare in that era

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I do remember computer shopper though, that massive 5lb magazine

thick pendant
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ya, it was cool because it had a section for almost every obsolete computer too

gloomy bolt
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I didn't start building until 386, but I also didn't have a computer until 386. I knew zero people with a homebuilt 286 growing up, but I would attribute that more to 'this is MY computer, you and your friends don't even get to look at it' from the parents.

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Also, my bones just turned to dust, my tongue to cinders, and I have drifted away in a cloud of old.

stiff steeple
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someday we'll be the last generation that really remember the time before tech

thick pendant
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I remember only having a black and white TV

gloomy bolt
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I played sonic on a 5" black and white screen for a month until I got back to my mom's and got to hook it up to a color TV.

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Plato was right.

thick pendant
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and doing nuclear War drills in school

gloomy bolt
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I didn't get those. I got the nuclear war ANXIETY, but by then it was like 'yeah, your desk isn't going to do anything but melt into your screaming face.'

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We did have volcano drills in Washington State a lot.

thick pendant
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there is one with 2 SIPP slots

gloomy bolt
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If I was a sociopathic billionaire I'd name my kids after defunct motherboard brands.

thick pendant
gloomy bolt
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Epox, BFG...CLEAN YOUR ROOM

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Nice!

stiff steeple
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oh, this is little HeadLand Jones.

gloomy bolt
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"It's OK. He named himself."

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What was that dual chip one that EVERY enthusiast wanted .. Tian?

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Tyan.

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Tiger?

stiff steeple
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I stand by my comment though, I think they were relatively uncommon compared to the IBM 286 8mhz machines

thick pendant
gloomy bolt
thick pendant
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that one is has 4 SIPP slots

stiff steeple
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when I think of a 286, im not thinking of a 25mhz machine with 4mb of ram

thick pendant
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It was real common on all the smaller footprint boards

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I ran windows 3.x on my 286 with ET4000 video board. It ran great although you could not virtualize DOS

stiff steeple
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3.0 did fine on 286

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3.1 didnt

thick pendant
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I'm pretty sure it worked unless you tried to run in Enhanced mode which gave you the DOS virtualization. It ran in Real, Protected and Enhanced mode with Real being useless

gloomy bolt
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My MCSE was in NT4.0. I hate Win 3.1.

clear meadow
# stiff steeple I would expect it to require a 386

It does support 286s, but it's really having enough memory and CPU
808x is out of the question though, it needs extended memory that isn't covered by the 286

And Kit, it's not about practicality - it's about it working at all ;P

gloomy bolt
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I would imagine there were tons of long standing industrial 286 boards that took newer and newer accessories, too. Industrial 386s are still being made new, AFAIK.

thick pendant
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4MB was fine for Windows.... I remember installing NT 1.0 on this massive NEC 486 EISA, SCSI, 12MB RAM etc... total powerhouse system which was sooooo slow

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being pretty disgusted with MICROS~1

gloomy bolt
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Hehehe

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"Why do you work on a 386, John T. Authorson?"
Save As > Final_final_copy_draft_My_Story_edit4_redo.doc
final~1.doc
"Because."

clear meadow
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There wasn't an NT 1.0

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There was a NT 3.1 though

thick pendant
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right 🙂 forgot

woven lava
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maybe in theory it could go faster but it would barely reach a 6Mhz 286 in speed

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at least ao486 is easier to set to CPU settings comparable to an AT

sour smelt
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so what is the story with the current Apple II core? Is anyone actively working on it or is it really just a port of Apple2fpga from years ago?

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just playing around with it briefly, i've seen a number of oddities with it -- it has the European character set, it has enhanced Apple IIe ROMs but defaults to a 6502 instead of a 65C02, the colorburst inhibit behaves differently than a real Apple II, etc.

woven lava
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it got some improvements after it was ported, but it doesn't have an active dev looking after it as other cores do

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would be nice if we could select the keyboard ROM we want to use (I'd like to have it with an FR rom, default is a UK rom)

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alanswx recently added serial card support for it

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the core still runs pretty well - main caveat is the lack of floppy write support (you an write to HDD)

thick pendant
woven lava
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yep

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its a tough nut to crack, its very finicky to get right for some reason

thick pendant
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I learned to program in Pascal on the Apple II, although i'd get to class early to get one of the 2 IIgs machines

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then later people got Apple II with composite color monitor

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then the last few got Apple II with green monitor

warm flax
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I grew up with an Apple IIc. I learned to take abuse playing Wizardry and King's Quest 2.

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A very console like computer for its time with the disks auto starting.

blazing wraith
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Playing Where in the world is Carmen Sandiego

warm flax
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I owned where in the USA is Carmen Sandiego

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And a Wizard of Oz adventure game. I think those were my first 4 Apple games

blazing wraith
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I think I also played Maniac Mansion too

waxen brook
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Fightin' Spirit for Amiga, played on the MiSTer core:
https://youtu.be/T8iMcCmK6MI

YouTube
MiSTer Walrus FPGA
MiSTer FPGA - Fightin' Spirit [Kento 1cc] / Amiga

Thanks to @damgentemp and @dantemendes on Twitter for the recommend on this one! I hadn't played a good fighting game on Amiga before, so this was a nice surprise! Pretty amazing artwork and sound design in this one, with some sprites and background art ripped-off from SNK classics. The only major downside is that controls are a bit stiff fee...

▶ Play video
thick pendant
waxen brook
thick pendant
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I thought there were two versions of this game, one for the A1200/4000 AGA and another for OCS/ECS machines

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maybe i'm thinking of a different game

warm flax
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It's there one with good gameplay?

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Ha, I kid. Sort of

waxen brook
# warm flax Ha, I kid. Sort of

I feel ya. It's got the trademark stiff amiga controls, and input windows are not properly implemented for charge moves. Besides that, a pretty good effort really

thick pendant
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seems pretty good as far as the contemporary computer fighting games.

waxen brook
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Definitely. Compared to most computer fighting games I've played, its a cut above

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the amount they ripped off from SNK/Neo Geo is pretty absurd though. Takes a lot of nerve to put "Copyright S.N.C." in the credits here 😅

thick pendant
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I kinda like bad fighting games though... my favorite is for the 3D0, Way of the Warrior

waxen brook
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still never played that one, but I remember drooling over the screenshots in magazines around the time it released

warm flax
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It looks really good for an Amiga fighter

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Bad fighters are fun. As long as they have some gameplay

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My buddies and I would hold bad fighting game tournaments. We have a trophy and everything

waxen brook
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definitely. been playing an unlicensed Korean fighting game for the Master System lately also, called "Sangokushi 3"

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surprisingly good for an 8bit console fighter

thick pendant
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On amiga Body blows is also pretty good

waxen brook
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noted. looks like theres at least three revisions also "Body Blows/Body Blows Galactic/Ultimate Body Blows"

thick pendant
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I think I like Galactic the best, but i'm not too confident

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I'll have to try them all again

tawny egret
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hey guys for the sharp x68000 core do I need to unzip the .hdf files into the game folder or does the zipped file work?

thick pendant
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I'd unzip them... its not like a huge amount of content for x68000 is there?

tall grotto
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I don't believe hard drive files can load from zips can they?

thick pendant
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that core is janky enough, why add more variables...

thick pendant
tall grotto
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yeah hard drive files mount to be written to

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that won't work I think

thick pendant
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right

tall grotto
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They're not generally that big anyway and it's not like there's a lot of them

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the library wasn't that huge for the computer

thick pendant
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my point is that even if it did somehow work, its probably a bad idea

tawny egret
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thanks guys for the help 😄

waxen ruin
# waxen brook definitely. been playing an unlicensed Korean fighting game for the Master Syste...

Oh. That's a port of Sango Fighter, which I played a lot of as it was shareware on the PC. Looks like you can download Sango Fighter 1 and 2 for DOS, and Sango Fighter for Windows and a few other games for free from the official page: https://www.superfighter.com/sango/dos/index.html

Sango Fighter

Sango Fighter is a fighting game for MS-DOS and Windows, developed by Panda Entertainment and Super Fighter Team.

fast kraken
waxen brook
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that one looks very nice. gonna try that on AO486- appreciate the link!

stiff steeple
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like it could fail at any moment and ruin everything

thick pendant
stiff steeple
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it just suddenly stops and you hear that repeated grinding, over and over and then, you feel something brush your cheek and turn to look, but nothing is there, you turn back to the screen and your heart freezes in your chest as you simply see:
Abort, retry, fail?

thick pendant
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then you take the disk out, look at it, replace it, finally, select retry, but it usually never works

stiff steeple
# 
Abort, Retry, Fail?r
Abort, Retry, Fail?r
Abort, Retry, Fail?r
Abort, Retry, Fail?r
Abort, Retry, Fail?r
Abort, Retry, Fail?r
Abort, Retry, Fail?qwerqwerqw
tall grotto
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I have heard a lot of people complaining about the Dreamcast's disk reading noise but I found out later that it wasn't nearly as bad with real discs and they were all burning cd's which makes the reader work 3x as hard because the data doesn't generally get written the same way as a gdrom. DCRes tended to make CD images that were well structured but yeah most did not do it right. And the gdrom drive suffered for it.

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CD not disks I know

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But the discussion reminded me of it.

thick pendant
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and I have never understood the difference between Abort and Fail

stiff steeple
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the joke is on us, it wasn't a question but a statement of fact

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it aborts, you retry, and then, you fail

tall grotto
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Which cores currently support physical tape/disk drives?

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Or is it just tape drives. since it uses the audio port.

stiff steeple
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a few support tapes as audio input

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I dont think any support diskettes except maybe as some extreme mods for proof of concept stuff

tall grotto
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Yeah I just realized ... How would that interface with it.

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Without custom hardware.

stiff steeple
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you could use the 40 pin second ram slot with a special build or something

tall grotto
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Yeah.

stiff steeple
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maybe multiplex to extremes over user io

thick pendant
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Tape was the bane of early 8-bit micros.. sorry

tall grotto
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You think user io could handle that?

stiff steeple
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not very well

tall grotto
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Yeah...

stiff steeple
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7800 core can load off tapes 🙂

tall grotto
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Commodore 64 and Amiga?

thick pendant
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Amiga never worked from tape

tall grotto
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Shows you what I know.

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Also curious but I haven't looked. Does the c64 core have a c128 mode?

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Or would that require a lot more work.

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Weren't the hardware similar?

thick pendant
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no, but there is a c128 core being developed

tall grotto
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Ah

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It would require a separate core then... I see.

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Sorry to derail the conversation

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I messed with a c128 years ago from my brother. It was interesting

stiff steeple
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was c128 a real computer?

tall grotto
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Was it popular? I don't think so. But it was released.

thick pendant
stiff steeple
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I dunno who hurd is, but if was a real machine then im surprised we dont have it

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especially if it's just a rehash of the same parts as c64

thick pendant
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its a real machine made by Commodore but was launched close to the Amiga so was very much eclipsed

olive junco
tall grotto
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Yeah I'm not sure why it needs its own core either personally.

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Most of the rest of the board was the same wasn't it?

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It would make it pretty annoying for those that want to use the same C64 ROM folder too.

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You can create a symbolic link but not everyone is avid in doing that.

olive junco
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One could always use symlinks

thick pendant
tall grotto
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Hmm... I guess that would be the bulk of the core.

thick pendant
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There were actually two revisions of the machine released

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one I think gave the 80col chip more RAM

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There was a GEOS released for it and obviously terminal software supporting the 80col chip, but mostly it was ignored due to C64 compatibility.

thick pendant
stiff steeple
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oh I thought you typo'd bill

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how odd, they must have run out of L's the day he was born

thick pendant
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he designed the C128 and other less popular 8-bit commodore machines

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Bill is a common name but Bil, not so much, kinda cool

woven lava
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back in the day, I mostly played c64 games with a friend who owned a c128... it had a c64 backwards compatibility mode

thick pendant
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he has great stories about C=

woven lava
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I remember it used disks, but loading felt slower than on the apple II

thick pendant
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Commodore drives were like a computer containing an entire 6502 cpu... and they used a slow serial bus

woven lava
thick pendant
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i guess you'd call it a distinction without a difference

tall grotto
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Basically the Commodore 128 didn't offer a lot over the 64, and so most people felt it was more cost effective to keep buying the C64 instead. It didn't offer 2x the performance. And it was priced way higher, closer to the Amiga, which was a way better investment

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I heard from my brother today that at the time of the Amiga, the Commodore team was ran by a bunch of people that just weren't running the company well

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poor marketing choices, bad decisions, etc

thick pendant
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It did offer 2x the performance, but only in 128 80col mode

tall grotto
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basically wouldn't help C64 stuff

#

So who was going to take the time to rewrite the stuff for C128 when most people didn't have one

thick pendant
#

It can offer a boost to C64 games by switching to 2mhz mode during the vertical refresh

tall grotto
#

The C128 I played with was beautiful

#

and I think it really was amazing for an 8-bit machine. But I think this forum post summarizes it nicely:

The 128D, was the best 8-bit ever! ... nice looking, felt great, great for programing, could run 99% of C64 software ... what was there not to like ... except it was 1986, not 1982-3 ... 8-bit was 'dead' or dying in '86 ... Amiga could have done much better if it had been 'open' for 3rd party 'cards', like the PC ... sad but true ... Amiga was a 'MAC' .. or could have been ... but poorly run by their CEOs ...

thick pendant
#

like with the mario port or Sams journy

surreal marsh
#

I think that if you couldbuy something officially produced, it should be a core (or should otherwise be runnable), short of a few edge cases (don't need a separate core for each MSX)

tall grotto
#

I guess it depends on how much of the hardware is similar

#

most of the more complex components in the 128 seems to be different from the C64

#

hence a modular core isn't really going to work, given space might be a problem

#

the board layout and construction may be the same, but the beefy chips are all different

#

And that's what takes up a lot of space in the cores for the MiSTer

#

the fact that that much was different and 99% compatibility with C64 software was actually achieved is quite impressive honestly

inland stream
#

I knew a lot of people with C128s but never knew anyone who did anything but run C64 stuff on them

#

A lot of people liked the keyboard better than the breadbox

tall grotto
#

It's built really well.

#

Just... Unfortunately the wrong time.

waxen brook
#

ah nevermind. reading further into some other articles, it looks like the original developer was "Panda Entertainment" and the sms dev made a completely illegal ripoff of it. heh. this lineage has some layers..

woven lava
#

I remember Sango fighter since it was one of the few early SF2 style fighting games on PC

#

I thibk it had 1 or 2 sequels which were better? not sure

#

I played SF2Liu more

#

(homebrewed SF2 with graphics ripped out of SNES screen photos)

waxen brook
#

LOL the way the characters blow up after a fight is hilarious

abstract condor
#

Best (if any) core to run a BSD on?

#

PDP11? 😛

void belfry
#

for sure PDP11

20221211_103800-screen.png
abstract condor
#

Nice

#

Does that have any sort of networking?

void belfry
waxen ruin
# stiff steeple was c128 a real computer?

The second computer we had after the TI-99/4A was the Commodore 128 (Third was a 486 my dad bought). It was given to us by a friend of the family, who had upgraded to something else. The compatibility with c64 was great, and that was almost all we used it for as there just wasn't a lot of software for c128. The only thing I know of we used c128 mode for was for a Hero Quest board game I started writing in BASIC (only language I knew at the time), with a bunch of single color sprites for the figures.

vestal ginkgo
void belfry
#

Couldn't agree more, it's getting cluttered with nonsense and getting real tech info from it is becoming bit of a struggle

vestal ginkgo
#

I'm kind of done with it.

abstract condor
#

It was a little ridiculous with the legal talk in that thread

stiff steeple
#

generally people do care more about being license warriors, but having a GPL framework is really not ideal

#

GPL is a terrible license for that bit of code, as it's 1) viral and 2) agressively incompatible with most other licenses that have any form of restriction

#

but the people who wrote the code are who matter

#

and none of them are going to care unless you try to sell it

dire solstice
#

I was reading in the mister fpga forum about over clocking the nano CPU. Has anyone done this yet and would the AO486 run better with this?

thick pendant
#

yes and no

#

it will not effect the CPU emulation at all but may (very slightly) improve HD IO

#

However, reportedly it does make a substantial difference with MUNT if you don't have a real Roland MT-32 or mt32-pi...

thick pendant
tall grotto
#

Most of the hard work is done via the FPGA so games won't be affected by the cpu.

#

Processing done by the cpu is the only thing affected. So file I/O with loading the files from SD (not the file io in ao486 core), munt/fsynth, and the menus I guess? But that already runs so fast it wouldn't be noticeable.

#

I personally wouldn't overclock it since it's passively cooled.

thick pendant
crimson fulcrum
#

I think it also helps speed up accessing zip'd roms and IIRC people had success with CHD working better with faster cd read speeds on PSX

thick pendant
#

I'm not sure if the overclocking can be enabled and disabled without reboot, but it might be an interesting idea to only enable it in special cases where it makes sense incase it does effect the overall longevity of the DE-10

#

I doubt it does though as power draw and heat increases are unsubstantial, but that is obviously speculation.

crimson fulcrum
#

you can control the clock in userspace on the fly, so it would be doable to only OC when needed

thick pendant
#

Then it could already easily be done by simply editing /usr/sbin/uartmode script...

stiff steeple
#

chd never didn't work perfectly

#

sorry for the double negative, but it benefits in no way from overclocking

#

zip access maybe marginally, but they aren't solid archives anyway so you'd have a tough time measuring a difference

thick pendant
#

I don't use zips. Not trying to cram everything on the original 8gb card the DE-10 came with...

stiff steeple
#

I think mostly it will increase the temperature, and on fpga's higher temperature means lower stability for cores that dont pass timing

#

so i'd not do it without active cooling, personally

#

the only benefits you will actually see are munt and amiga if you use that weird branch that uses the arm as a cpu

#

possibly scumm? I dunno cause i'd never use mister for that

thick pendant
#

The ScummVM could probably benefit from it, but, its like the ao486 100mhz thing... Is something really going to benefit that much form a 10mhz increase? Like suddenly something was unplayable at 90mhz is substantially better at 100mhz?

stiff steeple
#

it's not really 10 mhz

#

it's more like +3-4 mhz

fast kraken
#

isn't the arm overclock more than that?

#

800 is stock and the overclock is like 1200?

thick pendant
#

i think it can go to 1200

stiff steeple
#

so you'd go from like a sx 33 to an sx 37

#

but what does that have to do with the arm being overclocked?

thick pendant
#

Yeah, but its not going to make it run engines that need 3D

fast kraken
#

might help for scummvm stuff like blade runner i guess

crimson fulcrum
stiff steeple
#

overclocking HPS doesn't make the fpga go faster

fast kraken
#

i wonder if it makes ftp faster 😄

stiff steeple
#

if anything it makes the fpga go slower because higher speeds are less stable at higher temperatures

#

anyway i'd suggest not doing it unless you have a problem you're trying to solve by doing so

#

there's no way to know what it might mess with in the future

fast kraken
#

having it dynamically clock up for munt/soundfonts would be neat

thick pendant
fast kraken
#

someone already did iirc

#

the overall chip temp doesn't rise much but who knows about hotspots on the die etc

thick pendant
#

I thought they did power draw and it was pretty much the same within error?

fast kraken
#

they did both i think?

#

more data is always good though 🙂

thick pendant
#

can't hurt for someone else to check, I have no way to monitor power though 🙂

fast kraken
#

you can get gadgets for that pretty cheap

#

like usb power measurers

thick pendant
#

the temp thing I have is really for automotive use, but sould work

#

I have 2 MiSTers, one which is traditionally (despite being actively cooled) had trouble with cores that don't pass timing constraints properly, and the other one.

#

but it seems like that has not been a concern as of lately

#

be good to test them both

stiff steeple
#

I dont really see how you can have a 50% increase in clock frequency without a temp increase somewhere?

thick pendant
#

that can happen

#

if the power draw only increases marginally

stiff steeple
#

does it seem realistic to have a 50% clock increase without a power draw increase?

thick pendant
#

yes, because its the overall power draw... suppose it depends on the % the CPU uses

waxen nymph
#

Has anyone ever gotten the acorn atom tape adc to work? I tried a few tapes but I didn’t see anything. Ideas? Not sure if it ever worked.

gloomy void
thick pendant
#

We can now do desktop publishing on the PCXT core 🙂

gloomy void
#

Some screenshots, the scrolling to the left that occurs in Prehistorik seems to be because of the parameters that the game puts in it, which do not match the standard 720x348 graphics of the Hercules, because I'm looking at other games and they look good, like this Monkey Island game

IMG_20230116_185214_728.jpg IMG_20230116_185210_352.jpg IMG_20230116_185205_893.jpg IMG_20230116_185201_684.jpg
hearty vector
#

Is it possible to create a jiffy dos rom for the c64 core using the 1571 disk drive? I looked at the github page and I am confused why the Arthur wants you to combine roms with the 1541-ii ....

gloomy bolt
#

Have you tried it? I know that the 1541 and 1581 have implementation, but I dunno about the 1571. Might be a fun experiment.

gloomy void
stiff steeple
#

is it supposed to look like that?

gloomy void
stiff steeple
#

is it supposed to have artifact colors or something?

gloomy void
#

However, it is still under development, and there is still some room for improvement.

gloomy void
stiff steeple
#

wow, gritty

woven lava
#

SIMCGA is what we had back in the day .. hercules XT and AT on monochrome displays were common where I was around 1989

#

if I'm not mistaken, you cannot use composite with it as the HGC signal is not NTSC compatible

#

@gloomy void your screenshot doesnt seem integer scaled horizontally

thick pendant
#

In HS i worked in the print shop as an apprentice and also for the student paper, so I did a lot of desktop publishing with Ventura Publisher.

thick pendant
# stiff steeple wow, gritty

720×348x1bpp compared pretty favorably with the Mac machines 512×342x1bpp and if you were upgrading from MDA did not need a new monitor. It really was excellent for desktop publishing.

stiff steeple
#

I will take your word for it

#

we had a lot of black and white macs when I was in high school in the early 90's, and I remember being very confused why they weren't in color

#

I absolutely hated them

thick pendant
#

It was a Steve Jobs thing... Remember, the first NeXT machines were also mono

stiff steeple
#

terrible choice

#

it's a shame apple didn't go out of buisiness

thick pendant
#

MICROS~1 could not let that happen...

woven lava
#

there were already color macs by then, but schools would inevitably have older hardware

#

my school (not in the US) mostly had PCs with a couple of high end (color) macs for printing and graphic design tasks

stiff steeple
#

they got one shitty 286 in the corner used by only me

#

but it was color

thick pendant
#

Yeah, mine did not have any color macs.... I remember my Physics teacher taking us to a Mac trade show on a field trip, because he had no idea how to teach Physics. That was around the time the MacII FX was introduced but not yet available.

stiff steeple
#

when I was in grade school the same computer room had apple2's

#

I hated them

#

my PC at home was way better

#

in the mid 80's

#

apples are just a long legacy of making me miserable

thick pendant
#

I did like the IIgs a little and would get to pascal class early to get one of the 2 available

stiff steeple
#

there was pascal for the apple 2?

woven lava
#

yes

stiff steeple
#

AP Pascal was what I used the 286 for (with borland turbo pascal)

#

the two boys in the class used the macs for it

thick pendant
#

They had some with blurry composite color monitors, and if you were last in class then you'd get a mono

woven lava
#

I had a book about making games with Pascal on A2

thick pendant
#

It had UCSD Pascal... was not like Turbo Pascal with pointers...

stiff steeple
#

I dunno why but im pretty surprised it had anything more complex than basic

woven lava
#

my mom considered Pascal to br a "proper" programming language over BASIC or assembly (she was right)

stiff steeple
#

it seemed so primitive it's hard to believe it had a compiler

#

well, basic is more of a scripting language

woven lava
stiff steeple
#

assembly is more like.. just having a conversation with the computer

woven lava
#

as primitive as the A2 might have been, it was better than coding with punch cards

stiff steeple
#

I suppose, but at least the punchcards weren't apples

thick pendant
#

well, in Turbo Pascal you could use assembly whenever you wanted, type asm begin ... end;

stiff steeple
#

those were the good old days

#

was kinda like John Denver said "talk to god and listen to the casual reply"

#

except with a cpu instead of god

thick pendant
#

well, except for dealing with that stupid 64K segmented architecture

woven lava
#

by then (PC era) I had upgraded to C, much closer to the metal

thick pendant
#

Then turbo pascal? Nope

stiff steeple
#

I took an independant study in C in high school, in 1994

woven lava
#

may be comparable, I just moved to c++ from there which felt more high level

stiff steeple
#

but the exams were in Pascal still, so they didn't normally teach it

thick pendant
#

I did not take c and c++ until college

#

We had COBOL, BASIC and UCSD Pascal in HS

woven lava
#

I think I used Turbo C, it was the blue Borland IDE

thick pendant
#

I was a student teacher in the Basic class and I got frustrated because they gave me the people who needed extra help getting caught up

#

And they just did not care... so I could not teach them anything,

#

So then they put me in charge of the advanced students wich was much better

woven lava
#

not caring is why they were lacking behind ... 😑

thick pendant
#

I mean the students did not care

woven lava
#

yes I know

#

its not like they wanted to learn but just didnt have access

thick pendant
#

I never had the patience to teach someone who not interested in learning, but I'd bend over backwards to help someone who really was trying.

woven lava
#

I had computers at home and I still tried to get into my HS' computer room at any chance I got 😅

#

its makes a huge difference when somebody is trying, yes. I feel it at work helping other teams sometimes

thick pendant
#

I remember the guy who finally made me snap was this guy who said he did (NOT) to need to learn Basic because he was going to join the John Jacobs "Power Team"... he was not much over 5' tall 🙂

abstract condor
#

Line number oriented coding makes you taller

#

(and also prematurely bald)

thick pendant
#

Unfortunately we used Quick Basic (no line numbers)

abstract condor
#

Aw

sour smelt
thick pendant
sour smelt
gloomy void
#

it would be great to test it on the PCXT core

woven lava
#

I'm sure the PCXT core can beat that ^ 🙂

worthy zealot
#

The AO486 core has that nice utility to change core settings using DOS commands... does the Amiga Minimig core has something similar? I think I asked Sorg about getting boot settings for the AO486 core similar to the Amiga ones, given how the AO486 core has several more boot options than the Amiga but he argued that it was not needed on the AO486 core due to it already having that system with the DOS utility that could chance the core settings to... well, anything I guess.

dire solstice
#

Hi peeps, are there any new developments with the Sharpe 68k core? I might have missed some news, but cant recall seeing much posted. Appreciate any insights, thanks.

The few games I tried had graphical bugs, but I imagine thats still the case.

thick pendant
#

Other than mount drives would would you want the util to do? Amiga is the original PnP, but it detects everything at boot...

thick pendant
#

I wonder if a Hercules version woulkd be better...

woven lava
#

a monochrome version with texture mods (for clarity) would be neat

gloomy void
worthy zealot
#

But the reason for it would be to be able to load 68000 and 68020 specific stuff. I have been experimenting with CDTV and CD32 emulation and CDTV wont work without the 68000 CPU. Also some tests are being done to add CDDA support to the Minimig core, so it might be all the more relevant.

lunar trellis
#

Do you need to add 68000 and 68020 CPUs to the Amiga core?

thick pendant
vestal ginkgo
thick pendant
vestal ginkgo
#

It was difficult to separate from reality. 😉 I do like that people are coding and releasing these kind of things though. Wolf was my first game where it really had a wow factor for me.

thick pendant
#

Same with me, I had this 25mhz 286 with VGA, never seen anything do "3D" so smoothly...

thick pendant
vestal ginkgo
#

It actually doesn't run that bad with CGA and the viewport turned all the way down

#

5 dots running around lol

thick pendant
#

that was with the MHZ set to highest?

vestal ginkgo
#

yes the AT 3.5 option

thick pendant
#

I find it interesting that there was a pattern with both Intel and Motorola CPUs back then... the even # CPUs mostly add performance and the odd # CPUs mostly add features...

fast kraken
#

intel still do that today they call it tick-tock

thick pendant
#

286, 486, 020, 040, 060 add speed

#

386, 030 add features

fast kraken
#

tick - shrink die, increase clockspeed
tock - add features, increase ipc

#

makes sense really, shrinking the die is hard enough without trying to change it aswell

thick pendant
#

I guess that is why they called the 060 and "68060" and not "68050"

thick pendant
fast kraken
#

they don't change the whole product name anyone

#

p4 probably had like 3 ticks and tocks

thick pendant
#

I would have been blown away back in the day if you told me there would be CPUs with 8 cores and i'd for sure not been able to comprehend hyperthreading 🙂

fast kraken
#

the chips we have today would of sounded like scifi technobabble back then

#

"yeah its just 64 hyperthreaded cores on a 3d substrate with liquid cooling"

clear meadow
#

It's a three step thing now

crimson fulcrum
#

tic toc... tac?

woven lava
vestal ginkgo
#

well the normal one if I remember is good at around 30 with both l1 and l2, you can tell by the sound the walls make, but I don't remember ever getting AO486 exactly sounding like my real 386 I have

#

if you are picky about those sort of things 😄

gloomy void
dusk bolt
#

Has anyone tried out the new Turrican 2 AGA remake?

gloomy bolt
#

Yeah. It's pretty good. It's Turrican for sure.

#

So.. after downloading it and getting my various parts handed back to me for 5 minutes, I haven't played it. But it was nice.

dusk bolt
#

Need to add it to my SD card then. 😉

gloomy bolt
#

I wear headphones and don't use stereo mixing. It actually is one of the most pleasant Amiga games to play in that regard. Hehe.

dusk bolt
#

Hard stereo separation is no for my brain.

gloomy bolt
#

Oh

#

Definitely a no then.

#

Hehe.

#

It'll make your spine do that spasm thing for sure.

dusk bolt
#

Hehe, I use speakers, not headphones. 🙂

gloomy bolt
#

I wish I could. I can after work, but two WFH folks in the house means headphones...and the stereo separation is very very intense. Hehe.

tribal crown
# stiff steeple does it seem realistic to have a 50% clock increase without a power draw increas...

Sorry for the bump, I just saw this

Going from 800 to 1200 MHz on HPS results in about a 150 mW increase in the menu core (and similar in any cores), almost all of it will be dissipated through the HPS cores.

I believe overclocking will affect FPGA timing to some extent, to what extent probably depends on silicon lottery. I ran the ring buffer core that was posted earlier and overclocking HPS affected the length of the bars, made them longer (not sure if it's some other effect resulting in that though). I've never had stability issues in real life with cores while running at 1200 in the background, even on those with questionable timing, but that's just on my unit

#

For people with boards that are marginal maybe you can underclock HPS to 400 MHz to make the FPGA cores work better. That works with the main kernel right now with a simple script

stiff steeple
#

I wonder how much realistically we could underclock it for portable setups

#

the HPS is what makes the thing hot at all

tribal crown
#

I don't think it'll really improve battery life too much. I measured 140 mW less at 400 MHz and I'm sure there's diminishing returns as you go lower.

#

Also it was not stable at 200 MHz, I got crashes, but I probably didn't try hard enough

#

Note that underclocking seems 100% permitted in Intel's spec for the chip, as they only specify maximums for the frequencies / clock multipliers I'm changing

stiff steeple
#

it would be an interesting excersise to figure out what crashed and why sometime

#

mister binary is probably written with a lot of speed assumptions in mind and I expect there might be various buffer overflows with little exception handling in the wrong situations

tribal crown
#

If I recall it was the entire system that just froze in those situations, not just Mister binary

#

But yeah, for portable MiSTer, while running cores that don't use the HPS at all you could get at least 140 mW improvement by underclocking the HPS during gameplay. May be worth something?

stiff steeple
#

a few more minutes 🙂

tribal crown
#

Yeah it is not going to be that much

#

If you can get the whole thing to draw 4 watts that's still just less than a 4% improvement. I'm sure portable misters will draw more than 4 watts

thick pendant
woven lava
#

@tribal crown what would you say is the average power draw of the MiSter normally? (just to compare with my measurements)

tribal crown
woven lava
#

I seem to get around 7W with MiSTer + BliSSTer v1

thick pendant
#

maybe a Steamdeck sized MiSTer would be possible?

inland stream
dire solstice
#

Hey does anyone whats happening with the sharpe 68k updates. I asked before but think my message got bypassed with another convo 😁

void belfry
dire solstice
#

Thank you most helpful.

I was looking to play any arcade games not yet released, plus other exclusives. Probably not a big deal. Do FM Towns have the same games, but better versions?

void belfry
stiff steeple
lunar trellis
#

Do people who are knowledgable of the FM Towns range know what machine Puu is basing his core on?

granite umbra
#

There is F20 rom in the bios used by the core so it is based on FM Towns II family

knotty briar
#

I can't seem to get the SNAC2IEC working on the C64, does anyone have this working? I get a drive reset signal coming into the drive but it never finds a device or directory listing.

undone anvil
#

hmm.. I know @modest skiff has one. any idea?

knotty briar
#

And I tested on 1571, 1541-II, and pi1541

knotty briar
#

OK so I have NOO idea what or why, but it's working now..

undone anvil
#

👀

#

nice!

stiff steeple
#

@thick pendant I tried the overclocking feature, and neither of my misters is stable even at 1000mhz, so it seems like it's kind of a bust. Oh well.

#

echo 1000000 > /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/scaling_max_freq this makes the HDMI get scrambled and it hard locks after about 10-15 seconds, 1200 just hard locks instantly

#

im seriously skeptical how good an idea it is to overclock at all if there's such instantaneous instability

thick pendant
#

So far I'm have seen no issue at 1000...

undone anvil
#

overclocking hps?

fast kraken
#

hps is the arm cores in the mister

#

i think the stock speed is 800mhz

thick pendant
#

I had set it for 1000 apparently, thought i set it to 1200

#

1200 does not work for me

stiff steeple
#

1000 doesn't even work for me, so I guess there's some silicon lottery

#

but if even 1000 is marginal for some, i'd be worried about using it

abstract condor
#

Couldn't this in fact be cooling related? Since the ARM is the only thing that gets hot really

stiff steeple
#

according to that other guy, the temperature barely changes

#

so I dunno

abstract condor
#

Okay, hm

stiff steeple
#

@tribal crown any idea?

tribal crown
#

Weird, most folks I’ve seen can do at least 1000. Basically it’s very close to the speed at which the lower temp, non industrial, higher speed bin of the Cyclone V can do on the HPS (951 MHz)

#

You have cooling on the chip?

#

What about underclocking? (400000)

thick pendant
#

I doubt it has to do with cooling like when in the case of mine the linux appears to lock the second you try and put it in 1200 mhz

#

I'm still trying to test my other MiSTer... my SD card went read-only and was not taking updates

stiff steeple
#

for both

stiff steeple
#

900 seems to work

#

not really worth it though

thick pendant
#

1000 really does improve munt

stiff steeple
#

that's too bad

#

I would have liked it for the mister that doesnt have an mt32pi

#

all of my de10's are pretty old revisions

#

if it matter

thick pendant
#

I'll probably just end up altering the uartmode script to have it only enabled when munt is running

stiff steeple
#

that would be a handy feature

thick pendant
#

my 64gb SD card went R/O so I replaced it with a 1tb, but i'm now trying to FTP enough ao486 stuff over to try to OC my older MiSTer

#

maybe i should try to oc it while sending the files... that will be the first test

#

@stiff steeple its so far so good at 1000 running FTP in the menu core doing the default static

stiff steeple
#

hrm

thick pendant
#

htop says its 100 maxed

#

this DE-10 was bought in 2017

#

and is the one that tends to act up on unstable cores

tribal crown
#

900 won’t do anything

#

Driver is fixed to those overclocks

#

Due to the way the PLL dividers are set

thick pendant
#

Ok, can already tell 1200 is no good on this one either, but the sftp daemon was dropping connection during ftp until i changed it back to 1000

thick pendant
stiff steeple
thick pendant
#

my older DE-10 seems to not instantly tank at 1200 like the newer one, but 1200 ultimately fails on that one too... I would have expected the results to be exact opposite.

#

as the older one would be the one showing ariifacts on some of the older Minimig cores before they got better timing closure on that core and those issues went away.

tribal crown
thick pendant
#

well, 1000 does seem stable on both mine so far, and it really does improve munt substantially..

fast kraken
#

have you tried mi2?

#

walking around town at the start is really intense on the mt32

thick pendant
thick pendant
thick pendant
stiff steeple
#

I dont use an inline switch

#

4amp meanwell

#

directly

thick pendant
#

i think I have the same one...

tribal crown
# thick pendant I've not looked at the drive code... could it be altered to support more granula...

There’s a lot of different clocks on the DE10 Nano that have to be derived from the same source clock (the VCO clock) as the MPU core clock with dividers. Those are the best to keep the same as stock. For example the “main” clock is 400 MHz. So to get a 1000 MHz MPU clock the VCO has to run at 2000 MHz, the MPU clock divider is 2 and the main clock divider is 5. To get a 1200 MHz MPU clock the VCO is 2400 MHz, MPU divider is 2, and main divider is 6

If you wanted 1100 MHz on the MPU the math doesn’t work out this way. You would set the VCO clock to 2200 MHz but you couldn’t possibly divide that by anything and get 400 MHz. You can get close but I wanted to keep the rest of the clocks in the system the same

At stock VCO is 1600 MHz, main clock divider is 4, MPU divider is 2

At 400 MHz VCO is 1600 MHz, main clock divider is still 4, MPU divider is 4

thick pendant
#

Thanks for the detailed explanation 🙂

#

I'm going to do more testing with ScummVM

tribal crown
#

Fun fact though: the -C6 variant of the Cyclone V runs at 900 something MHz and breaks this. It usually runs the main clock slightly slower to compensate. I played it relatively safe by keeping the main clock the same as it may affect many peripherals ie. Even FPGA stuff, I’m not sure so I was conservative with it

#

Off topic but I’ve tried compiling ao486 targeting the -C6 and the bitstream is compatible. Maybe it’d be a way to help timing closure on marginal cores but hard to test that

thick pendant
#

Maybe one day they will rev the DE-10 with faster ARM, more FPGA...

thick pendant
stiff steeple
#

ironic.

#

I unplugged my mt32pi and now it can hold at 1000

thick pendant
#

Can you check if its dropping the vcc?

stiff steeple
#

I don't have a tool handy for that atm

#

I have one somewhere but heaven only knows where

thick pendant
#

i have a nice fluke, i'll beem it to you...

#

did it materialize yet?

thick pendant
stiff steeple
#

it does, but I have played with that one a lot less

#

im checking to see if munt can keep up with ultima7

#

aww seems like HPS crashed as I was loading the game

#

I got in that time

#

but it seems at 1000mhz it can't keep up with lord britishes castle

#

1200 is still an insta crash

#

it does seem better than it was though, although still not really a perfect experience

thick pendant
#

i'm FTPing a bunch of stuff while messing with the clock between 800 and 1000,

#

definitely provides a nice boost

#

little over 1mb/sec

#

6.27 at 800

#

7.59 at 1000

tribal crown
#

Many people in the thread reported success at 1200 or 1000 but I’ve not done a poll or anything

stiff steeple
#

1000 seems marginal for me

#

like it barely works

#

only with mt32pi unplugged from my desk mister, not at all (so far) on my retrocastle one

thick pendant
#

Not even munt maxes out the cpu like sftp, so i feel like this is a good test

#

plus i need to load up this new 1tb sd micro 🙂

tribal crown
#

I wonder if overclock stability on the ARM correlates at all with FPGA stability as well in marginal cores

#

They’re both on the same silicon after all

#

It’s disappointing that Kitrinx’s misters won’t do 1000 well or at all. I had expected almost all of them to hit 1000 as it’s barely higher than one of the official variants of this chip

thick pendant
#

in my case the one with the more finicky FPGA was more stable at 1200

tribal crown
#

Very interesting

#

What’s the best core to test FPGA finicky-ness?

thick pendant
#

old versions of the minimig core i guess

formal whale
#

Sorry for a terribly uninformed question, but when you mess with the clock speed, does that affect how the cores behave?

stiff steeple
#

potentially

#

it's a hard thing to quantify

thick pendant
#

@tribal crown

image.png
tribal crown
thick pendant
#

its just BasiliskII for the HPS

tribal crown
#

O

thick pendant
#

oh, did not mean to reply to eobet

#

But that is a nice boost.

#

I was alarmed when I heard a wierd sound just now but they was just AD flying toasters kicking in

thick pendant
gloomy bolt
#

Has anyone ever experimented with this? Speaking of? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jph0gxzL3UI

YouTube
RMC - The Cave
The Fastest Apple Mac is an Amiga - Fact or Fiction?

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ShapeS...

▶ Play video
#

Ah, needs the 68882 it looks like.

thick pendant
# gloomy bolt Ah, needs the 68882 it looks like.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tg9epXn9CQs

YouTube
binarybond007
ShapeShifter (Mac Emulator) - MiSTer FPGA - Minimig core (RTG graph...

ShapeShifter (Mac Emulator) - MiSTer FPGA - Minimig core (RTG graphics)

My ShapeShifter config 00:10
Version of Mac OS 00:55
Speedometer 4.02 01:10
Comparison vs MAC LC III 02:35
AfterDark Toasters 02:52
Photoshop 4.0 03:26
Sim City 2000 05:30
Price of Persia 06:40
Sword of Sodan 07:35

Having RTG on Minimig core really speeds up ShapeShifter h...

▶ Play video
gloomy bolt
#

I was just setting up up...hehe.

thick pendant
#

you need to do raw partitions, not HFS files in the Amiga filesystem for best results

gloomy bolt
#

Gotcha. This is till pretty damned impressive.

thick pendant
#

don't go over 2GB

gloomy bolt
#

I totally missed that this is what you were already talking about.

thick pendant
#

BasiliskII and ShapeShifter are essentially revisions of the same thing, and have struggles with the same issues as far as compatibility...

#

This stuff is an interesting diversion until a macII core drops...

undone anvil
#

isn't shapeshifter essentially a virtual machine? Since both host and guest use the same if not similar architecture?

#

I always thought of basiliskII as a software emulator that you can compile to run on different architectures

sudden ice
#

@vestal ginkgo Hi! Is there a tutorial to add games/midi files to the MyMenu?

abstract condor
vestal ginkgo
# sudden ice <@309052653520814081> Hi! Is there a tutorial to add games/midi files to the MyM...

no but pretty easy. MyMenu reads from the real folder system, like c:\GAMES. Install or copy your games in that folder. If you are using long folder names you can name the folder the full name and it will show up in the list. If you want it to auto run when you select the folder you need an autorun.bat in the folder with the game and in that bat just put the real launch script or exe. Readme.ans in the same folder will be auto loaded to the preview panel in mymenu when you select the folder. that can be just a readme.txt renamed to readme.ans or you can create or get an ANSI file from the internet for that panel.

#

thats it

#

MIDI is the same, mount the vhd, copy a bunch of your midi or whatever into a MIDI folder, or music, or whatever and browse to that folder in mymenu. You can click the little drive path at the top to select a different folder or path like C:\GAMEs or press F2 will also bring up the drive selection menu.

sudden ice
sudden ice
vestal ginkgo
#

I can't remember how much space I left. I thought it was close to 1GB

sudden ice
#

Was trying to copy over a 3gb midi pack over to the vhd but it gave me a size error message

#

Oh ok

vestal ginkgo
#

ohhh

#

yeah

#

you will need to do the VHD dance

#

create a new one attach it in the core as the second disk, boot, format D: and then go mount both in windows, copy and paste everything from shareware into your new one. and I think thats it.

#

thats the dumb easy path

#

you might have to fdisk the second vhd before formatting.

sudden ice
#

Ok I will try to save these instructions.

vestal ginkgo
#

there is a script that will do it as well that memaker made too

sudden ice
#

I'm a noob when it comes to this

vestal ginkgo
#

ok so technically, you should be able to go into windows. start search for diskmgmt.msc -- run that -- select Action -- Create VHD -- if it is greyed out, select your c drive in the list first, then set a location, disk size of something like 10GB -- VHD option selected and Fixed Selected -- select ok -- then you will see an unknown disk show, right click on it on the left side, Initialize as MBR disk -- now right click on the 10GB unallocated disk -- New Simple Volume -- Next -- Assign a drive letter, doesnt matter -- next -- change format file system to FAT32 from NTFS, -- finish. it will format and mount. then go double click the shareware.vhd you have, should have two drives now, make sure you have " show hidden and system files" in your windows, and just select all and copy and paste. I think that new disk will now boot. if not you have to go in to fdisk from dos and set it as "active" which you will need to google

#

OR, option 2. create your disk, attach that empty one in windows, copy whatever you want to it, right click, unmount/eject/wheatever and then just have 2 disks attached in the AO486 core and just use MyMenu to browse to D: or E: or wherever it mounts

sudden ice
#

Thank you so much for this information. It should be pinned

vestal ginkgo
#

@ me if you get stuck so I see it

sudden ice
#

Thanks!

thick pendant
#

it allows you to use mouse/gamepad and configure the colors

gloomy bolt
#

(I've got graphics dialed in just fine, but it hangs on boot and never shows the ? Mac prompt)

gloomy bolt
#

Oh, I think you hinted at it in your 'until we get a MacII core.' And wikipedia's 68K mac list agrees. I'll give it a go with that info.

thick pendant
#

i use LC III rom

#

for BasiliskII and ShapeShifter and my actual A1200 with Blizzard 1260

gloomy bolt
#

Thanks!

sudden ice
gloomy bolt
abstract condor
#

Neat

thick pendant
gloomy bolt
#

So cd automagically worked as well.

thick pendant
gloomy bolt
#

Yeah, I kept mine at 500MB just because it's a pain moving larger files over FTP.

thick pendant
#

If you are looking to upload files to your shapeshifter, you can use the mac handler and transfer in stuff from your shared drive

#

like if you had some "sit" files or something

gloomy bolt
#

Oh, once it's on it's not a problem. I just mean the large HDF files. Moving them around sucks so I try to keep them a bit smaller. I mean, I don't know that there are 500MB worth of games I want to play on this thing. This, Sim City, Sim Ant, Glider 4, Fool's Errand... that's like .. 100MB total maybe.

#

Formatting them also takes 5 ever if they're big. Even the 500MB is like 30 minutes.

thick pendant
thick pendant
gloomy bolt
#

I'm not, but I'm also using KS3.14

thick pendant
#

That is ideal... that PrepareEmu thing makes it do an extra reboot

gloomy bolt
#

Ah. And that's the driver in the SS directory? I assume you drop it in L if you want to use it?

thick pendant
#

on my actual A1200 I use BlizKick to boot a custom Kickstart with the ShapeShifter patch

#

among other things

#

If you wanted to use it (which you don't) you would add it at the top of s:startup-sequence...

gloomy bolt
#

Ah, gotcha.

#

How did the Amiga Mini go? I have one, but I got it mostly for a prop for my studio.

thick pendant
#

but the 3.1 I have on the amiga mini needs it

#

RTG on the Amiga mini is flaky...

#

but its pretty fast emulation, so AGA would probably be enough especially if you used external video drivers that utilize the MMU...

#

like I do on the real A1200

#

But so far is crashes on boot

thick pendant
#

it works on my real A1200 with 060

#

But for whatever reason I can't figure it out on the MiSTer. TCP on mac is not my wheelhouse

#

Research indicates OpenTCP needs an 030 CPU. but is that why it won't work?

waxen brook
meager mural
#

Any progress on adding a Reset key mapping and disk writing to the Apple IIe core?

#

Also, any progress on adding disk/tape writing to the Coleco Adam core? Super Games lock up on the high score screen because they can't write to the disk/tape.

gloomy bolt
# thick pendant if you get this thing going, PLEASE let me know...

Something changed because my old ppp setup on Amiga worked great, but now it's not resolving DNS. I've verified the IP changes are fine (192.168.x.254 is out of my router's DHCP range on purpose to static it and it works on AO486) . But suddenly MiamiDX just isn't sending packets over the pipe and LCP calls are throwing 'Protocol ConfRej' on the DNS calls. Direct IP is also failing. Loopback and self ping fine, so I can see responses from the subnet, but it's like the gateway just doesn't exist.

Edit: I shouldn't say AO486 works great - I tested it in December though. I'm trying again now.

#

So sadly, I'm not gonna be looking at it too deeply.

thick pendant
#

try and put in 1.1.1.1 or 8.8.8.8 for DNS

gloomy bolt
#

Yep

#

And 8.8.4.4

#

It's not even pinging the ppp host.

#

It's not DNS, but DNS is a victim.

thick pendant
#

wierd

#

I'll have to check if mine still works when i get home

gloomy bolt
#

I tried moving to software flow control, no dice. Tried a few other things. it's literally like pppd is just not actually serving packets.

#

And seeing a bad packet header for ConfigRej in the ICMP packets is not great. That's way deep in the pizza.

#

LCP is usually pretty straight forward. It's like the firewall is blocking icmp packets but the firewall is off.

gloomy bolt
#

Yeah, no luck with AO486 anymore either. I'll see if I can track down the latest ppp_options that come with the linux update. I changed mine so they probably didn't overwrite it.

thick pendant
#

honestly, no idea - hope you get it sorted....

gloomy bolt
#

I'm sure it's because I did a bunch of hacky workarounds to get 2 misters working on the same network a few years ago and I've been pulling that ppp_options file with me the entire time.

#

I'm sure once I get the default one on there tonight it'll work fine.

thick pendant
#

all you need to do is run the script to change the mac address

gloomy bolt
#

Er... 2 years ago.

#

There was more to it than just macs. But I had them working.

thick pendant
#

anyway, what happens if you go into the f9 console and try to resolve names?

gloomy bolt
#

The old AA BB CC mac sucked.

#

They're fine.

#

Linux has no issues.

#

I can't ping the ppp pipe though, so it's something with pppd....fresh options are the way to start for sure.

gloomy bolt
#

There's something so satisfying about running a fresh Fusion.

thick pendant
#

I just ran it the other day... got a new 1TB card because the one I was using went read-only

gloomy bolt
#

It's gotta be my router. Fresh setup, brand new install, same issue.

#

I have a ubiquiti edge device. It has had a firmware update in the past few months, so I'm guessing they locked something down.

thick pendant
gloomy bolt
#

It's not mac. It's my edge router. Trust me when I say I'm good and not needing help on the networking side. Hehehe.

gloomy bolt
#

Yep. Firmware update last year defaulted to ICMP blocked on all interfaces. Working again. I'll see if I can get any Macintosh networking figured out this weekend, but I doubt it. Appletalk to TCP is a huge blindspot for me. I wired a fully terminated AT network in school, but never had to do TCP bridging. But if I can get it to work (very unlikely), I'll let you know @thick pendant

thick pendant
gloomy bolt
#

OK, so this is weird. I am tapping out on getting PPP shuttled over to the Mac, by the way. It's before my time and above my paygrade. BUT...
I had thought that the modem option simulates a com device, so why not select modem and then forward the com, so maybe terminal apps would work? Seems straight forward. However...
The term program I found on Mac had a 56K option. So I went to set the port to 56K and it locked the entire Mister OS. Hard froze. That's the first time that's ever happened to me.
It didn't happen after a reboot, so I assume it was a one off.

thick pendant
pure fog
#

So...I grew up playing this one (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K5Yv7i1UpFY) and would love to play it again on MiSTer

YouTube
YesterYear's MacGames
Shadow Wraith - The Cyberpunk Top-Down Shooter for MacOS: Revenge i...

Shadow Wraith is a a brilliant top down shooter from Terminal Sunset. The game boasts fast paced and exciting gameplay, a truly exceptional soundtrack, and a captivating cyberpunk storyline.

YesterYear's Mac Games explores what makes this often overlooked retro classic a must play for old Mac fans.

This game has a pretty small window of compa...

▶ Play video
#

any chance we ever get Mac OS 7/8 via a core?

tall grotto
#

I have a feeling this may be outside the realm of possibility with the De10-Nano, but anyone is welcome to correct me

#

This game looks far more complex than most computer platforms the MiSTer generally handles

#

The Amiga core, using the FPGA, seems to not get past 68ec020 performance

#

That game you want asks for 68030/40 at 33MHz

#

not probably gonna happen with an FPGA implementation

pure fog
#

Oh well, thanks for checking

#

I saw one YouTube video of a guy at least booting mac7/8 on Amiga via Shapeshifter

thick pendant
thick pendant
thick pendant
#

If the game is just too much for the the Minimig CPU or it needs FPU then you still have the option of trying it under MiSTer_BasiliskII which runs on the HPS(ARM CPU)

pure fog
thick pendant
#

I can't figure out how to fire.... haha

#

please don't criticise my gameplay.... never played it before....

#

maybe if i disable some extensions or something it will work.... anyone remember the key to press during boot?

pure fog
thick pendant
#

maybe if i could get the gamepad to work, but for me probably i just need to set it to "very Easy"

#

The music is really good!

#

Would have pulled it off a lot faster, but it takes a LONG time to decompress the SIT file on both platforms

pure fog
tall grotto
#

Cool work and great to have but I didn't realize it existed. I was thinking that he was asking for an FPGA implementation which as far as I can tell is not realistic on the de10.

#

And I said 68030 or 68040 at 33MHz because that's the requirements listed on the game's box ...

#

So don't question me on that lol.

thick pendant
#

I think it would be realistic to have a fast 020 MacII core. The CPU in Minimig core is definitely fast enough for this game...

tall grotto
#

I can't really argue as I have very little experience with that hardware, but hey if I can be proven wrong (which I asked with my initial statement) I'm all for it.

#

I just noticed kitrinx had listed that photo a while back stating that the 68ec020 seems to be the highest bench the Amiga core was able to do, and even they were looking into branching out to using the arm cpu.

thick pendant
#

Yes, as far as instruction set it is limited to 020, however speed wise its 030/50mhz level

#

The hybrid CPU thing has not really achieved any real performance.

woven lava
#

I used footage of it in my corinthian solder video 😆

#

around 0:41

#

(damn its been 2y since that already... time flies)

worthy zealot
tall grotto
#

You need direct lines for something of that level.

worthy zealot
# tall grotto You need direct lines for something of that level.

direct lines? Its an FPGA, and the GPIO should be able to perfrom as direct lines to whatever is in the core. Some have worked on adding PCI support to the core. There already exists FPGAs that use 68K CPUs on them, and therefore also supports PiStorm. That said, I do not think the PCI solution ever got to work, but I know there are a few that have been looking into making a MiSTer + Pi hybrid solution, with the Pi helping add features to the MiSTer. Already the GPIO is used for SD-RAM, which already is something that requires low latency IO.

This is what makes FPGAs powerful, being able to integrate hardware in ways that seem as good as the original hardware and the main reason why I think its important to not refer to FPGAs as emulation even if its technically correct. Its just too different from software emulation I think to refer to it like that, but the MiSTer development for the most part does not focus so much on hardware support and integration. Support for things like floppy drives, CD drives and so on. The IO for this FPGA is rather limited though so you cannot just implement anything, and something like a CPU might require both GPIOs.

worthy zealot
#

I know ChatGPT can be wrong but:

image.png
#

Seems the two GPIOs are not the same. One is 50mhz and the other is 10mhz. I suspect the one some of us use for the analog board is the 10mhz one and the SD RAM uses the 50mhz one.

#

So it might be limited to connecting a 50mhz CPU to the GPIO0, and doing so instead of the SD-RAM. But what 50mhz CPU? I am pretty sure it makes a difference whether its a x86 386 CPU, a 486, a 68000 or a 68060 CPU. Or is it really that a 060 CPU at 40mhz is faster than a 020 CPU at 40mhz is because the 060 way more efficient at the same refresh rate? Having way more efficient cycles than lower CPU types? That would explain how the Vampire boards got so much more performance out of the same FPGA.

chilly rain
#

Pretty high actually. Usually the limitation of bandwidth isn't the gpio, it's the complexity of the design it's connected to. If you compile the template core check the speed (fMAX) of spi for the fastest theoretical speed I've seen at least.

#

ao486 from like a year ago for instance

image.png
tall grotto
inland stream
stiff steeple
#

or how many pins you wanted connected 🙂

thick pendant
stiff steeple
#

"all we know is address line 0, but it's connected god damn it"

abstract condor
#

There's no A0 on the 68k incidentally

thick pendant
#

makes sense with a 16bit bus

abstract condor
#

Yeah

stiff steeple
#

damn, foiled again

formal whale
#

hmm... I'm using the "new" update-all script and the Amstrad core just blacks out my display and there's no OSD... need to reset the Mister

#

Oh, interesting... the update-all script handles the boot.rom incorrectly... it names it amstrad.rom which is wrong

worthy zealot
#

Pretty sure it should be able to do more than be "connected". The pins should not need to be 1 to 1 I think if there is an adapter for it. Remember the Pi is doing it through its GPIO when its using for PiStorm.

worthy zealot
# inland stream You didn’t specify how fast you wanted it to be

I do not know how fast I would need it to be to connect a 68K CPU. But it seems it might be able to support a 50mhz CPU this way. If a proper adapter is made, like how the PiStorm is for the Amiga.

The Pi 3 GPIO is 65.8mhz, and it still manages to run several times faster than the 020 on the MiSTer. So I do think it ought to be possible to do pistorm that is at least twice as fast as the current 020. The Pi 4 GPIO is 75-80mhz.

I do not think the amount of pins would be the problem given its the same number of pins the Pi's use. Its a standard after all. But the complexity might be a problem, because the core probably has other bottlenecks... but I highly doubt these bottlenecks will stop it from being a very nice boost for the Amiga and AO486 cores if this was implemented. It probably wont, but I do think it seems possible that it could.

stiff steeple
#

there's enough pins to connect simple cpus if you use a digital io board, but nothing that uses those cpus really need it

#

complex things like 486 don't seem like they'd work very well this way

#

by "cpus" I mean a pi emulating a cpu

#

otherwise you'll have to deal with voltage issues

thick pendant
#

From my understanding the bottleneck was not with the CPU

stiff steeple
#

for amiga it helped marginally didnt it?

thick pendant
#

No...

#

slower

#

and it way slowed down the disk access as the CPUs were all maxed out between the CPU emulator and MiSTer menu

stiff steeple
#

well, I've never been a fan of taxing the HPS as you know

woven lava
#

I thought maybe a 68K could be connected to the FPGA, but it has 64 pins so we'd have to sacrifice SDRAM

stiff steeple
#

you'd never use a real one

#

that would be worthless

woven lava
#

especially if you can replicate it in the FPGA yeah

stiff steeple
#

you could multiplex a pi's output though since it's 3.3v and faster than a real chip

#

not sure it would really benefit anything though with the overhead from coordinating it

#

not that amiga actually needs that much more to begin with

#

I think it's already trying to max/min

woven lava
#

the only marginal benefit would be if it has same performance (at least), but frees up FPGA space for other features

#

but the fact that nobody tried it yet suggests it's a lot of work for unknown benefit

stiff steeple
#

the space freed up by a 68k is not going to make or break much

#

there's no reason to use a real one

#

a pi is a more interesting proposition but it's still pretty akward

thick pendant
#

There us a variation of the original MiniMig that uses a DIP 68000 which can be replaced with PIStorm. I understand it is very fast... might be useful to use that as reference...

thick pendant
stiff steeple
#

no idea, but that core isnt really very full is it

thick pendant
#

35.82%, but that may be an old figure

#

Something I notice with my original Minimig 1.1, it runs at performance parity to an A3000 which uses a 68030/25mhz using a real 68000...

#

Obviously lacking the 030 instruction set... but there must be something else like cashing going on there

stiff steeple
#

whats the cpu speed

#

maybe it's just got higher clocks

thick pendant
#

42mhz

#

I think its more than that tough because there were hardware hacks back in the day to for the A500 to increase the CPU to 14mhz from 7 and they made minimal difference.

abstract condor
#

I have one of those hardware hacks, OCing a 68000 to 42MHz

#

That does make a difference

#

It's the ACA500plus

#

It uses a 68ec000 which seems to handle it fine (but I won the silicon lottery, not all of them reach 42)

#

The fastmem does make a tangible difference, as well

worthy zealot
worthy zealot
# woven lava I thought maybe a 68K could be connected to the FPGA, but it has 64 pins so we'd...

I am still pretty sure you would not need the full number of pins. It would make it easier to do if you had that, but as long as you have an adapter it could still work. Would probably need a more advanced adapter though since I suspect when the Pi is used for the PiStorm much of the work is done on the Pi.

It could be very interesting if it was possible to just connect a 68K CPU through an adapter, but if a Pi was connected, it would be more useful I think.

Another thing though, is that if a Pi, to be used as a PiStorm, should be connected to the MiSTer, it would probably have to be the GPIO that the RAM uses right now. At least I am pretty sure that is what the SD RAM is connected to. The GPIOs are not the same speed, one is 10mhz the other is 50mhz, and the 10mhz one is meant to be used for IO stuff. So that must be what the analog IO boards use. It could be nice if there could be made some hardware switch, that would allow to connect several things to the GPIO on the MiSTer, and let the cores somehow set which of the connected things would be used. That would make it a lot bigger though, so it probably would make more sense to just reconfigure it physically connecting what you wanted to use the MiSTer for.

But maybe a Pi connected to the SD RAM GPIO could also be used for SD RAM, emulating the SD RAM. But that might cause timing issues and such. I guess it could solve the RAM timing issues of hybrid cores though, if the SD RAM and the CPU is done on the Pi. But it would probably also further bottleneck the whole solution.

woven lava
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if you can fit it in 40 pins, a board could be made to tinker with, while keeping SDRAM comnected

worthy zealot
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This is why the frequency of the pins is relevant, because that is how fast they can be switched between. There might be 8 pins, but they are used several times each second. As long as something can adapt the signals, then it cannot just be looked at as 8 pins, but more like a USB connection. Any connection really, but consider the speed of USB and how much that can be used for, that is only using 4 pins. That is because the bandwidth is very high and its accomplished by using each pin for more data, having a higher frequency of the data transmitted. So the question is about how many signals per second is expected?

This is also why I use the PiStorm as an example, it does all of that through the same 8 GPIO pins, although the Pi 3 does have a faster GPIO than even the fastest of the two GPIOs on the MiSTer. But it shows how a 68K CPU can be accomplished through 8 GPIO pins, and more than that could be done with it as well.

But its hard to figure out what all the possible bottlenecks are. How much of the GPIO bandwidth does the SD RAM use? I suspect it would not work in the slower IO GPIO on the MiSTer, it is 10mhz and the one mostly used for SD-RAM is 50mhz. If it uses half the bandwidth then that probably limits how much can be done with a CPU connected there as well, or possibly even make it impossible to connect one. I think it would mainly reduce the possible speed it have.

But if its a Pi connected, the speed should be quite adjustable. But either way it would probably be best if the SD RAM was not used while trying a solution like this.

chilly rain
tall grotto
# worthy zealot This is why the frequency of the pins is relevant, because that is how fast they...

The thing to understand is software emulation and FPGA hardware emulation have one major difference. Software emulation always processes everything one thread at a time. So all things, audio, video, and other components are processed in order of operation. This is not how the real hardware works. An FPGA will simulate the hardware as separate components in the die, so the individual components can operate independently, with their own timings.

Translating these between each other is one thing that would need to be considered, and the amount of gain achieved depends on how well that can be done, and it is a large task I'd expect

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We're not talking bread and butter. More hammer and screw

stiff steeple
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they work fundamentally differently, yeah

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at some point there will be a bottleneck synchronizing them

tall grotto
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And said bottleneck may mean you won't get as much net performance gain as you might think

stiff steeple
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the software will be going at some random uncontrolled rate

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it has to wait for a signal from the fpga, then the fpga has to wait for a signal that it's done

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the "pins" have no inherent frequency, they just are

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the clock of the fpga and the amount of noise tolerance is what determines their max speed

tall grotto
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FPGA simulated hardware doesn't have a concept of "waiting for receiving a thread" like modern CPU's do

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You can't easily just halt the process to wait for the CPU to complete its work easily

stiff steeple
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if you design the fpga thing correctly you can halt the clocks if it isn't done in time

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but it's gotta be made that way

tall grotto
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yeah. The way the MiSTer cores are typically designed doesn't constitute this capability

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You'd have to have a brand new core made

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Or some massive changes to the current one, if that's possible

stiff steeple
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some of them can

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it depends on the core

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like NES can pause, 7800 can pause, snes can't pause

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etc

worthy zealot
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Yeah, it will need to be a pretty complicated transformer... but still, the PiStorm already accomplished it

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It is an adapter, putting a Pi directly into the CPU slot on the Amiga

tall grotto
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PiStorm expects a pi to be used as the host

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not an FPGA device

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It's a fundamenntally different use case

worthy zealot
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No, it expects an Amiga

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The Pi will be used the same

tall grotto
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sorry... mispoke. It's intended to be used with real hardware. Contrary to popular belief, the MiSTer is not real hardware

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it's a lot of effort and there are limitations

worthy zealot
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Oh yeah, it wont be simple.

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There are other bottlenecks to take into account as well

tall grotto
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it's probable that it won't really gain you any performance at all over what we have. Because the FPGA would have to work extra to wait for the signals from the PiStorm

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This would affect overall performance of the core

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Even if you're offloading the CPU, it adds extra complexity to it

worthy zealot
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Well, it adds a different complexity at least. Quite different from what it does now

tall grotto
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Imo it won't really be worth it as much as you think

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The FPGA is trying to keep all the timings tight so the hardware runs as expected. forcing the core to pause for microseconds to wait for signals could very easily mean a worse experience I expect

worthy zealot
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I would argue it should be possible to connect a real CPU to those 8 pins

tall grotto
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Timings are critical when dealing with FPGA's

worthy zealot
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The timings should already be correct, given its possible with the PiStorm

tall grotto
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Possible, yes. Worth the investment? I opt to say no

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I have a feeling it wouldn't really gain you much of anything personally, even after the core is optimized

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The extra wait for every signal could very easily mean not achieving much extra performance at all

worthy zealot
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Hard to say, it could probably be calculated by someone who knows the hardware engineering well.

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What extra wait do you keep mentioning? Why would there be extra wait?

tall grotto
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If you read what I said, FPGA's work fundamentally different from CPU's

worthy zealot
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There are already FPGAs that connect a 68k CPU though

tall grotto
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the cores are designed to run with every component inside the emulated dies and such Independently. PiStorm and any other software emulation method process information one bit at a time. This is not how hardware works

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To make them talk to each other, you'd have to change the FPGA core to wait for signals from the PiStorm which would be talking at a random rate.

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They physically cannot talk to each other without forcing the core to wait, which it doesn't do normally

worthy zealot
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But what makes PiStorm so interesting is that the emulation only does the CPU, and this is why it works in an Amiga, because it does not add latency to the CPU signals

tall grotto
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The Amiga isn't an FPGA

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That's the difference

worthy zealot
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FPGAs have already in more than one solution been used directly with 68K CPUs.

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and the PiStorm should work as a 68K CPU replacement

tall grotto
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From their Github

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it's only intended to be used with real Amiga's

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The MiSTer is not an Amiga, contrary to what people want to think

worthy zealot
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Yes, and the 68000 in the Minimig core should be able to run as an Amiga 500

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You do know of the Minimig that can be used with the PiStorm??

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That is already a thing

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And our Amiga core is based on that

tall grotto
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minimig is not just an FPGA core