tschak909 Posted January 10 Share Posted January 10 It seems enough time has passed to revisit this, as some new hardware has come to light. For the hardware hackers in this group, what about mating an ESP32 with an RP2040 (RPi Pico) to provide the necessary bus interface/cartridge emulation for a device that would provide two main functions: * Loading of games via internet * Playing of multi-player games via internet. Thoughts? -Thom 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jeffpiep Posted January 10 Share Posted January 10 I’m game. Happy to work with anyone else interested. I learned how to use the PIOs and DMA on the PICO as a lookup table much like a ROM. Should be totally doable. Add the ESP32 with the FujiNet interface with external power and this thing becomes usable on the 2600+ too. 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thomas Jentzsch Posted January 11 Share Posted January 11 11 hours ago, tschak909 said: It seems enough time has passed to revisit this, as some new hardware has come to light. For the hardware hackers in this group, what about mating an ESP32 with an RP2040 (RPi Pico) to provide the necessary bus interface/cartridge emulation for a device that would provide two main functions: * Loading of games via internet * Playing of multi-player games via internet. Probably I am missing something here, but the PlusCart already covers the first point. And AFAIK for multi-player games, one would need a server. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Al_Nafuur Posted January 11 Share Posted January 11 1 hour ago, Thomas Jentzsch said: Probably I am missing something here, but the PlusCart already covers the first point. Second point is covered by PlusROM functions, which are already supported by various emulators and the PlusCart. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tschak909 Posted January 11 Author Share Posted January 11 The first point is that with FujiNet, games can either be loaded via local SD card storage, or via the Internet, like with the rest of the FujiNet platforms. The second point is that we have an extensive stack of network operations with protocol offloading that can connect to modern Internet end-points, with JSON and XML parsing to boot. And we have a WIN/POSIX port of the emulator to work with emulators. I dunno, seems like a no-brainer to me for FujiNet to come here, but if you guys think you have all this covered, then... -Thom 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tschak909 Posted January 11 Author Share Posted January 11 Oh, and there's this, the Lobby system we've working on, and a game of 5 card stud poker which uses it: 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Al_Nafuur Posted January 11 Share Posted January 11 1 hour ago, tschak909 said: The first point is that with FujiNet, games can either be loaded via local SD card storage, or via the Internet, like with the rest of the FujiNet platforms. With the PlusCart, games can either be loaded via local flash storage, or via the Internet. Also with the PlusCart Duo games can be loaded via a local SD card (even though I never understood the need for fumbling around with SD cards when we have a webDav based system). 1 hour ago, tschak909 said: The second point is that we have an extensive stack of network operations with protocol offloading that can connect to modern Internet end-points, with JSON and XML parsing to boot. And we have a WIN/POSIX port of the emulator to work with emulators. I dunno, seems like a no-brainer to me for FujiNet to come here, but if you guys think you have all this covered, then... -Thom The idea of the PlusROM functions is to offload the extensive work to the internet back end. So the PlusROM backends can (and should) be used as proxy to the services used. 38 minutes ago, tschak909 said: Oh, and there's this, the Lobby system we've working on, and a game of 5 card stud poker which uses it: It shouldn't be too difficult to connect a PlusROM and its dedicated backend to your service. However, how to display the information with the TIA is another problem... 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tschak909 Posted January 11 Author Share Posted January 11 5 minutes ago, Al_Nafuur said: With the PlusCart, games can either be loaded via local flash storage, or via the Internet. Also with the PlusCart Duo games can be loaded via a local SD card (even though I never understood the need for fumbling around with SD cards when we have a webDav based system). The idea of the PlusROM functions is to offload the extensive work to the internet back end. So the PlusROM backends can (and should) be used as proxy to the services used. It shouldn't be too difficult to connect a PlusROM and its dedicated backend to your service. However, how to display the information with the TIA is another problem... Well, if you'd like to join forces, we have a discord, and a lot of battle tested code across multiple platforms : https://discord.gg/2Ce9guX And our firmware source code is here: https://github.com/fujiNetWIFI/fujinet-platformio/ -Thom 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+ZeroPage Homebrew Posted April 4 Share Posted April 4 ZeroPage Homebrew has the Exclusive World Premiere of 5 Card Stud PlusROM/FujiNet Client on tomorrow's ZPH stream LIVE on Twitch! Hope you can join us! Fri Apr 5, 2024 | LIVE @ 12PM PT | 3PM ET | 7PM GMT WATCH LIVE: https://twitch.tv/zeropagehomebrew/ WATCH LATER: https://youtube.com/zeropagehomebrew/ Games: 5 Card Stud PlusROM/FujiNet Client (2024 Exclusive World Premiere | 2600) by Wolfgang Stubig @Al_Nafuur ZΔRKSTΔRS V: Stellar (2024 Exclusive World Premiere | 2600) by Leandro Camara @HSW3ET Frogger (2024 WIP | 2600) by Philip Blackman @splendidnut 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+x=usr(1536) Posted April 6 Share Posted April 6 FYI: tnfs.online has a huge 2600 library online, built from the Atarimania set. Just mentioning it in case anyone wants to test TNFS over the Internet. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tschak909 Posted June 26 Author Share Posted June 26 Now that the STM32 based PlusCart firmware has been ported to work on the RP2040. Work begins on the Atari2600 #FujiNet board. The 2040 talks to the ESP32 via the UART. The 2040 acts as the bus interface. -Thom 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+batari Posted June 27 Share Posted June 27 Thought I would chime in here. First let me say I think it's great that the RP2040 is seeing more love. That being said, I am wondering if you have worked around the reported slow boot times on the RP2040. The time from power on to running the first line of C code is more than 100ms with the default Pico bootloader/SDK. Just curious, does the project include bootloader changes to work around this problem? If so, I want to see them as it will save me some time. If not, it is my plan to figure out a solid workaround for my RP2040-based HEM and other RP2040 cart boards, and I am looking at sending the Atari into a RAM loop with assembly in the first stage bootloader, so then the Pico SDK can take as long as it wants after that setting things up. I can share of course once I get it figured out, if it would help some of these other Pi Pico projects out there. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gtortone Posted June 27 Share Posted June 27 Hi @batari, you will find GIT repo of PlusCart-Pico here: https://github.com/gtortone/PlusCart-Pico Regarding RP2040 boot time let's take into account two things: 1) we are overclocking RP2040 @250MHz at startup with set_sys_clock_khz(250000, true) in main.c 2) flash read/write performances are optimized due usage of "proper" second stage bootlader for W25Q080 flash available on Pico "purple", if you take a look to platformio.ini you will find this line: board_build.arduino.earlephilhower.boot2_source = boot2_w25q080_2_padded_checksum.S In practice, during my developments I never had any issues with RP2040 boot time; I tested RP2040 with Atari 2600 Jr (PAL) and Atari 2600 Darth Vader (PAL). The customization of second stage bootloader was required to read ROMs that cannot be loaded in RAM due to huge size (e.g. 128 KB ROM), but I don't write the bootloader from scratch because there are a bunch of bootloader available in Pico-SDK to optimize read/write performances for different flash chips... Let me know if you need further details.... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+batari Posted June 28 Share Posted June 28 The race condition between the ARM and console boot has been a long standing challenge with ARM-based carts. I would test on a sixer and a 7800, as these seem to be the most problematic with boot time. These are the consoles where I have seen the worst boot time issues. I don't know what overclocking and optimization of the second stage bootloader will get you over a stock Pi Pico (which takes 130ms), but my estimates put the typical boot time of some consoles at around 25ms, and I'd think you want to beat that by a good margin, which might be hard to do that way. I do still plan to write a custom first stage bootloader, then nobody needs to worry about overclocking or using a special flash chip to try to beat the console to boot. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gtortone Posted June 28 Share Posted June 28 (edited) Hi @batari I have done some tests with an oscilloscope with a C code that setup a pin (GP5) and make an endless loop moving this pin up and down... I have used two probes: one on the +5V of RP2040 and the second one on the GP5 - so I put the trigger in single mode on the +5V channel and disconnect/reconnect the USB power in order to trigger the acquisition. This is the first test with Arduino-Pico library and C/C++ compiler -O3 optimization: (we have to measure the time between rise of CH1 and start of toggling of CH2) in this case we have 200ms of boot time As second test I have added to platformio.ini the bootloader optimized for my RP2040 board flash chip... boot time now is 100ms... very good but quite far to your requirements.... As third test I have removed Arduino-Pico library (that have some Arduino-like initialization for setup() and loop() functions and other stuff...) and I have used plain Pico-SDK to move GP5 pin. In this test I did not use overclocking or custom bootloader. boot time is now 17ms. It is clear that Arduino-Pico is very nice and suitable for C/C++ development, but as usual these frameworks add some overhead on hardware performances... Edited June 28 by gtortone Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+batari Posted June 29 Share Posted June 29 Great to hear that, I think you should be good! I will probably still have a custom first stage bootloader for my RP2040-based cartridge boards, but for my HEM project, I think i'll fork from your sources because 17ms sounds like it should work just fine. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tschak909 Posted June 29 Author Share Posted June 29 1 minute ago, batari said: Great to hear that, I think you should be good! I will probably still have a custom first stage bootloader for my RP2040-based cartridge boards, but for my HEM project, I think i'll fork from your sources because 17ms sounds like it should work just fine. -Thom Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gtortone Posted July 1 Share Posted July 1 Yes, but take into account that current PlusCart-Pico uses Arduino-Pico libraries due to some Arduino library dependencies for ESP8266 (WiFi) and FAT filesystem, but for future Atari-2600 FujiNet code I'm considering the idea to use plain Pico-SDK to make the project minimal. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tschak909 Posted July 13 Author Share Posted July 13 @mozzwald just got back the first prototype PCBs for the #Atari2600 version of #FujiNet. This PCB has sockets for both an #ESP32 dev-board, and an #RP2040, along with an indentation for the internal antenna, SD card socket, and buttons. #retrocomputing #retrogaming -Thom 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+batari Posted July 13 Share Posted July 13 Great news! I think I will open-source the HEM project to be able to use some of the same sources as this project. No reason to reinvent the wheel here. A question - is it necessary to use the full ESP32 dev board, or could the simpler ESP8266 work? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tschak909 Posted July 13 Author Share Posted July 13 36 minutes ago, batari said: Great news! I think I will open-source the HEM project to be able to use some of the same sources as this project. No reason to reinvent the wheel here. A question - is it necessary to use the full ESP32 dev board, or could the simpler ESP8266 work? No. Our firmware needs the extra muscle afforded in the ESP32. -Thom Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tschak909 Posted July 17 Author Share Posted July 17 @gtortone has populated the #FujiNet #Atari2600 PCBs recently made. After adding a capacitor to stabilize #RP2040 reset power consumption, the board is stable. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+batari Posted July 17 Share Posted July 17 On 7/13/2024 at 3:40 PM, tschak909 said: No. Our firmware needs the extra muscle afforded in the ESP32. -Thom First, glad to see the board is working. So, from the schematic above it looks like the extra muscle is to drive the SD card? So if the SD card was not used, could a version with the 8-pin ESP8266 work (in theory?) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tschak909 Posted July 17 Author Share Posted July 17 (edited) No. We use the extra CPU muscle and RAM to drive a very well abstracted network devices, with lots of protocol adapters and channel modes like a JSON and XML parser. A complete PDF rasterizer is also present for printer emulation. I would suggest looking at our codebase. https://github.com/FujiNetWIFI/fujinet-firmware Edited July 17 by tschak909 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tschak909 Posted August 3 Author Share Posted August 3 #FujiNet for #Atari2600 Status. Gennaro Tortone ported the #PlusCart Firmware to the RP2040. Now we change the PlusCart code to do SIO calls to the ESP32 Firmware stack, instead of the ESP AT firmware. This exposes our network stack to the #RP2040. #retrocomputing #retrogaming 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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