FlashFloppy - new firmware for Gotek drives, open source

[Keir]

Originally Posted by turrican9

So I just asked this in the Gotek HXC thread aswell, but would it be possible two emulate two drives (DF0 and DF1) on one Gotek?

Yes I would say it's possible. There's perhaps a question whether the increased complexity in IO-line handling will push IO latencies too high to work reliably. Would have to try it to find out, could probably be done okay.

[jcarvalho]

Someone raise a statue to kaffer in Queen's Palace Gardens... He is a floppy God!

[alpine9000]

Originally Posted by kaffer

Latest release v0.5.0a:

- Fixes reliability issues when used with Amiga 1200. Drive would often not be detected, especially on warm reboot and accelerated 1200s.

I would like to remove the alpha/prerelease tag soon. Please test and report any issues!

I just tested this on my stock a1200 and it will boot into the selector only after a warm boot (cold boot will boot HD). But the selector says "HxC drive not detected".

Works well on my a500

[Keir]

Originally Posted by alpine9000

I just tested this on my stock a1200 and it will boot into the selector only after a warm boot (cold boot will boot HD). But the selector says "HxC drive not detected".

Works well on my a500

Might be too slow to mount an image on cold boot. If you enter startup menu (both mouse buttons) does DF0 at least appear there?

Regarding the selector, are you using my build of AUTOBOOT.HFE (included in the FlashFloppy distribution)?

[alpine9000]

Originally Posted by kaffer

Might be too slow to mount an image on cold boot. If you enter startup menu (both mouse buttons) does DF0 at least appear there?

Regarding the selector, are you using my build of AUTOBOOT.HFE (included in the FlashFloppy distribution)?

Yes, I have only used cortex previously, so that's the only one I have.

[Keir]

Originally Posted by alpine9000

Yes, I have only used cortex previously, so that's the only one I have.

Okay, I'll have a play around and see if I can reproduce the issue

[alpine9000]

Originally Posted by kaffer

Okay, I'll have a play around and see if I can reproduce the issue

Before you waste too much time, I might re-test it in the A1200 using cortex firmware to make sure it's not the A1200 causing the issue.

It's an Amiga Technologies A1200, so I think it had some issues with the ready signal ? I remember cutting some wire off the motherboard which made gotex work initially, but I didn't really use the floppy much after that as I got a PCMCIA card which was faster.

[Keir]

Originally Posted by alpine9000

Before you waste too much time, I might re-test it in the A1200 using cortex firmware to make sure it's not the A1200 causing the issue.

It's an Amiga Technologies A1200, so I think it had some issues with the ready signal ? I remember cutting some wire off the motherboard which made gotex work initially, but I didn't really use the floppy much after that as I got a PCMCIA card which was faster.

Then please can you test using my SysTest ADF? Download here https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B6...GhXMWRvOXVDd3M

You can boot that on FlashFloppy firmware if it's only file on the USB stick it will be auto-allocated slot 0. Or you can test on Cortex of course. Run the Floppy Test -> Floppy Read Test and you will see a report on RDY signal at the start of the test.

No RDY would mean my selector (well, my build of HxC's selector) won't work as my modified detect routine relies on it.

EDIT: Also, regarding too slow on cold boot. Can you try the early startup menu, check DF0 appears there, and also whether you can boot from Gotek when exiting the startup menu. That can confirm whether FlashFloppy is simply too slow to mount the first image. It is then a matter of your USB drive being slow to mount (but I guess it worked on Cortex?) or I have too many delays in the init routines: eg I stuck a 200ms delay at start to allow 5v to stabilise, and the USB stack is full of multi-millisecond delays also. There's probably 500ms could be shaved off of startup. Another possibility might be to deassert DSKCHG while mounting a USB stick, perhaps just at power on, as that will make the Amiga wait a while as it tries to read the floppy it believes is there.

EDIT2: Okay just ran a logic analyser on cold start of my A1200/030, rev 1d1, Kick 3.0. Timing is approx 1.5s from power on to drive detect, and then another 1.5s from drive detect to STEP, sample DSKCHG, and floppy boot. So FlashFloppy has ~3s to get the first image mounted -- and on my setup it gets from power on to image mounted in less than 1.1s, so there should be oodles of time (I have measured the time from image mounted to DSKCHG deasserted as over 2 seconds). I would therefore suspect your USB stick is slow, or has a lot of files in the root directory (FAT32 lookup is linear, and new files are usually at the end of the directory list).

See this pic: power on is at approx 3s (lines glitch and initialise), drive detect is the blip at 4.5s, and then DSKCHG is deasserted and image loads at approx 6s.

[supaduper]

Kaffer just tried your new 5.a on my A1200 /030 acc, and that systest adf and works ok here

Did the floppy read test and it says All tracks read ok

[Keir]

Originally Posted by supaduper

Kaffer just tried your new 5.a on my A1200 /030 acc, and that systest adf and works ok here

Did the floppy read test and it says All tracks read ok

Glad to hear You should see SysTest complain that READY asserts too fast, and believes that a Gotek is attached. Which is of course true, and the message is expected.

[supaduper]

Originally Posted by kaffer

Glad to hear You should see SysTest complain that READY asserts too fast, and believes that a Gotek is attached. Which is of course true, and the message is expected.

Yes it reports exactly as you say Kaffer, thanks again for this most excellent work, your place in Amiga history is assured

[turrican9]

Originally Posted by kaffer

Yes I would say it's possible. There's perhaps a question whether the increased complexity in IO-line handling will push IO latencies too high to work reliably. Would have to try it to find out, could probably be done okay.

Thanks for the answer. Having DF0 and DF1 on one Gotek would be really nice. Say a game like Wings, mount disk 1 in DF0 and Disk 2 in DF1. No need for a second Gotek (which is a hassle anyway because that would need to have the images pre mounted).

I cross my fingers that this can be a thing. Keep ut the great work

[Keir]

Just tested on an A600 with Vampire 2. I didn't find any problems so far, touch wood, as of v0.5.0a release.

[Mikerochip]

Originally Posted by kaffer

Latest release v0.5.0a:

- Fixes reliability issues when used with Amiga 1200. Drive would often not be detected, especially on warm reboot and accelerated 1200s.

I would like to remove the alpha/prerelease tag soon. Please test and report any issues!

Works perfectly with my A600 + Vampire II!!

Woohoo!

Thanks!!

[Keir]

Originally Posted by alpine9000

Before you waste too much time, I might re-test it in the A1200 using cortex firmware to make sure it's not the A1200 causing the issue.

It's an Amiga Technologies A1200, so I think it had some issues with the ready signal ? I remember cutting some wire off the motherboard which made gotex work initially, but I didn't really use the floppy much after that as I got a PCMCIA card which was faster.

Please see kipper2k's post in this thread: http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=22082

This shows the jumper wire you need to add to restore the ready signal on your Escom board.

There's also a full video description of modding a stock Escom board by the great RetroGameModz on YouTube: [ Show youtube player ]

[alpine9000]

Originally Posted by kaffer

Please see kipper2k's post in this thread: http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=22082

This shows the jumper wire you need to add to restore the ready signal on your Escom board.

There's also a full video description of modding a stock Escom board by the great RetroGameModz on YouTube: [ Show youtube player ]

Thanks for that!

I will fix up the motherboard tonight and re-test.

[dlfrsilver]

Originally Posted by kaffer

Please see kipper2k's post in this thread: http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=22082

This shows the jumper wire you need to add to restore the ready signal on your Escom board.

There's also a full video description of modding a stock Escom board by the great RetroGameModz on YouTube: [ Show youtube player ]

Ah I'm so pleased, you're showing us again the great wizard you are, and the technical mastery you own

Congratulations for doing such a good job

[alpine9000]

Originally Posted by kaffer

Please see kipper2k's post in this thread: http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=22082

This shows the jumper wire you need to add to restore the ready signal on your Escom board.

There's also a full video description of modding a stock Escom board by the great RetroGameModz on YouTube: [ Show youtube player ]

OK, so I did that modification to the motherboard and it works much better now (almost perfectly). The selector now detects the drive.

The only issue I have now is that during a cold boot it will always boot from the HD. Warm boots will boot from the floppy fine (using index mode).

The game I am writing uses a custom track write routine, and it was always detecting write errors with cortex, however it saves really quickly (no errors) with your firmware.

Thanks again for pointing out the fix!

[Keir]

Originally Posted by alpine9000

OK, so I did that modification to the motherboard and it works much better now (almost perfectly). The selector now detects the drive.

The only issue I have now is that during a cold boot it will always boot from the HD. Warm boots will boot from the floppy fine (using index mode).

Glad to hear your other issues are fixed. Regarding cold boot, see my earlier detailed response, and consider these questions:
Your A1200 is stock with Kickstart 3.1 I guess? How many files are in the root of your USB stick? Have you tried another USB stick? Does that very same USB stick with same number of files work on cold boot with Cortex firmware?

[alpine9000]

Originally Posted by kaffer

Glad to hear your other issues are fixed. Regarding cold boot, see my earlier detailed response, and consider these questions:
Your A1200 is stock with Kickstart 3.1 I guess? How many files are in the root of your USB stick? Have you tried another USB stick? Does that very same USB stick with same number of files work on cold boot with Cortex firmware?

Yes, stock a1200 with 3.1 roms.

One file on the stick. I tried my "slow" stick and ironically it booted fine from cold boot.

I will test it with the cortex firmware tomorrow with both sticks.