Minimig Discussion Forum

Hi,

I have finished working on Pic firmware for original minimig 18lf252 pic.

Features:
1.) SD/SDHC support for large cards (4GB tested)
2.) Fat16/32 support
3.) Long file name support when selecting files
4.) Loading floppyes from subdirectories
5.) 4 Floppy drives support
6.) Hard disk file support
7.) Support for latest minimig fpga bin PYQ090911 by Yaqube

Limitations:
1.) Roms can only be loaded from card root
2.) Harddisk files also only from card root
3.) If you wish to use Hardidsk files format card using 32kb clusters to achieve decent speed.
4.) Directory lists are not sorted as in arm firmware
5.) HD and Floppy access is slower because of fitting features in pic memory
6.) HD files and rom files displayed in menu using 8+3 characters and saved to eeprom config

How to use it?
You will need to flash firmware using tynibld http://www.etc.ugal.ro/cchiculita/software/picbootloader.htm
Than you will need latest minimig1.bin http://minimig.googlecode.com/files/minimig_YQ090911.zip
MMC/SD/SDHC card with minimig1.bin, kick.rom in root.

I was testing HD file support using "Kickstart A1200 v3.0 r39.106.rom"

if you want to boot HD you need to name it:
HDFILE00.HDF - For master
HDFILE01.HDF - For slave
Procedure to prepare HD file is same as for ARM firmware.
Booting http://classicwb.abime.net/classicweb/68k2.htm takes around 2 minutes when card is formatted with 32kb clusters.

Note: By default HD support is dissabled, also ActionReplay is dissbled by default (this might change in future)

Hope you'll like it, reply here bugs found, there is still much to do fix and optimize...

I would like say thanks to Yaqube for help in analyzing his source which is base for this pic development.
I would like to upload source to google code, please RchGrav and Yaqube let me know.

I'll try to make tomrrow simple how to prepare hdfile using WinUae .

Quille

WOW! Thats great
The firmware directly works on my 2nd Minimig with an 4GB SDHC card and all described function!

Here some point that occurred to me while testing:

- The setting "Blitter: normal/fast" was combined together with cpu speed normal/turbo in current ARM compatible core. I guess this setting is a dummy now, at least I could not see any difference in testing or game/demo behaviour.
- Perhaps this function could be replaces to make OCS/ECS switchable. Currently the chipset act as OCS (whats mostly best for game and demo).

- Better change the cpu speed "7.09 / 28.36" text into "normal / turbo", this will be more matching.

- The cursor pointer at "Reload Kickstart? - Yes/No" is set to something else. One have to move the cursor line once to reach "No" and again to reach "Yes" value.

- PIC seems to freez after pressing some character key in any file selection list. The only way to get it back to work again is to press PGM Reset button.

In general its nice to see even PIC provide HDD support with about 170KB/s with a 32KB cluster size formated normal sd-card!
Thanks for your great work to the original MCU

Very nice work!

The hard file interface works quite well. My 2 GB hard file boots in 155 secs (4 secs with ARM) but the 20 MB one boots in only 6 seconds! That's really impressive!
The read transfer speed is ca 120 KB/s (1500 KB/s with ARM) and it's pretty good. I realize seek times of large hard files are rather mediocre.

After very quick test I found a few drawbacks (in addition to what boing4000 has found):
- I can't set floppy drive count to any other number when it's 4
- short folder names have a dot (or rather a full stop) appended
- when listing root directory I see multiple occurrences of dir entries and scrolling to the bottom has very strange effect (never ends - last three entries are repeated over and over)

Please also change version id to anything other than PYQ090911 since it already exists. Use different prefix like e.g. 'PGL'.

Tell me your google account id and I will add you to the project.

Just tested: Its also impossible here to decrease floppy drive count if 4 floppys is selected (or saved).


I can confirm that. In my case an endless repeat of "SpaceHarrier.adf" and "SpaceHarrier2.adf" appear. Not possible to reach files beyond that. It only appears in root directory of memory card, as soon as the whole .adf file list is stored in some sub folder, this bug is gone.

Hi,

First let me say thank you boing4000 and Yaqube for testing and reporting bugs.
I have send Yaqube PM to add me to google code.

I'm going to upload source and than contine fixing bugs because I would really like to finish it

Anyway here is quick bug recap:

• The setting "Blitter: normal/fast" was combined together with cpu speed normal/turbo in current ARM compatible core. I guess this setting is a dummy now, at least I could not see any difference in testing or game/demo behaviour. Perhaps this function could be replaces to make OCS/ECS switchable. Currently the chipset act as OCS (whats mostly best for game and demo).
  I'll check Yaqube Arm code to see what is different, I have just continued using his original pic menus with few changes
  
• The cursor pointer at "Reload Kickstart? - Yes/No" is set to something else. One have to move the cursor line once to reach "No" and again to reach "Yes" value.
  
• PIC seems to freez after pressing some character key in any file selection list. The only way to get it back to work again is to press PGM Reset button.
  
• Better change the cpu speed "7.09 / 28.36" text into "normal / turbo", this will be more matching.
  
• I can't set floppy drive count to any other number when it's 4
  
• short folder names have a dot (or rather a full stop) appended
  
• when listing root directory I see multiple occurrences of dir entries and scrolling to the bottom has very strange effect (never ends - last three entries are repeated over and over)
  I can confirm that. In my case an endless repeat of "SpaceHarrier.adf" and "SpaceHarrier2.adf" appear. Not possible to reach files beyond that. It only appears in root directory of memory card, as soon as the whole .adf file list is stored in some sub folder, this bug is gone.
  I had similar bug allready inside subdirectories I'll try to fixit, how many adf entries do you have in root dir ?
• Please also change version id to anything other than PYQ090911 since it already exists. Use different prefix like e.g. 'PGL'.

I'm going to continue fixing bugs ..
I'm glad that you like it ..

Quille

GREAT WORK!!! I am very impressed , waiting for the next version...

Currently there is 26 files present in sd-card root.
Mostly .ROM files, one Minimig1.bin and Minimig.cfg file and also 6 sub-folder.
At this amount, last 5 list entry keep repeating itself in endless loop by selecting some new kickstart image file.
It seems only the first 11 file name can be read-out correct, after that entry 7 to 10 including one "D xxx" entry keep repeating endless.

Perhaps this may help in finding some bug

Additional info:

It is also possible to select any directory name as Master / Slave hardfile name. In this case the Kickstart (3.1 here) crash into some Guru.

Also in floppy image selection list, the 1st entry of sd-card root directory (here) is "D UNREAL2.ADF". Actually there is an "UNREAL2.ADF floppy image file present in sd-card root, it also is listed below as normal .ADF file.
In fact this "D UNREAL2.ADF" is a sub-folder and should be called "DEMOS". By enter this "wrong named" folder, all 310 demo .ADF file is present and selectable(!). Afer returning into root directory, there is no more "demo" or wrong named folder present.
After exiting and re-enter the OSD, the same thing repeat again

This all may be caused by some wrong sd-card access timing or code. I really dont know much about this but swapping folder name and file name could be an indicator of some wrong code handling.

I think general directory handling could be the most reason for this listing bug.

Hi...

I was up last night until 2:30 and hopefully fixed few issues.

Fixed so far:

• I can't set floppy drive count to any other number when it's 4
  Fixed
  
• short folder names have a dot (or rather a full stop) appended
  Fixed please report if you see problems
  
  
• when listing root directory I see multiple occurrences of dir entries and scrolling to the bottom has very strange effect (never ends - last three entries are repeated over and over)
  I can confirm that. In my case an endless repeat of "SpaceHarrier.adf" and "SpaceHarrier2.adf" appear. Not possible to reach files beyond that. It only appears in root directory of memory card, as soon as the whole .adf file list is stored in some sub folder, this bug is gone.
  I had similar bug already inside sub directories I'll try to fix it, how many adf entries do you have in root dir?
  This whole bug is due to displaying long file names in file browser, i think i have fixed that issues but please retest and let me know because it is kind of hard to fix it without having same folder/file list on card.
  boing4000 I think you are diagnosed problem more accurately because when file entry with only short name is about to be displayed previous entry was displayed again.
  
  
• Please also change version id to anything other than PYQ090911 since it already exists. Use different prefix like e.g. 'PGL'.
  Changed to PGLYYMMDD format last is PGL091207, when I fix all bugs I'll change version again to have it kind of stable release.

Left for fixing:

• The setting "Blitter: normal/fast" was combined together with cpu speed normal/turbo in current ARM compatible core. I guess this setting is a dummy now, at least I could not see any difference in testing or game/demo behaviour. Perhaps this function could be replaces to make OCS/ECS switchable. Currently the chipset act as OCS (whats mostly best for game and demo).
  I'll check Yaqube Arm code to see what is different, I have just continued using his original pic menus with few changes
  
• The cursor pointer at "Reload Kickstart? - Yes/No" is set to something else. One have to move the cursor line once to reach "No" and again to reach "Yes" value.
  
• PIC seems to freez after pressing some character key in any file selection list. The only way to get it back to work again is to press PGM Reset button.
  
• Better change the cpu speed "7.09 / 28.36" text into "normal / turbo", this will be more matching.
  
• It is also possible to select any directory name as Master / Slave hardfile name. In this case the Kickstart (3.1 here) crash into some Guru.
  
• Also in floppy image selection list, the 1st entry of sd-card root directory (here) is "D UNREAL2.ADF". Actually there is an "UNREAL2.ADF floppy image file present in sd-card root, it also is listed below as normal .ADF file.
  In fact this "D UNREAL2.ADF" is a sub-folder and should be called "DEMOS". By enter this "wrong named" folder, all 310 demo .ADF file is present and selectable(!). Afer returning into root directory, there is no more "demo" or wrong named folder present.
  After exiting and re-enter the OSD, the same thing repeat again
  
  This all may be caused by some wrong sd-card access timing or code. I really dont know much about this but swapping folder name and file name could be an indicator of some wrong code handling.
  
  I think general directory handling could be the most reason for this listing bug.
  This might be fixed now it is due to my file browser code and trying to display long names, please let me know how it is now.

I have also uploaded source code to google code in trunk, PIC_GL folder so if you wish you can have a look.

That is all for now I need to get back to work now ...

Quille

Thanks Quille for your additional work

The first 2 fixes for floppy counter and directory listing indeed work.
Also ADF and ROM selection list is working fine, no more loops in filename.

This "D UNREAL2.ADF" folder name bug still is present with at least one of my memory card.
Also folder name selection for HDF image name, but this of less importance.

More important is to find this ADF write bug with damage of any source image.
But take your time and dont hurry! "Amiga" things are pretty compex to handle.