Terrible Fire Accelerators

[Tachyon]

In anticipation of my CPLD's arriving next week (fingers crossed) I gave my soldering and assembly skills a little workout by assembling that DSO138 Oscilloscope kit that's been languishing in my to do projects pile. She works nice. Only wish it had a bandwidth range that would make it useful for testing the TF530. Oh well. On the up side it worked first go, no smoke, no reworks necessary so apparently I'm not that rusty.

[jediknight]

i wonder when the 040 060 will be ready.

[plasmab]

I just committed Revision 3 to github with a bunch of fixes including removing the need for OVR/INT2 completely. Although i've left the headers there just incase.

EDIT: Obviously not verified yet.

EDIT2: Few fixes coming in this version that should make it work in an A2000.

[dalek]

woohoo thanks!

[havok1919]

Originally Posted by plasmab

I just committed Revision 3 to github with a bunch of fixes including removing the need for OVR/INT2 completely. Although i've left the headers there just incase.

Neat! Is the Verilog forthcoming or are your waiting to test first?

[plasmab]

Originally Posted by havok1919

Neat! Is the Verilog forthcoming or are your waiting to test first?

I want to have an actual board before i add new new parts to the verilog.

I'm also trying to squeeze the SPI port functionality in. Thats tricky. 72 macrocells is very tight.

[havok1919]

Fired mine up tonight-- came up first try. Nicely done, Stephen! I'm still doing a 'progressive' bring-up, so no IDE or FPU yet.

I literally just used the first oscillator I put my hands on that wasn't a crazy high clock rate, so it's running fine at 24MHz at the moment. Unsurprisingly, it gets along fine with my little A501+ clone.

[michaelz]

That looks good

[plasmab]

Originally Posted by havok1919

Fired mine up tonight-- came up first try. Nicely done, Stephen! I'm still doing a 'progressive' bring-up, so no IDE or FPU yet.

I literally just used the first oscillator I put my hands on that wasn't a crazy high clock rate, so it's running fine at 24MHz at the moment. Unsurprisingly, it gets along fine with my little A501+ clone.

Excellent. I have a lot of firmware changes planned for this board. What is currently in the repo is "just get it working".

Your A501 clone? Are they your design? can i buy a couple?

[havok1919]

Originally Posted by plasmab

Your A501 clone? Are they your design? can i buy a couple?

Yeah-- I just got on an "I can make that smaller" kick a while back. ;-) It's pretty compact, the PCB is 30mm x 73mm. There's two build variations, one has a little CR1225 battery (probably good for a year or so?) and the other has a big supercap that's good for a few weeks or more between power-ons.

PM me your details and if you want supercap and/or battery version and I'll send you a couple as a gift-- thanks for the sharing your '030 work!

-Clay

[plasmab]

Ok folks. The TF530 Rev 3 has been done and has been sent to the boardhouse. If anyone is feeling very brave i'll open up the dirtypcbs link for them.

[keith]

Hi plasma amazing news! Top bloke, with amazing skills. I am up for it, a part from the silk, extra caps and int & ovr changes, are there any other changes, sorry to ask l am in another country at the moment so no access to eagle just me phone sorry if the rev 3 is on git hub I've not looked, so please forgive me please!

[keith]

Havok1919 nice work may I ask are you going to be selling them, or as kits, or git hub. If you are going to selling them how much are they likely to be, with CR1225 battery.

[Tachyon]

Originally Posted by havok1919

Fired mine up tonight-- came up first try. Nicely done, Stephen! I'm still doing a 'progressive' bring-up, so no IDE or FPU yet.

I literally just used the first oscillator I put my hands on that wasn't a crazy high clock rate, so it's running fine at 24MHz at the moment. Unsurprisingly, it gets along fine with my little A501+ clone.

Nice, good to see one up and running. Inspiring to the rest of us.

Also, you obviously have an A500+, for you or anyone else with one, why not solder pins on CN15 and use that for your _INT2 / _OVR source? They're on the two leftmost pins. I posted a chart in my GIT docs and in the Commodore Community Consortium - Amiga Expansion Devices section. Should be tagged with #TF530CCC along with all the other TF530 related materials there.
Given how many other boards and gizmos use those signals, I'd put a header on those four pins if I had a rev 8+ A500. There's also a ground there (far right) that you could use to shield the wires you use for the other signals (ie use twisted pair wire).

[Tachyon]

Hey, sorry if this has been asked, but I'm curious, where in the address space does the onboard RAM Autoconfig? Is it in 32bit space? 8M space?

Will it play nice with an 8MB A500 RAM expansion?

[plasmab]

The TF530 board is a little odd in that it is 32bit ram that lives in the Z2 autoconfig space. Reason for this is that doing Z3 needs 8 more address lines which means a bigger CPLD. It will need a firmware update to let it give up the autoconfig space after the ram is configured... After that it should play ok with "well behaved" autoconfig cards. Unfortunately some cards like the Kipper2k one (he didnt design the firmware) seem to hard code their RAM at $200000 and just turn it on when poked by autoconfig.. these RAM board will not work unfortunately because the OS will expect them to appear at $400000.

EDIT: I have considered doing a patch of the kipper2k RAM firmware to make it play nicer with the TF530 but i havent had time.

[cowdog360]

Originally Posted by keith

Havok1919 nice work may I ask are you going to be selling them, or as kits, or git hub. If you are going to selling them how much are they likely to be, with CR1225 battery.

I'll chime in a little here, but of course he may have other thoughts about the ram board. He is currently building them and I am handling some of the sales here http://nwretrorepair.com/?page_id=38

They are a great board and work in the 500+ and 500.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G935A using Tapatalk

[cowdog360]

Originally Posted by Tachyon

Nice, good to see one up and running. Inspiring to the rest of us.

Also, you obviously have an A500+, for you or anyone else with one, why not solder pins on CN15 and use that for your _INT2 / _OVR source? They're on the two leftmost pins. I posted a chart in my GIT docs and in the Commodore Community Consortium - Amiga Expansion Devices section. Should be tagged with #TF530CCC along with all the other TF530 related materials there.
Given how many other boards and gizmos use those signals, I'd put a header on those four pins if I had a rev 8+ A500. There's also a ground there (far right) that you could use to shield the wires you use for the other signals (ie use twisted pair wire).

I actually like what Havok1919 did, using a lead clip and using INT2 off the even CIA. No soldering to your board needed.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G935A using Tapatalk

[plasmab]

Originally Posted by cowdog360

I actually like what Havok1919 did, using a lead clip and using INT2 off the even CIA. No soldering to your board needed.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G935A using Tapatalk

Also like this approach.

[havok1919]

Originally Posted by keith

Havok1919 nice work may I ask are you going to be selling them, or as kits, or git hub. If you are going to selling them how much are they likely to be, with CR1225 battery.

Cowdog360's been selling them for a month or two now, so he can hook anyone up that needs one!