Blog

Dec 24, 2015

Hi all,

Suska is now in the tenth year and we are working on bringing out new hardware and improved IP cores and firmware. Currently we are in intense debugging concerning the upcoming Suska-III-B hardware. On our experiment-s server you will find the latest version of the configware. Be aware, that Suska-III-B features the SD card as a hard drive. This part of the configware is not open source. But you will find a working image for Suska-III-B including the SD card support in the respective directory. The hardware for this board is now tested and working. Also the firmware of the AVR which does not get it into this 12-24 release will be released shortly. So if you like have a look on experiment-s in January.

I wish you a Happy New Year. Hope you have a great time ahead.

Have fun, Wolfgang

Jun 29, 2015

The 2K15A version of the Suska IP-Cores ist ready. For further information refer to the release notes.

Happy Summertime, have fun with the core.

Wolfgang

Dec 24, 2014

Hi all,

The version 2K14B of the Suska IP-Core is now available in the download section. Look at the release notes for information about fixes and enhancements.

Enjoy

Wolfgang

Jun 23, 2014

Hi all,

The version 2K14A of the Suska IP-Core is now available in the download section. Look at the release notes for information about fixes and enhancements.

Enjoy

Wolfgang

Dec 24, 2013

And once again the year has passed by. In the end there is always the question why it passed by so fast and what has been achieved. Considering this question, there are several answers concerning the Suska project.

The Hardware:

Suska-III-C has now got nice clothes. The case is of high-quality, made of aluminum and will be available for interested person from Spring 2014. Just the silkscreen on the top of the case is missing up to now.

Furthermore Suska-III-N, a new hardware based on a Cyclone-III has been developed. It is a platform well suited for the realization of a Falcon. Features are for example Bluetooth und WIFI. This project is widely realized but will need a little bit more effort although the critical design phase has been passed. The board uses micro SD cards as mass storage devices and is prepared to drive modern TFT panels.

Since a few weeks Suska-III-B is in further development after it was delayed for three years due to lack of time and prioritization of other projects. Currently Udo helps with the development of the system microcontroller firmware which will for example be required for flashing the operating system or changing the FPGA configuration.

Modelling of Digital Circuitries:

In Spring, the IP core of GigaFile could be strongly enhanced and optimized, after the GigaFile hardware was developed in Fall 2012. In the meantime this small piece is traveling around the world and the feedback is mostly really positive.

The ACSI/SCSI adapter which is suitable for the connection of older SCSI hardware to the Atari DMA port is growing in popularity. Many feedbacks and tests, done by different persons with a wide variety of devices led to a further improved IP core.

Beside the work on the Suska-III-C IP core, which has again get some improvements and enhancements, the modelling of the 68K30 CISC processor was the most intensive work which has been done this year. It was a rather big deal but in the end the processor is now feature complete. Some information for specialists: it is a complex core with about 21.000 LEs in an Altera Cyclone-III device. But therefore the core features a MMU, Cache and the coprozessor interface, a barrel shifter and fast integer arithmetics. The bus controller rules dynamic bus resizing and cache burst mode filling. This project was by far the most time consuming this year.

Last but not least there were efforts concerning the Firebee, the Suska-III-B IP core and different smaller things, i do not want to list here. All told, this year has passed by very quickly but it was a good year and i am happy to see all the things in work or (partly) finished coming up.

As usual the updates to the Suska IP core are located in the download area.

Best wishes Wolfgang

Aug 13, 2013

Currently I enjoy the wonderful Summer days. Nevertheless the ip core version 2K13A of Suska-III-C is located on the server since June. The work on the Falcon chipset continue smoothely. You can see the current status in the section Progress.

Wolfgang

May 23, 2013

The last weeks past by very fast and were characterized by works on the GigaFile, which works now in the Configware Rev.03 very reliably on all Atari machines and on SCSI-II interfaces like Amigas, MACs and also PCs. In the meantime there are a crowd of accesoires for the GigaFile like 7 adapters an ACSI interface cable and a power supply for external use. Furthermore improvements to the ACSI/SCSI adapter were made. It can now be useful to connect all the different SCSI devices to Atari machines. It was reported that CD-ROMs, DVDs, Tape drives, MOs, ZIP, JAZ and of course all the different hard disk drives work well with it. For this reason the development is regarded as finished. And last but not least i like to point out, that the developments to the 68K30, means the 68030 compatible CPU inclusive coprocessor interface and built in floating point unit (FPU) seems to be promising. As a developer of digital logic my impression would be wrong, ift this project would not end in a well working IP core. In June there is again a maintenance update of the Suska IP core, as usual in the download section of experiment-s.

ttyl Wolfgang

Dec 24, 2012

I want to wish to all people who are reading these lines some peaceful days and the time to investigate in beautiful things.

What’s the actual situation: since today. the Suska IP core is ready for download in it’s version 20121224. This is the 14th release since 2006. Since the work on the Suska-III-C project has far progressed, there are only a few improvements to the FPGA core. However, the firmware for the microcontrollers could be very interesting. Udo Matthe has released the first version of the SD card controller firmware which features to reload the FPGA configuration from a SD card. This is all brand new and you can find first informations here: http://www.yellowhut.de/public/suska/

Accessories for Suska: Since few days, there are in the documentation download section the operating manuals for the GigaFile in several languages online. At this point i want to thank all peaople contributing to the translations from the German version. The GigaFile with different adapters and also the ACSI-SCSI adapter are now available in the Suska shop.

How to proceed in 2013? After a longer delay we would like to bring the small Suska-III-B device in the focus of public attention. The work at it’s IP core are nearly finished. Suska-III-B is completely developed and already existing in form of two prototypes looking exactly as the series products. There is a new website concerning Suska-III-B in the ‘Boards’ area. Also in 2013 there will be a revision (REV02) of the GigaFile speeding up the transmission data rate for about 30%. The GigaFile connected to Suska-III-C results in 1850Mib/s during read operation. For further informations refer to the respectiv web site. And last but not least: perhaps the new board Suska-III-N will say ‘Hello’ in 2013… further informations will follow up.

Kind Regards

Wolfgang

Oct 26, 2012

Since the last blog not less than four months have passed. What happend in between to the Suska project? Well, after several years of the core- and hardware-development and improvements concerning all the stuff, the Suska project has grown up to a family of equipment. Work on all these products are done in tha background and merge in the bi-yearly IP core updates which are published every June and every December since 2006. New since this Summer there are perepherals (hardware), intended to replace old or aged hard drives or other storage devices by modern hardware.

Summarized the Suska Family consists of the following members:

The Computers

Suska-III-C the classic and the most universal board which presents a lot of the features of the different ST computers. It is highly software compatible in comparision to the original machines. Suska-III-C is available since about two years.

Suska-III-B a slim version featuring the most important interfaces. Suska-III-B is widely finished; the system software is missing up to now (the IP core is finished). Due to missing software developers for the system software, the model is deferred.

Suska-III-T a sophisticated study with modern interfaces, a lot of memory and hardware to connect touch panels. Suska-III-T is not officially available.

Peripherals

ACSI-SCSI adapter a protocol converter between the Atari ACSI interface and parallel SCSI devices. Thus it is possible to connect and operate SCSI devices on ST computers.

GigaFile SD cards are used as hard drives connected on the one hand to the ACSI interface of the Atari STs or on the other hand to parallel SCSI interfaces like in the Atari TT computers or the Amigas.

Further information concerning the GigaFile and the ACSI-SCSI adapter will be available in the near future.

Wolfgang

Jun 20, 2012

The version 2K12A of the Suska IP-Core is now available in the download section. Look at the release notes for information about fixes and enhancements. The documentation archive has been updated with several additional documents.

Enjoy

Wolfgang

Mar 6, 2012

We are working in several directions at the ip cores to the different Atari machines. So here is a short summary concerning these approaches:

Suska-III-C: The ACSI-SCSI Adapter has been optimized concerning it’s compatibility with modern Hardware. The Audio Codec is now connected to the system and the access via DMA is working well.

Suska-III-T: Work on the modeling of the Falcon compatible COMBEL chip has been finished. Work on the modeling of the Falcon compatible DMA chip has been finished. Work on the modeling of the Falcon compatible VIDEL chip are in preparation. These three modules will be tested, when the top level wiring and the 68030 compatible ip core has been finished.

Peripherals: The ‘Proof of Concept’ for a SCSI compatible hard disk connected to the ACSI bus has been verified. Currently there are plans concerning a solid state disk (SSD) at the ACSI port. This equipment will be available as accessory and the ip core will at this time be ‘closed source’. The SDDs are planned to work on every ACSI port even on old machines.

Others: Work on the modeling of the TT compatible FUNNEL chip has been finished. Tests are outstanding.

Wolfgang

Dec 26, 2011

After the work on the Suska ip core has been slowed down this years in the light of recent events, the core is roughly in a state as of February this year. Nevertheless the Suska-III-C core has been improved a little bit. In the download area there are all respective files. Interesting for the owners o a Suska-III-C boards might be the timing improved configuration files which provide a better stability of the boards.

TTYL

Wolfgang

Feb 24, 2011

Works as of February 2011: the development of the Suska ip core continues steadily. Due to the availability of the different Suska hardware platforms Suska-III-C, Suska-III-B and Suska-III-T, the development of the microcontroller firmware and the digital modelling of the FPGAs results in parallel development.

Suska-III-B: We work on the completion of the firm- and configware of the Suska-III-B boards. While the configware (digital modelling) of the FPGA is at 100%, the completion of the firmware of the Atmel microcontroller which handles the system control, the PS/2 mouse- and keyboard transfer and the SD card management will last a while.

Suska-III-C: The Suska-III-C ip core, which is developed and maintenanced since years, is currently examined concerning incompatibilities and improved in this sense. Smaller bug fixes were done in the recent time (DMA sound, real time clock). There are some programs which do not work on Suska-III-C. We currently evaluate, if the 68K00 ip core could be responsible for this behaviour. The firmware of two microcontrollers (PS/2 and system control) is complete. The third controller which shall handle the sd card and the ability to upgrade the FPGA respective boot device via the sd card is in progress means is developed hand in hand to the work on the Suska-III-B firmware. Currently the is no publicly available sd card firmware for this controller.

Suska-III-T: the work on the ip core of the smallest but most performant Suska board is turning out to be most complex of all. Because the Suska-III-T hardware is developed completely as a 32 bit system, there is a need to have the 68030 microprocessor available. Therefore the work currently focuses on the development of the digital model of such a 68030 respective the 68K30 ip core which shall later provide a functional compatible model compared to the original CPU. The current status is as follows: the bus controller in conjunction with the internal data- and instruction caches, the cache controller and the memory management unit (MMU) which interferes with the mentioned functional modules is completed and in intensively testing. We assume, that the completion of the 68K30 will last a longer time up to now.

Wolfgang

Jan 1, 2011

The Suska ip core version 2K10B is available for download now (20101229). What’s ahead? This year we will provide new hardware and extensions over the existing ip core. Happy New Year to all; have fun.

Wolfgang

Jun 27, 2010

We have released the Suska-III-C configware in it’s version 2K10A. We have introduced several details, which resulted among others from feedback of users of the Suska-III-C boards. Generally spoken, the new configware version can be considered a maintenance release. Unfortunately we are very busy in the moment and can not provide both, software and hardware development. So we have decided to bring out more suffisticated changes in the version 2K10B if there are people supporting the project by writing software for example drivers for ethernet, audio or USB. Have a look at the release notes in the Configware directory.

Enjoy

Wolfgang

Feb 22, 2010

Currently we work on several updates of the Suska-III-C IP core. We have improved the ACSI-SCSI bridge to get SCSI-II devices working. Furthermore there is an updated RP5C15 real time clock emulation; so we have now a working real time clock. There are also investigations to improve the audio DAC functionality and the DMA sound system. The IP core of Suska-III-B is nearly finished. More informations on Suska-III-B will be released in the near future.

Wolfgang