Building the TerribleFire TF530 accelerator board, part 3: Parts inspection, and soldering

Let's see what we've got. And how we're gonna put it together. This one had a little surprise for me.

Disclaimer: This is not an instruction. Use at your own risk. No responsibility taken for whatever you do. Safety first. Kids, dont try this at home. 

Parts and BOM, and the shiny blue PCB.

It looks like I haven't missed much so far. Everything required to populate the board is there (except for the CPU socket connector, for which some substitute will be built), and I'm still able to identify the individual components! :-)

Parts and tools.

So, with Stephen Leary's instructional video (see below) on my computer's screen, I started soldering. May I note that not only does his video provide helpful and important information and hints, but also is a pleasant accompaniment when working on the TF530.

Soldering the first SMD chip on to the board quickly resulted in the chip being roasted, and the PCB damaged. Lol. Surprise. It turned out to be waaaaaay more difficult than I had expected.

Working with tiny SMD components poses some unexpected problems. For example if you're used to soldering hole-though parts you will most likely use way too much solder on your first attempts. Well, I did. Then, when you got used to using really very little solder, you find out that you cannot easily suck away the solder if you've made a mistake, because the amount of solder is too little for the desoldering pump to work on. Then you may learn the painful way that tiny PCB chip pins are reeaaally weak, you have to treat them really gently. And finally, when checking results of your soldering, you may find out that your grandma's magnifying glass does what it's supposed to do - to magnify - but it's scratched or unclear, and really creates more confusion than it does help.

First chip in place. Dirty, but undamaged!

But after some practicing with the damaged board and chip, things looked better. I learned to use the right amount of solder, the right amount of soldering flux, and to move the soldering iron at the right speed, and started working on a new board - with far better results.

More components.

After some hours of focused soldering and (visual) checking it looks as if my first TF530 might soon be ready for testing.

TF530r2 fully populated!

She's currently no beauty and needs some serious cleaning, but she makes her owner very proud. :-)

If you wanna try to build one, here's Stephen Leary's first "how to" video (we're still waiting for the second):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xG_5oDeLdGE

Next time we need to find out if she's alive - watch out for part 4 of our series "Building the TerribleFire TF530 accelerator board"!

Overview and back catalogue of the series:
http://amigaalive.blogspot.de/p/hardware-building-terribefire-tf530.html

AMIGA alive 03: Juggler (1986) and BoingBall (1984) (Video)

"AMIGA alive 03 - Juggler (1986) and BoingBall (1984)" is out! The legendary Juggler and BoingBall demos, shown in the early days of the Amiga, and responsible for stunning the audience.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nMy1CyJveKM

AMIGA alive software: rewincy v0.8 - window and screen cycling

Our second - still rather tiny - software release is out. It's rewincy v0.8, a Workbench commodity for AmigaOS2.0 and higher. Rewincy will add Windows-"Alt-Tab"-like functionality to your Workbench: cycle through windows and screens, and zip windows, using your keyboard.

You can configure keys and colors, and run it from CLI or Workbench alike. Rewincy is based on M. Cortese's "Altabber", with added features, and just like Altabber it's freeware, of course. It has been cross-compiled from Linux to AmigaOS with vbcc, sources and makefile are included.

See Readme-file included for more information.

You can download it from AmiNet:
http://aminet.net/package/util/cdity/rewincy

AMIGA alive software: rentp v0.4 - NTP time synchronization

Our first - tiny, admittedly - software release is out. It's rentp v0.4, a Network Time Protocol time synchronization utility for AmigaOS2.0 or higher.

Here's a usage example:

rentp -o120 0.fedora.pool.ntp.org

...will sync time from Fedora's timeserver, using 120 mins.
UTC offset (=Germany summer daylight saving time). UTC
offset should be supplied, otherwise time will probably be
wrong (unless you live in UTC zone 0).

And...

rentp -h

...will give you help.

You can download it from AmiNet:
http://aminet.net/package/comm/tcp/rentp

New page: Best of the best - Amiga games you must have seen

Our take on the "Best Amiga games" / "Top 10 Amiga games" subject, from a slightly different point of view, where a Competition Pro joystick is not the only Amiga expansion device allowed, and exceptional technical achievement, sweaty pixel art or perfect overall style may put a game on the list.

Have fun with our...

Best of the best - Amiga games you must have seen

 

BANG! There it is: Vampire V4 standalone & Vampire V4 Amiga 1200

And this is how things happen. You have an Apollo team, and a Vampire team, and Kipper2k and Majsta and all the others, and they just go the way, all the way.

Today has been announced Vampire V4, and what a beast it is: it comes in different flavours, including an Amiga 1200 version, and a standalone version.

Among it's features are the Altera Cyclone V A5 FPGA, 512MB DDR3 RAM, FastIDE with two connectors (40 and 44-pin), HDMI* video out, dual Kickstart-flashrom, USB, ethernet, and MicroSD storage. Additionally, the standalone version will feature two DB9 mouse/joystick ports.

From the official announcement: "The Vampire V4 standalone system will be a complete new Amiga system powered by the 68080 CPU core and the complete SAGA chipset (AGA compatible)."

Probably most interesting are three I/O ports on the new Vampire V4. Currently we have no information about these, but could this be the basis for a new standard of Amiga expansion devices? Will this be what people build upon, and make the Vampire V4 the new Amiga?

It has to be said, though, that there's some sort of question mark regarding the Amiga 600 version of the Vampire boards. The announcement of the V4 says "Amiga 600 with kippa’s adapter (if produced)", and assuming that "kippa" is "kipper2k", things don't look too well: recently, kipper2k left a note on his website (see sources, below) that he doesn't intend to continue making the Vampire 600 boards. Let's just hope this doesn't affect the overall roadmap of the Vampire boards, and that someone will build the adapter for the V4 600.

Anyway, exciting times we live in!

Congratulations!

  

http://www.apollo-accelerators.com/images/v4.jpg

*) probably, see sources below

Sources: 
http://amiga-news.de/de/news/AN-2017-08-00003-DE.html
http://www.apollo-accelerators.com/files/V4_announcement_v1_5.pdf
http://forum.apollo-accelerators.com/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=1804
http://kipper2k.com

vbcc - Volker Barthelmann's C compiler

The great compilers on AmigaOS (and for AmigaOS) like SAS/C and gcc (ADE/geekgadgets) are getting some serious competition by the name of vbcc, which is an acronym for "Volker Barthelmann's C compiler".

What makes vbcc great?

It...

...is cross-platform / portable
...can cross-compile for different targets
...is very fast
...produces small binaries
...has a clear concept, working default configurations, and is easily installed
...is actively developed with modern standards in mind
...still supports AmigaOS1.3 and plain 68000

Portability & cross-compilation targets

vbcc's portability seems to be near-perfect. It runs on almost all AmigaOS flavours (m68k/Classic, PPC/WarpOS/PowerUP, PPC/AmigaOS4, MorphOS), as well as on Atari, Linux, Mac and Windows, and can compile for almost all AmigaOS flavours, and different Atari operating systems. Building vbcc under Linux works like a charm, if you know what you're doing you can set up a cross-compiler environment in just minutes.

(Note that there's also a version for AROS, but it looks like it's outdated / incomplete / development has stopped. (?))
 

Installation

Binary and target archives are provided via e.g. AmiNet:
http://aminet.net/search?query=vbcc

Installation on Amiga can be done via the included Installer-script, which also copies a target's configuration files to vbcc's directory. The whole process is nothing magical, and can be easily applied to e.g. Linux. Very good.

Speed

Debugging software written by other authors, and porting software from other systems requires an insane amount of compiler re-runs. Combined with a large project this results in noticeable, sometimes painful time wasted just hitting cursor-up, return and waiting.

Compiling a "helloworld.c" type program (1.5KB of printf()s and the likes) with vbcc is about three times as fast as with gcc.

(Cross-compiling on your gigahertz-multicore Linux box is ridiculously fast, compared to Amiga-speeds. A 66KB sized sourcecode file with some includes and a few precompiled objects attached compiles in what can legitimately be described as no time.)

Size of binaries created by vbcc

A quick check gave these results:
1568 bytes of source code, helloworld.c type, #include <stdio.h>
gcc binary without ixemul.library usage (libnix): 25580 bytes
gcc binary (with ixemul.library usage): 18636 bytes
vbcc binary (vbcc's vc.lib): 4868 bytes

Porting programs written for SAS/C or gcc

vbcc sits somewhere in between: it has good built-in support for AmigaOS, but lacks some of SAS/C's features, and currently has limited support for GNU/POSIX. You may want to add some own inventions. If you add new header files and/or libraries for compatibility (e.g. from gcc/ADE/geekgadgets or libnix), you will run into (resolvable) conflicts. While SAS/C and ADE/geekgadgets provide additional developer tools (e.g. make) required in the build process, vbcc is (basically) just a compiler.

Cross-compiling binaries for AmigaOS on other operating systems

As has been said before, installation is simple, and almost identical on all host systems, and so is cross-compiling. Under Linux, two changes were required to make vbcc-Linux compile a previous vbcc-AmigaOS project: add compiler config option "+aos68k", and add Linux include path to NDK_3.9/Include/include_h directory to config file "aos68k" to Linux paths.

Impressive!

Overall, the impression left by vbcc is utterly positive. There are a few flaws, e.g. some error messages could be more precise, gcc's __FUNCTION__ and __LINE__ macros or a substitute would be very helpful, and AROS host and target modules would really be nice, but it works fine on different platforms including classic AmigaOS, is easy to use, creates quality code, is fast, etc. pp. and best of all it all comes with superb cross-platform capabilities: the concept of exchangable host and target modules is an invaluable tool for cross-Amiga-platform development, and may help unify the scattered Amiga landscape.

Huge THANK YOU to Volker Barthelmann and co-authors (vasm, vlink), and iComp GmbH for sponsoring vbcc m68k-AmigaOS!

Sources:
http://sun.hasenbraten.de/vbcc/
http://blitterstudio.com/setting-up-an-amiga-cross-compiler/
http://blitterstudio.com/setting-up-an-amiga-cross-compiler-windows/