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towmater

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Kazool!

The software works, but unfortunately expects the sprite board to be in slot #7 (where the CFFA lives in my system) so I just temporarily relocated the F18A for this test.

 

Keep in mind this shot is of the VGA output from the F18A, the way I connected it was the main //gs video was on VGA from a GBS thingy, and the F18A was connected to the DVI input with a DVI-VGA converter, so I just switch inputs on the monitor to see the second screen.

 

 

Are you using the Normal Pin F18A, or the Tall Pin F18A?? Or do you think it would matter??

 

Are these Adapter Boards available on OSH Park??

 

MarkO

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*** Board published ***

 

Are you using the Normal Pin F18A, or the Tall Pin F18A?? Or do you think it would matter??

 

Are these Adapter Boards available on OSH Park??

 

MarkO

Low-profile. It might matter, if you want to put a card in next to the F18A, in an Apple. I believe the low-profile also works in a Colecovision if you simply add height using an additional 40-pin socket as a spacer.

 

https://oshpark.com/shared_projects/CHUbvipD

I know a lot of people are turned off by having to solder together the board themselves, but this is really simple, 
solder a 74LS00 and a 40-pin socket, plug on the F18A, and you are good to go.
Of course, nothing much happens yet, until some software is written.
Edited by towmater
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I wish I knew how to edit the first post, in any case, here's we we need to start, the F18A has gobs of additional registers for setting up graphics modes, counters, pages, and sprites.:

http://atariage.com/forums/index.php?app=core&module=attach&section=attach&attach_id=389298

 

This post contains much of the details:

http://atariage.com/forums/topic/207586-f18a-programming-info-and-resources/?p=2676606

 

And the docs are at: http://atariage.com/forums/index.php?app=core&module=attach&section=attach&attach_id=318329

Edited by towmater
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  • 2 weeks later...

Me too. Anyone? You all should have built the board by now, so here to get the ball rolling, thanks to archive.org, is a 9918A-specific slot-finder routine that we can learn from. This is similar to what Tursi descibes, in that it writes to VDP ram and sees if reading it back matches, indicating a functional F18A is in the slot.

 

10 REM SLOT FINDER ROUTINE

20 FOR S = 7 TO 1 STEP -1
30 RD = 49280 +S *16
40 RS = 49281 +S *16
50 WD = 49282 +S *16
60 WR = 49283 +S *16
70 SR = 49285 +S *16
80 DW = 49286 +S *16
90 DR = DW
100 A = INT( RND(1) *256)
110 B = INT( RND(1) *256)
120 C = INT( RND(1) *256)
130 POKE WR,0: POKE WR,64
140 POKE WD,A: POKE WD,B: POKE WD,C
150 POKE WR,0: POKE WR,0
160 IF PEEK(RD) = A AND PEEK(RD) = B AND PEEK(RD) = C THEN S = 1
170 NEXT S
180 HOME
190 PRINT "TMS 9918A VDP BACKGROUND COLOR DEMO"
200 PRINT : PRINT "HIT RETURN TO START AND SEE NEXT COLOR"
210 PRINT "CONTROL C TO EXIT"
215 PRINT
220 PRINT "BACKDROP COLORS ARE:"
230 PRINT " 0 - TRANSPARENT"
240 PRINT " 1 - BLACK"
250 PRINT " 2 - MEDIUM GREEN"
260 PRINT " 3 - LIGHT GREEN"
270 PRINT " 4 - DARK BLUE"
280 PRINT " 5 - LIGHT BLUE"
290 PRINT " 6 - DARK RED"
300 PRINT " 7 - CYAN"
310 PRINT " 8 - MEDIUM RED"
320 PRINT " 9 - LIGHT RED"
330 PRINT " 10 - DARK YELLOW"
340 PRINT " 11 - LIGHT YELLOW"
350 PRINT " 12 - DARK GREEN"
360 PRINT " 13 - MAGENTA"
370 PRINT " 14 - GREY"
380 PRINT " 15 - WHITE"
390 GET X$
400 POKE WR,0: POKE WR,128
410 POKE WR,128: POKE WR,129
420 FOR X = 0 TO 15
430 POKE WR,X: POKE WR,135
440 GET X$
450 IF X$ = CHR$(3) THEN 480
460 NEXT X
470 GOTO 420
480 CALL 768

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Here's some Assy code that can be adopted to perform the slot detection task:

* SLOT FINDER

SLTFDR LDX #$07 ;CHK 7 SLOTS

SLOT1 LDA #$00 ;WR SETUP

JSR WVREG

LDA #$40

JSR WVREG

LDA #$55 ;WR $55 AND $AA TO

JSR WVRAM ;1ST 2 VRAM ADDR

LDA #$AA

JSR WVRAM

LDA #$00 ;RD SETUP

JSR WVREG

JSR WVREG

JSR RVRAM ;RD 1ST BYTE

CMP #$55 ;= DATA WRITTEN?

BNE NXTSLT ;CHK NEXT SLOT

JSR RVRAM ;RD 2ND BYTE

CMP #$AA ;= DATA WRITTEN?

BNE NXTSLT ;CHK NEXT SLOT

JSR SOFF ;TURN OFF PSG

RTS

NXTSLT LDA SNDATA+1

SEC

SBC #$10 ;PSG DATA

STA SNDATA+1

SBC #$01 ;PSG LATCH ADDR

STA LTCHAD+1

SBC #$02 ;WVREG

STA WVREG+1

SBC #$01 ;WVRAM

STA WVRAM+1

SBC #$01 ;RSTAT

STA RSTAT+1

SBC #$01 ;RVRAM

STA RVRAM+1

DEX

BNE SLOT1 ;CHK NEXT SLOT

BRK ;NOT FOUND

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  • 2 weeks later...

With all due respect, I have missed my promised deadline. I'm finding that to type in assy programs on a Mac, I have to type into textedit, run Virtual ][ with the monitor running, paste the text in, save it to an existing disk image, move that to the GS via CFFA, then run the image to check for errors. I had tried just saving to a file, then transferring the file with AppleCider, and setting the file type, but the line-endings always come out wrong.

 

But I'm almost done with a demo.

 

An uthernet card arrived, but I have no idea how to use it just yet. No time. I guess I could open the GS (which with my setup is a pain) and move the F18A temporarily to slot 7 to run the Spritecard demo software just to film, but it is kinda not the best demo. They show sprites shite-ing and flipping off the screen. I'm serious, it's weird. As long as I have the machine open to install the Uthernet I might as well record a video of that bizzare demo.

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Here is a link to the manual for the SuperSprite card (Thanks Paul), might be useful for you also. ( I have pushed a copy into the Asimov incoming folder)

 

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/391444/Vintage/apple/ii-peripherals/synetix/supersprite/synetix-supersprite-owners-manual-cs.pdf

 

/Rob

 

Excellent. I'll add complete SuperSprite support to the next MAME (including the speech and AY-3-8912).

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I do have "Sprite Logo" from LCSI

should be fine, depending on what slot it might expect. It seems some software does a proper check for the 9918A, others just assume you put it in the slot they decided you'd use.

 

I have a demo ready to run, if I can get all the code to paste into the monitor correctly.

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  • 2 weeks later...
  • 1 month later...

Interesting. It seems to me that you could probably turn this into an 80 column card replacement for the 8 bit Apple without too much fuss. You'd need a ROM (to tell it what to do when you PR#3) and you'd basically need to build a terminal driver somehow or other. I'd suggest a small AVR could do it.

 

I have no idea how you'd do the 64k RAM upgrade in the //e 80 column card with it, and I have NO idea how you'd use it without major stuff done with the VGC or ... something.

 

Interesting!

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The usual method of overlaying video with the TI chips was to use a genlock input on the 9918a. The creator of the F18a, Matt, elected not to add those pin functions because they were not used by the 99/4a.

 

It would be a relatively simple matter to build a routine to move the 80 column video to the F18a output, and since I put this together as a rainy day project, i just need some free time to work on it. As for the 64K, you could utilize the F18a's ram in some way, and possibly do a lot more in the way of ram-disks, etc. Remember that a comparitively powerful 100MHz computer is on the F18A that should be able to respond and manipulate data fast enough that the Apple is returned results as fast as the 6502 can read them. Matthew tells me that the f18a video ram can also be used as computational ram space for the fpga.

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That's not necessary if you give the interface card some ROM to tell the Apple // how to do it and perhaps provide a small microcontroller onboard to emulate the videx standard. That'd work with all 8-bit Apple // machines, and it'd replace your 80 colum card. How to replace the //e extended 80 column card I'm not sure, unless it actually sat in the aux slot.

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That's not necessary if you give the interface card some ROM to tell the Apple // how to do it and perhaps provide a small microcontroller onboard to emulate the videx standard. That'd work with all 8-bit Apple // machines, and it'd replace your 80 colum card. How to replace the //e extended 80 column card I'm not sure, unless it actually sat in the aux slot.

 

Interesting stuff to investigate. Remember that we already have a 100 MHz computer in the F18A, so maybe a microcontroller wouldn't be needed.

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I look forward to trying this, although it will be a few weeks before I get a board from OSH Park. Thank you for creating this.

 

I do have "Sprite Logo" from LCSI (http://www.bluerwhite.org/2014/03/boxing-sprite-logo/), and I want to get this software working with the F18A.

Are the Sprite Logo disk images available anywhere? I ordered a few boards and would like to start experimenting.

Edited by polyex
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Are the Sprite Logo disk images available anywhere? I ordered a few boards and would like to start experimenting.

Not yet. But, I'll image the disk and share. I suspect that Sprite Logo won't work with the AppleTi card because the original LCSI sprite card has a small EPROM. I'll try it and report back.

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