PiStorm for Amiga1200?

[AmiBoy]

Is there any work being done in the community so that PiStorm can be used in Amigas with CPU other than the socketed 68000?

I am mainly interested in the A1200 but I guess many have the A600, the A3000 or A4000 and they are also interested.

I know that TF or @kipper2K has been working on something for A1200 for Buffee so wanted to know if there's something brewing for bigger Amigas

[alexh]

Terriblefire is making the TF1200

[wiz12]

Isn't the TF1200 designed for the Buffee?

[512k]

Originally Posted by wiz12

Isn't the TF1200 designed for the Buffee?

https://amitopia.com/buffee-68030-3-...or-amiga-1200/

Look like it maybe alex h meant

https://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=106447

When it comes to the pistorm i heard of work been done on the a600 not a1200

[alexh]

TF1200 is a generic 16-bit 680x0 to A1200 adapter. It's going to work with PiSTorm with the right FW options

[sampedenawa]

Originally Posted by alexh

TF1200 is a generic 16-bit 680x0 to A1200 adapter. It's going to work with PiSTorm with the right FW options

... and maybe a complete redesign of the Pistorm Layout, I doubt the current desgin of Pistorm adapter+Raspi3 would fit into A1200 slot

[skan]

It seems the thing is real... Now, where are all those experts saying "it can't be done on 1200"?

https://twitter.com/Claude1079/statu...53852064952326

[Lisko]

Originally Posted by skan

It seems the thing is real... Now, where are all those experts saying "it can't be done on 1200"?

https://twitter.com/Claude1079/statu...53852064952326

NVME SSD on an Amiga? Very nice, a bit overpowered tho. Can't wait for this.

[alexh]

Originally Posted by Lisko

NVME SSD on an Amiga? Very nice, a bit overpowered tho.

It is only 1-lane PCIe gen 2. 500MB/s theoretical BW ;-)

[Promilus]

Well 500MB/s is still roughly 20x more than what you can hope with regular Amiga interfaces.

[AmiBoy]

Nice progress.
Wondering if the chipset itself is a bottleneck and to what degree. Both Buffee and PiStorm offload the CPU and the CPU and other elements, respectively but I think in both cases things have to go through the chipset, isn't this right?

[skan]

Originally Posted by AmiBoy

Nice progress.
Wondering if the chipset itself is a bottleneck and to what degree. Both Buffee and PiStorm offload the CPU and the CPU and other elements, respectively but I think in both cases things have to go through the chipset, isn't this right?

Yepp, mostly. Plus some RTG, AHI, LAN and (maybe) RGB2HDMI.

[Gryfon]

Originally Posted by alexh

It is only 1-lane PCIe gen 2. 500MB/s theoretical BW ;-)

"Only" - LOL - on an Amiga. "I'll buy that for a dollar"

Big thumbs up from me Claude. Especially sexy if they get AGA working over HDMI.

[ali-b]

Now that Claude has a physical prototype to work on, we're discussing how production is going to happen as the parts involved are considerably harder to build than the OG PiStorm. almost certainly the way forward will be contract production as already there's an interest list of ~350 units.

Probably 20% of those weren't serious or only if it was the same sort of price as the O.G pistorm (spoiler alert, it will probably be a good chunk more expensive as it's not as simple) and there's probably an equal number of interested parties who never filled out the interest list. basically it wouldn't be unreasonable to get enough made to hit the kind of volume where the unit price becomes attractive.

This will certainly be some kind of pre-order as nobody has 20k lying around to front for this kind of thing. we'll try to avoid kickstarter but will probably need to use some kind of crowdfunding or pre-order platform or another.
by getting the initial batch made up front we'll hopefully avoid the mess we had of the scalpers when the project first went viral, just as core components became hard to get.

Also... this is literally really really early days. Claude hasn't even started work on the firmware, just getting to bringing the board up, booting the Pi, flashing some test firmware making sure everything works at an electrical level as designed. I think he found the obligatory "first bodge wire required" days after submitting the board to the factory.

As I said on discord, this is still a loooooooong way off an even alpha level product. don't expect to hear anything until next year about pre-orders.

Also to address what someone said about the TF1200. As I understand it, the TF1200 is not a generic A1200 to DIP64 adapter but will be doing a special Buffee specific translation to multiplex the 32-bit bus transactions over the DIP64 16-bit interface that buffee will then expand back into 32 bit bus transactions. Only Buffee will be able to de/encode this multiplexed protocol so no, you won't be able to put a PiStorm 16 into a TF1200

-AKA ABrugsch

[AmiBoy]

Originally Posted by ali-b

Now that Claude has a physical prototype to work on, we're discussing how production is going to happen as the parts involved are considerably harder to build than the OG PiStorm. almost certainly the way forward will be contract production as already there's an interest list of ~350 units.

Probably 20% of those weren't serious or only if it was the same sort of price as the O.G pistorm (spoiler alert, it will probably be a good chunk more expensive as it's not as simple) and there's probably an equal number of interested parties who never filled out the interest list. basically it wouldn't be unreasonable to get enough made to hit the kind of volume where the unit price becomes attractive.

This will certainly be some kind of pre-order as nobody has 20k lying around to front for this kind of thing. we'll try to avoid kickstarter but will probably need to use some kind of crowdfunding or pre-order platform or another.
by getting the initial batch made up front we'll hopefully avoid the mess we had of the scalpers when the project first went viral, just as core components became hard to get.

Also... this is literally really really early days. Claude hasn't even started work on the firmware, just getting to bringing the board up, booting the Pi, flashing some test firmware making sure everything works at an electrical level as designed. I think he found the obligatory "first bodge wire required" days after submitting the board to the factory.

As I said on discord, this is still a loooooooong way off an even alpha level product. don't expect to hear anything until next year about pre-orders.
-AKA ABrugsch

Thanks for the info. Let the people lay hands on the power

Originally Posted by ali-b

Also to address what someone said about the TF1200. As I understand it, the TF1200 is not a generic A1200 to DIP64 adapter but will be doing a special Buffee specific translation to multiplex the 32-bit bus transactions over the DIP64 16-bit interface that buffee will then expand back into 32 bit bus transactions. Only Buffee will be able to de/encode this multiplexed protocol so no, you won't be able to put a PiStorm 16 into a TF1200
-AKA ABrugsch

Understood. Would be nice to generalize that interface to accept PiStorm as well.

Are you planning to workaround the chipset bottleneck somehow?

[ali-b]

Originally Posted by AmiBoy

Are you planning to workaround the chipset bottleneck somehow?

That's a claude question really. Plus I'm not really sure what bottleneck you're referring to.


the TF1200 has a kind of artificial bottleneck of the buffee being on the DIP64 16-bit data bus. the Pistorm32 is using the full bandwidth of the A1200 32-bit bus. Albeit to the FPGA which is then doing its own protocol between it and the Pi CM4 over the GPIO pins, so there is a bottleneck there in a similar but slightly different way to the TF1200/Buffee combo, but the bus transactions are being communicated from the FPGA to the Pi at upwards of 200MHz (that's the speed on current Pistorm/Pi3A combo. I have no idea how fast the CM4 will be running its bus protocol. I doubt even Claude does just yet...

[AmiBoy]

I may misunderstand things but I think that both Buffee and PiStorm are still being slowed down when data go through the Amiga custom chips.

[ali-b]

Originally Posted by AmiBoy

I may misunderstand things but I think that both Buffee and PiStorm are still being slowed down when data go through the Amiga custom chips.

I don't have intimate knowledge of the Amiga bus protocol (nor how PiStorm interacts with the bus) but I would imagine that the custom chips can only operate so fast. So in that regard, yes comms between the "CPU" and the custom chips will be limited by the custom chips data transfer rates. but that would be the same for any accelerator without replacing/emulating the custom chips too. So no, there is no plan to just use the amiga as a chassis to provide power and then emulate everything else. The Pistorm is only emulating the CPU and providing a few extra 32-bit side peripherals like Z3 RAM, RTG and Pi-SCSI. (oh and AHI soon too, well already partially) and Buffee is planning on providing fewer peripherals. Just CPU and RAM as they are aiming to be more of a "pure" CPU emulator and be more platform agnostic (though there are efforts for putting PiStorm into 68000 Macs, ST's and X68000 machines)

[AmiBoy]

Originally Posted by ali-b

I don't have intimate knowledge of the Amiga bus protocol (nor how PiStorm interacts with the bus) but I would imagine that the custom chips can only operate so fast. So in that regard, yes comms between the "CPU" and the custom chips will be limited by the custom chips data transfer rates. but that would be the same for any accelerator without replacing/emulating the custom chips too. So no, there is no plan to just use the amiga as a chassis to provide power and then emulate everything else. The Pistorm is only emulating the CPU and providing a few extra 32-bit side peripherals like Z3 RAM, RTG and Pi-SCSI. (oh and AHI soon too, well already partially) and Buffee is planning on providing fewer peripherals. Just CPU and RAM as they are aiming to be more of a "pure" CPU emulator and be more platform agnostic (though there are efforts for putting PiStorm into 68000 Macs, ST's and X68000 machines)

This is what I thought, thanks. More CPU power is always welcome

I guess, going a bit off topic from the original question, accelerating the Amiga bus and chipset is not possible or easy?

[Jope]

No, you can't really accelerate the Amiga side of things. It is locked to frequencies derived from the 28MHz main oscillator.