HiassofT

Not really, we only used the 9572 in the very first prototypes which weren't anything like the final version (only stock/happy/speedy/turbo1050 mode supported, no flashing capability, mode selected by jumpers etc). The 9572 was way too small and I remember I had to temporarily disable stuff like the track display to make room for testing additional modes (usdoubler etc). Even the 95144 is really full, I already had to play with fitter settings to make the latest logic version fit (see MegaSpeedy.rpt) cpldfit: version P.20131013 Xilinx Inc. Fitter Report Design Name: MegaSpeedy Date: 6-12-2017, 10:22PM Device Used: XC95144XL-10-TQ100 Fitting Status: Successful ************************* Mapped Resource Summary ************************** Macrocells Product Terms Function Block Registers Pins Used/Tot Used/Tot Inps Used/Tot Used/Tot Used/Tot 132/144 ( 92%) 488 /720 ( 68%) 340/432 ( 79%) 56 /144 ( 39%) 81 /81 (100%) ** Function Block Resources ** Function Mcells FB Inps Pterms IO Block Used/Tot Used/Tot Used/Tot Used/Tot FB1 16/18 53/54 88/90 11/11* FB2 16/18 41/54 59/90 10/10* FB3 15/18 45/54 77/90 10/10* FB4 15/18 47/54 73/90 10/10* FB5 16/18 41/54 59/90 10/10* FB6 18/18* 30/54 25/90 10/10* FB7 18/18* 39/54 34/90 10/10* FB8 18/18* 44/54 73/90 10/10* ----- ----- ----- ----- 132/144 340/432 488/720 81/81 * - Resource is exhausted so long, Hias

And PBI on the back 🙂 so long, Hias

Sorry, I have no idea about the FujiNet - I don't own one and am also not planning to get one. so long, Hias

You won't need a DOS if you just want to "CLOAD" a CAS file stored on SDrive/SIO2PC/... But note that "CSAVE" won't work - this has to do with the way the Atari accesses tapes (it outputs FSK signals, not normal serial data, and SDrive et al can't cope with that). As soon as you want to load or save a file from/to a disk (image) - i.e. LOAD "D1:MYPROG.BAS" or SAVE "D1:FOOBAR.BAS" you need to have a DOS loaded - which needs memory. You only need to bring up the DOS menu (which is usually a separate file stored on the disk, loaded when you want to bring up, needing even more memory) when you want to eg format a disk, delete or copy files etc in a convenient way. You can perform some operations without the menu, by using cryptic XIO commands, but you still needs to have DOS loaded (as this is what provides those functions and access to D:). so long, Hias

TBH I wouldn't recommend any newcomer to use LiteDOS. Thanks to it's proprietary format it'll just result in follow-up threads "how can I read all those ATRs with DOS 2.x/MyDOS/SpartaDOS". Sorry to be harsh, but LiteDOS falls into the same category as DOS 3 and DOS 4 and no one should use it if they ever want to access files stored with it from some other DOS (if you're fine with vendor-lock-in then of course be happy to use it and have 2k more RAM). so long, Hias

While that is correct from a technical standpoint I'd say having 48k (or 64k) is a hard requirement if you want to use disk drive functionality (i.e a DOS) and do anything useful with it. On a 16k machine you typically have about 8k RAM left once DOS is loaded so there's not much space left for programs (very small programs may still work) or data. Using the Atari without a DOS is not really feasible either, you could load cassette (CAS) files but saving will only work with the AtariMax SIO2PC USB interface plus APE - the other SIO2PC interfaces (and I also think all the SDrive/SIO2SD/... standalone devices) don't support saving cassette data to files. so long, Hias

Which type of Epson printer do you have? The FX80 (and likely others, too) support user defined characters which you can just upload to RAM. Once you do that you can simply use the uploaded font from BASIC or any other program that doesn't reset the printer back to the ROM character set. See chapter 15 of the user manual https://files.support.epson.com/pdf/fx80__/fx80__uv.pdf so long, Hias

Not with dir2atr, LiteDOS is too far off from standard DOS 2.x disk format https://github.com/HiassofT/AtariSIO/issues/2 so long, Hias

I'd say a couple of Foster's (or some other beers from down-under) would be a good choice in that case 🙂 And don't worry, pretty much everyone who's into electronics (me included) has done similar stupid mistakes. so long, Hias

See here: so long, Hias

Initial testing looked good so far so I've pushed an updated version to github and uploaded a ZIP with current patchrom.exe and sources https://github.com/HiassofT/highspeed-sio/releases/tag/1.33 https://www.horus.com/~hias/tmp/hipatch-1.33.zip Please give it a try, feedback is welcome 🙂 so long, Hias

This sounds (pun intended) like a good idea! I think this should work: LDX #$A0 STX AUDC3 LDA SOUNDR BEQ ?NOSND STX AUDC1 ; silence CH1/2 only if SIO sounds are enabled STX AUDC2 LDX #$A8 ?NOSND STX AUDC4 Now I'm juggling around code parts to avoid page-crossing in the critical receive and VBI branches (way too many variations to check, guess I'll shift that to the build system / assembler and hard fail the build in that case). so long, Hias

I'm a bit undecided at the moment. Yes, the original Atari OSes and also Altirra OS mute all Pokey channels in the SIO code, but this is a thing a lot of people disliked as it made it impossible to play music during SIO. The first two Pokey channels aren't used during disk IO so it is perfectly fine to use them for sound while eg loading from disk - and with very short player code eg in a DLI in areas without ANTIC access (eg blank lines at the top of the screen) this should even work at very high SIO rates. So although this is not 100% compliant with the original OSes I'm a bit inclined to keep it as is as it implements a feature lots of people wanted for a long time. so long, Hias

The highspeed SIO code only touches pokey channels 2 and 3, channels 0 and 1 aren't used/needed by the SIO code so are left intact. So if the porgram running didn't disable sound on channel 0/1 before calling SIO it will continue playing. I'd like to call that an issue of the program then (it shouldn't assume SIO will mute channels 0/1). Very likely you'd have similar issues with PBI devices which don't use POKEY for SIO at all so won't clear any channels (but still accessing sectors on a HDD could take some time so you'd hear the channels playing as well for a while). so long, Hias

Which software version are you running on the Frreezer (check with "VER")? Might be worth retrying with the latest version. I've fixed a bug about a year ago that lead to a crash on freezing if the NMI vector in the OS is set to a specific value. Version 220626 contains the fix https://www.horus.com/~hias/freezer/software/beta/ so long, Hias

open-drain plus pull-up would be the best / easiest solution, this is also what we did on the Eclaire. so long, Hias

One of the best horror trips you can get on an Atari today is loading Syncalc and doing your household financial calculations with it - no other game beats the shock you'll get from current inflation rates! so long, Hias

Not sure why Bob Puff did it, but in my case I set DAUX to $20 so it already contains the needed values for the possibly following $48 Happy command (to enable fast writes) - two additional LDA/STAs for DAUX would have needed more space than adding two more bytes to the ?CMD3F values and increasing the loop counter by two. so long, Hias

I had the impression most TVs nowadays support both 576p50 and 480p59.94/60. PC monitors are different beasts though, most of them (without HDMI inputs) support only 60Hz and above (the "IT"/"PC" modes as defined by VESA DMT). CEA/CTA-861 mandates that sinks (TVs) must support 640x480p60 in addition to either 576p50 or 480p59.94/60 and as IT/PC modes are quite common (people wanting to hook up their HTPC/gaming PC to the living room TV) pretty much all TVs have support for the PC modes as well - and if a TV already supports the 60Hz DMT modes then adding support for the 60Hz CTA modes is rather straight forward (and most manufacturers seem to do it in "50Hz PAL land" though it's not required by the CTA spec). As 576p50 isn't mandatory in CTA specs for 60Hz display devices I could understand though if not all TVs in 60Hz NTSC land implemented support for 50Hz CTA modes - although it'd be a bit odd as most devices nowadays use a common platform worldwide with at maximum the analog tuner (if they even add one) being different. Simple scan-doubling would also have the benefit of a reduced latency - buffer a single scan line from the Atari then clock it out - waiting until vertical blank has happened will delay the first scan line of the picture by a full frame (TVs usually won't switch the display data until vblank so that gives you 1 frame delay compared to 2 frames for the beginning of the picture - picture "enhancements" in the TV may add additional delays if they are enabled, on top of that). so long, Hias

Big thumbs up from me for your awesome work @ijor and @foft, HDMI out with audio is a feature that I craved for for ages and which none of the other sophia / vbxe / ... upgrades supplied. IMHO it would be fine to stick to standard 720x576p50 / 720x480p60 scandoubled HDMI video output (current TVs provide really good upscalers) for the standard version and leave all other upscaler features for extended versions (with probably higher specced FPGAs and additional RAM). SD video output with sound is well enough for me. Again, thanks a lot for your amazing work! so long, Hias

You have to be very careful with all the letters and digits at the beginning and the end of the part number. I don't have a datasheet for the AM2732A here but the AM2732B requires only 12.5 programming voltage - so that should work fine with current and old gen TL866 so long, Hias

Just check if your particular EPROM is in the device support list: http://www.autoelectric.cn/MiniPro/TL866II_List.txt There are tons of different manufacturers and the required algorithms to program the EPROM (or also flash, eeprom etc) may differ so double-check with the support list before buying any devices. If it's not listed then, well, it may or may not work by choosing a similar device - it could also "seem to work" but the device looses it's memory after a (shorter or longer) while because the programming time was too short or the programming algorithm didn't match. so long, Hias

I'm afraid the TL866 II Plus won't do the job - the AM2732 needs 25V programming voltage, but max the TL866 II can supply is 18V. The original TL866 A/CS should work fine (it can do up to 25V) EDIT: scratch that, original TL866 only goes to 21V so won't work out of the box either so long, Hias

I, too, was happy that the memory test reported issues on several occasions and have used the keyboard test a lot of times on various Ataris, either because of crappy membrane or keyboard cable issues. And I also use the audio visual test a lot when I quickly need to check if audio and video out (or a/v in on the TV/amp/capture device/...) works. So, I'd say too, leave the self test as is. so long, Hias

There was some discussion on the ABBUC forum and now JoSch picked up the work and published the first 5.4 release candidate https://github.com/josch1710/RespeQt/releases/tag/v5.4RC1 He's doing this in his repo as he didn't manage to get in contact with ebiguy so he couldn't get full access to the RespeQt repo so long, Hias