A314 - The RPi co-processor Official thread

[McTrinsic]

Maybe get in touch with Lucas from MNT:

https://mntre.com/#contact

Basically the A314 for Zorro is a simpler version of his ZZ9000 expansion card.

[apocalypse2012]

I have 2 questions.
How likely is it that this card will work in a system already using a Vampire board?

Second, can the RPi board be connected via a 40pin ribbon cable, or is it necessary to slot it directly to the board?

Cheers,
Raymond

[Mark sealey]

I just wish that someone would make these boards ready assembled to buy ?

[hooverphonique]

Originally Posted by apocalypse2012

How likely is it that this card will work in a system already using a Vampire board?

As far as I understand, the Vampire (at least some versions) bypass most/all of the Amiga custom chips. In that case, the features where the A314 interacts directly with its onboard chipram probably won't work (remote workbench, video decoding, etc).

[TuKo]

Seems some knowledge is lacking there about Vampire. In current GOLD2.x branch, Amiga custom chips are not bypassed at all.

[Niklas]

Originally Posted by apocalypse2012

I have 2 questions.
How likely is it that this card will work in a system already using a Vampire board?

Hey. I'm not sure, I haven't heard of anyone that tried that combination. A314 has been tested with a TerribleFire (I don't remember which one, probably TF530) and that worked well. If the Vampire doesn't take over the functions of the custom chips then I'm feeling optimistic, but still, not tested.

Originally Posted by apocalypse2012

Second, can the RPi board be connected via a 40pin ribbon cable, or is it necessary to slot it directly to the board?

Hmm. During development we used Dupont wires to connect the FPGA to the RPi, as can be seen in the image below, but at that time we were running the SPI bus a lot slower. Now with the RPi connected directly to the A314 board we are running the SPI bus at 66 MHz, and tests to increase that to 100 MHz haven't been successful, so I'm feeling somewhat pessimistic about the prospect of adding a ribbon cable in between. But I suppose trying to do that would be a fun experiment.

Originally Posted by Mark sealey

I just wish that someone would make these boards ready assembled to buy ?

So do I.

[apocalypse2012]

I’d love to try it out with my vampire, but I don’t think I have the soldering skills to put a board together. I wish I did. Those bare boards are tempting.

[CrowStudio]

Hi Niklas and Eriond
Do you have any YouTube videos on how this thing works? Would be really interesting to see some demos on how the A314 works in real life, especially the web based remote desktop and Videoplayer!

Will the board be possible to solder without a hot air gun if you have decent solder skills? I must say that I am very tempted to by a PCB and try it out! ;-)

If I understood the Pi (CLI tool) correct, there is not really any limitations on what you can do with this except the limitations of the RaspberryPi, right? Reagarding communication Amiga --> RaspberryPi that is.
Another question, does your A500 rev 6a with 8372 get 1MB chip RAM even if it has only 512KB to start with?

Keep up the good work!

[Niklas]

Originally Posted by CrowStudio

Hi Niklas and Eriond
Do you have any YouTube videos on how this thing works? Would be really interesting to see some demos on how the A314 works in real life, especially the web based remote desktop and Videoplayer!

Hi CrowStudio!

I did make a few YouTube videos a while ago, but the quality is quite poor so I didn't bother linking them, but I suppose you can still see something from them.

[ Show youtube player ] The first video shows the videoplayer. Note that this A500 has no accelerator, so the slowness of running workbench programs is the "normal speed", and is not affected by playing the video. [ Show youtube player ] The second video shows the pi command used to run a compiler, and the a314fs file system. On the Windows laptop I have mounted the RPi's shared folder (which shows up as the PiDisk: volume on the Amiga) using Samba. [ Show youtube player ] The last video shows RemoteWB, and running an interactive program (midnight commander) using the pi command. Resizing the console window sends a windows bounds report that changes the TTY window size.

Again, sorry about the poor quality of the videos, I really should make nicer ones. Someday.

Originally Posted by CrowStudio

Will the board be possible to solder without a hot air gun if you have decent solder skills?

Eriond should answer this, I have no idea I'm afraid.

Originally Posted by CrowStudio

If I understood the Pi (CLI tool) correct, there is not really any limitations on what you can do with this except the limitations of the RaspberryPi, right? Reagarding communication Amiga --> RaspberryPi that is.

Right. The standard in/out of the program running on the RPi is forwarded to the Amiga console, and so the program is running interactively. When the RPi program is started the current working directory is changed to match the current folder in Amiga CLI, if that folder is on PiDisk: (the last 10 seconds of the third video is meant to illustrate this).

Originally Posted by CrowStudio

Another question, does your A500 rev 6a with 8372 get 1MB chip RAM even if it has only 512KB to start with?

Yes, using the 1MB chip ram mod (https://postimg.cc/K3nQnnL5) the memory on the A314 shows up as 512kB extra chip mem, and this is required for the functionality of RemoteWB and VideoPlayer.

Originally Posted by CrowStudio

Keep up the good work!

Thanks for the encouragement The latest development is that I'm writing a bsdsocket.library implementation that lets the A314 be used as a network adapter--the progress is described here: https://github.com/niklasekstrom/a314/issues/22. It's basically working but there are multiple API functions that I haven't gotten around to implement. Any involvement/contributions to the development of this or other features would be much appreciated!

[CrowStudio]

Originally Posted by Niklas

Yes, using the 1MB chip ram mod (https://postimg.cc/K3nQnnL5) the memory on the A314 shows up as 512kB extra chip mem, and this is required for the functionality of RemoteWB and VideoPlayer.

Cool, I am halfway there. I have the trapdoor expansion from Amiga Store that gives 512KB extra chip and 1.5MB slow RAM! :-)

Originally Posted by Niklas

Thanks for the encouragement The latest development is that I'm writing a bsdsocket.library implementation that lets the A314 be used as a network adapter--the progress is described here: https://github.com/niklasekstrom/a314/issues/22. It's basically working but there are multiple API functions that I haven't gotten around to implement. Any involvement/contributions to the development of this or other features would be much appreciated!

Unfortunately I have way too little experience to be able to help, I can keep up the cheering though! ;-)
If it is possible to buy rev 1.0 PCB from you guys I would be happy to play around and test it out!

Best regards/Daniel

[Sim085]

Hello, I am very interested in this project. From the git repository I can see there is a v1.0 available.

Is anyone planning to sell these boards as a DIY kit?

[Eriond]

Originally Posted by CrowStudio

Will the board be possible to solder without a hot air gun if you have decent solder skills? I must say that I am very tempted to by a PCB and try it out! ;-)

The boards that I have assembled so far, are all done with a soldering iron. Albeit a good quality one, but in skilled hands that shouldn't matter too much.
I use the "drag soldering" technique which can be seen in several tutorials on YouTube. Just google it, and you'll find plenty of examples. There is one trick though: The IC11 PMIC. This one I solder using a larger, more poweful (80W) iron. It's basically reflow soldering using solder paste and heating it (the paste and IC) through the board from the solder/bottom side. An example can be seen in this video: [ Show youtube player ]

[Eriond]

Originally Posted by Sim085

Hello, I am very interested in this project. From the git repository I can see there is a v1.0 available.

Hi Som085!

Glad that you find this project interesting.
There has been a recent minor update of the PCB layout in order to resolve issue #10 and #11. New PCBs are on their way to us from China, and as soon as we have been able to verify their functionality, we will update the Git repo.
Expect that to happen in two weeks or so.

[Eriond]

Originally Posted by CrowStudio

Hi Niklas and Eriond
Do you have any YouTube videos on how this thing works? Would be really interesting to see some demos on how the A314 works in real life, especially the web based remote desktop and Videoplayer!

Hi CrowStudio.
Thank you for the kind words. I have kept it a small secret due to some uncertainties, but now I can confirm that the A314 will be on display at the Amiga 34 event in Neuss, Germany!
I will bring a complete set-up to demo all of the features. Depending on available spare time up until the event, I will also try to bring a couple of boards with me. Don't expect any volumes; I'll be happy if I manage to make three or four

[CrowStudio]

Originally Posted by Eriond

There is one trick though: The IC11 PMIC. This one I solder using a larger, more poweful (80W) iron. It's basically reflow soldering using solder paste and heating it (the paste and IC) through the board from the solder/bottom side. An example can be seen in this video: [ Show youtube player ]

Wow, cool technique! Unfortunately I do not have a suitable solder iron for this, not sure if I got the skills either!

Originally Posted by Eriond

New PCBs are on their way to us from China, and as soon as we have been able to verify their functionality, we will update the Git repo.
Expect that to happen in two weeks or so.

This explains why I could not sort out the Beta-2 PCB and the BOM 1.0

Originally Posted by Eriond

I will bring a complete set-up to demo all of the features. Depending on available spare time up until the event, I will also try to bring a couple of boards with me. Don't expect any volumes; I'll be happy if I manage to make three or four

This is fantastic news! Too bad I cannot attend, I guess the cards are all gone before the end of that event! If not, sign me up for one


Keep up the good work!

[AiO]

Hi all. First of all - Thanks for this project. I'm so motivated!

I have built my board a month back or so. Checked the voltages and it seems good so far. And I tried to be as methodical as possible on measuring contacts between all solder-joints. So I hope I got it right.

Yesterday my USB Blaster arrived and I dove right into compiling the HDL code qith Quartus. However... I can't seem to get my head around what I'm failing at. I get "Error (209053): Unexpected error in JTAG server -- error code 35" in Quartus, which would inidcate it have'nt even started communicating with the FPGA. I'm running it on a 64bit Ubuntu-machine, do anyone have any experiences to share? Also.. Why "server", when I've selected the USB-thingy. So. If anyone has some insights on this software under Linux I'm all ears Are there any command line tools i could try that are more revealing on what's going wrong?

Edit: I fixed the udev magic so that it could be used as any user, and also i had to do an ugly thing... Make a symlink for libudev.so.0 Anyhow. I still get the 'error code 35' thing tho... The jtagconfig command line tool now just say "Unable to read device chain - JTAG chain broken", which goes for the JTAG setup-debuging tool in Quartus. I'm kind of new to hands-on FPGA-hobbyism - Should the device be powered, by being fitted in an Amiga or other power source while programming it?

Kind regards,
AiO

[Robban]

I have only used the odd Raspberry Pi method to program my boards, but for me the board needed external power as well to be able to program the FPGA. It was low power enough that it was possible to just steal some 5V from the pinheaders on the RPi fortunately.

[Tryphon]

This is a really impressive project. Perhaps this will reach the role played by the bridgeboards (Vortex GoldenGate, Commodore A2386); except that the bridge is no longer useful since the Pi has everything onboard. I want this for my A2000 !!

[Ledfoot]

Yeah, also very interested in trying this in conjunction with my A500 Vampire. I have the network adaptor set up on it, so don't need that, but the video and the processing offload is certainly interesting for cross compiling and such... Even just running command line stuff that isn't available for Amiga...Could make for some very interesting mixed-platform scripting...

[toshi]

Thanks very much Niklas and Eriond for this very nice piece of hard- and software and the demonstrations session on the Amiga34 meeting in Neuss this weekend.

One short question remains. Will the board act as an 1 MB expansion when used in an A500plus? Or just 512 kB in this case?

Thanks and best regards
Stephan