Experiment-s

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Experiment-S is a recreation of the old Atari ST / Mega ST home computer using FPGA technology. The two main boards being prototyped at the moment are:

Suska-III-C

Suska-III-C is a circuit board intended to be a platform for Atari ST/STE/Mega-ST/Mega-STE/Falcon computer emulation.[1] Central element of the circuit is a Cyclone II FPGA from Altera. This Field Programmable Gate Array acts as a complex programmable digital circuit and determines the functionality of the computer. The board includes all relevant plug connectors for the older Atari peripherals (ACSI, keyboard, monitors). Furthermore the hardware supports the programming new operating systems by a Bootstrap Loader as well as replacing the FPGA configuration through the USB interface. Most characteristics of the old Atari machines are already implemented. The following list gives an overview of the functionality of the Suska-III-C:

  • Motorola 68000 compatible CPU.
  • Floppy Disk Controller WD1772 compatible, HD-enabled.
  • Atari Computer System Interface (ACSI)
  • SCSI via ACSI interface (with Parity and Initiator Identification).
  • DMA Module.
  • 68901 compatible MultiFunction Peripheral (MFP) Circuit.
  • 6850 compatible ACIAs.
  • Atari keyboard interface.
  • ST compatible graphics.
  • Blitter (Bit Block Transfer Processor).
  • Monochrome LCD interface (Stacy, STBook).
  • Glue logic.
  • ST / STE compatible MMU.
  • A/D-converter interface (Sound-Option).
  • IDE interface.
  • SD-Card interface.
  • CF-Card interface (via IDE).
  • Bootstrap-Loader for OS updates.
  • Real-time-clock (RP5C15).
  • PS/2 keyboard and mouse.
  • Ethernet option.
  • USB interface option.

Suska-III-T

Another approach for emulating Atari ST computers is Suska III-T (T = Tiny).[2] This board (in preparation) pursues a different philosophy. While the Classic board implements nearly all interfaces of the original STs, the tiny version is characterised by its 5 USB and single Ethernet interface, enabling the use of modern peripheral devices. Further characteristics:

  • 128MB DDR RAM.
  • 32MB Flash PROM.
  • 2 Micro SD-Card plugs
  • Soundsystem with an audio codec.
  • RTC.
  • Radio chip.
  • Connector for a LCD panel.
  • Touchpanel ready.
  • Extension plug for the FPGA board.

See also

References

  1. ↑ Suska III C
  2. ↑ suska III T

External links


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