Amiga.org
Amiga computer related discussion => General chat about Amiga topics => Topic started by: ElPolloDiabl on April 30, 2015, 02:05:35 PM
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With the early PC emulator boards they could take advantage of the Amiga chipset and expansion ports.
Is it possible to make a modern one? Would it be a big speed increase over PC-task?
Also what would be involved in making an ARM emulator board?
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Hmmm, weird, I was just thinking of this yesterday... Actually I was wondering if there was a way to activate the PC slots without a bridgeboard but, the more I thought about it, the more I realized it wouldn't be real useful without a CPU. Anyways, the reason I was thinking the same thing is that I have an old 16bit (complete and like new) MPEG decompression board that would be cool to utilize. Minimum requirements are fairly modest; 386/win3.1/2MB/DOS5 etc. It came with all the software to playback VCD's @ 24bit/MPEG-1 video and MPEG-1&2 audio using a simple passthru cable. I'm building up my A2000 to be a King Kong multimedia machine w/toaster functionality (WIP). Anyone brought up adapting a Pi to ZII/III? Good post ElPolloDiabl!
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Hmmm, weird, I was just thinking of this yesterday... Actually I was wondering if there was a way to "activate" the PC slots without a bridgeboard but, the more I thought about it, the more I realized it wouldn't be real useful without a CPU. Anyways, the reason I was thinking the same thing is that I have an old 16bit (complete and like new) MPEG decompression board that would be cool to utilize. Minimum requirements are fairly modest; 386/win3.1/2MB/DOS5 etc. It came with all the software to playback VCD's @ 24bit/MPEG-1 video and MPEG-1&2 audio using a simple passthru cable. I'm building up my A2000 to be a King Kong multimedia machine w/toaster functionality (WIP). Anyone brought up adapting a Pi to ZII/III? Good post ElPolloDiabl!
Over at Atari-Forum.com a user Jookie has built a device (Cosmos Ex) that interfaces a Raspberry Pi with the ST. The Pi acts as a HDD interface, network interface and FDD emulator. It will decompress ZIP images etc for you to.
Now.. an Amiga version of this could be an interesting idea...
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With the early PC emulator boards they could take advantage of the Amiga chipset and expansion ports.
Is it possible to make a modern one? Would it be a big speed increase over PC-task?
Also what would be involved in making an ARM emulator board?
What would it do? Run MD DOS 6.22? Windows 3.1? Linux? It seems the cost and effort would be best utilized on a proven SBC with new software like the Janus to allow the Amiga to access it?
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94 was when we lost a lot of software to PC. It would give me some satisfaction having an Amiga running 90s PC software.
Running DOS is a good hobby too.
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So it makes no sense to use more up to date hardware supported by classic Amiga software? Interesting. But why use an ARM to run Intel/AMD DOS?
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how feasible would be to replicate the old bridgeboards with modern cpus so that old janus works? a board with a i3/i5/i7 socket a ram slot and fpga emulating all other chips present in the bridgeboards (maybe problems with voltages and power?). why you ask? and why not?
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how feasible would be to replicate the old bridgeboards with modern cpus so that old janus works? a board with a i3/i5/i7 socket a ram slot and fpga emulating all other chips present in the bridgeboards (maybe problems with voltages and power?). why you ask? and why not?
Modern CPU is going to have all kinds of power requirements that an old Amiga PSU couldn't cope with. Does Janus even support anything beyond 386/486? Anything's feasible with enough $$$$. One of these days I'm going to stick a Raspberry Pi in an Amiga 2000 case, not sure if I'll have room though??? :lol:
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Modern CPU is going to have all kinds of power requirements that an old Amiga PSU couldn't cope with. Does Janus even support anything beyond 386/486? Anything's feasible with enough $$$$. One of these days I'm going to stick a Raspberry Pi in an Amiga 2000 case, not sure if I'll have room though??? :lol:
I think that a lot of people have an adapted powerfull PC psu already on their miggys. Also couldbe used the low power Atoms instead XD
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So it makes no sense to use more up todate hardware supported by classic Amiga software. Interesting. But why use an ARM to run Intel/AMD DOS?
Why is a tree good? Why is the sunset good? Why are boobs good? :laugh1:
(http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-836isrkWG0w/U_Fd0WAU7hI/AAAAAAAADjY/nWxNEKpRpHs/s1600/joedirt.gif)
Anyways, be nice to see a cheap, new hardware solution to bridging DOS to Amiga and use some 16bit boards. I have a ton of DOS software and games that I still use. :) Is this thread just gonna go nowhere now? :(
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Finally speaking of the address and data buses, how do you connect a Bridgeboard up to a modern processor? As stated before, if the consumer wants to run this type of hardware/software on a more modern CPU, why would reinventing the hardware be easier than writing an update of the software?
True there are issues with opening up a window in the Z2 (original) memory space to transfer information (keyboard, mouse, files) between the two that may require a BIOS firmware update (still software) and a software port, but laying out a new CPU board, or trying to put a Pentium or greater level CPU on an existing board? Really? Good luck on the prototype, wire wrapping can be fun!
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Well, for practical purposes, and I'm not sure ElPolloDiabl was actually suggesting anything more than a 486, IMO, a low cost 486 in FPGA w/ZII/ZIII bus, that could take advantage of existing software would be great! Add a $hit load of ram maybe. I'm not an expert on what all something like that would have to emulate though... or how difficult that would be. Do you think it is do-able though?
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There is a 486 conversion for the 386SX chip that is (was) available; see http://www.ebay.com/itm/SEALED-CPU-Vintage-NOS-Cyrix-386-to-486-Clock-Doubled-Upgrade-Kit-GOLD-CPU-/291449076968?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item43dbb7fce8
And a GoldenGate was made too.
This can turn a Commodore 386 Bridgeboard (SX chip) into a 486 to run those DOS based programs really faster than before...
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There is a 486 conversion for the 386SX chip that is (was) available; see http://www.ebay.com/itm/SEALED-CPU-Vintage-NOS-Cyrix-386-to-486-Clock-Doubled-Upgrade-Kit-GOLD-CPU-/291449076968?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item43dbb7fce8
And a GoldenGate was made too.
This can turn a Commodore 386 Bridgeboard (SX chip) into a 486 to run those DOS based programs really faster than before...
Yea, I've seen a few bridgeboards around and always tempted to pick one up, to perform the mods, but the cost always goes crazy on ebay and they hardly ever show up anymore. Exactly how does the bridgeboard activate the PC slots anyway?
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The PC slots are just a passive backplane in 8-bit (XT-mode) or 16-bit (AT-mode) and they communicate with the PC cards the same as a PC or a SBC (Single Board Computer) at a pretty crappy 4.77 MHz (XT) rate or 6 to 8 MHz (AT). Since they are passive electrical connections, the bus speed is set by the CPU board. If you recall, the EISA was an ignored attempt to go 32-bit, and IBM's own microchannel was a failed (proprietary) 32-bit attempt before the AGP and PCI came into play.
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Just give me a 400 MIPS FPGA card and then I can use DosBox AGA on my A1200 :)
[youtube]1Am-3TjsOWo[/youtube]
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Just give me a 400 MIPS FPGA card and then I can use DosBox AGA on my A1200 :)
Just avoid AGA and make it RTG only ;)
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Why not just set up a small Intel mb or laptop mb in your 2000 with dedicated ram and hd and video capture. Even power supply. There's enough room. :)
You can use a separate XGA / HDMI output to a modern monitor.
Then you can plug your Amiga video out into the video capture card on the PC board and use simple software to display the Amiga screen on the PCs Screen.
You now have modern hardware emulating A2000. Just takes a good deal longer to get the Amiga screen up.
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@Gertsy
I want to get the VNC network installed and working. It is slow, but there must be ways to speed it up and also share applications.
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Why not just set up a small Intel mb or laptop mb in your 2000 with dedicated ram and hd and video capture. Even power supply. There's enough room. :)
You can use a separate XGA / HDMI output to a modern monitor.
Then you can plug your Amiga video out into the video capture card on the PC board and use simple software to display the Amiga screen on the PCs Screen.
You now have modern hardware emulating A2000. Just takes a good deal longer to get the Amiga screen up.
A single board computer just plugs into the AT bus backplane and has its own inputs for mouse and keyboards and the outputs, but unlike a true Bridgeboard ir cannot communicate with the Amiga.
http://www.voxtechnologies.com/SBCs/JUKI-745E.htm -- for example
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The PC slots are just a passive backplane in 8-bit (XT-mode) or 16-bit (AT-mode) and they communicate with the PC cards the same as a PC or a SBC (Single Board Computer) at a pretty crappy 4.77 MHz (XT) rate or 6 to 8 MHz (AT). Since they are passive electrical connections, the bus speed is set by the CPU board. If you recall, the EISA was an ignored attempt to go 32-bit, and IBM's own microchannel was a failed (proprietary) 32-bit attempt before the AGP and PCI came into play.
What about VESA Local Bus or more generally called VL-Bus or VLB. This was also a 32 bit extension to ISA primarily for Video Boards, but could be used for just about anything
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D(a)mn, I knew there was one I forgot, and just didn't feel like Googling!
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Dang you guys, you actually had me feeling all nostalgic last night, and reading this article:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_device_bit_rates#Computer_buses (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_device_bit_rates#Computer_buses)
Warmed my heart to see Zorro III ranked on there, for the era it could really hold it's own against the other buses out there! :)
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There's this thing also:
http://www.bigbookofamigahardware.com/bboah/product.aspx?id=351
It would be nice to be able to plug an inexpensive single board computer into the passive backplane on the amiga motherboard. Then have a "dumb" bridge board that gave the single board computer access to amiga memory and devices (and the other way around).
Even if we skipped the custom bridge board thingy and connected the computers externally over some high speed serial ports or ethernet, this might be an interesting upgrade.
brian
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There's this thing also:
http://www.bigbookofamigahardware.com/bboah/product.aspx?id=351
It would be nice to be able to plug an inexpensive single board computer into the passive backplane on the amiga motherboard. Then have a "dumb" bridge board that gave the single board computer access to amiga memory and devices (and the other way around).
Even if we skipped the custom bridge board thingy and connected the computers externally over some high speed serial ports or ethernet, this might be an interesting upgrade.
brian
I was going to ask if Commodore made something like this yesterday... (sure Rog...). Looks difficult to obtain and don't see any real use for it to utilize IBM cards. Still, pretty cool item! Wonder if this type of board could be replicated to interface with Arm/FPGA? Still, a low cost bridgeboard with CPU would be great because as the Crosslink board description states; "That is, you can use real ISA cards on the Amiga, providing that there is a driver available and they don't use DMA. Unfortunately the ISA specifications requires a real X86 processor in order to do DMA, which obviously the Amiga does not have." and that kind of defeats what I would like to use it for... i.e., yes Beave, DOS6.22, Win 3.1, DMA for the old games to work. When I upgraded to full PCI and Win98 a lot of my software suddenly got no use due to hardcoded DMA. :( Great find blanning! Be nice to keep this thread going! :laugh1:
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Dang you guys, you actually had me feeling all nostalgic last night, and reading this article:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_device_bit_rates#Computer_buses (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_device_bit_rates#Computer_buses)
Warmed my heart to see Zorro III ranked on there, for the era it could really hold it's own against the other buses out there! :)
Nice Wiki Mike! :) BTW, I was going to mention that my Buddha only gets 1.3MB/s transfer rate... :furious:
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I have the Golden Gate Bus Plus card just like the Crosslink above. It also allows use of non-dma isa cards like ethernet, ide and serial ports cards, etc. Ethan Dicks at Software Results Enterprises was the last person working on the product when his A4000 died with all of the source code as I recall.
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I was going to ask if Commodore made something like this yesterday... (sure Rog...). Looks difficult to obtain and don't see any real use for it to utilize IBM cards. Still, pretty cool item!
I'm not sure but i think there were less than 20 made, I only had the Crosslink in the photos because I worked with a chap who new the guy who made them. Apparently they were mainly made so he could run a BBS with several phone lines. Was able to have lots of Rs232 cards in the ISA slots, I ran a 33k modem in the slots on my 4000. I could not get any Ethernet cards to work though.
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I'm not sure but i think there were less than 20 made, I only had the Crosslink in the photos because I worked with a chap who new the guy who made them. Apparently they were mainly made so he could run a BBS with several phone lines. Was able to have lots of Rs232 cards in the ISA slots, I ran a 33k modem in the slots on my 4000. I could not get any Ethernet cards to work though.
Ahhhh, that makes sense...
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Nice Wiki Mike! :) BTW, I was going to mention that my Buddha only gets 1.3MB/s transfer rate... :furious:
A2000HD w/2MB Chip, 128MB Fast, P5:Blizz 2060@50MHz, 4GBHDD, Buddha, TrueIDE, XSurf100, RapidRoad, IndiECS, MiniMegi, CD-RW, Kitchen Sync, SunRize AD516, Toaster 2K, Toaster Flyer, WB3.9
Man, your sig line for your A2000 is getting long, Rog! ;) Don't worry, I got a little something-something coming to me from Finland for mine that I've spent two years trying to track down, it's anybody's guess if it'll work when it gets here though, but should help boost my spec a bit. You still don't have a graphics card, though, and my 600x 8GB PFS-formatted CF card beats that speed, but not by a whole lot, I'm limited by the (relatively) slow interface on my GVP. :(
Hey, just noticed - does your Toaster & Toaster-Flyer work under 3.9 or are you dual-booting? I thought I remember reading in a couple places the Toaster software only worked up to Workbench 3.5?
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@Brian
Sounds quite similar to the AteoBus expansion for ythe A1200. Any connection between the two projects I wonder?
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Man, your sig line for your A2000 is getting long, Rog! ;) Don't worry, I got a little something-something coming to me from Finland for mine that I've spent two years trying to track down, it's anybody's guess if it'll work when it gets here though, but should help boost my spec a bit. You still don't have a graphics card, though, and my 600x 8GB PFS-formatted CF card beats that speed, but not by a whole lot, I'm limited by the (relatively) slow interface on my GVP. :(
LOL... long sig, short on functionality at the moment. :lol:
What's new in your bag of tricks Mike? Do Tell!!! :laugh1:
I need to revise my stat for the Buddha, it's 1.8MB/s... still :furious:
I need to start a Buddha thread... find out what's up with this... :confused:
@Brian, did you get your Buddha and TruIDE installed? What's your transfer rate?
Graphics card.... Hmmm... I was also wondering, if the Toaster board goes in the video slot, how does one use a Toaster board, a video card and and accelerator all at the same time in an A2000? 16 colors with WB3.9 $ucks... :lol:
BTW, does this work? Anyone here tried it?
http://www.a1k.org/forum/showthread.php?p=508355
, just noticed - does your Toaster & Toaster-Flyer work under 3.9 or are you dual-booting? I thought I remember reading in a couple places the Toaster software only worked up to Workbench 3.5?
You are correct, Toaster no worky with WB3.9. That's why I got the TruIDE as it can dual boot and I'll be running WB2.1 on the second CF card. I'm still working things out with the 2GB CF test card at the moment. Still wondering what to do about the 2 dead 4GB CF cards I got from... cough... cough... you know who that were supplied with the TruIDE. Anyways getting off topic... (I should start a new A2000 thread - so many Q's) hope we can continue bridgeboard alternatives here. :) Why? I don't know... it's fun.
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Graphics card.... Hmmm... I was also wondering, if the Toaster board goes in the video slot, how does one use a Toaster board, a video card and and accelerator all at the same time in an A2000? 16 colors with WB3.9 $ucks... :lol:
BTW, does this work? Anyone here tried it?
http://www.a1k.org/forum/showthread.php?p=508355
Switch to the Rebel palette! It's beautiful under 3.9, especially if your use Super Plus 800x600 on the Indivision.
http://www.mfilos.com/2012/01/guide-making-workbench-prettier-using.html
Guess you'll have to research using a video card at the same time as a Toaster. Since the Toaster only clicks on when you load it's specific software though it might be possible, right? Worst case scenerio you dual-boot a 3.9 system with Picasso96 or CGX for your day-to-day, and a stock 3.1 or 2.x for when you want to use the Toaster. Hummm....
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Switch to the Rebel palette! It's beautiful under 3.9, especially if your use Super Plus 800x600 on the Indivision.
http://www.mfilos.com/2012/01/guide-making-workbench-prettier-using.html
Guess you'll have to research using a video card at the same time as a Toaster. Since the Toaster only clicks on when you load it's specific software though it might be possible, right? Worst case scenerio you dual-boot a 3.9 system with Picasso96 or CGX for your day-to-day, and a stock 3.1 or 2.x for when you want to use the Toaster. Hummm....
Yup, got the IndiECS flashed and am using 800x600 Super Plus. Thanks for the link... I'm only concentrating on the OS3.9 side for now since I know that all the Toaster stuff works with WB2.1 as I tested it all about - THREE FRICKEN YEARS AGO! - I know... pathetic! :hammer: Got sidetracked with A1200's! Anyhoo, I don't even know IF peeps used graphics cards with the Toaster. Guess it doesn't matter much though as I'll still be using WB2.1 with the dual boot. So, back to the "day to day" (as you put it) WB3.9 side, I guess at this point, excluding some technical stuff, just wanna get it to be a great multimedia machine with way more colors without adding a dedicated graphics card as I guess I can't do that with a Toaster... Uggggh! I wish there was a user's group here! :lol: Hey Mikey, you wouldn't be getting a holographic teleporter card from Denmark would you? :roflmao:
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Uggggh! I wish there was a user's group here! :lol: Hey Mikey, you wouldn't be getting a holographic teleporter card from Denmark would you? :roflmao:
I wish!
I know man, lack of users groups is pretty depressing. :( Still gotta figure out my plan for going to that Amiga30 thing in Mountain View! If I can figure it out then you can figure it out, hehe. :)
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What's the Amiga30 thing? I think I missed that... :confused:
Denmark now... I meant Finland... You gonna keeps us in the dark till it arrives? Just as well, I love surprises! :lol:
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What's the Amiga30 thing? I think I missed that... :confused:
Denmark now... I meant Finland... You gonna keeps us in the dark till it arrives? Just as well, I love surprises! :lol:
How'd you miss this?
http://amiga30.com/
Admittedly a lot of news has gone "unnoticed" on this site, lately. *sigh*
And yes, totally in the dark! Gotta see if it (they) work, first! ;)
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There are some FPGA add on boards for Rasberry Pi. Could any of those be turned into a Minimig?
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You are correct, Toaster no worky with WB3.9. That's why I got the TruIDE as it can dual boot and I'll be running WB2.1 on the second CF card. I'm still working things out with the 2GB CF test card at the moment. Still wondering what to do about the 2 dead 4GB CF cards I got from... cough... cough... you know who that were supplied with the TruIDE. Anyways getting off topic... (I should start a new A2000 thread - so many Q's) hope we can continue bridgeboard alternatives here. :) Why? I don't know... it's fun.
I don't know where this story comes from that the Toaster does not work with OS 3.9. I have an A2000 and an A4000 with Toasters that work with OS3.9. That is until the A4000 Toaster went poof one day but it ran for a couple years with OS3.9 just fine. There is an issue with the newest Toaster installer that it overwrites some libs with older ones but restoring them after the install completes puts everything back where it should.