Minimig (Amiga) core discussion

[ericgus]

@ericgus
And I have two V2 cards. They always offer what is described...ish. But what's described may of course change at Gunnar's whim.

True but so far, when it has, its change has always been for the better.. worse case, just stick with a prior core release that best suits you.

[fpgaarcade]

I've isolated the M68K problem in 68000 mode, I hope to get time to fix it this week (but I have a lot on with work).

Writing a high speed CPU is a lot more complex than just executing instructions in a single cycle. The TG68k/M68K execute the majority of instructions in a single cycle already, or the minimum number of cycles with external fetches. With a good cache you get very decent performance.

There are very long combinatorial paths which currently require some back-edge clocking and synthesis/layout constraints to get 28MHz in my design, although it runs a bit faster in the CycloneV and much faster in the Ultrascale. To take it further you have to use techniques they use in real processor designs and have a fetch/decode/execution pipeline and handle the dependencies between these stages. The Apollo core is twin superscaler - the same as the 060 in that it has two execution pipes. I'm looking at the dispatcher in the real 060 and we'll try to model that behaviour, there is good documentation on the allowed instruction pairings.

The 68000 ISA is not designed to make this easy, unlike the RISC-V ISA for example, but it's possible.
We've been modelling the entire 68040/60 instruction set and built a decode table which tells me early on the complete instruction size (with some additional brief decoding). This lets me shift and fetch from the cache the next instruction while decoding the current one. This is one of the most critical timing paths I've found so far and decouples fetch and decode.

/MikeJ

[ijor]

I put the FX68K core into my Amiga design and it works well, although there are some glitches we don't see with the M68K.
I think it's showing up some very subtle chipset issues, but when I get time I'll run with a real 68000 (I have one on a DB) and compare the two.
/Mike

Hi Mike.

No idea if it is related, but a bug that affected BCD instructions was recently fixed. Please update to the new version: https://github.com/ijor/fx68k

ah cool, will do ! Thanks.

Another bug fix was just released. This one affected the ROXR instruction. Please update again

[beatchef]

The readme for Minimig-AGA_MiSTer on GitHub mentions the download page being http://somuch.guru/minimig/minimig-mist/ which I went to and was slightly confused about but put the file on my Mister and of course the core crashed. I did work out that I should go into https://github.com/MiSTer-devel/Minimig ... r/releases and download the latest file there eventually I love it, thank you so much

[high5]

as there have been discussions on how to transfer files from/to MiSTer-minimig I thought I would share the way it's working out for me.
I am using .hdf files on MiSTer, my desktop is running Windows. Using SFTP Net Drive (free) to mount MiSTer filesystem as a network drive in Windows I can attach the hdfs to Winuae and do my changes there and enjoy them directly on MiSTer. No trouble so far.
https://www.nsoftware.com/sftp/netdrive/

[BlockABoots]

So have posted an issue ive had with the screen size on the Miniming core a few times and each time its been suggested to use the screen adjust option in the core options to make the screen fit the height of my TV screen but ive never been able to get the screen to move down further than about just over half way down the screen. When i try and move the screen down all it does is bring the top of the screen down (so it squishes the image) and not actually move the screen down at all.

Ive posted a video showing the issue (please excuses the audio not sure what happened)......

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S8P6RbL ... e=youtu.be


So is there a way to get the screen to move down further so the game screen fills on the vertical axis or am i missing something??

[mahen]

BTW, just wondering, is there somewhere an experimental build of the Minimig core with the TG68 replaced by some other 68k implementation, as I heard there are 2 or 3 of them being worked on ?

[Sorgelig]

Ive posted a video showing the issue (please excuses the audio not sure what happened)......

what's the game?
From the video it's unclear do you use HDMI or VGA output. Screen position adjustment affects only HDMI output. On VGA you will get only wider or narrower blanking without changing the position/size.

[Sorgelig]

BTW, just wondering, is there somewhere an experimental build of the Minimig core with the TG68 replaced by some other 68k implementation, as I heard there are 2 or 3 of them being worked on ?

Currently there is only one open source alternative 68K implementation - it's FX68K. It doesn't support 68020 mode, so it's not suitable for Minimig.

[breiztiger]

But amiga 500, 600 and 2000 only have 68000

Most games works with this computers and ks 1.3

A a500 core with cycle exact cpu should be good, perhaps a600 with ecs and ide also

[BlockABoots]

Ive posted a video showing the issue (please excuses the audio not sure what happened)......

what's the game?
From the video it's unclear do you use HDMI or VGA output. Screen position adjustment affects only HDMI output. On VGA you will get only wider or narrower blanking without changing the position/size.

The game is Shadow Of The Beast, im using HDMI.

When i go to the adjust display optin in the Minimig core, if i keep pressing down of the controller the screen squashes down from the top (so its kind of making the screen widescreen), it doesnt move the screen down at all

[albconde]

When i go to the adjust display optin in the Minimig core, if i keep pressing down of the controller the screen squashes down from the top (so its kind of making the screen widescreen), it doesnt move the screen down at all

Test with "alt" + "down" to increase the size of the image in the down part

with only up or down you only move the position of the upper side of the image , with alt + up or down you move the botton .
Similar with left and right

[z00pster]

Hi,

I'm interested if anyone has had much luck using the Minimig core with Workbench 3.1.4 and the 3.1.4 rom? I can get the vanilla install to work but when I installed BestWB (http://lilliput.amiga-projects.net/BestWB.htm) I'm getting this error "ramlib program failed 800004". It's set up as a maxed out A1200 system.

Thanks
John

[knc]

Hi,

I'm interested if anyone has had much luck using the Minimig core with Workbench 3.1.4 and the 3.1.4 rom? I can get the vanilla install to work but when I installed BestWB (http://lilliput.amiga-projects.net/BestWB.htm) I'm getting this error "ramlib program failed 800004". It's set up as a maxed out A1200 system.

Thanks
John

yeah i am using 3.1.4 on mister with BestWB i can not remember if it was the same error i had after first running it on mister
but after editing the startup-sequence all was fine

[BlockABoots]

When i go to the adjust display optin in the Minimig core, if i keep pressing down of the controller the screen squashes down from the top (so its kind of making the screen widescreen), it doesnt move the screen down at all

Test with "alt" + "down" to increase the size of the image in the down part

with only up or down you only move the position of the upper side of the image , with alt + up or down you move the botton .
Similar with left and right

Thanks, ill give that a go

[z00pster]

yeah i am using 3.1.4 on mister with BestWB i can not remember if it was the same error i had after first running it on mister
but after editing the startup-sequence all was fine

Great that you worked it out. Would you mind sharing the startup-sequence edit? PM me directly if that is easier. I'm also going to try another optional add on from EAB forum. It wouldn't be Amiga without startup-sequence edits!

[z00pster]

yeah i am using 3.1.4 on mister with BestWB i can not remember if it was the same error i had after first running it on mister
but after editing the startup-sequence all was fine

Great that you worked it out. Would you mind sharing the startup-sequence edit? PM me directly if that is easier. I'm also going to try another optional add on from EAB forum. It wouldn't be Amiga without startup-sequence edits!

So it turned out to be the 68020.libs used by BestWB, so renaming that so it wasn't used got everything working. For anyone interested there is good add-on pack that can be used on a plain Workbench 3.1.4 installation here: http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=94493&page=10

[z00pster]

Anybody having problem with mouse double clicking on Workbench? I'm wondering if it might be my USB hub as I've seen the same problem in the Mac and ST cores. Tried three different mouses - two wired and one bluetooth - without any luck.

[mahen]

Currently there is only one open source alternative 68K implementation - it's FX68K. It doesn't support 68020 mode, so it's not suitable for Minimig.

Ah, I must have overlooked some important bits of information, my bad.
I thought JimDrew referred to one (not public yet) and there was some ambiguous statement regarding a M68K implementation. Some people on the thread didn't know if it referred to a real chip or a re-implementation. I'm pretty sure someone mentioned a slightly modified TG68 with some fixes. Mike ?

Anyway, back to dumb user lurking mode Sorry for the stupid questions

[laserdisc]

Anybody having problem with mouse double clicking on Workbench? I'm wondering if it might be my USB hub as I've seen the same problem in the Mac and ST cores. Tried three different mouses - two wired and one bluetooth - without any luck.

I'm having this issue after updating the linux + main_mister (MiSTer_20190406), reverting to back to MiSTer_20190404 did the trick and now it's working normally again.

[z00pster]

Anybody having problem with mouse double clicking on Workbench? I'm wondering if it might be my USB hub as I've seen the same problem in the Mac and ST cores. Tried three different mouses - two wired and one bluetooth - without any luck.

I'm having this issue after updating the linux + main_mister (MiSTer_20190406), reverting to back to MiSTer_20190404 did the trick and now it's working normally again.

Looks like the release today fixes a mouse issue so I'll wager it fixes the problem. Will test tonight.

[troydm]

Few games unfortunately aren't working or crash in a weird way corrupting hard drive (in WHDLoad case), for example Desert Strike (tried both WHDLoad and adf images, game crashes after title screen when starting campaign). I've managed to corrupt my hard drive twice, one time extracting zip archive via xad and another time starting a WHDLoad game (called Epic). Not sure over how this happened but workbench restarted and hdd was giving tons of header checksum errors, had to reformat it.

Also I've configured internet and ftp server inside Workbench 3.1 using AmiTCP-bin-30b2.lha, AmiPPP122u.lha, New8n1.lha and wu-ftpd-37.21.lha from aminet. Not perfect but works okey allowing to upload files directly via ftp client over network into the Amiga workbench with 10kb/s speed. If anyone is interested I could write a guide on how to do it

[jemismyname]

hi, I am trying to get started with using amiga on the MISTer (i have never used amiga, but i have MISTer+SDRAM setup and working). I also have a kickstart rom v3.1... it comes with 2 different files...

"Kickstart - ROM0 (USA, Europe) (v3.1 Rev 40.068) (A3000).rom"
"Kickstart - ROM1 (USA, Europe) (v3.1 Rev 40.068) (A3000).rom"

the wiki says to rename the kickstart rom to "KICK.ROM"

but which one? does it matter? what is the difference?

can someone tell me about a good newb setup for amiga? Or a good explanation of this? I think i also need a hard disk image?

I'd like to run a full desktop environment, but i also just want to play games...

thanks

[BBond007]

hi, I am trying to get started with using amiga on the MISTer (i have never used amiga, but i have MISTer+SDRAM setup and working). I also have a kickstart rom v3.1... it comes with 2 different files...

"Kickstart - ROM0 (USA, Europe) (v3.1 Rev 40.068) (A3000).rom"
"Kickstart - ROM1 (USA, Europe) (v3.1 Rev 40.068) (A3000).rom"

If those two 3.1 ROMS are only 256K in size then it is likely that those are dumps of the (two) actual ROM chips for an A3000 - like you would use if you were going to use an EEPROM burner to make physical ROMs to install into a real Amiga 3000.

but which one? does it matter? what is the difference?

If what I suspect is correct, you would need to combine them into a single 512k file.

Even if you did that, it is possible that A3000 ROMs don't contain the correct "scsi.device" for the Gayle's IDE controller. I'm not sure about that - still, I would suggest finding a (512k) Kickstart ROM for the A1200.

I'd like to run a full desktop environment, but i also just want to play games...

If you intend on playing games using the 3.1 Kickstart ROM then you will also want the full desktop environment (installed on a HD image) so that you can run games converted to the whdload format - many ADF (disk based) games are only compatible with the 1.3 ROM unless run from the HD with whdload.

http://whdload.de/

Hope that helps.

[troydm]

You can use same kickstarts that FS-UAE is using:
https://fs-uae.net/docs/kickstarts

Before trying to configure/install Workbench 3.1 on Mister I highly suggest you trying to do in FS-UAE just to get hang of it, because some essential knowledge is required about using Amiga. Just follow their documentation:
https://fs-uae.net/docs

Also good guide about installing Workbench 3.1:
http://guide.abime.net/home3.htm

And superb customization guide after you've installed Workbench 3.1:
https://devtty.io/2018/07/computing/how ... kbench-os/