| Amiga Peripheral Compatibility? | page 1 2
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Ivan Sorensen
USA
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Posts 11
04 Apr 2011 00:58
| To what extent will amiga peripherals be compatible and how high a priority is this?
I recall from some of the bringup posts that joystick and keyboards will be good. Amiga mice? (I still prefer them to optical.. Im weird like that)
External floppy drive? (for that matter, will the finished system include a floppy drive or no? I imagine that would push cost quite a bit)
Old printers?
Any other interesting devices out there?EDIT: Im aware some stuff won't be practical nowadays. Just wondering what plans are :)
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Samuel D Crow
USA
| | (Natami Team)
Posts 1295
04 Apr 2011 01:06
| You can probably infer an awful lot by looking at the following NatAmi MX board with the ports labelled. EXTERNAL LINK
BTW, this thread should be posted in QA rather than News.
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Ivan Sorensen
USA
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Posts 11
04 Apr 2011 01:10
| ah, I apologize about placing in the wrong forum. Hopefully a moderator can move this. Good point on the image. I guess one of my questions is, the system shows PS2 mouse connector, but also has the 9 pin connectors. So is the plan that you can use either (so f.x. have a PS2 mouse and 2 joystick connected) or could you use a mouse in one of the 9 pin connectors? Apologies if this is a stupid question :)
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Samuel D Crow
USA
| | (Natami Team)
Posts 1295
04 Apr 2011 01:34
| I think that's the idea. Judging from the MX Board bringup thread, some of this hasn't been tested yet but may well be planned by Thomas.
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Joe M
Norway
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Posts 500
04 Apr 2011 02:06
| Ivan Sorensen wrote:
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External floppy drive? (for that matter, will the finished system include a floppy drive or no? I imagine that would push cost quite a bit)
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Good question. I wonder the same thing. I don't think anything has been said regarding this matter earlier? Since the board seems to lack an external disk drive port you probably have to create a special cable in order to be able to use it. I assume a maximum of four floppy disk drives can be connected simultaneously (as is the case with the original machine).I bet the finished system won't include a floppy drive. To my understanding the Natami will be able to make standard PC floppy drives act like Amiga floppy drives. Problem solved - since you can get PC floppy drives anywhere almost for free. Ivan Sorensen wrote:
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Old printers?
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Will be very surprised if they are not going to work.Ivan Sorensen wrote:
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Any other interesting devices out there?
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MIDI interfaces and sound samplers etc. are most likely going to work like they did on the original. I'm not sure about Action Replay cartrigdes and external hard drives made for the A500/A2000's expansion port though. ;)
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Marcel Verdaasdonk
Netherlands
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Posts 3991
04 Apr 2011 02:30
| the memory expansion slot the (86 pin sideslot) the 100 pin zorro 2 and well everything depending on those well forget them please.
Expansion slot cards wouldn't work.
Centronics and 2 atari 2600 game ports are available.
There is a 15Khz connection too for video, been asking if /C1 was available on it and am still waiting on a answer.it's not clear if the floppy port is internal or external.
And it only has a DB9 for serial so i doubt midi device would work...
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Joe M
Norway
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Posts 500
04 Apr 2011 02:42
| Marcel Verdaasdonk wrote:
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There is a 15Khz connection too for video, been asking if /C1 was available on it and am still waiting on a answer.
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What practical consequences does it have for you/us if the board supports 15kHz RGB with C1 or not? Does it have something to do with picture quality and/or compatibility?
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Marcel Verdaasdonk
Netherlands
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Posts 3991
04 Apr 2011 02:55
| /C1 is the so called pixel clock, so you be the judge of that joe
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André Jernung
Sweden
| | (MX-Board Owner)
Posts 988
04 Apr 2011 07:20
| Marcel Verdaasdonk wrote:
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And it only has a DB9 for serial so i doubt midi device would work...
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What are you smoking? A MIDI interface needs only TXD, RXD, Vcc and GND from the serial port.
The only devices I can think of that will not work on DB9 are certain serial port samplers.
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Stefan
Germany
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Posts 75
04 Apr 2011 09:02
| For Midi you have to create a special 9to25 adapter that addes the needed powersupplay for the interface wores case: +12 Volt Power DC (20 mA) and -12 Volt Power DC (20 mA).
Audio in/ out (Mono) is not used for MIDI.
BTW Amiga uses only 9 pins of the db25 for serial signals.
All samplers I know (sound and still video) are connected to parallel port and not serial port.
But how much sense do they have? when the upcoming board will have native video and audio input or do i missread the specs?
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Stefan
Germany
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Posts 75
04 Apr 2011 09:25
| Marcel Verdaasdonk wrote:
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/C1 is the so called pixel clock, so you be the judge of that joe
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That's a typical Marcel post questions are only partly and/or inadequate answered and the rest assumes absolute speculative "facts" and is not related to the thread nor question asked before.
First you can not conclude when someone asks a gunnar like question in the style "What practical consequences does it have for you/us ...?" that he or she has influence on the team decisons.
Nor do I think that Joe (not a team member afaik) is able of judging if this for 99% of the people unneeded feature will be added.
Only one I know making use of it is you with your LED cube see separate thread.
To make it clear with your answeres anyone will judge it's not needed as you can not simply say why you need it.
BTW you are not only missing /C1 also the digital MSB bits of each color and maybe the intensity bit.
As this feature got nearly never used I do think the traces go only to DA and not also to the 15 kHz port.
So you will most likely have to grab them from the crontel chip.
I would not even wonder when the 15kHz port is only SVideo instead of RGB as it connects better to (semi-)modern equipment.
But as I can only see the Chrontel CH7301 I have no idea how and where the 15 kHz port is connected to I also can not find an AD for the videoin that is marked as existent on the same connector on this picture: EXTERNAL LINK
Maybe one of the FPGAs can do that direct DA via PWM e.g. but AD?So lets wait till one of the team can clarify that.
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Marcel Verdaasdonk
Netherlands
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Posts 3991
04 Apr 2011 14:33
| André Jernung wrote:
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Marcel Verdaasdonk wrote:
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And it only has a DB9 for serial so i doubt midi device would work...
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What are you smoking? A MIDI interface needs only TXD, RXD, Vcc and GND from the serial port.
The only devices I can think of that will not work on DB9 are certain serial port samplers.
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Sorry, on the RS-232C connector on the amiga you have a Input and a output i was indeed far off by that
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Sascha B
Germany
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Posts 131
04 Apr 2011 16:14
| Amiga in general is based on 15KHz screen mode. Copper and most other timing depent on it.
If there already is an RGB 31KHz VGA video output present, its quite easy to get back to 15KHz by just disable the internal scan-doubler/flicker-fixer.
Scart 15KHz RGB video technique is the same as analog VGA, it just require a C-Sync signal combined out of H-/V-Sync.
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Stefan
Germany
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Posts 75
04 Apr 2011 16:43
| Above I wrote:
Stefan Sz wrote:
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But as I can only see the Chrontel CH7301 I have no idea how and where the 15 kHz port is connected to I also can not find an AD for the videoin that is marked as existent on the same connector on this picture: EXTERNAL LINK
Maybe one of the FPGAs can do that direct DA via PWM e.g. but AD?
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Looking around here I found the info that the connector is for a module.
For me the 15 kHz connector (26 pin) on the MX board does look like a digital bus (possible a bit IDE like with 16 bit data and a few address and control lines) that means the 15 kHz Module will propably also have also some kind of programable core logic in other words cpld or fpga and of course some video circuitry.
I estimate the price of such a module of at least 30 Euro endcustomer price with a good video-in it can easiely reach twice the price in low production numbers.
I maybe wrong but i can hardly imagine that the module will have a genlockable 23 pin Amiga Video Port more likely just SCART in/out + svideo in/out. The genlock function could be integrated in the videochips or even been simulated inside the fpga as the natami chipset should be fast enough to solve this task digitally.
It would ofcourse be possible to build a deluxe videomodule with serveral in- and outputs and a connector for an external controller (looking like an audio/video mixer).
So I think if the design is final the 15 kHz will be a separate sold plugin-module for video entusiasts.
It should also be possible to use a DVI2VGA adapter and attach a vga2scart cable and programm the FPGA output to 15 kHz.
If I'm right that means bad cards for Marcel.
Can someone of the team please confirm if this guessed information is right.
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Marcel Verdaasdonk
Netherlands
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Posts 3991
04 Apr 2011 19:43
| /C1 is a signal needed to generate the PAL burst frequency, this is a handy feature for Video editing using a VCR. Want me to give at least 3 other things /C1 could be used for? That specific connector Stefan should have the full Amiga support i just want it verified.(although the Amiga only had 23 plus shield, could be they aren't supplied in that size)
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Stefan
Germany
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Posts 75
04 Apr 2011 20:08
| That is oneway to generate the PAL burst, as the burst does not have to be syncron you can use a sparate crystal for that, and that's whats done usually.
As I wrote before I bet that connector is not compatible at all.
As there are only lowvoltage digital signals.
I'm sure there are no analog signals.
There are not enough pins for an amiga compatible digital (aga) videoport.
Okay so tell us 3 things where a sync clock like /C1 is needed.
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Marcel Verdaasdonk
Netherlands
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Posts 3991
04 Apr 2011 23:48
| lol, it's not used for syncing with Stefan it is used to generate other signals.
I personally use it to get 4/5 out of it running a little faster then 4MHz.
And AFAIK even the 520 uses it.(on a side note does anyone have a user manual for it stating RAM expansion too?)Not relevant here but the expansion boards needed it for getting their 7M signal
And even the 501 has access to this clock. I suppose that could be said as three, most of which couldn't or shouldn't be used with the Natami i would have to add.
although using the 520 might be interesting nice it cannot work with all amiga models.(signal incompatibility)
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Jakob Eriksson
Sweden
| | (Moderator)
Posts 1097
05 Apr 2011 06:26
| That port is for video in. How that is supposed to be done, I don't know, but I could imagine a genlock approach or a framebuffer approach. Certainly the FPGA is fast enough to handle digitizing video, but I don't have any details.
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Stefan
Germany
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Posts 75
05 Apr 2011 10:39
| I don't think may people beside you Marcel care if the A520 TV Modulator works with the Natami. If I would be in team I would not care at all cause HF-Signal is for TV's without any input beside antenna in other words computer stoneage (ord German Democratic Republic models maybe). Any color TV I can think of (about 25-30 years) has at least a FBAS input as chinch, DIN or SCART, with a simple adapter you can connect a SVIDEO-Out to a FBAS-in (but not otherway round). All european modern (tube)-TV sets have at least one SCART imput.
LCD and Plasma can accept VGA or DVI.
BTW the picturequality of the A520 is bad there are serveral mods to fix that. (http://members.iinet.net.au/~davem2/overclock/a520.html)
The A501 has access to it but does not use it at all so what is the point?
I'm sure if you want to build an extension that really needs such signals it's connected to the szorro bus where you have all needed timing signals.
The only real reason i can imagine to have a compatible AMIGA Video Port is if you want to connect an AMIGA Genlock interface.
As I wrote above question is if that makes sense if the Genlock is integrated in the video module or can easyly be emulated by keying the amiga output into the digitalized video-in.
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Thomas Hirsch
Germany
| | (MX-Board Owner)
Posts 647
06 Apr 2011 03:26
| Marcel Verdaasdonk wrote:
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/C1 is the so called pixel clock, so you be the judge of that joe
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Amiga timing: Super HiRes: 28MHz pixel clock
HiRes: 14MHz pixel clock
LoRes: 7MHz pixel clock The Amiga has also a system internal clock called CCK, the Color ClocK. It`s frequency is 3.5MHz which means it covers two low res pixels (or four hi res, eight shi res). This Color Clock is also available on the video port as the /C1 signal.
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Do you have questions about the Natami?