Pistorm operation

[Boing-ball]

Did you, or did you not, say:

I mean, that's pretty much assuming that the SD card will be overridden by a floppy, and that this would then prevent Emu68 from booting. I don't think there's any other way to interpret what you said - even if you insist that the SD card must not be present after the fact.

And then in the rest of the post I quote:

You are making the assumption that the OP has the SD card inserted into the Pi on bootup and has the correct partitions in place. Therefore the PiStorm will not function on startup
Don’t forget that with above you still have a stock A1200 setup.Therefore bootable software from floppy will ONLY access the stock A1200 config.

So again, I will ask you. Did you read the posts?

Pettiness for the sake of the OPs original question seems to be what one does not want to know 😉🤣

[ZXDunny]

So again, I will ask you. Did you read the posts?

Of course I did, you've made quite a name for yourself in the PiStorm community with this, I'd literally forgotten I had an account here now!

I have to say though opening up your Amiga to remove the SD card so you can go back to stock is quite the bold move.

Edit: I am reminded that there is indeed a stealth mode for the PiStorm that would serve much better than trying to run the accelerator without an Emu68/FAT32 partition present - the long press on the ol' three-finger death grip will disable the PiStorm temporarily until the next power-cycle. That would get floppy-only games into much better shape compatibility-wise, but you would indeed lose the benefits of FastRAM and a quick 68k CPU.

All in all, it is probably easier to run the game through WHDLoad, assuming a slave exists.

[Boing-ball]

Of course I did, you've made quite a name for yourself in the PiStorm community with this, I'd literally forgotten I had an account here now!

I have to say though opening up your Amiga to remove the SD card so you can go back to stock is quite the bold move.

One thinks you are going off topic. No help to the OP here. Short lived welcome back me thinks… 🤣🤣🙋‍♂️

Edit: Yay! You edited your post in time to make this post relevant again.. well done! 😆

[kolla]

No help to the OP here.

And your answers are helpful? Half the time you provide "help", you blend in false information and unfounded claims, which is frustrating to read. If you AT LEAST could do a little research before "helping" and be a little more humble when making bold claims.

So back to topic… disclaimer, I don’t have PiStorm32, only a handful of older PiStorms.

Glitches - yes, it’s normal that games made for OCS/ECS A500 cause various glitches on AGA systems such as A1200. As mentioned, this is why "downgraders" exist, such as for example WHDLoad.
Kickstart 3.0 or 3.2.2.1 doesn’t matter much.

- PiStorm needs SD card to work, but it doesn’t really need any "special" formatting, plain staright-from-factory partitioning is good enough.
- PiStorm needs the Raspberry Pi firmware files as well as Emu68 present on the SD card
- kickstart file on SD card, referred to in the pistorm config, will override physical kickstart roms
- with the above present, a PiStorm behaves just any other A1200 accelerator card.
- exception from above for RPi4/CM4 which may be just a little slow to initialize, causing the A1200 to boot from motherboard 68EC020 CPU for a few seconds before resetting with Emu68 as CPU
- booting from floppy, PCMCIA card, IDE drive on mother board or from "special" partition on SD, has no impact on whether the A1200 will boot with 68020 or Emu68 as CPU, regardless of boot priority
- PiStorm will be disabled if SD card is not present
- PiStorm will be disabled if Emu68 or firmwares are not present on SD card
- PiStorm can apparently be disabled by long-pressing ctrl-a-a, which keeps it disabled till next power cycle (or perhaps another long pressed ctrl-a-a?), this feature exists also on other acc. boards.

[Boing-ball]

And your answers are helpful? Half the time you provide "help", you blend in false information and unfounded claims, which is frustrating to read. If you AT LEAST could do a little research before "helping" and be a little more humble when making bold

Hmm… And you provide help half the time. Or just make defamatory claims on here… Did I upset One’s friend on here or something? calm down sheldon… I believe the word “Humble” is something you must have researched as you are not this. I believe you have already upset one of the admins on here with your rudeness..

Back on topic:

okay just had a look at @kolla your helpful advice given to the OP.

The PiStorm SD card doesn’t need any special formatting?

So the fact you need a FAT32 partition with a windows format for the EMU68 files and then AMIGA partition such as FastFileSystem or PFS3 etc.. For the AmigaOS Installation.

Just to back up my helpful claim here:

https://youtu.be/04Ra86PE5Cs?si=nDYlCds12HwbBLJJ

[ZXDunny]

So the fact you need a FAT32 partition with a windows format for the EMU68 files and then AMIGA partition such as FastFileSystem or PFS3 etc.. For the AmigaOS Installation.

Strictly speaking you don't need either of those. You can have your Fat32 partition on a bootable USB drive plugged into the Pi (the Pi needs to boot from something after all, so that Emu68 can start), and your AmigaOS installation can be on any device the Amiga can boot from - plenty of people boot from an IDE CF card adapter rather than the SD card in the Pi.

You can put all those on the SD card if you like - it's the recommended setup - but it's not set in stone.

[Boing-ball]

Strictly speaking you don't need either of those. You can have your Fat32 partition on a bootable USB drive plugged into the Pi (the Pi needs to boot from something after all, so that Emu68 can start), and your AmigaOS installation can be on any device the Amiga can boot from - plenty of people boot from an IDE CF card adapter rather than the SD card in the Pi.

You can put all those on the SD card if you like - it's the recommended setup - but it's not set in stone.

Useful information. Good to know. But you have to make sure you have a Pi that has USB ports to use that feature. Looks,like Doug @10MARC may need to do a follow up video.

Do you have any useful links to backup your claim there?

[mschulz]

The PiStorm SD card doesn’t need any special formatting?

If you are not intending to use part of the microSD then no - you don't need any special formatting. A single FAT partition with Emu68 files from GitHub is enough.

Just to back up my helpful claim here:

Maybe ask the author for Emu68 instead?

[mschulz]

Do you have any useful links to backup your claim there?

He asked author of Emu68. I think this is the best place to ask and get a reliable answer.

[Boing-ball]

He asked author of Emu68. I think this is the best place to ask and get a reliable answer.

Would be helpful for the OP to know how to contact with a link. 🤷🏻‍♂️
Where did “He” ask the OP at?

[mschulz]

Would be helpful for the OP to know how to contact with a link. 🤷🏻‍♂️

Emu68 author can be contacted through several channels:
1. GitHub, for example through "Issues" page: https://github.com/michalsc/Emu68/issues
2. Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/michal_schulz
3. Discord: https://discord.gg/TEu3gpmc
4. Twitter: https://twitter.com/michal_schulz
5. PM on amigaworld.net: https://amigaworld.net/userinfo.php?uid=4679
6. PM on amiga.org: https://forum.amiga.org/index.php?action=profile;u=610

He is very rarely on amiga.org but can be reached in many other ways too...

[kolla]

Looks, like Doug @10MARC may need to do a follow up video.

Well, gee wizz… if you ask me, almost all his videos could need follow ups, he too has this ability to spread false information with strong confidence, typically based his own misunderstandings.

[Boing-ball]

Well, gee wizz… if you ask me

We weren’t asking you…

Hopefully the OP now has something to go on. What a Riddle and hard work that was.. No wonder people sell up their Amiga Hardware and give in… 🤦🏻‍♂️

Over to you OP from now on…. 👍🏻

[ZXDunny]

There's a huge amount of misinformation about what the PiStorm is and what it isn't, about how it behaves and what it does. There's no shame in getting it wrong from time to time, we've all been there.

[mschulz]

I'm happy you have moved this to another thread, yet, that would be the great opportunity to fix the statements where you were wrong:

1. "What you have to remember that if running directly from a floppy disk, then the SD card on the Pistorm32 doesn’t run first. Hence no EMU68 emulation and setting up of Pi RAM as fastRAM." - wrong.
2. "The only time EMU68 gets a chance to be setup is when no Floppy disk is in the drive." - wrong.

Also please note that my first post, right behind yours, gave OP detailed information why running games/demos directly from floppy may be problematic. Hence, the complaint that it took so long to give some answers was, well, wrong (again).

Sincerly,
Michal Schulz, author of Emu68...

[mschulz]

Ah sorry, it wasn’t you who moved the thread.