MINIMIG HARDWARE COMPATIBILITY & NEW TURBO MODE!

[boing4000]

@Jakub
OK I was just wondering about that timer speedup in playing mod files. But it will not occur at all time, maybe in a special way from a few mod player routine. CIA timer are very stable and the internal DosControl modplayer is not affected by the disk writing.

Wow thats great news very nice to see that the 68k can run at that speed! Maybe you can let me know the changes so I can test it on my 16MHz designed SEC000. But I think it will also run at 28MHz.

Generic question... you are using the PIC internal eeprom to store the permanent OSD settings. Will the PIC also store the settings every time a reset is triggered and no change was done? I think the eeprom is in general a flash-rom and can also be written about a maximum of say 100.000 times each bit.
I limit the changes to a minimum, don't want to stress the single bits inside the PIC too much.
Therefor I would ask if you are planing to change CPU speed in OSD to let it non permanent. Startup could be 7.09MHz and by user change set to 14-28MHz. After any hardreset (power off) the core would set the speed back to standard.

What do you think about it?

[yaqube]

@Sascha

Please let me know the players and conditions when you experienced playback speed-up.

The PIC's EEPROM is specified for 1,000,000 write cycles. I only store the data when exiting particular submenu and  required value is different than already stored. Don't worry about wear factor.

I'm planing to change CPU speed by the OSD menu. The settings won't be affected by reset.

[mahen]

Added LG 1915S 19" LCD monitor. Contrary to its specifications, it DOES support 50 Hz ! Woohoo !

However, the minimig doesn't seem to like my kvm switch : keyboard keys tend to remain hit, and I have to keep the mouse button pushed to be able to move the mouse pointer

Monitor detects output as 800x600. It was 640x480 with the NTSC core

[Hattig]

That's great news about getting a 28MHz CPU mode operational!

How is it with games like GunShip 2000 and Epic - they would be most improved I guess by more clock cycles?

Also would faster/lower latency RAM help with these higher clock speeds.

[boing4000]

Hi Jakub,

I've just tested that implied player on real OCS A500 and it shows the same behavior as in Minimig! So no problem with DMA timing or whatever :-) *happy*

If you want to try it out, take a look at this image: AMEGAPck.adf
Let it boot and choose any mod file. Change floppy image while guru-message. LMB to reset and boot workbench (or doscontrol) to format any other floppy image. Real Amiga500 just freeze in 2nd formating. Music is still playing ;-)

Then I'm satisfied that PIC eeprom will take the changes for a long time!

[Belial6]

boing4000 wrote:
Be aware that Minimig just have 1.5MB of available RAM and this will limit the TCP/IP apps to be used. Gegesis will take a lot of RAM to work, I tried it using an A1200 with 2MB Chipram and PCMCIA Nic with the famous NetBootDisk. After booting in CLI with genesis 577912 byte was already used by the TCP/IP Stack. No application was started, in Minimig would be a maximum of 917 kb free memory left.

You are missing the point.  The point isn't to put an ethernet card on the MiniMig.  The point is to virtualize physical ports across an ethernet connection.  You don't even need to to have a TCP/IP stack on the the MiniMig to accomplish this.  something like this http://hackaday.com/2008/09/25/web-server-on-a-business-card-part-2/ puts the entire TCP/IP stack in a pic.  The MiniMig could then have an IDE port coded into the FPGA.  Instead of sending the command to a real hard drive, the commands would be sent over Ethernet.  You would then have the choice of building a receiver board that converts the tcp/ip stream back into IDE and connects to a real hard drive, OR run a app on the file server in the basement that reads and writes to a hard drive.  The benefit to this is that you would be able to add an unlimited number of ports to your MiniMig, and never have to worry about available pins again.  You could virtualize IDE, Serial, Parallel, PCMCIA, Video card, Sound Card, or anything else you attach to a real Amiga.  The only limit would be the speed of your connection to the Ethernet add-on, and the speed of the bandwidth of the Ethernet itself.

In fact, if the OS can even tell that the Ethernet is connected, the system is broken.  If you want to run network applications, you would want a virtualized Ethernet card written in the FPGA that runs over the real connection just like every other virtualized device.

By doing it this way you get:

*4 pins for unlimited number of device
*Ability to connect devices at a distance
*Ability to share devices with other computers (like hard drives and printers)
*Ability to process output on remote computer before actual use.  i.e., data printed to the virtual serial port can be massaged into something usable for a modern peripherals.
*Ability to use modern peripherals.
*Ability to add new devices with firmware upgrades only.
* No need to worry about a tcp/ip stack running on the MiniMig.

[freqmax]

"building a receiver board that converts the tcp/ip stream back into IDE and connects to a real hard drive" - It's most likely to be raw layer2 data interpretated directly.

Speaking of memory. The main problem is that the ram is SRAM instead of DRAM which means big chips to high cost.

[mahen]

On my 19 inches LG LCD monitor (LG 1915S) I noticed that the picture is unequally distorted.

Indeed: when I type, in a shell "ooooooooooooooooooooooo", each o is different. Some look OK, some are too big or too small...

I tried many settings but didn't achieve anything satisfying.

Also I noticed scrollings didn't look that smooth (maybe for the same reason).

Edit : maybe it's due to the fact it has a 1280x1024 matrix, instead of 1280x960 ?

cheers !

[yaqube]

To achieve undistorted picture your monitor must be able to set sampling clock to 910 pixels per line. Not every monitor is capable of doing this. I have got one which can accomodate to Amiga display mode and there is no distortion and the scrolling is smooth.

[freqmax]

DVI/HDMI output next?

[boing4000]

Something different... Maybe I found a bug in the current core (copper) by running the demo "Rampage  by The Electronic Knights". The demo freeze shortly after the beginning and only show a wild flickering chipram bitmap.

Using e-uae in Linux give a clue what possibly went wrong:
"Program uses Copper SKIP instruction." --> Minimig freeze here
"B-Trap ffec at 00038066 (0xb4ee206e)" --> e-uae freeze here

Even e-uae freeze but after the point of Minimig. I think this demo is hacking the custom chips to its limit or at least in an extraordinary way.

@Jakub
perhaps you find some time to take a look at :-)

[denli]

Illuwatar is nearing completion of his miniITX-version board.

Then perhaps he can begin finish his more interesting mini minimig, featuring 10 ns SRAM and completly redesigned board with four additional spare FPGA pins available.

[boing4000]

Yeah, I call that a mini Minimig ;-) Nice work!

Additional info for Jakub:
Turrican-1 is unable to write its highscore to floppy. Floppy image is writeable. Here is the PIC debug dump:

Code: [Select]


Inserting floppy: "TURRIC1 ADF", attributes: 20
drive status: 03
*44:0:99E0-97C4->1:97C3-95A4->2:95A3-9384->3:9383-9164->4:9163-8F44->5:8F43-8D24->
6:8D23-8B04->7:8B03-88E4->8:88E3-86C4->9:86C3-84A4->A:84A3-8284+++->0:81C5-0000->1:0000:OK
*1:
#SYNC:
Second sync word missing...
WriteTrack: error 21
#SYNC:T44S0
WriteTrack: error 27

I hope this will help a bit to find the reason :-)

EDIT:
Just found out that e-uae also have problems in this matter:

Code: [Select]


Disk decode: checksum error on sector 1 header
Disk decode: weird sector number 18
or
Disk decode: checksum error on sector 10 header
Disk decode: weird sector number 70

This message appears in attempt to write highscore to the same adf image.
Perhaps my image is damaged, it would be helpful if anyone else could try this.

[FrenchShark]

mahen wrote:
Added LG 1915S 19" LCD monitor. Contrary to its specifications, it DOES support 50 Hz ! Woohoo !

However, the minimig doesn't seem to like my kvm switch : keyboard keys tend to remain hit, and I have to keep the mouse button pushed to be able to move the mouse pointer

Monitor detects output as 800x600. It was 640x480 with the NTSC core

The Dell Ultrasharp 1908FP also supports 50Hz refresh rate (Dell's documentation says 56Hz minimum).
Moreover, it does recognize odd resolutions like 640x512 @ 50Hz and 720x576 @ 50Hz.

Regards,

Frederic

[mahen]

Is it possible to get the Minimig to output a 100 Hz vertical frequency, instead of 50 Hz ?

Indeed, some 100 Hz TV screens double the vertical frequency to get a less flickery picture. I found some very nice big CRT monitors, but, the 50 Hz mode will make me blind in a couple of hours, and the monitors don't double the frequency by themselves

Thanks for reading my annoying blabbering...

[boing4000]

This could work but require a fullscreen framebuffer in the onboard memory. The FPGA is not capable of doing this inside. Also the already limited amount of s-ram will shrink again.