Amiga 68000 Relocator Verilog Updates and More

Following on from my post yesterday I decided to do a minor change to the Verilog on the 68000 relocator and pave the way for future changes.

Relocator Updates

I have forked the original 68000 relocator with flash ROM project, within that fork I have:

• Cleaned up the codebase a little
• Modified the Verilog so that it boots by default using the motherboard’s ROM
• Updated the Jedec bit map file

In addition I have played with the command line software a little bit. Using this I was able to flash DiagROM onto the ROM chips.

There are some minor issues I would like to resolve with the software. For example, if you try and write without erasing you just get pages and pages of errors. The default behaviour should probably be changed. This is something I will work on soon, but I may make some incompatible hardware changes first.

This is some of the hardware changes I’m thinking of making:

• Make the jumper select the default boot option
• Switch to a TSOP 29F series flash
• Move the JTAG further south (cannot access it with a TF card connected)
• Maybe use spare Xilinx IO for more jumpers for future options?
  • Such as larger flash with multiple ROMs?

SD Card Updates

Whilst I really like the fact that I was able to expose the IDE SD card outside of my Amiga using an extension cable, it was getting a little annoying that the cable ran right along the inside of the Amiga. I decided to try a little experiment and purchased a micro SD card version of the extension cable to see if I could fit it through the vent.

There was a little rubber band covering the solder joints of the connector, when this was removed I was able to pass the connector through the vent without damaging anything and now have it much closer to the TF card’s IDE port.

This has made my life much easier as I’m constantly opening up the case to work on it. I am also now using a faster 16GB SD card (not that it makes much difference to the Amiga) with pretty much stock Amiga OS 3.1.4, built using HstWB.