Indivision ECS V4: New features, development progress

Quote from Xanxi

Hi. I have read on the product description by Alinea Computer that with A604 / A604n, the trapdoor has to be left open. How come?

You need to ask them - they probably haven't realized that the low-profile socket adapters are standard with Indivision ECS V4.

Quote from Xanxi

By the way, can a third party expansion with Denise socket like the Piggybacknot V2 work? Any clue about the mechanical fit with that one?

I can't say how that product is designed. It is very well possible that it's a straight copy of the A604n, but please understand that I can only recommend to use the original from iComp. I will not do support work for knock-off products. If you like the approach of the product, you should buy it from the one who has taken the time, money and effort to develop it.

Jens

Quote from Jens

The current plan is to make it work with a plain 68020, although it won't be fast.

This plan has been dropped. The Indivision ECS V4 driver for P96 will only work with 68030 and MMU, or higher accelerators that also feature an MMU.

Jens

P96 V3.5.0 will be released before Xmas, and it will contain a driver that uses Indivision ECS V4 without 2D acceleration (no blitter). That's because the blitter won't be finished by then.

Jens

Quote from omniphil

Are you saying you can do 256 color workbench on ECS with the additional framebuffer magic?

Yes.

256 colours out of 21 bits colour (=2 million colours, not the 4096 that you know from OCS/ECS), 1024x768 and 1280x1024 pixels is the development target that you can see in the first post of this thread. This will only work with 68030 or higher, and only if the CPU has an MMU. I'm mentioning this because there will be a lot of 68060 accelerators from iComp that do not have an MMU (68EC060 CPU).

We've also added a 65k colours mode (aka "hi-colour") that doesn't have the same limitations as a colour-palette mode. However, since it uses twice the amount of data per pixel, a WB in that mode is really slow. It's good for displaying still images, and since we can do two overlapping and draggable screens, we might do a demo for a picture viewer.

Jens

Quote from omniphil

I'm probably confusing my terminology, but MMU is Memory Management Unit? This is not the same thing as a Math Co-processor?

Correct, MMU is memory management unit. And yes, all ACA1234 have an MMU. The Math co-processor is called FPU, which stands for "floating point unit". An FPU can actually be emulated.

Quote from omniphil

And to be clear are you saying that only the 1024x768/1280x1024 require MMU? or do you need the MMU for even 256 color at 640x512?

All framebuffer modes, including lower resolutions, will require an MMU. That's because the frame buffer is held twice: Once in fastmem of the accelerator, where the CPU can work on it really fast. And there needs to be another copy in Indivision, so it can actually display it. The MMU keeps track of changes in the fastmem buffer: It can tell if something has changed or if it remained the same since the last time that a certain block has been transferred. This vastly reduces the amount of data that needs to be transferred to Indivision.

Jens

Quote from omniphil

(The upcoming cards have the MMU as well?)

There will be 12 variants, and each of them clearly shows if MMU and/or FPU are available.

Quote from omniphil

It also sounds like you are hinting that with going to FPGA you are going to emulate the FPU in there as well on these new cards?

No, the FPGA will either take over the complete bus, or it "only" serves as memory controller and bus translator. It cannot intercept single commands.

Jens

(This answer should really be in the ACA1240/1260 thread...)

Quote from shan2752

Is there anyway to engineer a product to show a display via the ECS V4 and provide keyboard control for an exterior gotek drive? This would be a wonder, as scrolling through a rotary dial and looking at that tiny oled screen is exhausting.

This is already engineered into Indivision ECS V4 - take a close look at the CIA adapter: There is a jumper on a 3-pin header. It connects the Power LED signal with the input of Indivision ECS V4. Since the Power LED signal is not used for anything on Indivision ECS V4, we can use that input signal for a data stream that can be displayed on the OSD on a future release of the FPGA core (thinking of a simple one-way UART interface, just without the T capability :-)).

There is currently no product that makes use of this, but I figured the jumper is worth adding after you (?) suggested it in a different thread of this forum. If nobody jumps on this opportunity, we may make a floppy emulator in-house. There's one or two things I'd do different...

Jens