-) Finished developments MiNT Ethernet driver

MyAES

Enclosure

DVD drives

USB-Keyboard at MiNT

NVRAM Clock

New FireTOS

A new FIRECONF.CPX

zView (PDF!)

New EmuTOS Version -) Parts of the project that are in development Linux developments

NetSurf for FireTOS

ATX power supply

Onboard PIC microcontroller -) Further debates inside the team USB-Floppy Drives

Infogrames USA

Missing VHDL Developers

Compatibility

Flash Layout -) Public perception of the FireBe -) Further Informations GEM Demo

Passive PCI Backplane

Active Radeon Graphic Cards

3d Labels





After our last big news update, the ACP team has been able to finish the following things:



MiNT Ethernet driver One of our most important new developments is an FEC Ethernet driver for MiNT. This supports us with fully functional use of networking features via the FireBee's onboard RJ45 connector - even multitasking is working fine. As MiNT is a Posix compatible OS we now can use the wonderful world of networking. While it has been possible with FireTOS to use sFTP and STiK-Clients for some networking services via a proxy we now have the possibility to use all existing MiNTnet clients. The most spectacular feature is to directly surf the net with the browser Netsurf. Further protocols or services are now ready to use. The networking driver has been ported from FireTOS to MiNT by our team member m0n0 during a heavy month long working schedule and thus covers one of the biggest gaps. Networking with MINT is the most wanted feature of the FireBee.



MyAES MyAES is finally fixed for FireBee, thanks to the team work of Vincent and Olivier. MyAES is an alternative and quite modern AES, which shows some fresh optical stuff for the world of our Atari machines. MyAES is now optimised for the FireBee, which meant several weeks of heavy programming. Some bugs caused quite intensive hunting and fixing. The cache usage that seemed impossible to do under MyAES couldn't be fixed until Olivier Landemarre teamed up with Vincent Rivière to get it done. Some smaller fixes within MiNT became necessary as well. In our opinion the results of this development are impressive ... Download MyAES



Enclosure The development of our small custom enclosure is finished. All of your wished changes have been incorporated. The enclosure comes, for instance, with an additional parallel/printer connector, and with a SATA port which can be used either internally or external as eSATA. Furthermore there have been incorporated some optimisations. For example, the enclosure now comes with an internal 2 1/2" slot for hard discs. It will be produced, as requested from you, in four colours. Dark blue, grey, pink and black. The definite price will be confirmed to all advanced bookings. But to hold the price down we decided to make no further prototypes with the changes, but to order directly the first production run. The enclosures will be made in Vienna and delivered to Switzerland in the end of November. Enclosure PDF



DVD drives There have been PACKET commands (Atapi for SCSI commands) added to the SCSIDRV of the TOS. Therefore it's now possible, with the use of the software Extendos, to use DVD's with DVD burners.



USB Keyboard on MiNT By patching the MiNT ikbd_scan routines, which on MiNT do not have the same format as on TOS, USB keyboards can now be used with MiNT as comfortable and as fast as with TOS. In the course of these patches there was also an update for the initialisation of AC' 97 via basic system (BaS).



NVRAM Clock The clock inside the NV-RAM is, since the beginning of October, now working very well on the FireBee.



New FireTOS Aside from the already mentioned ID interrupt routines as well as the AC'97 initialization, the PCI-BIOS got "Bus Support" added, with which the stage for using PCI Express adapters is set. The new limits are: four buses, thirty-two devices at each bus and four features per device. Moreover, all possible IDE-calls inside the boot routines after detection of SCSI devices, which could be not valid, got fixed (attention: SCSI is still not implemented). ATAPI devices got added to SCSIDRV everywhere, IDE devices in contrast were removed. These are now enabled by Inquiry commands at scanning during the boot of SCSIDRV. On the FireBee now, when the boot menu entry "TOS 4.04 for MiNT" is selected, the FEC driver for Ethernet is disabled, to allow use with the new MiNT-net FEC driver.



A new FIRECONF.CPX The control panel FIRECONF.CPX is now available in German language.



zView The program zView, thanks to the recent work of Miro Kropáček, is now available in a version for the FireBee. That means PDF on the FireBee! zView is software for searching and viewing files from mass storage devices via an overview browser. There can be displayed and converted Bitmap and Vector files like JPGs, TIFFs, Degas, BMPs, Eureka, GIFs, IMG, NEOChrome, PNGs, TGAs, and as mentioned, PDFs. Using zView means that LDG has had to be adapted and updated, and all Codecs had to be recompiled. The upshot is a 100% ColdFire version of this (by Atari measures, comparatively young) software.



New EmuTOS Version There was a new release of the GPL Operating System EmuTOS. Version 0.8.6 of EmuTOS comes to us thanks to the sedulous work of Vincent Rivière, the first version with official ColdFire support. Many improvements, like usage of file systems up to 2 GB, have been added to this first release since 2010. EmuTOS is likewise (as a free alternative) preinstalled on every FireBee. The release from November the 8th 2011 is ready for operation on the FireBee.



-) Parts of the project that are in development Linux development Greg Ungerer has done several Linux patches that provide support of ColdFire cores and especially for the FireBee. After uClinux is up and running on the FireBee, the aim is then the adaptation of Linux-m68k. These are the first steps for complete Linux distributions (server, desktop, etc.). For more information the linux-m68k mailing list is recommended.



NetSurf for FireTOS There has been some work for Netsurf-browser on pure FireTOS (Single Tasking). This has no high priority inside the team, and shall just be mentioned for the sake of completeness.



ATX power supply After some discussion and consideration of the use of ATX power supplies in bigger enclosures together with the FireBee, we decided to develope our own small add-on PCB to use ATX power supplies together with an integral FireBee computer in standard enclosures. This PCB will contain a micro controller, some plugs and few components. The advantages are: the use of the FireBee in different enclosure situations is easier with no need to relocate the solder bridges, also usable with passive PCI backplanes (see below), full functionality of power and reset switches in ATX and mini-ITX enclosures, is immediately usable with no need to burn the new PIC micro controller on the FireBee (also on already delivered computers), and finally, is useful for further ATX power supply tests without ATX motherboards. This realisation has already started. The small PCB will probably be completely made within the Atari community and cost only a few Euros.



Onboard PIC microcontroller The code for the PIC micro controller residing in the FireBee was recently under development by two people. As the electrical power supply is also operated by the PIC, we are waiting patiently for the official start of delivery, until this development is finished. Presumably there is, besides the expensive ICD-PIC-Burners, a cheap Open Source alternative that is working likewise together with the FireBee, for burning the PIC. We'll keep you informed.



-) Further debates inside the team USB-Floppy Drives Within the U-boot source code, which is providing the USB functionality of the FireTOS, there is already support for USB-floppy-drives, which are sadly not normal "mass-storage" devices. Thus we are of the opinion that it shouldn't be too hard to provide a driver for USB-Floppy drives.



Infogrames USA We've been witnesses of a very disturbing initiative from the current Atari IP holders, Infogrames, against several people of the non-commercial Atari community, mainly from the 8-Bit and Console fields. But fortunately after numerous complains from the community they apologized for the dissuasions and wrongful claims. Even though the - especially in that appearance - pleaded incriminations are untenable, and notwithstanding that our project was not hit at all, we hope that Infogrames will in future focus on positive coexistence with communities of all fields and their more as 40,000 members. Be it consoles, 8-Bit or 16/32-Bit. Particularly it is a matter for non-commercial initiatives, that have been partly active since 1994 - meaning 9 years earlier than Infogrames - in the Atari area. We would like to wish the affected persons further enjoyment of their Atari hobby, and want to assure them of our solidarity.



Missing VHDL Developers Inside the ACP team there are recently not enough VHDL developers. We have discussed some possibilities how to get new people on board, who can pursue in their spare time opened tasks like for example the unfinished DSP. Sadly we do not have a satisfactorily solution for this issue, and as well, no resources in this direction. We would feel happy about some support concerning this matter.



Compatibility The compatibility between ColdFire CPU and 68k CPU until recently was mainly achieved by the freely usable CF69kLib and a few patches inside FireTOS. This is working in many cases, but not in all, and it is partially comparatively slow. From the beginning, it was clear inside the ACP team that the compatibility has to be strongly increased, to be able to let most Atari applications run. Therefore already in 2010 the development of our own compatibility layer for the FireBee was started by Medusa, and it was planned via BaS. But after the successful implementation of CF68kLib directly inside the FireTOS this development stood still for some time. Now we have decided to again go about the further development of the emulation of the missing instructions. This will be mainly realised by branch tables, but for certain instructions - that are behaving differently - like LineA, it will use a JIT-compiler. With our own completed development we expect in the medium term a highly improved compatibility and as well, increasing of the speed of programs that make plenty of use of 68k instructions, no longer present on the Coldfire. It will be realized as a library that can then be used by all Operating Systems like TOS or MiNT if required, and that it is providing the ideal speed of 68k applications on the ColdFire. For this further development the well-known developer Miro Kropáček from Bratislava could be won. Subsequent to its completition, the CF68kLib can be completely replaced by our own development. Theis work will begin in the middle of November.



Flash Layout There have been some discussions about the layout of the internal Flash Memory, which has an amount of 8MB, inside the team. Recently there is the BaS, FPGA configuration and EmuTOS as well as FireTOS residing inside. We have now talked about how dBug - a free boot loader from Freescale - can be integrated into the system, and how all parts can work together in an optimal way. The integration of dBug benefits are, that there would be some valuably tools onboard at the disposal of developers, and that Operating Systems like Linux could be booted directly with it - allowing, for example, boot over the network. Presumably we will allow the BaS now to take over a few basic initialisations like RAM ad FPGA. Subsequently the BaS will start (or not start) one of the various compatibility layers that have been selected with the DIP-switches, and than pass to one of the Operating Systems like dBug, EmuTOS or FireTOS. This requires some modifications to dBug, but after finishing, should mean an ideal collaboration between all components and a maximum flexibility regarding Operating Systems. Even after the integration of dBug there will be some free space inside the ROM (Flash Memory) for more unforeseen developments.



-) Public perception of the FireBee The FireBee was mentioned a couple of times outside of the Atari community in the last few months. one paragraph at the Heise News-Ticker - predestined for games with the not anymore existing rivalry to Amiga ;)

In October edition of the University Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne newspaper

As FPGA-Board ataufzu.de



-) Further Informations GEM Demo The GEM Demo is now working complete and without any problems at the FireBee. The values for the graphics inside the FPGA are: 87 (1x), 75 (x2), 18 (x4) at a resolution of 1600 x 1200 @ 16 Bit

and

75 (1x), 53 (x2), 12 (x4) at a resolution of 1920 x 1440 @ 16 Bit



Passive PCI Backplane For people who want to use their FireBee with a PCI-bus, we now have a favourable PCI backplane at our disposal. The passive backplane has four slots, is produced in Germany and will be slightly modified by us. It is tested and working very well together with the FireBee, and the price is below 20 Euros. The availability is assured.



Active Radeon Graphic Cards For people who want to use Radeon graphic cards inside their FireBees, we took a look around for recent manufacturers. At the time being it looks like we´ve found a long-term partner, who can deliver 9200 PC graphic cards for below 40 Euros. The model for 3,3 Volt PCI buses would be immediately available. However, we let produce a card for 3,3 and 5 Volt PCI Buses so that this card can be used at all Radeon-enabled Atari-systems. The specifications are: 9200 PCI card, 3,3 Volt and 5 Volt PCI bus, 256MB RAM with 128 Bit interface, GPU/RAM with 200MHZ/325MHZ, ATI Chip 215 Radeon 9200, low profile, passive cooling! The cards are available for production the upcoming years, and will be built after our orders, within 14 days from a German company. The Radeon 9200 is thereby faster than the 9250 model, which was released later. A first sample is on its way to us.



3d Labels For the upcoming enclosures, we also have 3D lables provided free by an Atari-User. Tom Kristensen from Denmark has an advertising agency, and is working daily with his Hades Atari Clones. These labels were done with Calamus on a Hades computer!



