RetroBrew Computers Forum
Discussion forum for the RetroBrew Computers community.

Home » RBC Forums » General Discussion » CB030, A 68030 SBC for hobbyists
Re: CB030, A 68030 SBC for hobbyists [message #10286 is a reply to message #10132] Mon, 20 March 2023 19:01 Go to previous messageGo to next message
computerdoc is currently offline  computerdoc
Messages: 130
Registered: October 2015
Senior Member

Hi Mike,
The boards I have completed are the Tiny68K and the MB012 boards running CPM 68K. I have ordered the 4.7K x7 resistor network to complete the T68KRC board this evening. I expect it to be able to boot CPM 68K soon.
Would one of the "Frugal RAM/ROM 512K" or the "Improved 512K RAM/ROM" RC boards and my MB012 board with 2 RC slots be enough to boot OS9 68K from the flash memory and be up and running to access the OS9 filesystem on the CF Card?
Kip


Kip Koon
computerdoc at sc dot rr dot com
http://www.cocopedia.com/wiki/index.php/User:Computerdoc
icon3.gif  Re: CB030, A 68030 SBC for hobbyists [message #10297 is a reply to message #10286] Thu, 30 March 2023 15:43 Go to previous messageGo to next message
computerdoc is currently offline  computerdoc
Messages: 130
Registered: October 2015
Senior Member

Bill,
Have you thought of the MC68080 CPU IP designed by the Apollo team which is used in the Vampire MC68080 for the Amiga 3000 and 4000? I was reading about the Apollo team thinking about or are releasing it for free. I wonder if it is usable in some form in the Pathfinder Projects as a KK080MB board. Cool Very Happy Rolling Eyes Here is the link: https://amitopia.com/free-68080-fpga-core-license-by-apollo- team-is-great/.
Here is a quote from the linked web page.

"
Gunnar von Böhn which is the head of Apollo Team offers regarding this a1k.org post, to make his 68080 reimplementation of a 68k processor available to other hardware manufacturers.
68080 is available as part of the "Apollo Cores" on the Vampire Accelerator cards

Currently, the 68080 is available as part of the "Apollo Cores" on the Vampire Accelerator cards, which are available for the Amiga 500, Amiga 1000, Amiga 2000, and Amiga 600 cards. Also 68080 is announced for the Amiga 1200 and the Vampire V4 stand-alone version. For the Amiga 3000, Amiga 4000 or even Amiga 4000T Amigas, nobody had ever offered appropriate solutions. But now Gunnar von Böhn gives other a chance to do so.

From Böhn's offer provides that a hardware manufacturer can license a free version of the 68060, which is throttled after booting to the speed of a real 68060 processor, but otherwise has the full range of features of the 68080. This "shareware output" of the CPU could then end users by acquiring a Keycode from Böhn from throttling.
Apollo Team makes their creation Available for even more audience

This offer would enable manufacturers in the Amiga to offer fast speed cards despite the very high prices or unavailability of the 68060. By Böhn himself this is opening up new markets, as, for example, manufacturers such as Jens Schönfeld from Individual Computers or other great hardware people could offer processor cards for Amiga 3000 and Amiga 4000 users, whose users may well be interested in unlocking the extra speed for their Amigas.

The offer refers only to the CPU of the Apollo Core by Apollo Team. Other components contained there such as SAGA or a possible chipset emulation are excluded in this free offer from Gunnar von Böhn.

Interesting move by Apollo Team. Focusing on the low-cost Amigas and the stand-alone Vampire V4 is a good move. Why Amiga 3000 and Amiga 4000 is removed from the plan, we don't know yet. It's most about time and money spent on this project for sure. We are looking forward with this project. Also the fact that A1200.net guys got a Vampire V4 as a gift at Amiga32 was a nice move by the team. Maybe these two can team up and make the ultimate Amiga V5000 in the end toghether?


Source
amiganews.de
"

What do you think? If so, what would be needed to obtain it?

Kip


Kip Koon
computerdoc at sc dot rr dot com
http://www.cocopedia.com/wiki/index.php/User:Computerdoc
Re: CB030, A 68030 SBC for hobbyists [message #10298 is a reply to message #10297] Thu, 30 March 2023 17:58 Go to previous messageGo to next message
plasmo is currently offline  plasmo
Messages: 916
Registered: March 2017
Location: New Mexico, USA
Senior Member
Since 68080 targets FPGA, my guess it can be implemented in a FPGA board with SDRAM and SD disk. Such boards are likely available, possibly cheaply, so no reason to design our own.

Shareware 68080 is throttled to 68060's performance, so might as well design a 68060 or 68040 retro board. Designing a 68060 is on my bucket list but 060 is very expensive so it is unlikely to have much general interests.
Bill
Re: CB030, A 68030 SBC for hobbyists [message #10372 is a reply to message #6931] Mon, 19 June 2023 09:01 Go to previous messageGo to next message
coolbear is currently offline  coolbear
Messages: 15
Registered: February 2019
Junior Member
Hello all, I'm back at it taking a stab at getting OS9 running on one of my CB030s. I have a few questions:

Does the OS9 port require any hardware mods - notably the 16-bit CF mods?
What about the timer?
I have the MWOS structure, but where can one find the branch for the CB030?
Re: CB030, A 68030 SBC for hobbyists [message #10373 is a reply to message #10372] Tue, 20 June 2023 11:42 Go to previous messageGo to next message
plasmo is currently offline  plasmo
Messages: 916
Registered: March 2017
Location: New Mexico, USA
Senior Member
I don't know anything about OS9 on CB030 so I was hoping someone better qualified can answer these questions. Here is my attempt:
Since 68030 has dynamic bus sizing capability, 8-bit CF interface works just like 16-bit CF interface except 8-bit is slower in data transfer. MC68681 in CB030 has a 16-bit counter/timer. CB030 CPLD also have a 100Hz level 2 interrupt source that can be software enabled. CB030 branch on MWOS structure is beyond me.
Bill
Re: CB030, A 68030 SBC for hobbyists [message #10374 is a reply to message #10373] Thu, 22 June 2023 23:48 Go to previous messageGo to next message
marcopolo is currently offline  marcopolo
Messages: 21
Registered: November 2020
Location: Nancy (FRANCE)
Junior Member
https://github.com/John-Titor/os9-m68k-ports

My Archives (68K, Old logic, SSB radio): marc.retronik.fr
Re: CB030, A 68030 SBC for hobbyists [message #10375 is a reply to message #10374] Tue, 27 June 2023 18:58 Go to previous messageGo to next message
coolbear is currently offline  coolbear
Messages: 15
Registered: February 2019
Junior Member
Well, that helped a bit but my feeble brain hasn't been able to wrap itself around the environment set up. At least not yet. I did try Windows, but the tools are all written for Win32, and I don't have a physical machine for that. I tried a Windows XP/32 VM, but os9make has a hard time finding all its dependencies. I also tried wine, but that turned out to be the least successful.

It seems like there's a pretty steep curve.

Is there any chance that I could wimp out and just get a copy of the ROM images?
Re: CB030, A 68030 SBC for hobbyists [message #10530 is a reply to message #10375] Tue, 05 December 2023 15:09 Go to previous messageGo to next message
mikesmith is currently offline  mikesmith
Messages: 80
Registered: March 2018
Member
Apologies @coolbear, work and other hobbies took over and I haven't had time to keep in touch. Some of that pressure is off, so hopefully I can spend a little more time tinkering with retro stuff again.

I'm sorry I don't have much in the way of suggestions for getting the tools running on anything other than macOS; I will take a stab at getting a Windows system up and see if I can come up with a recipe, but someone more familiar with the platform is likely to be more useful there. In theory modern Windows should still run older stuff, as long as you can find / install the required runtime libraries.

To some of the other questions:

Quote:

I am setting up the OS9 68K SDK v12 compile package. I have unzipped os9_68k_sdk_v12.zip and put the contents in "M:\MWOS".

Do I put the contents of os9-m68k-ports-main.zip in M:\MWOS as well?
You can check out the ports repo more or less anywhere, but make sure that there are no spaces in any of the parent directory names. Using the zip archives is less than ideal, as it makes it very hard for you to keep track of your own changes at the same time as taking in new changes that might happen upstream.

Quote:

I want to copy the CB030 folder to Tiny68K folder and try to port it, of course, to the Tiny68K, MB012 and T68KRC boards. Anything special I need to know about making these changes. I have never done this before so please include every little detail if possible.
That would be essentially the same as doing the work from scratch... but off the top of my head, you would want to at least:

  • adjust ROM_CBOOT/sysinit.a to perform the correct (possibly minimal) early startup tasks
  • adjust the bootfile lists to select the correct kernel and other system modules
  • adjust systype.d to select the correct CPU type, I/O addresses, vectors, CFIDE configuration, etc.
  • write a new ticker driver to use the 68681 timer and sort out any conflicts with the (nigh-unreadable) OS-9 68681 serial driver
  • adjust the RTC driver as required; either to stub it out so that the system will prompt for the time / date at bootup, or to read the time/date from some other RTC of your choosing (IIRC there are issues with Bill's board layout that make the tiny68k onboard RTC non-functional, you could use the RTC he designed for CB030).
  • adjust the bootfiles and probably other Makefiles so that only the bootloader goes in the serial ROM
  • add new disk image generation logic / config as required to build a bootable CF image
There's probably more; I am still paging all of this back in. I have a sneaking suspicion that I convinced myself that using the '681 timer for the ticker was going to cause problems, but I don't see it in my notes and it's not immediately obvious what it would be, so it might? work.

Quote:

Would one of the "Frugal RAM/ROM 512K" or the "Improved 512K RAM/ROM" RC boards and my MB012 board with 2 RC slots be enough to boot OS9 68K from the flash memory and be up and running to access the OS9 filesystem on the CF Card?
I would expect that a basic MB012 would be plenty to run OS-9, without needing any additional memory boards. It'd need a little tinkering to get there from a tiny68k port, and it would have the same basic set of prerequisites.

Quote:

Does the OS9 port require any hardware mods - notably the 16-bit CF mods?
What about the timer?
You need the 100Hz tick version of the CPLD. It's best to have one of Bill's realtime clock modules, since OS-9 likes to know the time / date at boot.
The CB030 port configures the CF driver in 8-bit mode. I don't know if this would conflict with the 16bit mod, I don't think I ever looked to see.

Hopefully this helps a little. I will probably have more to share in a bit when I have refreshed everything and got myself up and going again.


[Updated on: Tue, 05 December 2023 22:12]

Report message to a moderator

Re: CB030, A 68030 SBC for hobbyists [message #10532 is a reply to message #10298] Tue, 05 December 2023 19:04 Go to previous messageGo to next message
mikesmith is currently offline  mikesmith
Messages: 80
Registered: March 2018
Member
Quote:

Shareware 68080 is throttled to 68060's performance, so might as well design a 68060 or 68040 retro board. Designing a 68060 is on my bucket list but 060 is very expensive so it is unlikely to have much general interests.
I'd obviously be down for one. I have an MVME177 already, something else with some documentation wouldn't be hated.

The "68080" is also missing some important parts; it should really be called "68EC080" if they were being honest.
Re: CB030, A 68030 SBC for hobbyists [message #10593 is a reply to message #10532] Mon, 05 February 2024 11:38 Go to previous message
denis2342 is currently offline  denis2342
Messages: 23
Registered: February 2017
Junior Member
I would also join in, I have already a rev.6 MC68060 waiting for it.

Previous Topic: ZRC, A Z80 SBC for ROMWBW
Next Topic: Neat '040 boot ROM setup


Current Time: Tue Jul 15 13:29:47 PDT 2025

Total time taken to generate the page: 0.01121 seconds