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ijor

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ijor last won the day on April 10 2023

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  1. If you have older, non-ANSI, code, it might be just easier to run the original compiler under emulation. Emulators can map host folders to emulated hard disks. So you don't even need to bother copying your source files between the host and the emulator.
  2. Please don't abuse forcing REFRESH low. It won't work with an ANTIC FPGA replacement. And to be honest, I'm not 100% convinced it is the best thing to do even for a "standard" ANTIC.
  3. We are talking here about replacing individuals chips in an original Atari motherboard, not recreating the whole computer with a single FPGA. Not saying it is better or worse, just a different thing. A FPGA based XL was already implemented by @foft in his EclaireXL product.
  4. I'm afraid I don't remember exactly. I remember it fits comfortably in the MAX10 02. I would need to run a compilation to get a better estimation. Of course, it also depends on a few factors, such as how you would handle the analog signals or the clocking.
  5. That is the faster speedgrade -7. The slower speedgrade (-8) is slightly cheaper, although some variants might be out of stock at this time.
  6. It's handled by the WD1772 FDC, which is in the XF's PCB.
  7. All MFM FDCs devices support write precompensation. The 1050 already enables write precompensation for the inner tracks on MFM (enhanced or double density).
  8. Ah, no. I was talking about the "latest" FPGA devices from the main manufacturers, Intel and AMD. Lattice usually concentrates in "niche" FPGA markets. I'm not familiar with this Lattice FPGA family, but this particular tiny FPGA might not fit. For comparison, the smallest Intel FPGA, MAX10 02, has 2K LEs.
  9. There is no need to use 5V tolerant FPGA. As noted already, you use voltage level shifters instead. That's how most FPGA based add-ons are designed, including PokeyMax, Sophia, UltimateCart, etc. Pokey, or any of the custom chips for that matter, fits in the smallest modern FPGA, that costs less than $10.
  10. The original software by Spartan was a "Chip" emulator. Years later CSS released new software, AFAIK only for the Happy 1050, that emulated a Super Archiver (with some limitations). Not sure about that Kiwi one, never tried it.
  11. @Simius will correctly if I'm wrong. But I'm pretty sure that even the first Sophia version produced the digital video completely on its own. It didn't perform an analog to digital conversion from the GTIA video output pins.
  12. Seems more like an alternative to GTIAdigitizer than to Sophia. This takes the analog signals from GTIA output, like GTIAdigitizer. Sophia replaces GTIA functionality and produces the digital video on its own.
  13. Well, in theory lots of optimizations are possible. I didn't implement them because initially I was more interested in 100% compatibility with the original chip. But yes, that, and many more optimizations would be easy to implement. Given enough RAM in the FPGA, in theory it is possible to completely avoid any DMA, just snoop the bus and cache internally the whole system RAM.
  14. I didn't say that only one Atari 8-bit title was released with multiple protections. Of course that many games were released with multiple protections. I said that, as far as we know, Seven Cities of Gold is the only title published by Electronic Arts with both protections that this publisher used. All MULE copies we found have the older EA protection, the so called Skew Align. And all One on One copies we found have the newer EA protection with 34 sectors. More generally, all EA titles older than Seven Cities were released with the older protection, and all titles newer than Seven Cities were released with the newer protection. A couple older EA titles have two different software copy protection versions. EA fixed an issue with the very first version that was incompatible with XL/XE computers. But they changed only the software side of the protection. The on disk protection remained the same. Lastly, most EA titles were released in Europe with a completely different copy protection, but not by EA, by different publishers.
  15. I wouldn't attempt any further modifications to that card at all ! Any additional modification risks producing more damage. Get some SD card imaging tools. If you have access to a Linux system, they are built-in. Otherwise you might need to download some software. Perform a sector level image of the card. Now you are safe. You have a digital backup. Store the image and the card in a safe place. Make a second copy of the image. You can now try to recover the files directly from the image. If you don't have anything confidential on the card you might want to post the image and other people might be able to help on the recovery. You can also write the image to a different card and try anything you want, knowing that the original card and image would not be affected.
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