PiStorm Amiga

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Cass
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PiStorm Amiga

Post#1 » Thu May 13, 2021 8:07 pm

Just been reading up on the PiStorm which is blowing up on the Amiga community. It's an incredible and very cheap acceleration solution. It got me wondering if we'll ever see a similar concept applied to the Dreamcast's SH4. It would probably need bios support but would such a solution provide a theoretical gateway to Naomi and Naomi 2 games being playable on the DC.

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Ian Micheal
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Re: PiStorm Amiga

Post#2 » Thu May 13, 2021 11:16 pm

But amiga and commodore people are crazy mad and never stop with stuff like this lol but sound like a project for someone that loves the dreamcast as much as people like the amiga.. might have to wait 10 years more..

Cass
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Re: PiStorm Amiga

Post#3 » Fri May 14, 2021 11:01 am

Ian as you know those communities, the C64 and Amiga, have a long history of upgrading made possible by their expansion ports for the most part. It's not something that can really be done with the Dreamcast's mainboard architecture but the PiStorm is a bit different. It clips directly on to the Amiga cpu and that's what got me thinking would such a concept work with the SH4 - possibly but as you say it would take a long time and a few motivated tech wizards to make an interface for the SH4. It's such a clever solution on the Amiga - a kind of third way between original hardware and FPGA and the price difference between this and some of the other expansion routes is enormous.

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Anthony817
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Re: PiStorm Amiga

Post#4 » Fri May 14, 2021 3:19 pm

One of my old friends from back at Assembler was doing something kind of in that realm. His name is Electronash and he and a friend FULLY reverse engineered the DC motherboard and had mapped out every single pin out and motherboard trace and whipped it up in a computer program ready to make their own DC motherboard replacements with some extra additions. They were talking about theoretically doubling the ram but this was before the double memory mod was actually a thing. Brand new SH4 MMU's can still be bought today by a company still manufacturing them from what I saw.

Some company bought the rights to them so they were pumping them out for certain customers. But he said those should work on his new board since there would be no need to cannibalize existing machines for the chipsets as many could still be purchased from 3rd party vendors. Maybe the GDRom board could be reused from a donor system but from what he said the mainboard stuff could be done for most part. He even mentioned theoretically shrinking down the board itself to have more room in the case or just making a more compact Dreamcast.

But he had a lot of stuff come up like moving a few years ago and it really put a damper on his plans. Also this pandemic was a friend to nobody so that affected things as well.

You can see his Github and Youtube here. Seems he is heavily into the MiSTer FPGA System as of late. So if anybody could do something similar it is he.

https://github.com/ElectronAsh

https://www.youtube.com/user/electronash/videos

I just tweeted at him here asking what is up. He discussed this project like 5 years back and I am interested in hearing if he will do anything with the idea. He talked more updated SH4 processors with faster clock speeds even, but no idea if even feasable.

https://twitter.com/Anthony_817/status/ ... 1375039492
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Cass
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Re: PiStorm Amiga

Post#5 » Fri May 14, 2021 6:08 pm

Cheers Anthony817 . Really interesting topic must check it out.

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Anthony817
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Re: PiStorm Amiga

Post#6 » Sat May 15, 2021 1:37 am

He posted a huge update on my tweet. Pretty good info in there. He said he got his prototype board working with the Naomi bios which is huge!

Maybe this interest will set a fire under him to be more serious about working on it? I sure hope so cause I and others have been highly anticipating this project for quite some time. If we can have 1 system for literally all of the Dreamcast, Atomiswave and Naomi releases, it would be a huge boost for anybody willing to put out the cash to build their own or buy premade. From what I understand it was going to be following the original form factor so should be drop in replacement. I think he mentioned not even needing a GDEMU or Disc drive on it in one of the replies to my tweets.

He did say reballing the processors to the new board was still a pain in the ass but if he can work out the kinks it should be awesome.
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Cass
MegaDeath
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Re: PiStorm Amiga

Post#7 » Sat May 15, 2021 7:14 am

That's an incredible achievement just getting the prototype board booting with a Naomi bios - all in the original form factor!! Obviously this has a long, long way to go before being realised. I'd assumed this type of board would require swapping out the existing chips from your DC - CPU, RAM, GPU but as you've pointed out there are some SH4's out there to source and I'd assume memory modules but the PowerVR chips would need to be canabolised?

We do have the extra RAM and overckocked SH4 mods available and they're interesting but they need bios support but their utility and application is very niche.

Would it not still be a huge ask to get any Naomi games to run even though even if the memory is matched as it had the revision two PowerVR chip and the the extra T&l chip but I'm sure the developer has given these issues more than my 5 minutes of uninformed manlet musing - super interesting hope Were lucky enough to see it realised some day.

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