amiga-news.de - Preview from Michal Schulz on PiStorm and Emu68

19.Feb.2025 Preview from Michal Schulz on PiStorm and Emu68
Michal Schulz and Claude Schwarz have already given us a lot of pleasure with their work on the Motorola68K emulation Emu68 (amiga-news.de reported) and 68K hardware emulation PiStorm32(-lite) (amiga-news.de reported). We asked Michal Schulz to inform us about the current and planned projects:

Framethrower

So far, the RTG emulation has been provided via the HDMI port of the PiStorm and the RGB data supplied by the Denise chip at the RGB port of the Amiga and must be tapped there separately. Since the end of 2023, the two have been working on an extension now called "Framethrower", which also outputs the RGB signal via the PiStorm (camera port) (amiga-news.de reported). As Michal writes, the project is unfortunately not yet finished: "There is a problem with the Tang Nano boards, which Claude is still working on solving. In more detail, this means that due to the design of the Tang Nano 9K, a lot of noise is introduced into the MIPI signal. This leads to either distortions in the transmitted image or the entire synchronisation is lost."

Emu68

For the Motorola68K emulation software Emu68, the new version 1.1 is to be released this year, which will bring some improvements in addition to typical corrections and bug fixes: "For example, cache blocks that are actually removed by the CPU cache flush will be reused. Instead, they will be "recycled" to reduce the compilation time. As a result, macOS, for example, will run much faster under Shapeshifter, and booting the Amiga will also take less time." The first tests have already been carried out and are very promising.

Furthermore, the work on the WiFi driver for Emu68 will be continued (amiga-news.de reported) and, if all goes well, the Ethernet driver for the Pi4/CM4 will be started. If there is enough time, the next project will be USB.

PiStorm16

The first version of the accelerator card for the Amiga 600 (or CM4) (amiga-news.de reported) has been produced in its final version in a quantity of 25 units and will soon be sent to the first users. Shortly afterwards, the project will be released as open source so that it can be produced and sold in larger quantities by various companies and hobbyists.

PiStorm16 is similar to PiStorm32: it uses the same FPGA, the firmware is embedded in Emu68 and is loaded to the PiStorm at startup, so features like the "stealth" mode are possible: by pressing and holding CTRL and the Amiga keys for a few seconds, the Amiga is started in basic mode, without extension.

Other models from the PiStorm16 family, for example for Pi3/Pi4 or for the A500, A2000 etc., will follow.

Future plans

Michal wrote: "We are looking at ways to make hardware that is unsuitable for the PiStorm in the Amiga usable in some form.
In the long term (i.e. not this year), a project is to be developed in which the Amiga chipset is implemented on an FPGA module, for example, and communicates with the processor via a PCIe interface. Yes, PCIe has disadvantages that make it almost unusable for a "classic" PiStorm. But in a scenario where PiStorm is not an interface but an Amiga chipset, the performance might be sufficient. Our work in this direction is running on several levels:

PocketStorm

As a first step, Claude has developed a motherboard for the Pi3/Pi4 that integrates the Amiga chipset (MiniMig) and the PiStorm interface in the Tang Nano 20K. With the help of Emu68, a complete (albeit emulated) Amiga is created.

EFI integration

At the same time, I am working on a start programme for EFI (Unified Extensible Firmware Interface), which will be integrated into Emu68. This would allow Emu68 to be used in some form on EFI-compatible systems.

FPGA + PCIe

In a further step (if we succeed) the Amiga chipset will be implemented on FPGA with a PCIe interface and run with the EFI version of Emu68.
This work does not mean that we give up the classic Amiga! There are still more than enough tasks for PiStorm and Emu68 in Amiga systems. Nevertheless, we also want to explore new avenues and discover further possibilities." (dr)

[News message: 19. Feb. 2025, 05:24] [Comments: 0]
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