Emulation of Commodore expansion cards

[Kitchen2010]

I compiled here a list of all original Commodore extensions cards for the Amiga that need still to be implemented in WinUAE. I have taken the list from the Amiga Hardware Database (http://amiga.resource.cx/search.pl?p...&base=dec&pid=).

Legend:
emulated and fully working
emulated and partly working
not emulated
not emulated because not useful for emulation

• A1000:
  • A1050: 256 kB Chip RAM expansion for the trapdoor slot
    Already implemented in WinUAE by variable Chip RAM memory.
    
  • A1060: IBM XT-emulation card for the side expansion Zorro I port (sidecar)
    Might be not too hard task if you already got a complete emulation of the Intel 8088 CPU and Intel 80807 FPU, depending if you can find out the how the exchange of the Amiga-PC sides works (it uses dual-port RAM for data exchange). It includes also 3 ISA slots, so emulation might expanded to some common PC ISA cards too.
    This might not so hard as it sounds if you can use the sourcecode of the MAME project, which already has a fairly complete IBM PC/XT/AT emulation with some ISA cards. Perhaps knowledge of the hardware of the comtemporary Commodore PCs is useful, as the board was implemented by the same developer team (Commodore Germany, Braunschweig).
    Emulated in WinUAE.
    
  • A1300: genlock and sound mixer for the RGB-port
    Should be very hard to implement as it might use analog hardware for its function.
• A2000:
  • A2000 1MB FAST RAM expansion for the CPU slot (for A2000A only)
    Already implemented in WinUAE by variable Fast RAM memory.
    
  • A2031 (PAL) & A2032 (NTSC): video modulator for the video slot adding some video output ports
    Not necessary for an emulator, as it is only needed to connect a TV to the Amiga.
    
  • A2052: 2MB Fast RAM expansion for the Zorro II slot
    Already implemented in WinUAE by variable Fast RAM memory.
    
  • A2058: 8MB Fast RAM expansion for the Zorro II slot
    Already implemented in WinUAE by variable Fast RAM memory.
    
  • A2060: ArcNet Ethernet expansion for the Zorro II slot
    It uses the HCY 9058/9068 chip to implement its functionality.
    NetBSD and OpenBSD seem to support this card, which might be useful if you get the sourcecode. It would be nice, when you really care about ArcNet network but perhaps emulation of an Ethernet card would be far more useful for WinUAE, as it is very slow (transfer speed: max. 300 kB/s, typical 100 kB/s)
    
  • A2065: Ethernet controller expansion for the Zorro II slot
    It uses an AMD Am7990 Ethernet controller chip with 32 kB onboard buffer shared between the Am7990 and the Amiga which is accessed with DMA transfers. It achieves 10 Mbit/s transfer speed and supports SANA II and MNI drivers.
    Fully implemented in WinUAE (according Tony Wilen).
    
  • A2088T: IBM XT-emulation expansion for the Zorro II slot
    It uses a NEC V20 as x86 processor and has a 16 kB XT-compatible BIOS and 640 kB RAM. It can use the ISA slots as a brigeboard card.
    An emulation might use MAME's implementation of the NEC V20 CPU (see also A1060).
    Emulated in WinUAE.
    
  • A2088XT: IBM XT-emulation expansion for the Zorro II slot
    It uses a Intel 8088 CPU and Intel 8087 FPU as x86 processor and has a 16 kB XT-compatible BIOS and 512 kB RAM. It can use the ISA slots as a brigeboard card.
    Emulation might be not too hard using a existing 8088/87 emulation (see also A1060).
    Emulated in WinUAE.
    
  • A2090: SCSI/ST-506 HD controller for the Zorro II slot
    It uses a WD 33C93 chip for the SCSI functionality and a Zilog Z80B cpu for the ST-506 functionality which can also be used to control the WD 33C93 chip. DMA transfers are provided by the custom Commodore 8727 chip, using a 65 kB FIFO buffer. Cannot autoboot and does not support SCSI Direct protocols.
    Partly implemented in WinUAE.
    
  • A2090A: SCSI/ST-506 HD controller expansion for the Zorro II slot
    Improved version of the A2090. It can now autoboot using 3 autoboot ROMs.
    Partly implemented in WinUAE.
    
  • A2090B: SCSI/ST-506 HD controller expansion for the Zorro II slot
    Improved version of the A2090A. It can now autoboot using 2 autoboot ROMs.
    Not yet implemented in WinUAE.
    
  • A2091: SCSI/ST-506 HD controller expansion for the Zorro II slot
    Improved version of the A2090B. It uses A3000's DMAC custom chip for the DMA transfers. It supports now SCSI Direct protocols, SCSI network sharing and Rigid Disk Block.
    Linux, NetBSD and OpenBSD support this card.
    Partly implemented in WinUAE.
    
  • A2232: Serial port expansion for the Zorro II slot
    It uses a 65CE20 CPU controlling the I/O operations. It supplies seven 8 pin mini-DIN serial ports which are not completely RS232C compatible, missing the ringing signal (RI). It can transfer 50-19200 bps for each port.
    NetBSD and OpenBSD support this card.
    Not yet implemented in WinUAE.
    
  • A2286AT: IBM AT-emulation expansion for the Zorro II slot
    It uses a Intel 80286 CPU and Intel 80287 FPU as x86 processor and has a 16 kB AT-compatible BIOS and 1 MB RAM. It can use the ISA slots as a brigeboard card.
    Emulation might be not too hard using a existing 80286/87 emulation (see also A1060).
    Emulated in WinUAE.
    
  • A2300 (NTSC) & A2301 (PAL): video genlock for the video slot
    Genlock allowing overlaying Amiga graphics onto incoming video signal
    Should be very hard to implement properly in WinUAE.
    
  • A2320: deinterlacer for the video slot
    It uses A3000's Amber chip.
    Not necessary for an emulator, as it is only needed to double the framerate of the Amiga video signal.
    
  • A2386SX: IBM PC 386 SX emulation expansion for the Zorro II slot
    It uses a Intel 80386SX CPU and Intel 80387 FPU as x86 processor and has a 64 kB AT-compatible BIOS and 8 MB RAM. It can use the ISA slots as a brigeboard card.
    Emulation might be not too hard using a existing 80386/87 emulation (see also A1060).
    Partly implemented in WinUAE.
    
  • A2410: TIGA graphics card expansion for the Zorro II slot
    It uses a Texas Instrument TMS34010 CPU and has 2 MB RAM and 1 MB VRAM. It displays 256+3 colours from a 24-bit palette. It supplies the different video modes by changing oscillator clock frequency. There are CyberGaphX 2, 4.2 and EGS drivers for this card.
    NetBSD and OpenBSD support this card.
    An emulation might use MAME's implementation of the TI TMS34010 CPU.
    Emulated in WinUAE.
    
  • A2620: processor turboboard expansion for the CPU slot
    It uses a Motorola 68020 CPU, Motorola 68851 MMU and Motorola 68881 FPU. It has 4 MB RAM.
    Emulated in WinUAE.
    
  • A2630: processor turboboard expansion for the CPU slot
    It uses a Motorola 68030 CPU and Motorola 68882 FPU. It has 4 MB RAM.
    Emulated in WinUAE.
• A3000:
  • All expansions for the Zorro II (see A2000)
    
  • A3640: processor turboboard expansion for the CPU slot
    It uses a Motorola 68LC040/68040 CPU.
    Already implemented in WinUAE by variable CPU core.
• A4000:
  • All expansions for the Zorro II (see A2000)
    
  • A3630: processor turboboard expansion for the CPU slot
    It uses a Motorola 68030 CPU, Motorola 68851 MMU and Motorola 68881/68882 FPU.
    Already implemented in WinUAE by variable CPU core.
    
  • A3640: (see A3000)
    Already implemented in WinUAE by variable CPU core.
    
  • A4091: Fast SCSI HD controller expansion for the Zorro III slot
    It uses NCR 53C710 as DMA controller.
    Emulated in WinUAE.
• A500:
  • A501: 512 kB RAM expansion for the trapdoor slot
    Already implemented in WinUAE by variable RAM memory.
    
  • A520: vido modulator for the RGB port
    Not necessary for an emulator, as it is only needed to connect a TV to the Amiga.
    
  • A560: ArcNet Ethernet expansion for the side expansion Zorro II port
    (see A2060)
    Not yet emulated in WinUAE.
    
  • A570: CD-ROM drive for the side expansion Zorro II port
    It uses a Matsushita interface, neither SCSI nor IDE to interface with CD-ROM drive. It uses DMA transfers and supplies CDTV compatibility a special ROM merged to the A500 ROM.
    Not emulated in WinUAE. But you can also use emulation of CDTV. From the software perspective A570 and CDTV are not distinguishable (according Tony Wilen).
    
  • A590: SCSI/XT-IDE/ST-506 HD controller expansion for the Zorro II slot
    (see A2090B)
    Partly implemented in WinUAE, namely the SCSI and XT-IDE part is emulated (according Tony Wilen).
• A500+:
  • All expansions for the side expansion Zorro II port (see A500)
    
  • A501+: 1 MB Chip RAM expansion for the trapdoor slot
    Already implemented in WinUAE by variable Chip RAM memory.
• A600:
  • A601: 1 MB RAM expansion for the trapdoor slot
    Already implemented in WinUAE by variable Chip RAM memory.
• CDTV:
  • CD1300 (NTSC) & CD1301 (PAL): vido modulator for the video slot adding some video output ports
    Not necessary for an emulator, as it is only needed to connect a TV to the Amiga.
    
  • CDTV SCSI:
    (see A2091)
    Partly emulated in WinUAE.
• CD32:
  • Full Motion Video MPEG video decoder for the rear expansion port
    It uses C-Cube video decoder and LSI-Logic audio decoder chip. MPEG animation can be genlocked with Amiga graphics.
    Partly implemented in WinUAE.
• A1200:
  • CD1200: CD-ROM drive (protoype)
    It provides CD32 compatibility to the A1200 including the Akiko chip.
    Not yet emulated in WinUAE. But you can use emulation of CD32.

[Noth]

A2065 is already emulated.

[Kitchen2010]

Thanks for reporting Noth, I was not aware of it !

[Toni Wilen]

Genlocks:

I don't see any point in genlock emulation, except perhaps to emulate it just enough to see something, like noise pattern/static image. All genlocks works exactly the same, software can't detect any differences.

Boards with CPU:

Too time consuming, would need full CPU emulator just for single board.. (This includes A2090 ST-506 part). Only exception is bridge boards because they can run "real" software, not just single code in ROM. 65CE02 may be another exception, someday, because it is also inside CDTV-CR's 4510 chip and it needs to be emulated for full CDTV-CR emulation.

Other:

A2065 is fully emulated. Back end may not be that fast but it has nothing to do with A2065 emulation.

A590 is SCSI + XT-IDE. ST-506 is totally different. XT-IDE is emulated.

A570 is identical to CDTV. Software can't see any difference.

CDTV SCSI expansion is emulated.

[Kitchen2010]

I have made changes to the list according the information that Tony Wilen wrote above.

[Kitchen2010]

Originally Posted by Toni Wilen

When did I say it won't be implemented? I think I only said it is pointless board and being pointless never equals if it is worth the trouble to implement.

The more there is information available about the board, like chip datasheet, register information etc, the bigger the chance of something happening. (Exact same happened with HAM-E and others, I got help with specs/driver disassemby etc..!)

MMU also happened simply because someone else did the framework first.

I rarely bother to research information about uninteresting hardware. It does not mean I am not interested in emulating it.

EDIT: Also (driver) software that uses the board and works in plain m68k AmigaOS is needed.

OK, then I will collect some information about the missing expansion cards in this thread, until you change head about implementing it in WinUAE.

[Kitchen2010]

A2410: TIGA graphics card expansion for the Zorro II slot
It uses a Texas Instrument TMS34010 CPU and has 2 MB RAM and 1 MB VRAM. It displays 256+3 colours from a 24-bit palette. It supplies the different video modes by changing oscillator clock frequency. There are CyberGaphX 2, 4.2 and EGS drivers for this card.
NetBSD and OpenBSD support this card.
An emulation might use MAME's implementation of the TI TMS34010 CPU.

Here some information that I found on the Internet:

• Commodore Amiga Schematics (directory of PDFs for several revisions of Commodore Amiga Hardware):
  Schematics of A2410 revision 6
• Commodore Germany mailbox software CD (official test and driver/install disks as formerly offered on Commodore mailbox)
  A2410 TIGA-Grafikkarte Tool-Disk (148KB)
• Big Book of Hardware
  A2410 page with some information about display modes and driver support
• Amiga Hardware Database
  Information, Photos and Driver software
• Amiga Hardware Database
  Information, drivers, software and manual
• Traumstation.ch (directory with software, drivers, manuals and ROMs)
  A2410 directory
• Github repository of MAME/MESS emulator which got open-sourced recently under BSD-3 clause
  sourcecode of cpu emulation of the TMS34010

[Toni Wilen]

Thanks. Uh, I didn't expect it to be _that_ complex chip.

Anyway, now it looks much more interesting than ever before

[rhester72]

Originally Posted by Toni Wilen

Thanks. Uh, I didn't expect it to be _that_ complex chip.

Anyway, now it looks much more interesting than ever before

*bows to you*

I thought this day may never come. =)

Rodney

[Toni Wilen]

Can anyone who is familiar with mame internals help "detaching" tms34010 and/or voodoo3 emulation from mame and replace needed support routines with some wrappers that can be replaced with UAE routines? Mame stuff unfortunately is much more complex than qemu.

I tried some quick hacks but there are too many dependencies that I have no idea what they are supposed to do..

[strim]

Originally Posted by Toni Wilen

Thanks. Uh, I didn't expect it to be _that_ complex chip.

Anyway, now it looks much more interesting than ever before

Yeah! It's very complex and interesting chip. I have a real A2410 here if I can help in any way.

I also have TMS34010 datasheet in case it disappeared from Google.

Btw. NetBSD supports A2410 and also has a TIGA cross-assembler included (which makes it cool for experiments). Unfortunately the driver does not support full functionality of the chip, but I guess that could be fixed...

Originally Posted by Toni Wilen

Can anyone who is familiar with mame internals help...

Unfortunately I also have nil MAME knowledge.

Also, here's a movie from 1986 presenting capabilities of TMS34010:
[ Show youtube player ]

[wXR]

@strim

Whoa is that the first consumer GPU then?

[Locutus]

'Consumer' is not really the right term for the TMS34010, it was a quite expensive chip initially targeted at workstations. A2140's only really showed up in non-professional users once they were sold at dump prices i think.

Its essentially a bit addressable CPU with extra graphics primitives, perhaps not so far from a framebuffer with a single pixelshader

[Toni Wilen]

A2410 emulation status report: Cybergraphx A2410 WB screen works! Overlay support (mouse cursor) is still missing and some cleanups and tweaks to do but it is getting complete, sooner or later.

Two images attached, first image is sort of working image of A2410 WB I saw for the first time. (very first was unreadable)

EDIT: NetBSD A2410 console also works.

[Locutus]

Cool! there's some older RTG and graphics libs for the A2140 to play with. That'll be fun!

[Kitchen2010]

Great news ! Thank you very much for adding A2410 emulation ! We got now almost complete emulation of a A3000 UX.

[rhester72]

*bows humbly before Toni* Thank you very, very much for this - I know it was very far down your TODO list, but this is quite a major milestone for rare Commodore-Amiga hardware emulation.

Rodney

[Toni Wilen]

Weird and low priority things can happen during summer (See last year!) (Donations would be nice too)

Only remaining Commodore boards that makes sense to emulate seems to be x86 bridgeboards. (Makes sense = has some "real" software, not just driver, that can't run without hardware)

--

CDTV-CR is missing from this list. (Which is currently partially emulated, 4510 CPU code is not emulated, simple simulation only which does not handle front panel information etc).

CDTV SCSI is fully emulated. It does not support XT-IDE, it is SCSI-only.

Genlocks are also sort of emulated now

[Kitchen2010]

Originally Posted by Toni Wilen

Only remaining Commodore boards that makes sense to emulate seems to be x86 bridgeboards. (Makes sense = has some "real" software, not just driver, that can't run without hardware)

You may start with the A1060/A2088T/A2088XT as they have very similar hardware. Once you got them work, the step to A2286AT and A2386SX should be not too big.
For some bonus points you may implement also ISA bus emulation including some common ISA cards (MAME/MESS has a fairly complete emulation of them already !).
Maybe you can get the 3rd party emulation extensions also to work if you manage to finish the Commodore emulation boards.

[*]A1060: IBM XT-emulation card for the side expansion Zorro I port (sidecar)
Might be not too hard task if you already got a complete emulation of the Intel 8088 CPU and Intel 80807 FPU, depending if you can find out the how the exchange of the Amiga-PC sides works (it uses dual-port RAM for data exchange). It includes also 3 ISA slots, so emulation might expanded to some common PC ISA cards too.
This might not so hard as it sounds if you can use the sourcecode of the MAME project, which already has a fairly complete IBM PC/XT/AT emulation with some ISA cards. Perhaps knowledge of the hardware of the comtemporary Commodore PCs is useful, as the board was implemented by the same developer team (Commodore Germany, Braunschweig).

[*]A2088T: IBM XT-emulation expansion for the Zorro II slot
It uses a NEC V20 as x86 processor and has a 16 kB XT-compatible BIOS and 640 kB RAM. It can use the ISA slots as a brigeboard card.
An emulation might use MAME's implementation of the NEC V20 CPU (see also A1060).

[*]A2088XT: IBM XT-emulation expansion for the Zorro II slot
It uses a Intel 8088 CPU and Intel 8087 FPU as x86 processor and has a 16 kB XT-compatible BIOS and 512 kB RAM. It can use the ISA slots as a brigeboard card.
Emulation might be not too hard using a existing 8088/87 emulation (see also A1060).

[*]A2286AT: IBM AT-emulation expansion for the Zorro II slot
It uses a Intel 80286 CPU and Intel 80287 FPU as x86 processor and has a 16 kB AT-compatible BIOS and 1 MB RAM. It can use the ISA slots as a brigeboard card.
Emulation might be not too hard using a existing 80286/87 emulation (see also A1060).

[*]A2386SX: IBM PC 386 SX emulation expansion for the Zorro II slot
It uses a Intel 80386SX CPU and Intel 80387 FPU as x86 processor and has a 64 kB AT-compatible BIOS and 8 MB RAM. It can use the ISA slots as a brigeboard card.
Emulation might be not too hard using a existing 80386/87 emulation (see also A1060).

Here some information that I found on the Internet:

• Commodore Germany mailbox software CD (official test and driver/install disks as formerly offered on Commodore mailbox)
  -A1060 Sidecar System Disk, #380654-01 (315KB)
  -A1060 Sidecar Plus-II Workbench, #380654-02 (345KB)
  -A1060 Sidecar Workbench V1.2, #380654-04 (342KB)
  -A1060/A2088/A2286 Janus Setup from V1.2 to V1.3 (348KB)
  -A2010/2020 Janus V1.4 Diagnostic (333KB)
  -A2088/A2286 Install-Disk up to OS 1.3 (181KB)
  -A2088T Install-Disk V1.02 (327KB)
  -A2088/A2286/A2386SX (A1060) PC-Janus 2.1 (PC-side) (72KB)
  -A2386 SX-Karte Install-Disk (279KB)
• Amiga Hardware Database
  -A1060 - Information, drivers, software and manual
  -A2088T - Information, drivers, software and manual
  -A2088XT - Information, drivers, software and manual
  -A2286AT - Information, drivers, software and manual
  -A2386SX - Information, drivers, software and manual
• Traumstation.ch (directory with software, drivers, manuals and ROMs)
  -A2088 directory (BIOS)
  -A2286/A2386 directory (BIOS, information, software)
• A2088 directory (BIOS)
• Tutorial on establishing Ethernet for Amiga with Commodore bridgeboard card and ISA network card (includes many information on the PC floppy and Janus software) (German)
  -A2088XT/A2286AT/A2386SX bridgeboard information
  -ATUtilities 4.0os - A replacement for Commodore's Bridgebaord software
  -Directory with some nice manuals for old computers
  -A2088/A2286 Manual (English)
• Website with many schematics, manuals and software of the A2000/A3000 hardware
• Directory with some nice manuals for old computers
  -"Commodore Amiga A500/A2000 Technical Reference Manual" - Section 4 - PC Bridgeboard (p.109ff)
• Github repository of MAME/MESS emulator which got open-sourced recently under BSD-3 clause
  -sourcecode of the cpu emulation of the 8086/8088/8087, 80286/80287 and NEC 70116 (NEC V20)
  -sourcecode of the cpu emulation of the 80386/80387, 80486 and Pentium
  -sourcecode of the ISA bus emulation including the emulation of some common ISA cards (sound, graphics, networking, harddisk host)
  -sourcecode of the IBM PC and IBM XT system emulation, featuring "Commodore PC-1" and "Commodore PC-10 III" with the 8088 CPU and hardware similar to A1060/A2088T/A2088XT bridgeboard cards
  -sourcecode of the IBM AT system emulation, featuring "Commodore 386SX-16" and "Commodore PC 30 III" with the 80386SX and 80286 CPU and hardware similar to A2386SX/A2286AT bridgeboard cards
  -Wikipedia page on the models of the Commodore PC computer line

[Toni Wilen]

X86 emulator was never going to be any kind of problem. There are probably 10+ different choices (I am quite sure some standalone emulator is easier to use than x86 emulator that is designed to be (too) generic)

Bridgeboard Amiga special features are biggest problem and weird shared memory addressing. Unless you get it accidentally right, debugging will be painful.