New firmware for the Blizzard 1240/1260

[Cosmos Amiga]

Since the hardware maprom built-in on the Blizzards 1230/1240/1260 is designed for supporting 512 Kb Kickstart only (1 Mb Kick give no boot), new firmware was necessary.

Some stuff into the onboard firmware needed to be removed. Was done since a long time. 1 Mb Kickstart are working fine now, Kick must be moved in fastram with software.

Today, I have added the small library p5emu.library v40.6 from the MMU package by Thomas Richter into a new v1.2 firmware : http://cosmosunivers.free.fr/download/firmware1260.readme

So, it's one library left from your HD, and of course unecessary now to install...


The onboard firmware rom 27C256 must be desoldered and a socket must be soldered. Users will have to purchase one time a new eeprom (about 5 euro) for flashing this new v1.2 !

And for the next versions, upgrade will be free (only shipping to pay, so about 0.80 euro for a simple letter)

For the moment, no release or selling because I'm not the author : I don't want Karda coming here at home for breaking my face, ok ?

I'm just an hacker who do the thing possible...



Good news : A15 of the 27C256 (32 Kb) seems connected on the Blizzard 1240/1260 whole logic, so 27C512 (64 Kb) should works : we will put more stuff into these new firmwares !

[LoadWB]

Wow, interesting.  I have a 1260, but I'm afraid I'm not all that familiar with its technical functionality.  What does p5emu.library do?

[Cosmos Amiga]

Wow, interesting.  I have a 1260, but I'm afraid I'm not all that familiar with its technical functionality.  What does p5emu.library do?

"P5Init. It will initialize P5 board hardware and setup the MMU accordingly. This is
unfortunately necessary since some P5 hardware isn't auto-configurable"

"P5Init is an advanced version of ScanMMUPort which should take all steps
required to configure the undocumented P5 hardware, including PPC boards.
It sets all caching modes for this hardware automatically and includes a scan
of the P5 MMU setup kludge. It replaces 'ScanMMUPort' plus all former P5 setup
lines in the MMU-Configuration and should be used instead"

Note : P5Init (p5emu.library) is only required for 68040 and 68060




I do some progress yesterday : p5emu.library 40.6 now included into the CyberStorm MK2 firmware !
=> http://cosmosunivers.free.fr/download/firmwareMK2.readme


Works fine with WinUAE 3.1.0 beta 9 !

Since my A4000D is still faulty, cannot have a try for the moment on the real thing with my MK2, sorry !

[Cosmos Amiga]

A15 of the 27C256 (32 Kb) seems connected on the Blizzard 1240/1260 whole logic, so 27C512 (64 Kb) should works : we will put more stuff into these new firmwares !

Ok, I checked this assumption with my working Blizzard IV 1230 : all is ok !

64 Kb is available for the firmware ! That's a good news !!

[guest11527]

Ok, I checked this assumption with my working Blizzard IV 1230 : works fine !

Not really, but see my private mail. I afraid you misunderstand a bit what P5Init does and how it intertwines with the p5emu.library. That the two are in one is just a compromize.  One way or another, this does not solve the problem. The problem is the unknown interface of the P5 CPU libraries, or/and - even more important - how the P5 SCSI interacts with the MMU. Just because the 1230scsi.device does not go into MMU tables does not mean that none of their other SCSIs don't. In fact, for a 68060 or 68040, and a system with additional FAST RAM on board, you don't really have a chance to avoid this. (The problems with DMA and copyback cache should probably be known, but I can explain this if required.)