Using C64 Core on MiniMig boards.

[Palm]

Yes. Fingers crossed. Regarding casing, I have the ITX version so I have the possibility to choose standars ITX ones, but they are expensive as hell :-( So I am gonna make a simple homemade PLEXI box for it instead. Will cost me a fraction of a commercial mini itx casing.

Did you make that white nice box in plastic ? If so, great work. Looks very nice.

Even though minimig dies in the end because other boards are for sale which has more power and more capacity, that doesn´t matter too much because every board has its lifespan, and the minimig is not that new anymore. But it was "the" board which probably kickstarted all this amiga-in-a-chip in the beginning. I am very thankful for both the minimig board and Dennis´ work here. But as time goes by, more people will follow in his footsteps and make better boards. And this is just normal i guess. It benefits everyone. It is just a shame that the market for these boards are limited to the retro-people. So not much money to earn here. Although, they do earn quite some respect in the community, and this is priceless, right ? ;-)))


Regs
Espen

[Palm]

Sounds like a nice idea to me. I personally am not involved in any development, but I like your idea. Generic cores with HALs on each mobo to use the core in its fpga. Sounds ok.

Espen

[Palm]

Boing4000 and Dirk: Good :-)

Now, throw out those screenshots for us to admire. Hehe.

Is it really necaessary to create IEC conenctor ? Wy not just D64 support from SDIO card ?


Espen

[Palm]

So, what if we approach the situation in the other end. You mention that you quickly loose interest in a project as soon as you get over the first hurdle (get things visible on the screen for instance). And I know what you mean. So, if most "users" out here cannot contribute in a technical way of bringing the development progress fast forwarding, how about if we give out bounties instead ? That is a way to encourage people to continue developing. I for sure would like to contribute for a c64 core and features around it such as running on minimig and have d64 support on the SD card.

So, what do you say guys. Anyone else who aggrees ? This way we, the community, can contribute from both sides.

a) Developers and ppl with FPGA knowledge can contribute in the techie way
b) "Users" with money they can spare can contribute to the bounty.


It is a win-win situation.



Espen

[Palm]

I did some VLSI design a few years ago. And have experience with microcontrollers. So this things about lacking FPGA discussion here, got me interested in picking up on things.

Can I use my MIniMig board as a test-board ? (I guess it must be possible...) or so I have to buy a Spartan kit ?



Espen

[Palm]

I guess I have to call the .bin file minimig1.bin then, no matter whether it is a c64 core My guess is that the pic bootloader automatically tries to look for the file called minimig1.bin or something ?

Thanks for the tip. I will DL and check it out.

[Palm]

Yes, you are right alexh, those are the names of the files needed. However, I wonder if the firmware really preloads the kick.rom file if there is another core used (e.g. a c64 core). Is it the FPGA itself which loads the kickfile to sram after minimig1.bin is loaded, or does the pic firmware both preload the kick.rom and afterwords. Reason why I ask, is if a new core is to be used, do we need a new fw that does not expect kick.rom on the sd card ?

Espen

[Palm]

Allright, how about adding IEC option thru the pinout then. I have a uIEC unit and a 1541-3 unit that I can use. This will give me what I need to use the core. If the core can supply me with kb+joysticks+iec I would be a happy man. Of course, the sid+vic must work properly ;-)

Can you say if the current c64 core works as it should when it comes to emulating the c64 as good as possible ? Does demos work ok?

Another thing: Can JiffyDOS be implemented in the core ? If I do own JDOS chips, can I add the JDOS kernal myself somehow ?

Regs
Espen

[Palm]

That sounds very nice. But to add another kernal, this must be embedded in the master-binary file (minimig1.bin) right ?
So I need the sources to enbed my own kernal. And the sources are not released, if I understood correctly ?

Boing4000+Dirk: Keep up the good work!!!

Have you thought about how to add cartridge support somehow?
Maybe F11 as freeze-button ? :-) ..or even better: BREAK



Regs
Espen

[Palm]

How is the 64 core doing. ?

Can I ask, is the sources for this available ?

Is it the ISE Foundation 10.1 I need to be able to load a source, compile it and get a binfile ?

Xilinx has a free 60 day eval version, but I am not sure if I need the webpack of the FOundation.

Anyyone who can enlighten me ?


Espen

[Palm]

Thanks for that info. I will definitely try it out. I just downloaded the webpack 10.1, and I just bought a usb-2-rs232 adapter so I can flash my minimig with new fw aswell, and bought some plexiglass to make a temporary casing for the minimig board to ease the tear on it

I was wondering, do you know how to make a jtag cable or is there a resource on the web to which I can make one ?

Have to drop by work to pick up a adapter so my USB keyboard can be used on the minimig (which only supports ps2 kbd). After that, I will go ahead and try out webpack. This is totally new for me, so it´ll fun.

BTW: Above, you write ".bit file produced". Do you mean ".bin file" (as in, the file I can rename to minimig1.bin and boot up at the minimig) ?


Regs.
Espen

[Palm]

If you want testers, and don't want to distribute your core as it is (containing embedded roms) .. how about we email you a copy of our roms, so you see we have them, then you make the core available to us (email back?) after we have acknowledged having roms beforehand.

I know this is totally silly, as probably everyone can DL them illegally from the net, but still -- it would provide a way to do it....somehow.

BTW: It would be cool if there were some kind of dram or other storage device on the minimig (apart from SD card) which enabled core to easily load data from it. Then we could have filled this space-area/chip (whatever) with e.g. rom files for the core to load upon boot.

Is itpossible to add a memorychip to any existing lines so we can connect dram or flash or something ? I think the next gen of minimig should have a easy flashable chip in which we can stuff with romsfiles. That would make core-sharing so much easier when they could be shared without pre-compiled romdata.

Any opinions on this ?

[Palm]

Dude, same here. I downloaded vice(x64?) for OSX and it too worked out of the box.

Espen

[Palm]

I was wondering, are the sources for the c64 core free so that I can download them, embed my own ROMs from my C64 into the source, compile to a single .bin file so that I can use this ?

It would require ppl to install ISE and compile themselves, but after reading you tutorial, it looks very easy to do.
(downloading SP4 IDE webpack now -- soon trying to compile the minimig sources..ehhe)

Espen