Posts by espskog

Quote from Jens

There is no place where you could connect the additional two address lines that a 4-way clock port expander needs.

Further, there is no driver for RR-Net on the Amiga, and I would not encourage anyone to write one, as it'll be dead slow and totally not Amiga-worthy without IRQs. The Amiga deserves better. I'm thinking of an adapter that lets you connect the X-Surf-500 between the Chameleon and the Docking station, but need to investigate if we have a sufficient amount of signal lines available.

Yep. I think I asked about whether it would work on the amiga or not and that it would need a driver but it'd suck the life out of the cpu as it did not support interrupts (if I remember correctly) But -- I was mostly just asking electronically in my question above, whether or not the rrnet would still work with the c64core if it was connected via a clockport-extender. But you kind of answered that by informing me that the clockport lacked the extra addresslines.

Is the clockport on the tc64 not quite alike the clockport on the a1200 pinout-wise ?

Quote from robinsonb5

The fully-featured 68000/'020 switchable TG68 takes up around 7,000 logic elements (and uses 2 memory blocks).

With the '020 stuff disabled to make it a smaller microcontroller it takes up around 4,400 (still using 2 memory blocks).

My own core, EightThirtyTwo, uses around 1,400 (and no memory blocks) in its smallest configuration as used in the new Minimig core. (This rises to around 2,200 if you enable interrupts, partial result forwarding and dual threads.)

Nice, so you've freed up about 5600 elements (gates?) in the best case scenario ? That is supernice -- was that the thing which made able to fit a full aga-core ? Out of curiosity, how much free elements are left currently with the current agacore ?

Jens - we've soon passed 800 members in the TC64 Facebook Group so if you need to spread some info to a large crowd to current and possibly future TC-customers -- just let us know and I'll put it up there. I am the creator of the group and we'd gladly help to spread news and updates there as well.

Quote from robinsonb5

As far as I know, the Minimig connector is handled entirely by the docking station's internal microcontroller and not exposed to the FPGA in any way - it's designed to make the Docking Station's ports accessible to a "real" minimig instead of a Chameleon.

Some context, for the benefit of Jens, Peter and Tobias: a few people are desperate to find some way of giving the TC64's Minimig core some kind of network access, and don't really care how slow it is - so there's some out-of-the-box thinking happening!

Aha, ok. That makes sense actually, considering its purpose -- the minimig connector, I mean.

Thank you for that detailed update. How many percent less space does you new CPU take up compared to that 2nd instance of the TG68K cpu which was initially ?

Hi. If a core would support it, can the minimigconnector on the dockingstation be repurposed to function as a rs232 connector for instance ?

It's fantastic new Dr. Robinson May I ask -- did you base it on something or did you implement it from scratch ?

Nevertheless -- a fantastic job! But, by doing this, you've also welcomed the good old Feature Creep into the game and you've already seen all the wishes and suggestions over at the facebook-group so ..prepare

PS! Now - where do I send the money.

@jens/@tobias: Quick question: Will the RRNET3 module in the TC work if I connect a 4-way clockportextender to the tc64 and then plug in the rrnet3 module into the extender (disregard the fact that it physically won't fit )

Oh, nice. I love that you've done SID updates

I am wondering if the clockport of the TC64 is hardware compatible with general clockport-peripherals sold for the Amiga ? I theory -- if Alastair's new AGA core will get clockport-support (like the one for V1 have in the special version(by Lallafa ?)) can we connect clockport-extenders or other clockportperipherals to use on our minimig and use the drivers which is released with the peripheral ? OR...is the TC64 clockport a limited/derivative which is only for rrnetmodule on c64core ?

Just asking to understand if might be a nice expansion-route for the future when the AGA core is out with clockport support (he would maybe look into it)

Is there some pre-release notes we can chew on while waiting ?

Quote from Tobias

not sure what the question is, but did you see this and this?

Yes and no Thank you

Quote from robinsonb5

That's a really nice thought, so thank you for that - but unfortunately there are a number of problems.

Jens explained on the previous page that there are no Amiga drivers for the RRNet's networking chip. So even if I add clockport support to the core, you still wouldn't be able to use it unless someone wrote a driver.

(For what it's worth, I have no idea how to write an Amiga networking driver!)

Also, as Jens explained, even if someone wrote a driver, it would disappointingly slow because the chip on the RRNET doesn't support interrupts in 8-bit mode, so the emulated Amiga would spend most of its time polling the chip.

Another problem is that I've soldered the optional JTAG headers to both my Chameleons, so that while developing I can upload cores directlyinto the FPGA - but there isn't room to connect a clock-port device once the JTAG header's been added.

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Gotcha. Thank for the detailed reply. I will now cry a little an get back in the boat

Quote from robinsonb5

Christian Vogelgsang did create a fork of the core (for V1 hardware) some time ago which makes the clock port visible to the Minimig, so it's definitely possible - however it can't work while the TC64's connected to a real C64 - and might even be hazardous to a C64, since (if I understand his blog post correctly) the address and data lines are shared between the cartridge connector and the clockport. http://lallafa.de/blog/2013/09…for-chameleon64s-minimig/

I don't know how difficult it would be to solve that issue - or if it's even possible, but I don't currently have any clockport peripherals for testing, so I'll add that one to the "Maybe one day" list.

As for P96/RTG support - it would be great to have this, but it's a tremendous amount of work and the result is likely to be pretty slow since we have just a single 16-bit-wide SDRAM chip to work with.

I would send you and lend my RRNETMK3 for you to develop on as for me it is useless now until the v2_core supports it I am sorry can't give it to you for free, but I would send&lend if you want to give it a go. It would, as you said, be most useful for us who use the TC in standalone mode, though. But for me -- that is exactly what I need

Quote from JanBlomqvist

I have ran the Amiga core for many months, but there are two things I would like to have added for me to use it for anything other then gaming:

Networking through the connected rr-net

Graphics enhanced through for example P96 for higher resolutions that the TC64 supports.

A humble request perhaps for robinsonb5 ... ... please!!!

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YES...networking thru RRNET ...thank you....me too It would be SO COOL!!

SUGGESTION:

Would it be possible if the owners of this forum create a table, which is sticky and always on top, that always would hold the latest core-supports for the v1 and v2 ? Kinda like in the first page of this thread -- but just....super updated

Quote from redrumloa

What I would die on the hill for is an updated Minimig core! Is there any chance of this? I'd love to see a core coming closer to where MISTer is these days. I'd also die for the Minimig core to be mapped to the 64 keyboard!

-Edit-

I'll ask robinsonb5 over in the Minimig v2 thread, but last time I asked him he didn't seem too interested in pushing it any further beyond bug fixes.

Any luck on getting the c64 kbd to work on minimig core ?

I know this might be a silly question as it is obvious that there isn't one, BUT...is it possible to someplace pull the userport pins from the TC someplace on the docking (or someplace else ?)

OR: Is there plans for a more extended docking which has a JTAG where we can pull signals for userport, svideo, ???

Yeup -- we found ContikiBBS too We wonder if there might be others too Or patched ones (rrnet-patchet) ?

We were asked a very good question over at the TC FB-group. We know that we can use RRNET in our TC in standalone mode and "call" BBS'es

using CCGMS/Strike terminal programs which support RRNET so that it translates into Hayes AT command.

BUT...how about the other way around ? When the TC is in standalone mode and we connect it to ethernet via RRNET, how would it be possible to

run a BBS on the TC in standalone mode ? The only way I can think of is to have a version of the BBS.software which support using RRNET

instead of RS232 modems.

QUESTION: Does someone know which BBS software (please note: the BBS software which runs the BBS itself -- the "server" side if you like) that

can operate and accept telnet-calls over the RRNET ? Maybe a RRNET-patchet versions of existing BBS-systems ?

Espen