EmuTOS for Amiga

[gibs]

-Keyboard (QWERTY): OK
-Date & Time : Ok
-Hold Shift : Ok

[BlankVector]

Originally Posted by gibs

-Keyboard (QWERTY): OK
-Date & Time : Ok
-Hold Shift : Ok

Excellent

Just for you, gibs, here is same EmuTOS-CVS-20120809 binary with French UI and keyboard. The keyboard layout is the one of the French ST keyboard, some characters will not exactly match the ones printed on a French Amiga keyboard.

[gibs]

Thanks for the gift

[strim]

Hello.

Originally Posted by BlankVector

About the FastRAM:
As Toni indicated, the FastRAM on Blizzard 1260 is not a standard AutoConfig RAM expansion board, so I don't know how to find it. As indicated, the solution would be to look at Linux/NetBSD sources to see how they solved the problem. I'm not going to spend time on that soon, any clue will be welcome.

In the NetBSD we have an intermediary boot loader between Kickstart and our kernel. This boot loader takes information about configured memory spaces from Kickstart and passes it to the NetBSD kernel. Then kernel gets started and read all this stuff. I guess you can't do that in EmuTOS, because you're basically replacing Amiga's firmware.

In my opinion replacing Kickstart is not a good solution. In a real machine you'll find many add-on boards that have ROMs. These ROMs are executed by AutoConfig mechanisms of Kickstart. If you don't execute ROMs some hardware will not be initialized, memory will not get configured and so on (you can already see bad effects of this).

We don't use Kickstart after kernel boot. But we don't replace it. We let it configure hardware, run code present in ROMs. Then we use it to fire up the boot loader in a standard way, which is a normal AmigaOS boot block that loads the kernel from NetBSD partition and starts it. We also have an alternative loader (loadbsd) that is just a normal AmigaOS program which can do the same thing as mentioned boot block.

I think you could do similar thing with EmuTOS - implement a loader that starts it *after* Kickstart finished its job. And use it to pass some information about hardware from AmigaOS (like memory boards).

[BlankVector]

Originally Posted by strim

In the NetBSD we have an intermediary boot loader between Kickstart and our kernel. This boot loader takes information about configured memory spaces from Kickstart and passes it to the NetBSD kernel.

Ok, thanks for the info.
Then I wonder how it works on Linux/m68k, probably the same.

Originally Posted by strim

We don't use Kickstart after kernel boot. But we don't replace it. We let it configure hardware, run code present in ROMs. Then we use it to fire up the boot loader in a standard way

Ok, it is similar to what happens on PC, which uses the BIOS to initialize the hardware then load the Linux Kernel.

Originally Posted by strim

I think you could do similar thing with EmuTOS - implement a loader that starts it *after* Kickstart finished its job. And use it to pass some information about hardware from AmigaOS (like memory boards).

You are right.
But EmuTOS as a Kickstart replacement is just a quick hack to see what is possible. If someone wants more serious stuff, your solution will have to be used.

[BlankVector]

New snapshot: EmuTOS CVS-20120813

- Added support for reading standard ST/PC 720 KB floppy disks. I integrated the AROS ST/PC floppy routines into EmuTOS. As a result, the limitations are the same as AROS: no write support, no support for extended 800 KB floppies (very common in ST games/demos).

It works fine with WinUAE (using standard 720 KB *.st floppy images), I hope it also works on real hardware.

[gibs]

To format a 720k floppy under Windows (or M$DOS):

format a: /n:9 /t:80

Going to try that.

Does this one support Fr keyboard too ?

[wXR]

Could this be extended into a more general ST emulator for Amiga? Could it run games?

[gibs]

Originally Posted by wXR

Could this be extended into a more general ST emulator for Amiga? Could it run games?

Only /black n' white/ hires / system friendly / ones...
It means no...or few...

You will have more luck with AMTARI : [ Show youtube player ]

[Retro1234]

Originally Posted by gibs

Only /black n' white/ hires / system friendly / ones...
It means no...or few...

You will have more luck with AMTARI : [ Show youtube player ]

Maybe in time some games like sundog?

What about something like Das 12 Jahrhundert works in hi Res mode probably some others
still think the ST emulator just called "ST Emulator" is best
Have you ever had St4amiga running? Did you get AMTARI Turbo demo working?

I still have no way to boot this

[BlankVector]

Originally Posted by gibs

To format a 720k floppy under Windows (or M$DOS):

Usually, I close the floppy HD hole with an adhesive tape, then I just do "format a:".

Originally Posted by gibs

Does this one support Fr keyboard too ?

No, but if the French EmuTOS is useful for you, I may include it in next snapshots. EmuTOS supports a lot of languages, but only one can fit in 256 KB ROMs.

Originally Posted by wXR

Could this be extended into a more general ST emulator for Amiga?

No, that would require emulating the ST hardware, while EmuTOS is not an emulator: it is just an OS.

Originally Posted by wXR

Could it run games?

Only monochrone, OS friendly ones (nothing really exciting). Almost all decent ST games use color video modes and access the hardware directly, so then can't run over EmuTOS on Amiga.

Originally Posted by Boo Boo

I still have no way to boot this

Maybe an AmigaOS loader for the EmuTOS RAM version will be available one day (not soon).

[gibs]

Floppy Support is working : [ Show youtube player ]

[Amiga1992]

This is pretty fantastic...
Do you think MIDI would work? We could use Digital Performer or Cubase...

[amiman99]

Floppy reading disks work on A1000! Nice, Thank you.

Now that I can run programs, I have few questions.
I'm getting out of memory errors on some programs, and I noticed that in the startup menu (EMuTOS start) I have 2 RAM configurations:
1. Free ST RAM at 214KB
2. Free FastRAM at 1536KB

What is the difference between them, it kinda looks like the TOS only can see 214KB of RAM.

BTW, my RAM configuration is 512KB CHIP and 1.5MB FAST on my A1000

Thanks.

[BlankVector]

Originally Posted by gibs

Floppy Support is working : [ Show youtube player ]

Ehe, excellent, thanks for the video
Now we should look for more interesting software.

Originally Posted by Akira

Do you think MIDI would work?

First I will have to implement MIDI output routines in EmuTOS for Amiga, and I have no idea about how to do that (RS-232 port?). But I see that WinUAE has MIDI abilities, so it will be easy for me to make tests (at least MIDI out).

Second, only clean software which uses the OS (and not the hardware) will work, I don't know what is the situation with popular software.

Originally Posted by amiman99

Floppy reading disks work on A1000!

Ah, floppy works on another machine

Originally Posted by amiman99

I'm getting out of memory errors on some programs, and I noticed that in the startup menu (EMuTOS start) I have 2 RAM configurations:
1. Free ST RAM at 214KB
2. Free FastRAM at 1536KB

What is the difference between them, it kinda looks like the TOS only can see 214KB of RAM.

BTW, my RAM configuration is 512KB CHIP and 1.5MB FAST on my A1000

Your values are correct, the RAM autodetection routines work fine.

There are several answers to your question.

1) ST-RAM is exactly the same as Chip RAM, FastRAM is whatever else (Slow RAM, Motherboard RAM, Zorro2 FastRAM, Zorro3 FastRAM).

2) EmuTOS uses too much ST-RAM compared to the original TOS, this is a long term issue. It is unrelated to Amiga. Usually on ST with 512 MB of ST-RAM, there is about 297 MB free. Of course improving that situation is a long term goal for the EmuTOS team.

3) EmuTOS for Amiga needs 19 kB additional ST-RAM buffers for floppy routines. This could be partially improved.

4) TOS/EmuTOS has a special ST-RAM 64 kB intermediate buffer know as _FRB used for DMA operations. I enabled it on Amiga, but now I see it is useless. I have just disabled it, the free ST-RAM bumped to 278 kB. I will include that fix in next snapshot.

5) Currently, EmuTOS itself does not use the FastRAM. External programs can use the FastRAM if some special bits are set in their header. Most old programs don't have those bits set, so then can only use the ST-RAM. Fortunately, for most old programs, forcing those header bits with an external tool just works fine.

[amiman99]

Any progress on this, like serial/midi support or unified memory, so we can have more the 200k+ free RAM on 512k chip Amigas.

[BlankVector]

Originally Posted by amiman99

Any progress on this

Latest snasphot: EmuTOS CVS-20121115

Originally Posted by amiman99

like serial/midi support

No, this will not be done for next EmuTOS release (will be released in a few months).

Originally Posted by amiman99

or unified memory, so we can have more the 200k+ free RAM on 512k chip Amigas.

TOS/EmuTOS does not support anything like unified memory.
But modern programs can use the FastRAM so having few ST(Chip)-RAM is not a problem.

Most old programs should also work fine in FastRAM. You just have to tweak some program header flags. I don't know any easy tool to do that, though.

[BlankVector]

EmuTOS 0.9.0 is about to be released, so I have built a release candidate.
Please test it, everything should work fine, just like previous snapshots.

Important note: Due to license incompatibilities between EmuTOS GPL and AROS APL, the AROS support has been disabled in the official binaries. This means that FastRAM and Floppy support will not be available. Fortunately, we have good chances to solve those issues for later releases.

[amiman99]

@BlankVector
I got your kick image.
Current v0.9.0 EmuTOS boots fine to desktop on Real NTSC A1000.
Hopefully the License issues will be solved soon.

[BlankVector]

Many thanks, amiman99.
I have added you to the credits. See at the end.