MEtalGuy66

Obviously, the MMX instructions were for the x86 platform.. AMMX is simply the term being used to describe the similar technology as applied to 68k. Here's a better question. Why are you even reading this forum? Based on what? It hasn't even been attempted yet. How do you know what percentage of software will/won't work? You are making quite a few incorrect assumptions about a great many things. The "200X" figure is just a conservative estimate regarding the effective processing speed of the current 68080 core (as tested on the AMIGA)versus a stock 68000. If using the on board HDMI graphics subsystem, the speed that we write video ram has nothing to do with the speed of the Atari's motherboard RAM or the speed of any of it's orginal graphics hardware or even native CPU bus, for that matter. Ok, there you go comparing to modern computing platforms again. Here are the specs for the cyclone III fpga: https://www.altera.com/products/fpga/cyclone-series/cyclone-iii/features.html You are the only one making unreasonable/unrealistic claims/expectations. Noone who chooses to use a retro 68k machine expects modern performance levels. The points you keep repeating are irrelevant to the topic of the thread and the whole forum, for that matter. Noone in here cares. If you are interested in Benchmarking modern systems, you should go elsewhere. Continuing this type of irrelevant hypercritical behavior classifies you as a "troll"..

If it's not on the wikipage it's because the page is not up to date. Well, please tell me what other 68k machine is capable of them and I'll take your statement seriously. I'm glad you "will not continue" since what you can buy for a modern platform is completely irrelevant to what is available for an Atari ST. You can go on youtube and see PLENTY of very recent demonstrations, but since your purpose here is clearly to compare the capabilities of 68k platforms with modern machines, Im not sure it wouldnt be a waste of your time. The point is: Vampire2 brings to the 68k machine over twice the performance of anything thats ever been available before and at about 1/3 (or less) price. Noone ever claimed it would compete with modern platforms. What it does have the potential to do is increase the speed of an Atari ST by 200x or more.. And that's conservatively speaking.. Here is an up to the minute update of the current state of the latest core which is about to be released. Some of the latest optimizations concern the MMX and video specific features, as discussed: http://apollo-core.com/knowledge.php?b=1&note=2700

Guys.. If you don't get on this "bandwagon" you are missing out. This is probably the fastest thing that has ever natively executed 68k code. Its easily over 2x faster than the fastest gen6 060.. If I load up the WinUAE Amiga emulator on my Corei7 PC, and set everything to "max acceleration", it can not run as fast as the Vampire 2.. ANd theres no way in hell any Raspberry PI running an emulator is gonna get anywhere even close. Mist and FPGA Arcade are not even on the same playing field.. This thing has a 64bit core that runs all of the extended commands from every generation of 68k processor, plus has exponentially larger caches, pipelining, and even MMX support. It runs existing 680x0 stuff at blinding speed, but thats only the "tip of the iceberg" when you talk about the potential performance gains possible with compilers updated to utilize the addtional cpu features. http://www.apollo-core.com The guys doing this are AMIGA people. They want to support the ST, but they need help & support from the ST community. There are 2 incarnations of the hardware currently available. One plugs directly into a 64pin DIP 68000 socket, so it could work for the 520,1040, mega ST/E machines. The other is proprietary to the A600 and it's doubtful it would have any application in the Atari world due to very specific physical/mechanical requirements.. So, let's focus on the model that actually fits the standard DIP 68000 socket: Main features: 1.The Apollo 68080 CPU core is implemented in a cyclone 3 FPGA.. Core updates can be easily applied via downloadable/executable flash-update files. 2. It has 128megs of the fastest RAM ever put on an AMIGA (or any 68k machine, to my knowledge). Programs that benchmark "effective ram speed" on classic AMIGA accellerators (usually 30 - 50mhz on the fastest 68060 accelerators) rate this SDRAM at like 580mhz. This is not an exaggeration. 3.It also has additional flash memory to contain the Amiga Kickstart image, negating the need for hard system ROMs (This could be used for the TOS image in an Atari ST application). 4.It has a built in IDE interface that currently benchmarks at about 11.5 megabytes/second. 5.It has a built in Micro SDXC card slot that can be used for additional mass storage and currently works with microSD cards up to 128GB. 6.It has a built in HDMI output which (on the AMIGA) does 8/16/24/32bit color output with resolutions up to/exceeding 1080p. The developers have stated that they believe it would be VERY EASY to adapt this to support existing Atari ST retargetable Graphics standards. Literally, all this thing needs to come to the ST is a compatable flash image containing the appropriate ST-specific support logic to make the core run on an ST and an appropriate/customized TOS image to provide rudimentary support to the onboard harware. Check out http://www.apollo-accelerators.com You wont find a 68k FPGA core anywhere that even comes close.. If you guys want the ST platform to benefit from this, they need your support. Last thing I will say is that the Pricing you've seen on ebay is a very short term thing being done to generate funds to set up mass production of the current and next gen design. The fact that people will pay those amounts should give you some indication of the performance levels that this device is capable of. There is also an order list you can get on with a fixed price of about $300USD.. Once mass-production is in place, they estimate lead-times of (approximately) 1 month or less.. If you have low level hardware/coding experience with the ST platform and you want to help, or are simply interested in following this project up to the minute(on Amiga or ST)please come to irc.freenode.net, #apollo-team.

Hey. Feel free to change whatever you guys want.. Theres no "rights" on this thing. I just provided the MIDI file to save time. My brother made it just for fun and he doesn't care what you do with it. If you make something kewl with it, great. If you want to give him credit for the MIDI file, fine. If not, that's also fine. If you want to keep some of it, and change other parts completely, great.. Go for it.. I just like the Alternate Reality intro tune, and have often wondered how much it could be improved apon with today's modern POKEY music tools..

If that's the case, just shoot a note to Lotharek before you order it. I am sure he can do that for you before he ships it if you are unable to do it yourself.. But yeah, you want the FPGA core that does the 31khz output without all the AMIGA-like graphics mode enhancements..

My brother just dug up this MIDI file that he made back in the 90s of the "Alternate Reality: The City" intro tune. Perhaps one of you RMT musicians can import it into RMT and do something really cool with it. http://www.rasterline.com/Alternate_Reality.mid My brother's name is Chris Jones, if you need to mention credit for the midi conversion. Have fun!

Dmitry, Yeah. I'll bugger off.. Don't ever ask me to do anything for you again. Prowizard: Yeah the U1meg in question here has got issues. Warerat and Myself both tested it pretty extensively. It's got nothing to do with the Rapidus, as the freaky behavior is the same with or without Rapidus physically installed in the machine. It's also had all the extra installation "fixes" applied as suggested by FlashJazzCat, but alas with no improvement. VBXE and Rapidus both seem to work fine, and in the default modes, with the stock firmware, U1meg tests fine in XRAM.. It will not however, take John's Alternate BIOS (bricks the machine until you externally reflash the flashrom). I was going to do a Hias/Mega-hz SRAM upgrade for him, but he got impatient and started acting like a total squirrel, so I shipped it back to him and didn't charge him a dime.. So.. He knows best.. Let him load the bus down with some crappy 25 year old noisey assed dram chips and TTL logic and see if that contributes to the "concrete stability" that he clearly expects of his heavily expanded Atari 800XL..<condescending chuckle> He is clearly enough of a hardware expert to remedy the situation and it will happen in a much more reasonable amount of time than I was willing/able to accomplish it in..

Anyone have a good Cart Label image for this one?

Wizztronics is a pile of shit. If you hadn't been so impatient you would have a modern SRAM based 1meg ram expansion that is not flash-bios/soft-configuration dependant. You have one of the best VBXE/Rapidus/u1meg installations ever done. I can say that with confidence and certainty. It would be an absolute dumbass move to put something as shitty as a wizz-tronics upgrade in there. Also, if you have problems with the machine "coming up" its due to something you plugged into it. That thing is rock solid and works exactly the same as my Rapidus machine. Its a shame that the U1meg is apparently defective in some way and wont take FJC's updated BIOS but its still 100 times better than a wizz-tronics. If anything you really should consider either a) exchanging the u1meg board to lotharek for another one.. (That would be a "plug-in" replacement. The only thing soldered in is the ground wire.) -or B) looking at another SRAM based upgrade. wizz-tronics is a cheaply made ripoff of a 30 year old ram expansion design (Rambo xl). Just my opinion.. But since I did a killer job for you and didn't charge you a dime, I think I'm entitled.. In the end, its your machine. Do what you want..

Hmmm.. Could it be.. I dunno.... SATAN???!??? I responded to your PM. i will pack your stuff up tonight and ship it back to you asap.

With the new firmware, Acard works 100%.. If it doesnt, then you 95% likely have a PHI2 issue with your Atari/MIO combo.. Latest firmware: http://www.rasterline.com/miov141.zip Burn it on an EPROM and stick it in your MIO..

I have installed several VBXE in atari 8-bits. It is fairly simple. If there are no official 5200 instructions, you just find the appropriate signals by comparing the 5200 schematics to the XL/XE ones..

Just do the Direct-power and Composite video mods.. Or get someone else to do it for you.. Its well worth it.. That switchbox is a PITA and being stuck with RF-output only is severely limiting these days in terms of display compatability.

Scart is already 15khz RGB so you shouldn't have a problem with that. What is a framemeister? Alternatively, it is possible to install/flash the VBXE to do 31khz RGB and thus hook directly to a VGA style input. You should PM Lotharek on here. He can point you in the right direction for sure.

http://www.lotharek.pl/product.php?pid=82 I believe that one should work. There are plenty of people who can help you with the connection points if no one has a pre-baked set of instructions for the 5200 yet..

The 5200 version of star raiders has dual axis proportional steering. This alone makes it better than the XL/XE(GS) version, in my oppinion. However, the 5200 is also more challenging in that the minimum difficulty levels are actually higher on the 5200 version. You can pretty much walk through a "novice" mission on the XL/XE(GS) version half asleep and stoned and still win. This is not the case to nearly the same degree on the 5200 version. I agree that once you know the keys, a real keyboard is more convenient especially when changing settings (such as speed) in the heat of battle.. I have often pondered building a special "5200 Star Raiders Control Console" to remedy this. Use a CH products FlightStick with the POTs swapped for flight control, and then build a control panel that has all of the various feature buttons arranged in a way that makes sense.

5 reasons: 1) Because it has the best version of Star Raiders, which is easily the best space combat game ever made. 2) Because it shares the ANTIC/GTIA/POKEY chipset with the home computer and XEGS.. 3) Because it's what I had as a kid in the early 80s. 4) Because the case looks kewl as hell. 5) Because it's NOT a 2600 or NES.

Yeah the Atarimax 5200 SD cart is great for trying out new ROM binaries, but it doesn't look nearly as impressive as this: $10.00 is my absolute max to pay for a used cartridge. I have found that most of the "rare/collectable" carts that demand a high price are aftermarkets (activision/parker brothers/sega/etc.) and they don't fit/work nearly as good as the ATARI branded cart shells/PCBs. So, I figured "why pay for something that's inferior?" All of these are "bootlegs" I made out of cheap/common carts. Total cost (Cart+EPROM+Label) was $4.00 - $7.00 each.. And in many cases, they are much better than the "originals".

Yeah I don't know where you get that.. NOONE on a2central (or the associated IRC channel), or in the forums at Apple2online, or in the Apple2 forums at vcfed.org (vintage computing forums) seems to have that idea. In fact, even in the mainstream, the various movies about Jobs' life story don't seem to portray that at all- quite the opposite where the apple II is concerned..

Another thing I notice from the picture is that MIO is a very early build. It has none of the "fixes" that ICD installed on the newer units. You typically had to fine tune the atari and MIO as a unit to get stable operation out of those, unless you were just extremely lucky.

Have you tried a different atari yet? (preferrably a bone-stock one) What your describing sounds like a classic PHI2-to-bus timing skew related issue.

What kind of expansions do you have on that atari?

Also, Id make the recomendation that even if you dont end up using it immediately, I'd keep the Acard as long as you intend to keep the MIO.. The Acards are not getting any cheaper and none of the newer SCSi-IDE bridges seem to work/perform anywhere near as good. Without the Acard, the MIO's range of drive compatibility is very "hit/miss".. The Acard removes luck from the equation and basically makes the MIO's hardisk interface into a viable solution again with a huge range of cheap/available devices. The same can be said about the Acard concerning the CSS Blackbox, to a large degree these days..

Yep. All modern drives/cards are ok with 512byte sectors.. It's just the DOS that matters. If you wanna use a disk based DOS, then you are limited to 256 byte sectors.. SpartaDOS X is the only one that currently supports 512 byte sectors.

Not sure why you posted that picture of that goofy row-swapped cable, but that isn't gonna work with the MIO. That goofy cable is designed to unfuck a pretty rare/specific problem where you are actually plugging into a connector that has been soldered onto the wrong side of the PCB and thus the two rows of the SCSI connector are swapped. As far as which way the cable "flows" heh.. You can assemble the connector onto an IDC ribbon cable with the cable "flowing" out either side and you get the same exact thing electrically.. So thats purely a function of exactly how the cable was assembled.. As far as the max drive size.. The new firmware does 32bit LBA. So.. 2TB. I have used a 2TB drive on an acard with the MIO and it worked fine. The MIO could access every single sector. You can only have a max of 8 32meg partitions configged at a time, but the interface and handler will talk to all 4294967296 sectors on a 2TB drive. Also, its important to note that if you select 256 byte sectors, you are only using half of each sector. the MIO does not "split sectors" in software like the blackbox does. So keep this in mind if your using a small drive. Using 256 byte sectors, you waste half the drive.