EmuTOS for Amiga

[Toni Wilen]

Originally Posted by BlankVector

The compiled version:
- Supports IDE hard disks on A1200. But I dumbly limited IDE detection to Gayle machines, so it currently does not work on A600. This will have to be fixed.

A600 has Gayle but with different ID (0xd0)

- If there is abnormal screen flickering. It is supposed to be the same interlaced mode as AmigaOS with high resolution on A500. I had some doubts when using WinUAE.

It has race condition in fast cpu modes. Copper may be between two moves while interrupt code updates bitplane pointer values. KS routine uses two copper lists, it does not modify bitplane pointer values.

[amiman99]

I has some time to play with EmuTOS and here are some results:
NTSC A1000 with 8MB kipper2k Fast RAM:
1. I tried the EmuTOS v0.9.4 with floppy support on A1000. The plain Atari disk with some files is recognized.
2. I was able to launch v1.0 CAD3D software and create simple objects. I was also able to load object from the floppy.
3. The keyboard and mouse work fine.
4. After loading the EmuTOS kickstart, immediately it wants to load floppy disk, thus giving error trying to load the disk.
5. CTLR LAmiga RAMIGA keys resets the A1000 back to TOS, so no need to reload the TOS, same as Amiga kickstart.
6. I did encounter "Panic Error, Exception number 16", I'm not sure what caused it.

I also tried MCC-216:
1. To get it to work I renamed emutos.rom to KICK13.ROM to fool the MCC-216.
2. The EmuTOS v0.9.4 with floppy enabled did not load at all, it stayed at white screen.
3. The EmuTOS v0.9.4 with out floppy support, load it fine to desktop.
4. Mouse works fine, I only tried PS2 mouse port. I was able to select menus and operate preferences.
5. The is a problem with keyboard. I started the EmuTOS console and I was only able to type 2 letters before it froze. Sometimes none at all.

I know that MCC-216 is not supported, but it's nice to know that it "works". As of right now it's not very usable do to the fact that floppy drive option is not working therefore no software can be loaded.
There also can be a problem with virtual disk access do to the fact that it uses ADF format not ST, I'm not sure.

[AnnaWu]

Thanks for the new EmuTOS which is now working with the last WinUAE versions.

@amiman99
Not sure you are talking about the real hardware or emulation.
I think EmuTOS for the Amiga doesn't support loading additional floppy disk images.
WinUAE support (tested with Amtari) the *.ST floppy disk image format.

[amiman99]

Originally Posted by AnnaWu

Thanks for the new EmuTOS which is now working with the last WinUAE versions.

@amiman99
Not sure you are talking about the real hardware or emulation.
I think EmuTOS for the Amiga doesn't support loading additional floppy disk images.
WinUAE support (tested with Amtari) the *.ST floppy disk image format.

The A1000 is a real Amiga.

[BlankVector]

Originally Posted by amiman99

I has some time to play with EmuTOS and here are some results:
NTSC A1000 with 8MB kipper2k Fast RAM:

Very good!

Was your FastRAM recognized? If so, it is displayed on the EmuTOS welcome screen: ST-RAM (= Chip RAM) and FastRAM below, if any.

Also, was the date/time correct on the welcome screen? If you have no battery backed up clock, it will be bogus (I get year 2065 on WinUAE). I should handle correctly the case when there is no battery backed up clock installed (TODO).

Originally Posted by amiman99

1. I tried the EmuTOS v0.9.4 with floppy support on A1000.

Many thanks, tests on real hardware are invaluable.

Important: EmuTOS 0.9.4 is the latest official release from march 2015 (with wrong stack initialization). On the other hand, "snapshots" are binaries I build from time to time, with the current Git sources, so users can test the latest developments before releases. I hope that you have tested with the latest snasphot instead (timestamp 20150828).

Originally Posted by amiman99

The plain Atari disk with some files is recognized.

Good, this was expected.

Originally Posted by amiman99

2. I was able to launch v1.0 CAD3D software and create simple objects. I was also able to load object from the floppy.

Excellent.
As long as you run software that don't require specific hardware and can deal with monochrome video mode, that will work.

Originally Posted by amiman99

3. The keyboard and mouse work fine.

Good. I debugged that with recent WinUAE, which is accurate.

Originally Posted by amiman99

4. After loading the EmuTOS kickstart, immediately it wants to load floppy disk, thus giving error trying to load the disk.

Indeed, that's not handy
EmuTOS expects to find some ST disk, but instead it finds the EmuTOS/KickStart disk in Amiga format which it is not able to read.

Fortunately this situation only occurs on A1000 (because EmuTOS is on floppy). I should detect this situation and ask for a floppy swap and key press.

You have 2 different solutions as workaround:

1) At the EmuTOS welcome screen, hold the Shift key to pause it. Still holding the key, remove the EmuTOS kickdisk floppy, and insert some ST floppy. Then release the key.

2) Boot normally, and wait for the message "Your output device is not receiving data...". Put an ST floppy into the drive, then click Retry.

Both solutions will work equally well.

Originally Posted by amiman99

5. CTLR LAmiga RAMIGA keys resets the A1000 back to TOS, so no need to reload the TOS, same as Amiga kickstart.

This is expected. I explicitly put a correct checksum at the end of the ROM. In that case, the KS loaded from floppy survives to reset. I must thanks again WinUAE to be particularly accurate regarding to this.

Originally Posted by amiman99

6. I did encounter "Panic Error, Exception number 16", I'm not sure what caused it.

Seen there:
Exception number 16 is "Reserved by Motorola". I have no idea what could cause it. Or maybe the stack is trashed for some reason, and EmuTOS displays a wrong message? Strange, usually panic messages are accurate.

As a summary :
Your tests on A1000 are 100% as expected

Originally Posted by amiman99

I also tried MCC-216:

Thanks again to have pointed me to that great machine, I didn't know it.

Originally Posted by amiman99

2. The EmuTOS v0.9.4 with floppy enabled did not load at all, it stayed at white screen.

If this really was EmuTOS 0.9.4, this might be normal due to the stack initialization bug. If you tried the latest snapshot, there is a problem somewhere in the AROS code (either AUTOCONFIG or floppy).

Originally Posted by amiman99

3. The EmuTOS v0.9.4 with out floppy support, load it fine to desktop.

Great, at least other parts of EmuTOS work.

Originally Posted by amiman99

4. Mouse works fine, I only tried PS2 mouse port. I was able to select menus and operate preferences.

Great.

Originally Posted by amiman99

5. The is a problem with keyboard. I started the EmuTOS console and I was only able to type 2 letters before it froze. Sometimes none at all.

This is a problem with Amiga keyboard acknowledges. Since the same code works fine on your A1000, this seems to indicate a hardware bug on the MCC-216. Maybe the timer I used for keyboards acknowledges is not correctly emulated on the MCC-216.

Originally Posted by amiman99

There also can be a problem with virtual disk access do to the fact that it uses ADF format not ST, I'm not sure.

Currently, EmuTOS for Amiga can only read ST disk images. There is no support at all for ADF. On the other hand, WinUAE "hardware" has great support for both ADF and ST image files, so EmuTOS can use ST image files as expected.

As a conclusion, there are a few issues with MCC-216, but globally it works quite well.

Many thanks for those tests

[BlankVector]

Originally Posted by AnnaWu

I think EmuTOS for the Amiga doesn't support loading additional floppy disk images.
WinUAE support (tested with Amtari) the *.ST floppy disk image format.

EmuTOS for Amiga does support swapping floppy disks.
I tested that on WinUAE, it works fine.

For information about the Atari desktop:
- There is no automatic refresh when you swap a floppy
- When you swap a floppy, if a window is opened on A:\, you must press the Escape key to force refresh of the window contents
- Of course, if there is no window opened, after swapping you just need to double-click on the A: icon to open it, as usual.

NB: Sometimes I get a read error on WinUAE on the first read after swapping a disk (it fails somewhere in the AROS floppy code). Just ignore and retry, next time it works.

[Locutus]

Just out of curiosity, how much work would it be to get a barebones MiNT booting on top of EmuTOS/Amiga? Does MiNT have some means to fall back on EmuTOS XBIOS drivers?

That would be the most perverse thing ever :-)

[BlankVector]

Originally Posted by Locutus

Just out of curiosity, how much work would it be to get a barebones MiNT booting on top of EmuTOS/Amiga?

Not much work. The FreeMiNT kernel has only a few noncritical hooks to actual hardware. I made preliminary tests, those small dependencies to Atari hardware can easily be disabled. I just need to take the time to do that cleanly and provide patches. This is my "FreeMiNT for non-Atari hardware" project.

Originally Posted by Locutus

Does MiNT have some means to fall back on EmuTOS XBIOS drivers?

Actually, FreeMiNT always use the underlying XBIOS drivers to do its job
FreeMiNT only provides its own implementation for upper OS layers.
This is why EmuTOS for Amiga is a key component to go forward, even if it is currently ugly.

Originally Posted by Locutus

That would be the most perverse thing ever :-)

Of course, this was my main goal when I started this adventure

[Locutus]

...Neat!

I remember that there was a MacMiNT decades ago (what Mac users didnt have to go through to get a nix userland ) i suppose it must have done something like that already to be be hosted on MacOS7. (not that the code would be relevant, probably bit rotten or lost).

I guess the real challenge after that is getting fVDI to work so you can run a multitasking AES.

I took a quick look through the code tree and as fVDI can work with just plain chunky framebuffers whats probably the easiest hardware to get fVDI up on would be a RTG board. (which WinUAE emulates ofcourse )

[BlankVector]

Originally Posted by Locutus

I remember that there was a MacMiNT decades ago

Nowadays the simplest methods to install a full MiNT setup on Atari machines are the VanillaMiNT and EasyMiNT distributions. But I don't know them much myself.

Originally Posted by Locutus

I guess the real challenge after that is getting fVDI to work so you can run a multitasking AES.

I took a quick look through the code tree and as fVDI can work with just plain chunky framebuffers whats probably the easiest hardware to get fVDI up on would be a RTG board. (which WinUAE emulates ofcourse )

That's totally true.
This is why I wrote an fVDI driver for WinUAE RTG graphics more than 1 year ago
Currently it only supports 16-bit true color video modes, which are far enough for serious stuff. Preliminary work works perfectly with plain EmuTOS (no FreeMiNT / XaAES yet). I used WinUAE RTG blit acceleration, so it runs very fast. I still have to finish support for the mouse sprite, then I will publish that work.
Definitely, I must find the time to finish that

[Locutus]

I've tried a couple of things on EmuTOS; Devpac, PureC, Teradesk and it all works.

Just for shit and giggles, i created a simple boot image with MINT (68k binary, so keep it as simple as possible) in U:/C/AUTO and the kernel actually starts up to the point of needing a init sequence. Lets see what it does with a barebones mint.ini :-)

I actually have a TT030 with a VME graphics card and NetUSBee which runs nvdi/xaaes/mint, but its been a while since i've last touched it.

If you want to share youre fVDI driver i'd happily give it some testing.

[Galahad/FLT]

Originally Posted by Locutus

I've tried a couple of things on EmuTOS; Devpac, PureC, Teradesk and it all works.

Just for shit and giggles, i created a simple boot image with MINT (68k binary, so keep it as simple as possible) in U:/C/AUTO and the kernel actually starts up to the point of needing a init sequence. Lets see what it does with a barebones mint.ini :-)

I actually have a TT030 with a VME graphics card and NetUSBee which runs nvdi/xaaes/mint, but its been a while since i've last touched it.

If you want to share youre fVDI driver i'd happily give it some testing.

Be interesting to see some ST games and if they work, quite a lot use TOS for all their system calls like setting up a screen and the like, the older the more likely they are to use the system.

[Locutus]

Those games would still be limited by the fact there is only a ST-High mode.

Theres some dungeoncrawler games that run in ST-High i vaguely remember, worth a try.

Any suggestions of which to try? i can give it a go.

[BlankVector]

Originally Posted by Galahad/FLT

Be interesting to see some ST games and if they work

Virtually all ST games use direct access to the Atari hardware (including floppy, video, sound, joystick), so there are no chances to get them running on EmuTOS for Amiga.

However, there are a few GEM-based games. Nothing spectacular. Those ones are more likely to work. I tested GEM AmiGo, it worked fine.

[Locutus]

Okay, while on the commute train i got MiNT + Teradesk to boot.

XaAES seems to just halt somewhere (mouse pointer is alive, but nothing happens) i suppose its a configuration issue mostly.

More investigation required As this has no use at all, its highly amusing!

[Locutus]

And a obligatory screenshot: http://locutus.puscii.nl/upload/2015...2-19a99f8b.png

[BlankVector]

Originally Posted by Locutus

Okay, while on the commute train i got MiNT + Teradesk to boot.

Good to see that you are playing with that

However, I'm not sure that MiNT is actually running. If so, you should have an U: drive.

Did you try an old MiNT or an up-to-date FreeMiNT? I really noticed a few hardware issues in the latter, so I would be surprised if it worked out of the box. My conclusion was that FreeMiNT really required a few patches to work as expected on non-Atari hardware.

[Locutus]

Ah yes thats a good point.

Murphy's law striked and i didnt check the screenshot properly myself before uploading.

Just to show again: http://locutus.puscii.nl/i.php?/uplo...61743cd-la.png

I have mint 1.18 running, as thats what i had on my laptop (i quickly set this up over my daily work commute on the train).

[Locutus]

It seems XaAES tries to start, and gets to the point of opening the desktop (so i guess my config is correct).

However only a blank white screen is shown.

See XaAES log: http://locutus.puscii.nl/files/xaaes.log

[Locutus]

Last one before i call it quits and people get annoyed with me



All works!

MiNT + XaAES + Teradesk.