Apple IIGS MiSTer Core Progress

[Newsdee]

You don't imagine how I am happy to find someone who loves like me or even more the Apple //xx platforms

I love the Apple IIe, I have two in working condition. I no longer use floppies though; I dumped all of them around 2007 and now use a CFFA that I snagged some years ago.

I tried to use my disk drives recently (2019) but they seem to be uncalibrated. It's probably less work to get a floppy emu working, or to just use ADT Pro.

Joysticks need some work for the MiSTer core, I succesfully used a USB adapter but noticed the core needs a calibration function as the center defaults to a wrong value (which I suppose is bound to happen with analog controls)

I'm hoping for floppy write to make it to the IIe core, but I understand its tricky. A IIgs core might come first.

[thorr]

You don't imagine how I am happy to find someone who loves like me or even more the Apple //xx platforms

I love the Apple IIe, I have two in working condition. I no longer use floppies though; I dumped all of them around 2007 and now use a CFFA that I snagged some years ago.

I tried to use my disk drives recently (2019) but they seem to be uncalibrated. It's probably less work to get a floppy emu working, or to just use ADT Pro.

Joysticks need some work for the MiSTer core, I succesfully used a USB adapter but noticed the core needs a calibration function as the center defaults to a wrong value (which I suppose is bound to happen with analog controls)

I'm hoping for floppy write to make it to the IIe core, but I understand its tricky. A IIgs core might come first.

Regarding the joystick, I took a CH Products Mach III apart, removed the existing cable and soldered in a small arduino and turned it into a 3-button USB joystick. I haven't tried it in the Apple II core yet, but it works in everything else perfectly centered. I had a USB adapter also previously and I had the same problems with it not being centered. If you don't want to take the joystick apart, you could make your own Arduino adapter externally. I had two PC based Mach III's and one Apple II one, so I used one of the PC ones and still have one of each type left besides the USB one.

Regarding the floppy, the floppyemu is really a great way to go (or a CFFA if you have slots and can find one).

Regarding getting floppy writes to work, the source code for AppleWin might be a good place to figure out how it works (or anything else for that matter): https://github.com/AppleWin/AppleWin/tree/master/source I think they got .nib files working with writing too. Since I have a real //c, I haven't really used the MiSTer for this much.

[vikinge]

I have my old //GS working. about to start converting some old disks. Can my physical access to GS help with the Apple //GS misterCore project? My goal is to reboot the GS and run on misterCore for the future

[thorr]

Just a bump. Does anyone know if this core is still being worked on? I just noticed it has been exactly one year since the first post in this thread, so hopefully there is some progress.

[alanswx]

Just a bump. Does anyone know if this core is still being worked on? I just noticed it has been exactly one year since the first post in this thread, so hopefully there is some progress.

It is not moving as quickly as I would like. Luckily Gyurco fixed the Apple II disk drive on MiST, so I will try to port that to our iie, and see if i can get it working on the iigs (eventually). Maybe in a few months we might get back to the iigs? I have been working on other projects unfortunately. If anyone wants to help fix the verilog, that would be amazing!

[akeley]

Luckily Gyurco fixed the Apple II disk drive on MiST, so I will try to port that to our iie

If it means proper write-to-disk ability, it'd be awesome - it's my personal Holy Grail of missing features on MiSTer. Good luck!

[thorr]

It is not moving as quickly as I would like. Luckily Gyurco fixed the Apple II disk drive on MiST, so I will try to port that to our iie, and see if i can get it working on the iigs (eventually). Maybe in a few months we might get back to the iigs? I have been working on other projects unfortunately. If anyone wants to help fix the verilog, that would be amazing!

Thanks! I really appreciate the update.

[AmintaMister]

Hi there! Any news about Apple II disk drive writing?

[alanswx]

Hi there! Any news about Apple II disk drive writing?

So far I am losing to the new code.. I hooked it up, but it doesn't work.

[thorr]

Hi there! Any news about Apple II disk drive writing?

So far I am losing to the new code.. I hooked it up, but it doesn't work.

Thank you for continuing to work on this. If you haven't already, you may want to reach out to Steve from BigMessOWires, the creator of the FloppyEmu. He's a really great guy and may be willing to help.

[alanswx]

Hi there! Any news about Apple II disk drive writing?

So far I am losing to the new code.. I hooked it up, but it doesn't work.

Thank you for continuing to work on this. If you haven't already, you may want to reach out to Steve from BigMessOWires, the creator of the FloppyEmu. He's a really great guy and may be willing to help.

This turned out to be something silly. The ram wasn't being inferred. I made some progress, thanks for the push. Now one floppy seems to work. Not sure why the 2nd doesn't work. More debugging. (I add the second floppy and both break!)

[ExCyber]

I don't remember the exact details, but back when I tried to add 2-drive support I had a couple of problems that were something to do with the track buffer not being cleared/reloaded correctly. In theory only one drive per Disk II card can be active/spinning at any given time (physical momentum of the spindle notwithstanding), so only one track buffer should be necessary, but I believe adding the second drive introduces at least one new transition (the selected drive is changed while "the" motor was already on) that some of the existing logic might not account for.

[alanswx]

Try this Apple II RBF. I need to add in my prodos compatible clock card for the next release as well.

[thorr]

Just a bump. Does anyone know if this core is still being worked on? I just noticed it has been exactly one year since the first post in this thread, so hopefully there is some progress.

It is not moving as quickly as I would like. Luckily Gyurco fixed the Apple II disk drive on MiST, so I will try to port that to our iie, and see if i can get it working on the iigs (eventually). Maybe in a few months we might get back to the iigs? I have been working on other projects unfortunately. If anyone wants to help fix the verilog, that would be amazing!

Just another friendly bump. Do you have any idea about when you will start working on the IIgs? Do you know if the mouse is the same as the IIe or different? I am only asking because if they are the same, you could get the mouse done in the IIe as a last step to complete the IIe core since it will be needed by the IIgs anyway, and then use what you can to port over to the IIgs. Without referring to my wish list in the other thread, the only other major thing that I can think of for the IIe core would be to add a second Mockingboard for Ultima games that support it. Thanks!

[alanswx]

Just a bump. Does anyone know if this core is still being worked on? I just noticed it has been exactly one year since the first post in this thread, so hopefully there is some progress.

It is not moving as quickly as I would like. Luckily Gyurco fixed the Apple II disk drive on MiST, so I will try to port that to our iie, and see if i can get it working on the iigs (eventually). Maybe in a few months we might get back to the iigs? I have been working on other projects unfortunately. If anyone wants to help fix the verilog, that would be amazing!

Just another friendly bump. Do you have any idea about when you will start working on the IIgs? Do you know if the mouse is the same as the IIe or different? I am only asking because if they are the same, you could get the mouse done in the IIe as a last step to complete the IIe core since it will be needed by the IIgs anyway, and then use what you can to port over to the IIgs. Without referring to my wish list in the other thread, the only other major thing that I can think of for the IIe core would be to add a second Mockingboard for Ultima games that support it. Thanks!

I am pretty sure the mouse is different. It is ADB on the iigs.

[ExCyber]

From documentation (I didn't see an obviously valid way to test this on MAME or KEGS), it looks like the mouse card was officially supported on IIgs, but most likely very few real-world systems had that configuration. The support was probably intended for people who bought the (unpopular, now an elusive collector's item) IIe-to-IIgs conversion and already owned the card and mouse. The IIgs does have an internal "mouse card" mapped to slot 4, but that seems to consist of some firmware routines that read the ADB GLU registers, not a full clone of the mouse card.

[thorr]

bump - just hoping this will happen eventually

[MisterPhil]

The progress on this seems really slow

• I would have thought that the way to proceed would be to evolve the IIe core into the IIgs core
• change the cpu to the 65c816, add the new graphic modes
• then fix the I/Os as necessary...

Is there a booting IIgs core yet? or a simple proof of concept?

[Flandango]

Unfortunately it's more than just an apple IIe with a different cpu and graphics.
Think of the IIgs as the Commodore 128 that was also able to run C64 software.
The IIgs had, in essence, the majority of Apple II(c/e) on a single (Mega II), custom chip along with 64K ram running at 1Mhz, then had a custom chip (FPI if I recall correctly) that, depending on what mode it was running in (IIgs or legacy II), will direct traffic to busses, cpu, the extra memory in the case of the IIgs mode...and what not.
Then of course there was the Ensoniq sound chip along with it's own custom Logic controller (GLU) and 64k of ram.

Sorry if I repeated anything already mentioned before or what I've said doesn't make sense.

[ExCyber]

Yeah, FPI does some interesting things to synchronize the 65C816 to the slower legacy side of the system, in terms of both timing and "shadowing" writes. Basically, most hardware in the IIgs only really talks to the legacy side, but FPI makes it so the CPU can do most operations in the faster IIgs RAM and only slow down if write cycles are too frequent for the legacy side to keep up. There's also some magic to slow down the CPU for floppy access (since that needs to be compatible with old code that was cycle-counted to stay synchronized to the drive).

ES5503 and Sound GLU code exists, but hasn't had much "real" testing (just playing back a couple of tunes in its own ad-hoc simulator using register writes logged in MAME) and lacks the sync/swap/AM modes.

[thorr]

ES5503 and Sound GLU code exists

Do you mean on the MiSTer, or in general? Are you involved with the core development? I still really want this core and I keep looking at IIgs's and resisting the temptation to get one, hoping that this core is still happening someday.

[ExCyber]

ES5503 and Sound GLU code exists

Do you mean on the MiSTer, or in general?

In general. It's RTL SystemVerilog, but I don't think anyone's tried actually synthesizing it. I know of one questionable idiom in the reset code that would be easy (albeit a little ugly) to unroll to pure RTL Verilog if needed, and there might need to be some optimization if things are inadvertently duplicated or priority-encoded.

Are you involved with the core development? I still really want this core and I keep looking at IIgs's and resisting the temptation to get one, hoping that this core is still happening someday.

I'm involved; the bulk of the work has been done by others. As far as I know it's not abandoned, but there hasn't been much momentum recently due to a somewhat sticky combination of issues with the current state of the code. I think there just hasn't been the right alignment of free time and motivation to untangle it, because it's the sort of situation that probably needs some focused work just to come up with a useful strategy.

[thorr]

I'm involved; the bulk of the work has been done by others. As far as I know it's not abandoned, but there hasn't been much momentum recently due to a somewhat sticky combination of issues with the current state of the code. I think there just hasn't been the right alignment of free time and motivation to untangle it, because it's the sort of situation that probably needs some focused work just to come up with a useful strategy.

Thanks for the inside information and for helping to contribute to the core! I have plenty of stuff to keep me busy in the meantime and I am excited about the idea of eventually seeing this come to fruition (hopefully). I never owned a IIgs, but always wanted one, and I have not spent any significant time with emulators so it will be like getting a new one for the first time and seeing what it can do. I did see some videos of games on it on Youtube, and after seeing Wolfenstein 3D looking better than the PC version, it made me want it even more.

[rhester72]

It's a super fun but super duper quirky little machine.

If a core ever comes to fruition, it'll be interesting to see if the vast array of peripherals (RAM card, accelerator, SCSI card, and stereo sound card come to mind) will be supported/supportable. The slot architecture alone will make a total mess of the UI. laughs

[ExCyber]

It's a super fun but super duper quirky little machine.

Definitely. A bunch of cool ideas, but I think it was really bogged down by the stringent backward compatibility requirements, the relatively slow stock CPU, and Apple leadership aligning behind the Macintosh family.

If a core ever comes to fruition, it'll be interesting to see if the vast array of peripherals (RAM card, accelerator, SCSI card, and stereo sound card come to mind) will be supported/supportable. The slot architecture alone will make a total mess of the UI. laughs

RAM expansion is practically a requirement for GS/OS to be usable. I think the main issue there is that the RAM needs to be moved into SDRAM or HPS RAM.

Stereo cards don't seem to do much other than demux and buffer/amplify the ES5503 output. Stereo should probably be the default, with the usual stereo mix option.

As for a SCSI card, the AppleWin HDD card (which is hardcoded to one 32MB ProDOS volume) is currently being used in simulation, but it hasn't been exercised much due to other issues so it's hard to say how well it will work medium/long-term. A SCSI card would be more "authentic" and potentially add some flexibility (I believe GS/OS eventually got ISO 9660 support, but was there actually any CD-ROM software for IIgs?), but also significantly more complex for both developers and users. The advantage of the AppleWin card is that it "just works" without any special drivers or configuration/formatting software (assuming that your image is 32MB).

I don't understand the system timing well enough to know what approaches to acceleration make sense, though some form of it would obviously be nice to have.

Are there any other cards that are especially useful for IIgs software? Hardware for legacy Apple II software is probably better off in the Apple IIe core.

[thorr]

"super fun but super duper quirky little machine" sounds perfect to me!

I say keep it simple for starters and get it working with the AppleWin HDD card. If this is the equivalent of a smartport, it should be possible to connect four HDD's at the same time like the FloppyEmu can. Details can be found on page 10 and 11 here: https://www.bigmessowires.com/femu-instructions.pdf SCSI could come later if there is demand for it.

Definitely max out the RAM. Accelerator would be nice eventually, but not needed for round 1 in my opinion.

Serial support would be nice (with a USB to serial adapter). I have an Imagewriter II printer I would love to use with it and also would like to write some programs to take advantage of it.

It would be cool to have Composite emulation mode and RGB mode.

It would also be nice to have dual Mockingboard support (and in the IIe core). As far as I know the IIgs can play Apple II games faster so it would be nice to have the option to play them that way with better sound when it is available.

I am looking forward to hard drive images filled with Apple IIgs games (assuming that is possible). Many games probably require floppies.

Mouse support will be great too (currently missing in the IIe core).

[ExCyber]

I say keep it simple for starters and get it working with the AppleWin HDD card. If this is the equivalent of a smartport, it should be possible to connect four HDD's at the same time like the FloppyEmu can. Details can be found on page 10 and 11 here: https://www.bigmessowires.com/femu-instructions.pdf SCSI could come later if there is demand for it.

That's a cool hack, but I think it depends on using the actual SmartPort firmware and protocol (and would also be limited to a floppy drive data rate?). The AppleWin HDD is a very simple device that just supports the ProDOS firmware calls.

Definitely max out the RAM. Accelerator would be nice eventually, but not needed for round 1 in my opinion.

There isn't really one agreed-upon "max", so RAM size might need to be an option for compatibility reasons. 4 MB was the official limit for RAM expansion size, while 8 MB became possible with later RAM chips (i.e. the vast majority of IIgs software probably never encountered this much RAM during its support lifetime). More than that seems to require patching GS/OS and decoding banks 80-DF as RAM (as far as I know, not readily possible without an accelerator on an actual IIgs).

Serial support would be nice (with a USB to serial adapter). I have an Imagewriter II printer I would love to use with it and also would like to write some programs to take advantage of it.

The serial port is a Zilog SCC (Z8530), which I think needs to be written. The only existing core I know of that would need this chip is MacPlus, and it doesn't seem to be there.

It would be cool to have Composite emulation mode and RGB mode.

Do you mean something like the "Composite Blend" option in the MegaDrive core? The composite output on IIgs is just RGB put through an off-the-shelf encoder chip.

It would also be nice to have dual Mockingboard support (and in the IIe core). As far as I know the IIgs can play Apple II games faster so it would be nice to have the option to play them that way with better sound when it is available.

The issue with stuff like this is that it makes the core bigger for very little benefit. Maybe a Mockingboard is tiny, though (it's been a while since I've looked at the AY, but I want to say it's basically three counters in a trenchcoat)? This would probably also wind up needing an implementation of the "Slotmaker" chip, which controls the mapping of internal vs. expansion slot ("Your Card") hardware.

I am looking forward to hard drive images filled with Apple IIgs games (assuming that is possible). Many games probably require floppies.

I'm not super-familiar with IIgs software, but I think most games are designed to be booted. If they use a standard ProDOS loader (either originally or because they were cracked) they might not care too specifically about the disk format and perhaps could be mapped to a RAM disk or similar. I don't know what it would take to build something like WHDLoad for GS/OS, or if anyone's attempted/done that.

[rhester72]

I'm not super-familiar with IIgs software, but I think most games are designed to be booted. If they use a standard ProDOS loader (either originally or because they were cracked) they might not care too specifically about the disk format and perhaps could be mapped to a RAM disk or similar. I don't know what it would take to build something like WHDLoad for GS/OS, or if anyone's attempted/done that.

Maybe I was just spoiled, but as I recall the vast majority of commercial IIgs games were actually designed for hard drive installation under GS/OS. I can only think of a handful of scene demos that required floppy.

[ExCyber]

Maybe I was just spoiled, but as I recall the vast majority of commercial IIgs games were actually designed for hard drive installation under GS/OS. I can only think of a handful of scene demos that required floppy.

I've been playing around with this a bit in MAME (whose revamped IIgs driver is generally pretty good), but I probably either don't understand GS/OS well enough to know how to do it right, or happened to pick the wrong games to try. I got a couple to work by dragging them onto "RAM5" and then changing the "Slots" boot configuration to boot from "Ram Disk", but trying to launch games directly from GS/OS mostly didn't seem to work unless it was from a floppy. Also, none of the games I tried had an obvious way to quit, but that's probably just a quirk of those particular games (a couple might have also been .2mg versions of legacy Apple II games rather than actual IIgs games).

[rhester72]

Unless there's an installer directly supplied with the game, you generally just drag the disk to a GS/OS folder, which in turn creates a folder with the disk's name that you can launch from.

I'm surprised about the need to boot them, though - do you have a specific game you're referring to?