Video Toaster working on Minimig

[Pyromania]

Who is going to be the first one to add a video slot to Minimig so the Video Toaster can work with it?

[weirdami]

Toaster on FPGA!!!!

 :roll:

[whiteb]

From memory, the Video Toaster needed at least 68030 (or higher), so JUST a video slot would not be enough.  You would also need a larger FPGA to support the extra signals.

[freqmax]

If anyone can give a more electrical lowlevel description of how the video toaster worked could help out making it a reality.

[alexh]

In addition to the video slot, the Video Toaster also needed a Zorro II slot.

To make it work with MiniMig you would need to expand the RAM to 10Mbytes, add a 68030 CPU and implement the BUSTER chip inside FPGA, maybe use a larger FPGA for the extra I/O's that go with that.

Not feasible.

[Argus]

alexh wrote:
In addition to the video slot, the Video Toaster also needed a Zorro II slot.

To make it work with MiniMig you would need to expand the RAM to 10Mbytes, add a 68030 CPU and implement the BUSTER chip inside FPGA, maybe use a larger FPGA for the extra I/O's that go with that.

Not feasible.

Perhaps feasible.  The original and Video Toaster 4000 both needed only an Amiga Video Slot and 1MB Agnus, not a Zorro II or III slot.  The original Toaster even works with a 68000 but it's dog slow.  A little fast ram helps as does more than 1MB chip ram.  The real accessory slots needed are powered ISA ones for TBCs and the like and some kind of mass storage device like a harddisk to store the Toaster software and OS (not possible to boot it from floppy, iirc).  The real key is going to be if the Minimig can sync to 15kHz NTSC, without which the Toaster can't start up.

[alexh]

I will yeild to your superior knowledge. There seems to be a lot of pins on the boards edge connector for just video.

How does the Amiga set up the Toaster without CPU access?

Is it just "on" all the time?

The blurb says "Realtime transitional effects including Dissolve, 2-D Wipes, Colour Amimation Wipes, Covers, Slides, Oragnic Effects, Digital Effects"

How do you activate and time these effects without Amiga CPU access to the Toaster? Switches?

[freqmax]

What's "ISA" and "TBC" ..?
As for syncing to external video. It seems like a simple matter to produce "c_28m" signal with another DCM using "/XCLK" from the original Amiga video DB23 socket as input.

Btw, any documentation on how the Video Toaster actually works is the key. And I guess it may vary between different Amiga models.

[alexh]

TBC = Time Base Corrector (some sort of video module)
ISA = Pre-PCI I/O card, I guess the TBC's sit in them but just to draw power.

[AndrewBell]

ISA = Industry Standard Architecture

Developed by IBM as an 8 bit expansion bus, later modified to 16 bit.
________
Prelude

[marcfrick2112]

fregmax: not sure if this would help, but the source for the Toaster has been available for a while :
OpenToaster.org

Oh, and IIRC a TBC is needed primarily to sync VCR's, for effects, transitions, etc. AFAIK, TBC's are not needed if only camcorders/cameras are used....

[alexh]

The more you look at the OpenToaster website the more it makes me think it must have had a Zorro interface. Otherwise how did all this software interact with the hardware? Simply though the video output?

[freqmax]

That was my first thought, but then ISA isn't used much in Amiga context. So it didn't make sense to me.

[alexh]

The ISA slots are not connected to the Amiga hardware without a bridge board. If they are used by a part of the Toaster Hardware or addons it's for power only.

[alexh]

Confirmed, Argus is wrong. All video toasters must have data connections to the Amiga.

http://amiga.resource.cx/exp/search.pl?product=video+toaster&company=

Autoconfig ID = 2191 / 0

If they have an Autoconfig ID then they must be memory mapped.