MiSTer FPGA Forum

duke_fsc wrote: ↑Tue Jun 14, 2022 3:27 pm You don't imagine how I am happy to find someone who loves like me or even more the Apple //xx platforms

Newsdee wrote: ↑Wed Jun 15, 2022 12:01 am

duke_fsc wrote: ↑Tue Jun 14, 2022 3:27 pm You don't imagine how I am happy to find someone who loves like me or even more the Apple //xx platforms

I love the Apple IIe, I have two in working condition. I no longer use floppies though; I dumped all of them around 2007 and now use a CFFA that I snagged some years ago.

I tried to use my disk drives recently (2019) but they seem to be uncalibrated. It's probably less work to get a floppy emu working, or to just use ADT Pro.

Joysticks need some work for the MiSTer core, I succesfully used a USB adapter but noticed the core needs a calibration function as the center defaults to a wrong value (which I suppose is bound to happen with analog controls)

I'm hoping for floppy write to make it to the IIe core, but I understand its tricky. A IIgs core might come first.

Just a bump. Does anyone know if this core is still being worked on? I just noticed it has been exactly one year since the first post in this thread, so hopefully there is some progress.

thorr wrote: ↑Thu Apr 13, 2023 12:09 am

Just a bump. Does anyone know if this core is still being worked on? I just noticed it has been exactly one year since the first post in this thread, so hopefully there is some progress.

It is not moving as quickly as I would like. Luckily Gyurco fixed the Apple II disk drive on MiST, so I will try to port that to our iie, and see if i can get it working on the iigs (eventually). Maybe in a few months we might get back to the iigs? I have been working on other projects unfortunately. If anyone wants to help fix the verilog, that would be amazing!

alanswx wrote: ↑Thu Apr 13, 2023 4:22 pm

Luckily Gyurco fixed the Apple II disk drive on MiST, so I will try to port that to our iie

If it means proper write-to-disk ability, it'd be awesome - it's my personal Holy Grail of missing features on MiSTer. Good luck!

alanswx wrote: ↑Thu Apr 13, 2023 4:22 pm

It is not moving as quickly as I would like. Luckily Gyurco fixed the Apple II disk drive on MiST, so I will try to port that to our iie, and see if i can get it working on the iigs (eventually). Maybe in a few months we might get back to the iigs? I have been working on other projects unfortunately. If anyone wants to help fix the verilog, that would be amazing!

Thanks! I really appreciate the update.

Hi there! Any news about Apple II disk drive writing?

AmintaMister wrote: ↑Tue Jun 20, 2023 10:40 am

Hi there! Any news about Apple II disk drive writing?

So far I am losing to the new code.. I hooked it up, but it doesn't work.

alanswx wrote: ↑Mon Jul 03, 2023 3:57 pm

AmintaMister wrote: ↑Tue Jun 20, 2023 10:40 am

Hi there! Any news about Apple II disk drive writing?

So far I am losing to the new code.. I hooked it up, but it doesn't work.

Thank you for continuing to work on this. If you haven't already, you may want to reach out to Steve from BigMessOWires, the creator of the FloppyEmu. He's a really great guy and may be willing to help.

thorr wrote: ↑Mon Jul 03, 2023 5:55 pm

alanswx wrote: ↑Mon Jul 03, 2023 3:57 pm

AmintaMister wrote: ↑Tue Jun 20, 2023 10:40 am

Hi there! Any news about Apple II disk drive writing?

So far I am losing to the new code.. I hooked it up, but it doesn't work.

Thank you for continuing to work on this. If you haven't already, you may want to reach out to Steve from BigMessOWires, the creator of the FloppyEmu. He's a really great guy and may be willing to help.

This turned out to be something silly. The ram wasn't being inferred. I made some progress, thanks for the push. Now one floppy seems to work. Not sure why the 2nd doesn't work. More debugging. (I add the second floppy and both break!)

I don't remember the exact details, but back when I tried to add 2-drive support I had a couple of problems that were something to do with the track buffer not being cleared/reloaded correctly. In theory only one drive per Disk II card can be active/spinning at any given time (physical momentum of the spindle notwithstanding), so only one track buffer should be necessary, but I believe adding the second drive introduces at least one new transition (the selected drive is changed while "the" motor was already on) that some of the existing logic might not account for.

Try this Apple II RBF. I need to add in my prodos compatible clock card for the next release as well.

alanswx wrote: ↑Thu Apr 13, 2023 4:22 pm

thorr wrote: ↑Thu Apr 13, 2023 12:09 am

Just a bump. Does anyone know if this core is still being worked on? I just noticed it has been exactly one year since the first post in this thread, so hopefully there is some progress.

It is not moving as quickly as I would like. Luckily Gyurco fixed the Apple II disk drive on MiST, so I will try to port that to our iie, and see if i can get it working on the iigs (eventually). Maybe in a few months we might get back to the iigs? I have been working on other projects unfortunately. If anyone wants to help fix the verilog, that would be amazing!

Just another friendly bump. Do you have any idea about when you will start working on the IIgs? Do you know if the mouse is the same as the IIe or different? I am only asking because if they are the same, you could get the mouse done in the IIe as a last step to complete the IIe core since it will be needed by the IIgs anyway, and then use what you can to port over to the IIgs. Without referring to my wish list in the other thread, the only other major thing that I can think of for the IIe core would be to add a second Mockingboard for Ultima games that support it. Thanks!

thorr wrote: ↑Tue Sep 19, 2023 10:50 pm

alanswx wrote: ↑Thu Apr 13, 2023 4:22 pm

thorr wrote: ↑Thu Apr 13, 2023 12:09 am

Just a bump. Does anyone know if this core is still being worked on? I just noticed it has been exactly one year since the first post in this thread, so hopefully there is some progress.

It is not moving as quickly as I would like. Luckily Gyurco fixed the Apple II disk drive on MiST, so I will try to port that to our iie, and see if i can get it working on the iigs (eventually). Maybe in a few months we might get back to the iigs? I have been working on other projects unfortunately. If anyone wants to help fix the verilog, that would be amazing!

Just another friendly bump. Do you have any idea about when you will start working on the IIgs? Do you know if the mouse is the same as the IIe or different? I am only asking because if they are the same, you could get the mouse done in the IIe as a last step to complete the IIe core since it will be needed by the IIgs anyway, and then use what you can to port over to the IIgs. Without referring to my wish list in the other thread, the only other major thing that I can think of for the IIe core would be to add a second Mockingboard for Ultima games that support it. Thanks!

I am pretty sure the mouse is different. It is ADB on the iigs.

From documentation (I didn't see an obviously valid way to test this on MAME or KEGS), it looks like the mouse card was officially supported on IIgs, but most likely very few real-world systems had that configuration. The support was probably intended for people who bought the (unpopular, now an elusive collector's item) IIe-to-IIgs conversion and already owned the card and mouse. The IIgs does have an internal "mouse card" mapped to slot 4, but that seems to consist of some firmware routines that read the ADB GLU registers, not a full clone of the mouse card.

bump - just hoping this will happen eventually

The progress on this seems really slow

• I would have thought that the way to proceed would be to evolve the IIe core into the IIgs core
• change the cpu to the 65c816, add the new graphic modes
• then fix the I/Os as necessary...

Is there a booting IIgs core yet? or a simple proof of concept?

Unfortunately it's more than just an apple IIe with a different cpu and graphics.
Think of the IIgs as the Commodore 128 that was also able to run C64 software.
The IIgs had, in essence, the majority of Apple II(c/e) on a single (Mega II), custom chip along with 64K ram running at 1Mhz, then had a custom chip (FPI if I recall correctly) that, depending on what mode it was running in (IIgs or legacy II), will direct traffic to busses, cpu, the extra memory in the case of the IIgs mode...and what not.
Then of course there was the Ensoniq sound chip along with it's own custom Logic controller (GLU) and 64k of ram.

Sorry if I repeated anything already mentioned before or what I've said doesn't make sense.

Yeah, FPI does some interesting things to synchronize the 65C816 to the slower legacy side of the system, in terms of both timing and "shadowing" writes. Basically, most hardware in the IIgs only really talks to the legacy side, but FPI makes it so the CPU can do most operations in the faster IIgs RAM and only slow down if write cycles are too frequent for the legacy side to keep up. There's also some magic to slow down the CPU for floppy access (since that needs to be compatible with old code that was cycle-counted to stay synchronized to the drive).

ES5503 and Sound GLU code exists, but hasn't had much "real" testing (just playing back a couple of tunes in its own ad-hoc simulator using register writes logged in MAME) and lacks the sync/swap/AM modes.

ExCyber wrote: ↑Fri Apr 26, 2024 4:12 am

ES5503 and Sound GLU code exists

Do you mean on the MiSTer, or in general? Are you involved with the core development? I still really want this core and I keep looking at IIgs's and resisting the temptation to get one, hoping that this core is still happening someday.

thorr wrote: ↑Fri Apr 26, 2024 9:10 pm

ExCyber wrote: ↑Fri Apr 26, 2024 4:12 am

ES5503 and Sound GLU code exists

Do you mean on the MiSTer, or in general?

In general. It's RTL SystemVerilog, but I don't think anyone's tried actually synthesizing it. I know of one questionable idiom in the reset code that would be easy (albeit a little ugly) to unroll to pure RTL Verilog if needed, and there might need to be some optimization if things are inadvertently duplicated or priority-encoded.

thorr wrote: ↑Fri Apr 26, 2024 9:10 pm

Are you involved with the core development? I still really want this core and I keep looking at IIgs's and resisting the temptation to get one, hoping that this core is still happening someday.

I'm involved; the bulk of the work has been done by others. As far as I know it's not abandoned, but there hasn't been much momentum recently due to a somewhat sticky combination of issues with the current state of the code. I think there just hasn't been the right alignment of free time and motivation to untangle it, because it's the sort of situation that probably needs some focused work just to come up with a useful strategy.

ExCyber wrote: ↑Fri Apr 26, 2024 10:22 pm

I'm involved; the bulk of the work has been done by others. As far as I know it's not abandoned, but there hasn't been much momentum recently due to a somewhat sticky combination of issues with the current state of the code. I think there just hasn't been the right alignment of free time and motivation to untangle it, because it's the sort of situation that probably needs some focused work just to come up with a useful strategy.

Thanks for the inside information and for helping to contribute to the core! I have plenty of stuff to keep me busy in the meantime and I am excited about the idea of eventually seeing this come to fruition (hopefully). I never owned a IIgs, but always wanted one, and I have not spent any significant time with emulators so it will be like getting a new one for the first time and seeing what it can do. I did see some videos of games on it on Youtube, and after seeing Wolfenstein 3D looking better than the PC version, it made me want it even more.

It's a super fun but super duper quirky little machine.

If a core ever comes to fruition, it'll be interesting to see if the vast array of peripherals (RAM card, accelerator, SCSI card, and stereo sound card come to mind) will be supported/supportable. The slot architecture alone will make a total mess of the UI. laughs