MiSTer FPGA Forum

Hi Newsdee, et al.

Newsdee wrote: ↑Mon Dec 20, 2021 1:51 pm This thread went quiet ... I hope it's just lack of time rather than a major blocker...

Just lack of time at the moment.
I work in transport, December/XMAS is our busiest time of the year.

Been home for exactly 4 hours in the last 3 weeks

Will get back to it soon...

Cheers,
Red

Hi Danielb, Did the OSI machines have an external switch of some kind for changing screen mode (analogous to the menu option in the core) or was screen mode only controlled from software? In short, no, they didn't. Some of the aftermarket graphics solutions did however. Mittendorf HRG was all software. The CUA Hires board had a manual switch on it ...

Hi Danielb, et al. Could the OSI machines auto switch screen mode? Yes. Later models of the C1P had a control register at $D800 which controlled Screenmode, colour, Sound. See page #77 of: https://osiweb.org/manuals/C1P_Manual.pdf That applies to Rev D Superboard, and the Challenger C1P Rev 2 (as far as I know?) Larger systems: C2,3,4,8 have a simi...

breiztiger wrote: ↑Wed Nov 17, 2021 6:58 am with memory test for 5 min result 160 without error
same with last build

OK, so no problem with the memory.

Does the core work for you apart from the graphics issue?

What params are you using for HDMI output in your .INI file?
(I have mine set at 1920x1080 so it translates well to a 4K monitor).

Cheers,
Red

Hi Breiztiger, et al.

breiztiger wrote: ↑Tue Nov 16, 2021 5:20 pm ps : i only have 32mo is it ok ?

I've reduced the SDRAM clock.

Can you try the latest RBF?

Regards,
Red
https://github.com/RedskullDC/Apple-II_ ... r/releases

hi sorry but with your last core a get that at boot on hdmi output 20211116_181933-screen.png is it normal ? ps : i only have 32mo is it ok ? I set the code to only use 32MB, so that it would be compatible with all the SDRAM expansions. I have a 128MB card, but it (theoretically) should work fine with the 32MB card. Can I trouble you to run the me...

Hi Akeley,

akeley wrote: ↑Tue Nov 16, 2021 1:56 pm

RedskullDC wrote: ↑Tue Nov 16, 2021 1:07 pm Managed to get the SDRAM code stable.

Does it mean floppy saving is possible now?

Not quite yet.
Next on the list.

Regards,
Red

Hi All, I've added the Open/Closed Apple Key functionality to the Left/Right ALT keys respectively. Also changed the Shift-3 key from '£' to '#' . (That's a temporary fix, as there should be a switch to select either) Pic showing the RamWorks card in action: RW-16MB.jpg Another pic showing the Self-test routine running: self-test.jpg (Hold down Lef...

Hi Breiztiger,

breiztiger wrote: ↑Thu Nov 11, 2021 9:43 am perhaps a bug

https://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=75630

this doesn't restart correctly after one run, have scramble caracters at buttom

run well in core 21.10.18

Tested with the latest build, working now that SDRAM is stable.

Regards,
Red

Hi All, Managed to get the SDRAM code stable. Added a 16MB Ramworks card emulation too. (Most software will only see 8MB though). Software to exercise the Ramworks is in the resources folder. https://github.com/RedskullDC/Apple-II_MiSTer (rbf file there for anyone who wants to dive in.) --------------------- I haven't tried this out yet, but I thin...

The open/closed apple keys are interesting, and I wonder if they were omitted when overhauling the core because in a sense, they weren't new to the IIe. Keyboard code only emulates the ASCII keys. The keyboard.mif file contains the ROM code from the original Apple //e keyboard: "341-0150A" Makes sense to use left and right ALT for the op...

Hi,

breiztiger wrote: ↑Thu Nov 11, 2021 9:43 am perhaps a bug
https://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=75630

this doesn't restart correctly after one run, have scramble caracters at buttom

run well in core 21.10.18

Thanks for the bug report.
I've identified an issue with the ALTZP switching.

Will post a fix when sorted.

Thanks,
Red

Hi Sorgelig et al., Better to keep per track loading/writing. The same is done in other cores too. Write/read a whole disk at once is time consuming operation. With the current setup, each track is re-read from the SD card , decoded to NIB, processor halted while the track mem is updated each time the drive head is moved. This can have quite an imp...

Hi Danielb, et al. Here's a little progress update: I have not been working on the core quite as intensively as before. It is quite functional and I have other stuff that needs attention. However, I have been continuing to faff about with the video. In my latest development version, the scandoubler works properly, and I have been testing it with a ...

Hi jca, et al. I must say that the paper is a little short on explanations on the subject but I suppose it has to do with overscan. Imagine your screen memory as a matrix 32x32 but what is displayed is the matrix 24x24 just on the middle of the 32x32 matrix, at the periphery of this matrix you will have this "guard band" which will not be...

Hi EeDee, et al. @RedskullDC You seem to have an interest in this line of computers :-) Yes, you could say that :) The OSI Superboard II was the first machine I bought as a school kid way back when. Currently have a Suberboard II, C1P + 610 expansion board, and a C4P built with reproduction PCBs. (User "glitchwrks" makes the repro boards:...

Hi DanielB, et al. I really need to find out exactly what the differences were between the UK101 and the OSI machines, and also the differences between the different OSI models, Main differences: Default Screen size: UK101 = 48x16, OSI C1p = 32x32, OSI c2,c3,c4,c8 = 32x32 or 64x32 (Normally 24x24 would be visible with a C1p, as it doesn't account f...

Hi DanielB, et al. One thing I have found out is that the OSI machines apparently had a different character set, and that some games written for them don't look right on the UK101 for that reason. Adding a selectable character set should be trivial. VHDL code for the OSI charater set is in the archive I posted earlier (if you want to use it): http:...

Hi All, Had a tinker with the Apple II core over the weekend. Got the write working ok in the disk ii module. Was able to write a sector using CIA utilities and read it back ok. Though it might make more sense to download the whole NIB disk image to RAM, rather than a track at a time. Tried that, but there are not enough free 10K RAM blocks availab...

Hi, Would it be sufficient to additionally trigger the save logic when the spindle motor turns off? I suppose nothing technically stops software from just spinning the disk indefinitely, but I would hope that there isn't much software that does this after a write operation. Yep, I was thinking something like that. If write signal is turned on while...

Hi, I'd have thought, the thing going into 'track_memory' to tell it where to index would be the same for both read and write. Since the position of the head for both would be the same. It's got to land in exactly the right spot for write, with read it goes bad, whatever, but with write it'll trash other data if it's not perfect. Maybe it's not rea...

Hi Cathrynmataga, et al. Oh I think I see what you're saying about writing nib now. If .nib is a nibble-ized sector with all this crazy already baked int. Maybe we could get this with write support, but for nib files only. Putting it simply, yes! The '.NIB' image format has been around for a very long time, more on it here: https://stason.org/TULAR...

Hi cathrynmataga, et al. ...It looks like something is missing on the hardware side. I don't even know how this works, I think it writes to the actual drive head from software? That it'd have to simulate an actual spinning disk? Low level Apple 2 floppy disk code was pretty obscure stuff, already in the 80s. No, nothing so fancy. Take a look at the...

Hi All, Lack of floppy write is a bit of a joy killer, since much of Apple 2 culture was floppy based and I guess the floppy write code is baked into the games, so the hardware has to be right maybe? I saw the comments on this. This might need someone with good understanding of low-level disk operation on Apple 2, and willing to work with FPGA, and...

Hi Danielb, .... The one drawback (for me) is that the text with this ROM is too far to the right. With Cegmon, I was able to patch it to move the text to the left, but I am unable to find info on how to do this with MonUK02. In any case, the text is not cut off at the right, so I released it like this. I will hopefully fix this at some point. Not ...

Hi Danielb, Thanks for uploading! ----- Few years ago I ported Grant's code to the Terasic DE0-CV board, and added 64x32 screen, colour and OSI C4P mode support: C4Pa.jpg Source: http://www.crisis.com.au/images/OSI_Searle_Q17.zip More info here: https://www.osiweb.org/osiforum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=343 Was recently thinking of porting the project...

Hi Ricardo, Ordered my ultimate MISTer Pro a week or so ago. Happy for him to settle into his new digs, and catch up on the backlog. No rush here at all. Thank you! This week will start shipment of full setups by queue order :) Parcel arrived today safe and sound. Took a while to get here, but everyone is in the same boat thanks to covid. Very well...

I managed to compile both Minimig/Amiga core and ao486 with it, although the compile times were hideous (over 1 hour for ao486 on a Ryzen 3900x) with some very small changes. .... If you have enough memory, I recommend you create a >=1GB ramdisk, and compile your project there. Compile times will come down significantly. I use "Primo Ramdisk&...

Ordered my ultimate MISTer Pro a week or so ago.
Happy for him to settle into his new digs, and catch up on the backlog. No rush here at all.