FPGA based A500 accelerator

[Sim085]

What is the socket next to the Agnus chip for?

[Sim085]

Ok, found the answer, sorry had not seen the other project.

Originally Posted by Sim085

What is the socket next to the Agnus chip for?

[kipper2k]

Originally Posted by Sim085

Ok, found the answer, sorry had not seen the other project.

Yup, this will allow you to choose between all Agnus chips (only 1 chip can be inserted at any given time). There are still other addons

[IanP]

Gotek on-screen display?

[IanP]

It looks like there's a flat flex connector for the R0-3, G0-3 and B0-3 inputs to the vidiot and maybe som other signals. Not sure why it's there, some add-on I assume (scan-doubler, DVI/HDMI, graphics card)?

[sampedenawa]

Don't you have any space to fit a USB Mouse/Pad adapter ?

[kipper2k]

Originally Posted by IanP

Gotek on-screen display?

It is there . no need to run long wires from one side to the other now. The gotek has the headers for the OSD addon board. This is basically what i transplanted to the board...

http://www.kipper2k.com/gotek31/gotek31k.html

Originally Posted by IanP

It looks like there's a flat flex connector for the R0-3, G0-3 and B0-3 inputs to the vidiot and maybe som other signals. Not sure why it's there, some add-on I assume (scan-doubler, DVI/HDMI, graphics card)?

There is a 20 pin FFC header that can be used as a breakout for all the above. it should allow for easy expansion maybe

Originally Posted by sampedenawa

Don't you have any space to fit a USB Mouse/Pad adapter ?

if i had a suitable schematic to import then it would be there, i can make space

[sampedenawa]

Originally Posted by kipper2k

if i had a suitable schematic to import then it would be there, i can make space

Is this enough (Eagle format) ?


https://github.com/EmberHeavyIndustr...1.0.redist.sch

(Besides, mosfets can be omitted should they waste too much board space. Also JTAG/Serial debug port can be stripped.)

[IanP]

The firmware (the hardest part) isn't open source and the hardware licence could be restrictive so it may need a negotiation agreement for inclusion.

[robinsonb5]

The Gotek already has a USB-capable microcontroller - can it support more than one port?
If so, is there any spare capacity in that chip, and scope to integrate HID firmware as well as floppy firmware?

[kipper2k]

Originally Posted by IanP

The firmware (the hardest part) isn't open source and the hardware licence could be restrictive so it may need a negotiation agreement for inclusion.

Yah, this is a grey area, i don't want to tread on anyone's toes. and this would ultimately need to be sorted out with the author which could be complicated. I will do a little bit more checking

I initially thought about removing the 8 ram chips off the board completely as the 2MB chip basically makes them redundant. I was going to use the freed up space for my A508IDE design so that the A500 could have built in 8MB Fast mem and IDE also. I decided against it as i will not sell these boards myself and it would be up to the end user to program the CPLD's etc so it would make it awkward. There are options available for fastmem and of course accelerators so i believe that would be the best solution

The only thing ATM that needs programming is the Gotek and there are plenty of tutorials on how to set it up for the Amiga so i don't think that is an issue and of course it is entirely optional if you want to use it or not.

One thing i forgot to mention is i will add the assembled video hybrid (assembled to the spare area, the part that would normally be cut off). It will save trying to salvage an old one.

[sampedenawa]

Originally Posted by IanP

The firmware (the hardest part) isn't open source and the hardware licence could be restrictive so it may need a negotiation agreement for inclusion.

Originally Posted by kipper2k

Yah, this is a grey area, i don't want to tread on anyone's toes. and this would ultimately need to be sorted out with the author which could be complicated. I will do a little bit more checking

Ehm ... the author of the hardware and the firmware is me .
No probs for the hardware to be cloned (I will be glad to contribute with schematics modifications as well), without any restriction.
For the firmware part, we can discuss it.
I am not going to open the source for the moment, but I could think about giving out free customized firmwares for who assembles his board, for example ....

[kipper2k]

perfect, thanks Sampedenawa

So here are my plans, i will get this assembled as much as is possible and there are a few logic chips that are not available to be assembled with the board so i have to look at either swapping them out with something newer or leaving it to the enduser to buy from digikey/farnell etc. The factory i use does not carry all the chips i would need and they do not use parts from a third party source.

The idea is to try to get as much done at the factory as possible so that the end user mainly needs to worry about the through hole components (sockets, connectors, headers etc). I have had a quick look at parts available and most are but there are a few MIA.

I definitely have the room for the USB mouse sch, so i can look at a way to implement it onto the board and see the best way to make the usb socket accessible.

[Fastdruid]

Could just leave it as a standard USB header and leave it up to the end user. You can pick up any number of different standard backplane type connectors.

[sampedenawa]

Originally Posted by robinsonb5

The Gotek already has a USB-capable microcontroller - can it support more than one port?
If so, is there any spare capacity in that chip, and scope to integrate HID firmware as well as floppy firmware?

Unfortunately no, the stm32f105 only supports one usb peripheral at a time.
More powerful chips do exist in STM32 family, with double usb capability, but a firmware code conversion should be performed, and at the moment I have no idea how painful it could be.

[kipper2k]

i just checked the chip availability for the STM32f105RBT6 and it is available for part assembly, not a bad price too, just under $3.00. I will prob add a USB header to the sch

[PurpleMelbourne]

People in Australia have been working on adding ExtraHD floppy drives (4MB/2.88MB) to Amiga and hit a problem with the low Amiga floppy bandwidth.

Matze has successfully reverse engineered Gary and put onto a Xilinx CPLD.


STM32H750 chip interfaced with a new enhanced Gary on CPLD would allow using regular speed HD floppy drives, and the ExtraHD floppies too (with software eject support already contained in Commodore original Kickstart!)

Other features* of that STM32 chip could also be added if wrapped "inside" enhanced Gary hybrid module.

* ethernet, enhanced parallel, faster serial, SD/CF, 480Mbit USB, SPI, i2c, NAND flash, crypto/hash processor, 480MHz ARM chip with both FPU and DSP.

[hooverphonique]

Paula takes care of floppy data I/O, so I don't understand why a reimplementation of Gary would help there.

Also, where would you get the extra DMA slots needed for increased floppy bandwidth?

[PurpleMelbourne]

Originally Posted by hooverphonique

Paula takes care of floppy data I/O, so I don't understand why a reimplementation of Gary would help there.

Also, where would you get the extra DMA slots needed for increased floppy bandwidth?

OK having another look at the schematics
https://www.amigawiki.org/dnl/schematics/A500_R6.pdf

So floppy appears to be split between Paula and Gary, and the bandwidth between them is limiting the speed. Without a major overhaul of the chips, is there another way but duplicating the Paula's floppy functions into Gary (using MiniMig code) to remove that bandwidth limitation?

I have no idea what this would do on the software side of things.
But if we want to use more readilyl available equipment (as well as twice as fast) then regular PC type floppy drives should be on that list.

Can this be done without messing with compatibility?

[Fastdruid]

I thought it was specifically the bandwidth of Paula that was the problem and this was why although the AGA machines replaced Gary with Gayle they were still limited for floppy drive access speed as they're still using the old Paula. Hence the half speed HD drives for the A4000.