Apollo "68080" new 68K Core running on Atari STf

[exxosuk]

I would ultimately like my boosters to come down in price so more people would buy them. Though at the moment its all development costs. Even so, the booster market is like 5-10 people at best, So costs of producing such small runs is high. I've produced around 30 STE V1 boosters so far. Half of them are unlikely to sell so that double the price of the possible 15 that will sell.

 

From what I see in general, if people want something enough, they will buy it. Though nobody is going to spend £500 on one either. Though mostly boosters are used to give old games a bit more of a kick speed wise. So far nobody has adapted or created any games to make use of the CPU instructions which run faster, and likely never will.

 

As for FPGA, as I said many times before, Myself and Rodolphe was interested in using the apollo core as a drop in replacement for the 68k. But the reply we got wasn't friendly so abandoned that idea. Though there do seem to be others working on 68k cores. Really, If there is a drop in replacement which supports all the 68k instructions correctly, then I would be interested in trying it out. Likely a FPGA could do some instructions in a couple of cycles instead of 100 or so like with some math functions. If the instructions could run in effect 50mhz and higher speeds, then I think it makes things very interesting. Whereas 68k instructions could take any amount of CPU cycles to complete, I would assume a FPGA could do the whole lot in a lot less cycles. Of course at this point I am still assuming CPU only upgrade, IE still bottle neck on RAM. But one has to start somewhere.

 

Overall I want to add IDE and fast-ram to future STE boosters. I also want to try other CPU's. The SEC version people claim 50mhz is possible, So I have briefly talked to Rodolphe about adapting it for the STE. Really its just to see if any more MHz can be pushed out of the 68k series. It is likely a long way off as I have just so many projects on the go, I just dont have time to start another one.

 

Of course if there was a 68k FPGA which can outrun a 50MHz 68000 then that would be even better. Though as people have already mentioned , You would lose the "stock cpu" speeds. At least with the real 68k CPU you can switch back to 8mhz and it acts like the booster isn't installed. With a FPGA, its never going to be 100% like a real 68k. At least from what others seem to suggest. So in that situation a real 68k and a FPGA would be needed. All just a pipe dream really anyway.

Edited November 13, 2016 by exxosuk

[leech]

Here is a thought... the company that makes Pagestream is still around, and they even still sell the version for Amiga 68k! If we could get some hardware out there that could run it decently, we could get them to start supporting Atari again? I believe the very first release was on the Atari, last release was 2.2 for it, and they are up to 5.0. I know Calamus still supports the Atari as well, but requires a minimum of 800x600@256, would be awesome if we could get an apollo core with supervidel to run such things.

 

http://pagestream.org/is the link for pagestream.

Edited November 13, 2016 by leech

[rustynutt]

Funny you mention Calamus, Papyrus, ect. Still utilize those as well as Xenomorph, Chronos, POV, ....on and on. ?

[rustynutt]

I think PM's real name is Sinclap, AKA, Peter Sinclair

[Goochman]

Anyone know where I can get the latest version of Pagestream that works on the MEga2 ST? I purchased Pagestream back in the 80/90s and at one point used one of those hard drive compressor programs to save space. Pagestream stopped working after compression and I can find my original disks. Id like to get it working to retrieve some of my old work.

[leech]

Anyone know where I can get the latest version of Pagestream that works on the MEga2 ST? I purchased Pagestream back in the 80/90s and at one point used one of those hard drive compressor programs to save space. Pagestream stopped working after compression and I can find my original disks. Id like to get it working to retrieve some of my old work.

I was kind of thinking the same thing, but the latest version I can seem to find is 2.1, and I was pretty sure that 2.2 was the latest. I installed a version on my Falcon that I had found, but it doesn't actually load, and pops up with a message about decompressing, so I'm betting it's a similar issue. I do have another version, it's just that my nfs mount has broken recently and so now I'm trying to fix that (guess I can slap the stuff on .hfe files for my hxc and test it that way).

[rustynutt]

Think PageStream decompresses as it loads, or after the installer writes it to HD. It's on my Falcon, all that stuff is boxed ATM, Will check soon.

[Goochman]

I was kind of thinking the same thing, but the latest version I can seem to find is 2.1, and I was pretty sure that 2.2 was the latest. I installed a version on my Falcon that I had found, but it doesn't actually load, and pops up with a message about decompressing, so I'm betting it's a similar issue. I do have another version, it's just that my nfs mount has broken recently and so now I'm trying to fix that (guess I can slap the stuff on .hfe files for my hxc and test it that way).

 

2.2 was the last version I got. Wasnt sure if it was updated after that. Pagestream was awesome back in the day. As powerful as Calamus and most anything on the Mac for alot less. I produced some cool stuff in College that Id like to see again

[leech]

Thanks for confirming, I was pretty sure 2.2 was the last version out for the ST. I recalled a friend had 2.2e or something for the Amiga, but when I have tried using it on the Amiga it didn't seem as easy to use. Also I've tried the newer Linux demo, and it sort of does the same thing as Gimp, where you have multiple windows as it's layout. 5.0 is the latest version out for Windows, Mac, Linux and Amiga (68k or OS4) and MorphOS. I've been tempted to buy it, but every time I think about it, I wonder if I should get it for the Amiga (68k since I don't have one of the other systems) or Linux. I'll probably eventually buy it for Linux, but it'd be awesome if they'd release a 5.0 for the Atari ST, since that's where they got their start.

 

Edit: I submitted an email to sales @ pagestream.org to ask for an updated ST version.

Edited December 29, 2016 by leech