External Amiga 500 PiStorm Accelerator

I'm checking out the Lazarusstorm external PiStorm adapter for the Amiga 500. // Kindly sponsored by PCBWay. www.pcbway.com/
PiStorm Github:
github.com/captain-amygdala/p...
Lazarusstorm Github:
github.com/arananet/LAZARUSTORM
Buy a Lazarusstorm from Edu:
www.arananet.net/pedidos/prod...
PiStorm software installation tutorial:
github.com/captain-amygdala/p...
Raspberry Pi 3A+:*
US: amzn.to/3wAhXuy
DE: amzn.to/3sCym0c
TIME STAMPS:
0:00 Introduction
3:30 Sponsor Message
4:01 Modding the Hardware
8:24 Preparing the Pi
11:11 Plugging in the Sandwich
12:14 Installing PiStorm Software
18:36 Starting CPU Emulation
19:47 Gracefully shutting down
20:47 More Pi Settings
22:29 Accelerated Amiga!
23:30 SSH Connection
24:34 Using a Kickstart ROM from SD
28:07 Autobooting the PiStorm
31:05 Adding a virtual Hard Disk
38:29 Thank you & Good night
---------------------------------------­-----
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Thanks for watching!
This video was sponsored by PCBWay.
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#JanBeta #Amiga #PiStorm #PCBWay

[@EduArana]

Thanks for your comments Jan on my adapter. I really appreciate it.

[@JanBeta]

It’s a great idea and excellently designed (as usual)! Thanks for providing it to the community! :D

[@gentlebear76]

Really interesting! I continue to be amazed what can be done to keep retro hardware alive 😀Always looking forward to your videos, Jan 🙂

[@JanBeta]

Thank you! It’s just plain awesome that there’s still so many new developments for the elderly hardware these days!

[@gentlebear76]

@@JanBeta And still new games being produced! That just blows me away! So cool!

[@MaximumRD]

Always fascinating to see modern options available to use on classic AMIGA hardware.

[@DavePoo2]

The expansion slot on the side of the A500 really opened up a world of addons that are still being made today. Perhaps it was a mistake to go with PCMCIA on the 600 and 1200, which wasn't really supported very well at the time.

[@dirkflannigan5271]

The 1200 has a similar expansion slot to the A500, allowing for CPU's to take over the system. The problem is that it is underneath the keyboard and has some tight space constraints. Being able to hang expansions off of the side is a big plus, in hindsight. It was pretty cool back in the day to have an expanded 1200 with hdd and an 030 that wasn't any bigger than the base machine.

[@valenrn8657]

A600/A1200's PCMCIA was dictated by Bill Sydnes i.e. the person behind IBM's failed PCjr. PCMCIA is based on PC's ISA. A1200 has an internal CPU expansion bus.

[@jonzenrael]

@@dirkflannigan5271 Yeah I have a 600 here and it has to be the least expandable of the Amigas. Sad too, as its tiny form factor is quite convenient really.

[@oskich]

@@jonzenrael The 600's PCMCIA-slot is extremely convenient to use for transferring files to and from modern machines. Pop in a SD-card adapter and you can just copy stuff by swapping the SD-card :-)

[@Chordonblue]

Back in the day, I worked for a dealership that sold A600's as display kiosks running Scala. The main advantage of PCMCIA was that scripts, pictures, video, etc. could be brought over from other platforms very quickly and easily. It was never meant to be a processor or direct-to-bus replacement, rather a storage/modem/network card option.

[@RetroRecipes]

Great product and great walkthrough, cheers!

[@svenkarlsen2702]

PCBfractic

[@giuseppelavecchia775]

La soluzione esterna del pistorm e' perfetta,ed è molto veloce!.il pistorm e' favoloso Jan

[@jameslewis2635]

This project looks pretty cool. Hopefully someone comes out with a casing design for 3D printing based on the old Amiga side card hard drive solutions for it. All in all it looks a lot simpler to set up rather than digging around inside an Amiga and removing the original CPU, especially if you want to take advantage of the HDMI output.

[@0ggie]

I really hope someone does come up with a great 3d case to print.

[@TPau65]

This is a great solution for using a heavily accelerated A500 and easily go back to a stock machine! The boot up time is just insanely fast! 😍

[@jabbawok944]

There’s a file you can put on the SD card to enable SSH on first boot, also a little micro-usb OTG ethernet adaptor should work to allow you to do all the setup over SSH. I use this for Pi Zeros a lot. Great video as usual.

[@Nordlicht05]

Do you mean the empty SSH.txt in the boot folder? You can also save the files afterwards.

[@hollgo626]

For pistorm, a pi 3a+ is recommended. Pizero is quite a bit slow for this purpose...

[@Meglivorn]

@@hollgo626 What if I don't need the acceletaror part, I'm fine with the speed but like to have the FastRam and HDD options?

[@jabbawok944]

@@hollgo626 I don’t mean using a pin zero for this application. I use zeros for home automation and Airplay audio receivers. I always set them up headless.

[@hollgo626]

@@Meglivorn pistorm needs quite some cpu power for emulation, no matter what. A pi zero is simply not fast enough to get the emulation running. I have tried it with the pi zero 2 and it was quite a pain. The pi3a plus is just working fine and fits even if you use the pistorm in the A500. The 3b is great if you choose the lazarus as it is too big to fit into the a500. .

[@RDJ134]

This have my attention for a while, great and clear video.

[@JanBeta]

Thank you!

[@chrismifsud7154]

Done this a couple of weeks ago :) Works really well

[@8BitRetroReFix]

Thanks Jan for the walkthrough . I will be checking this out later :)

[@JanBeta]

Nice! Hope it works for you (took me quite some time to figure out the basics, hope the video is helpful).

[@8BitRetroReFix]

@@JanBeta Its very helpful Jan . As are most of your videos . Ive watched you for year and you along with others that inspired me to start doing my own :) . Thank you

[@stephenbruce8320]

EMU68 is a faster less complicated setup. Chris Edwards did a nice tutorial on how to set it up. I did it with an A600 and it works great. That Lazarusstorm is a nice touch. I also have one in an A1200 but am playing with CaffeineOS for the PiStorm. If I can get networking to work through the PiStorm it will be great to have SMB Shares setup and working on those two computers as I only have it working on my A2000 and A4000 which have XSURF100 boards in them.

[@properjob2311]

that's amazing! plug and play expansion. now someone needs to 3d print a cool enclosure for it :)

[@JanBeta]

Oh, that would be awesome indeed!

[@properjob2311]

@@JanBeta I see there is a A590 3d model available. maybe it would fit in that? or good starting point for a modified version :)

[@CubicleNate]

FWIW, I like that Logitech keyboard so much, I have purchased 3 of them... :) Great project, makes me want to get an Amiga 500 but I will have to adapt this to the A600 I DO Have... I feel like that is the right thing to do, especially since I see that the work has already been done. :)

[@TanjoGalbi]

On a Windows computer you do not need third party software to do the SSH for login to the Pi remotely. It can be done from either CMD.EXE or the PowerShell. The SSH command is pretty much the same as the Linux/MacOS versions of the command. To use CMD.EXE just press WinKey+R to bring up a Run dialog, type CMD into the entry box and click OK.

[@svenkarlsen2702]

I prefer headless setup. On Rasbian Buster you can just add an empty file named ssh on the /boot partition on your SD card to auto-enable ssh. On later versions of Raspberry Pi OS where the pi user doesn't exist you'll need to add a config file to set user credentials in addition to the ssh file. You can also add wireless network credentials etc. to a file named wpa_supplicant.conf (in /boot) if you need wifi

[@espressomatic]

You can also pre-configure SSH and WiFi with the Raspberry Pi imaging software when you write the image to the sdcard, avoiding having to do any of this afterwards.

[@jocool7370]

Gut gemacht!!

[@JanBeta]

Danke! :)

[@franckraccah1354]

very good tutorial, thank to you it s very clearer for me

[@rawberg_se]

Holy shit that's one fast Amiga! Very cool project!

[@sirknumbskull3418]

I love this solution! Best comunity ever!

[@jyvben1520]

if you see Y/n as option in linux, in many cases the uppercase option means that using only enter it will do the Y option (default), also in linux you have tab completion e.g; have on 3 files in a folder :: file1partA, file1partB, file2partX.sh . type "f", tab, system adds "ile" and waits, type 1 + tab, system adds "part" and waits, type A or B. Had you chosen 2 (after getting "ile") and tab then filename would already be completed with "partX.sh" not so useful for short names, works for files and directory names, try it on an executable !

[@raoullangner-macmillan7655]

Great Video, thanks.

[@pride293]

Amazing performance! One thing I noticed is that I think it says to have the BRJP jumper "open." 6:48 Closing it didn't seem to negatively affect yours though.

[@JanBeta]

Yes, I think I misread that. Didn’t seem to make a difference though but I’m going to try with the correct jumper settings!

[@davidegalliussi1979]

Hi Jan, what a great job to make the expansion effective 🤯 congratulations !!! for the tv do you use a scart rgb to hdmi converter?

[@JanBeta]

Yes, I’m using a cheapo upscaler for testing things on the bench. The most positive thing I can say about it is that it had hdmi in and you can switch between that and SCART (which makes it super useful for testing things). Other than that, it’s super laggy and not really suitable for gaming and such.

[@MrLurchsThings]

For the us Windoze users; you want Putty for the SSH connection and WinSCP or FileZilla (and setting the connection to SFTP) to transfer files.

[@purrator]

OpenSSH comes as standard for quite some time on win 10 now so you can actually skip putty

[@MrLurchsThings]

@@purrator still requires installing. So which ever floats your boat.

[@purrator]

@@MrLurchsThings odd I did not install it knowingly it just worked at some point

[@espressomatic]

What? SSH is already part of Windows 10. Open Powershell, $> ssh username@host

[@_Funtime60]

23:58 an SSH client is available as a Microsoft provided optional feature. Just search optional features in the search bar and add the SSH client option. At one point an SSH server was available there as well, but I think it might have been moved.

[@kevinshumaker3753]

@jan you can add a file (ssh or ssh.txt) to the /boot folder prior to first boot, as well as a wpa_supplicant.conf file to boot it headless enabling ssh remote access to avoid needing the attached keyboard and monitor.

[@jabbawok944]

I’ve had real inconsistent results with the wpa_suicant.conf not sure why.

[@kevinshumaker3753]

@@jabbawok944 I use the same file for all of my Pis (25+). The format is fairly simple: ctrl_interface=DIR=/var/run/wpa_supplicant GROUP=netdev update_config=1 country=US network={ ssid="SSID" psk="password" key_mgmt=WPA-PSK }

[@godslayer1415]

@@jabbawok944 one problem is you misspelled wpa_supplicant.conf

[@TanjoGalbi]

The reboot command does not need a now or a zero, it defaults to now. It's only the shutdown command that needs the now parameter.

[@_Funtime60]

What would be great is is if you could simulate some kind of serial connection between the pi and the Amiga so you could administrate the pi from the local system.

[@majkelc3090]

Great job Jan, I wonder if you could make a movie with the Pistorm Emu68 version ?? :)

[@zednott]

"this is the way"

[@dh2032]

question: What is the small patch mod with a blob of solder all about, is it just correcting, bug left by commodore, which up to this point not been a problem? or is it changing something about the way the amiga works? it's not as need and tidy, but A500, had a real CPU upgrade, or speed up side car that plugged in to that port, so I think it actually more authentic, to have the Pi outside pretending to be a Motorola CPU, than the in side version, 🙂 with Pi out the amiga case, with any Pi do the job, with all it ports intact, and hopefully accessible to the amiga side of things?

[@brufnus]

In Linux you can just type the first few characters of a command or file name and then press tab; then it automatically completes it (if there are more than one option, just press tab until it suggests the right one, or type a few characters more). Often saves loads of time and faulty key presses when working extensively at the command prompt. c",) Concerning the graceful shutdown of the Pistorm - I've merely turned off my CDTV as usual, and never had any problems because of that (in fact, Linux is generally very forgiving when it comes to such shutdowns, and I think the Pi versions are even more so).

[@mworld]

I believe that the context for /etc/rc.local would already be root, so sudo would not be required in that case.

[@johnnydreamwarior]

Sehr shnelles amiga 500 !!!!

[@fu1r4]

If you hold both mouse buttons at startup you will see an Amiga boot menu. There you should be able to see al the devices you can boot from.

[@JanBeta]

Yes! But I don’t think you’d see uninitialized hard disks, so it would only be useful after the installation of the OS, I guess.

[@speedrecorder]

Great. Unbelieveable fast.

[@tommyboy9998]

the pi has a pre-configured pin you short to GND to start a shutdown... wire up a button between this & a GND pin to shutdown easily.

[@JanBeta]

Oh, didn’t know that! That‘s going to be useful indeed. Thanks!

[@stevenbrentson8]

I was so hyped by this product since it frees up some critical space inside the case and also makes it very easy to remove in case I wanted to run the a500 stock. Problem is that I've never gotten it to work, even with a PiStorm that runs flawlessly internally. Only thing this product has done for me is caused me to fry a pi3's GPIO header when I misaligned the pins endlessly plugging the thing in and out troubleshooting (5v into 3.3v = poof!). In more 35 years of Amiga, I've never been more frustrated by a product. This is not meant to poo-poo any part of this. I will get this darn thing to work and I'm certain it will be glorious when it does.

[@JanBeta]

Did you close the solder jumper on the Amiga mainboard? That’s essential for the PiStorm to get the necessary clock signal. Otherwise it should be plug and play mostly (unless something else is broken). Hope you manage to get it to work!

[@stevenbrentson8]

​@@JanBeta I'd already shorted JP6 on my rev6a board for this. The jumpers on the Lazarus Storm itself I had shorted VPAJP2-3 and BRJP, though I think I tried other other configurations. I'd purchased the board assembled for me and other than bridging jumper pads, hadn't touched it with an iron. I've gone ahead and re-flowed all the solders including the SM caps and resistors. While the workmanship on the Lazarus Storm wasn't super clean, I also didn't see any obvious issues that might have resulted in something unintentionally open or shorted. Since I have to pull the PiStorm itself out from another working 500 to try this again, I'm dragging my feet a bit here. I'll probably give it one more go later today. Fingers crossed.

[@madcommodore]

Great, I can add a Pi Storm to the Amiga 1000, the king of all Amigas :)

[@stephenvalente3296]

Only problem at present is getting hold of the Pi 3A. I have a new one thankfully if needed, and missed out on the last availability alert here in the UK for another one.

[@JanBeta]

Yeah, Pis are not too easy to get these days unfortunately. "Luckily", I procrastinated this project for so long that I bought the Pi ages ago when they were still readily available… 😅

[@stephenvalente3296]

@@JanBeta I have a fair few Pi Zeros/W's/Zero 2's,/3B's and 4's along with a couple of Compute 4 modules. Slowly making them do something useful!

[@ConradVassallo]

Does the Lazarustorm work with rev5 boards? I can’t get mine to work even if I plugin the cpu instead of the pistorm. There is a note on the lazarus to bridge solder jumper on rev5 boards but can’t figure which jumper it is referring to. Rev 5 boards do not have the jumper pads like the rev6. Any guidance is appreciated ❤thanks

[@RetroLarz]

This is the way ;)

[@dave24-73]

I like the idea of it being external.

[@JanBeta]

Yes, it’s awesome to be able to revert the Amiga to its original state by just unplugging the sandwich! 😊

[@8BitRetroJournal]

That's so cool. Once I can get my hand on a raspberry pi (a Zero 2W...I already have a PiStorm board and an adapter for my A600) I want to see if I can interface it with my Sinclair QL. It also has a side expansion port and I was thinking of creating just such a board. Btw, do you mind if I tag this with the hashtag for AMayGA in the comment?

[@JanBeta]

Oh, sure! I forgot about AMayGa again. I’m going to add the hashtag to the description. :)

[@SteveTeeIridium-Plus]

If you ever figure out how to interface a Pi Zero 2W to a Sinclair QL I'd love to hear about it!

[@8BitRetroJournal]

@@SteveTeeIridium-Plus I haven't recently looked, but the hold up is in the sparsity of Pi Zero 2Ws ... well, in the affordable sparsity as you can buy a $10-15 item for $100, which I'm not willing to do. So hoping it comes down in price eventually. I'm also looking to create/get the replacement ZX8302 chip when I try it. I have a spare one but I'd rather not destroy it in testing out my idea and I've heard that's a risk when interfacing something like that.

[@ryanmacewen511]

Sorry if I'm slow, lol. Was the video output through stock A500 video (in your video)? I'd love to design a case for this. Hopefuly mine is still around. I used to rock an A590, which was indeed life changing at the time.

[@MyNameIsBucket]

This is a welcome change of pace. All the old micros have a number of perfectly serviceable expansion ports for all sorts of uses but too many homebrewers decide, "Nah, we're going to solder shit permanently to the motherboard."

[@LeChucky]

Hi jan what about pistorm 32 lite and your 1200? Are you planning installing it and which version pi cm4?

[@rutizoma]

ZIS IS ZE WAY. ❤

[@CLS2086]

would this work on the Amiga 1000 as they share the same expansion port (just upside down)

[@iseethreedee2317]

The side expansion port of the A1000 is NOT upside down compared to the A500 port. It's just rotated by 180° around the VERTICAL axis. If you connect an A500 side expansion board to the A1000 upside down, your A1000 may get destroyed. Don't do this!

[@strunapl6103]

Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W alsow working almost with Pi3A speed.

[@ChrisKewl]

You could use a Zero 2 W as well, right?

[@JanBeta]

Yes, I think so, those should be compatible with the Pi 3 series. I didn't get my hands on one yet, though. :D

[@Petes.Hobbies]

Are you sure you have the jumpers correct? Stock jumper settings for the LAZARUSTORM adapter, tested with two 68000 cpu's are: VPAJP 2-3 and """BRJP open"""

[@JanBeta]

I saw that when I edited the video. Might have to try the other configuration. It seems to work fine with the jumper settings I used though.

[@Dreammaster15089]

Where can I buy this lasarus storm adapter full assembled . Please and thank you.

[@JanBeta]

The link is in the video description. You can buy it at arananet. Edu said that there’s going to be more stock available very soon!

[@DodgyFPV]

on windows you can use powershell to ssh into a pi

[@Scruit]

The "Amygdala" is a part of the brain that handles emotions. Pronounced "Ah-MIG-duh-luh"

[@michac3796]

I am Jacks medulla oblongata...

[@JanBeta]

I understood that reference! 😅

[@ps8437]

would you please try other types of rhaspberry pi with this , a flat Formfactor is nice , but now outside of the Amiga case there is plenty of space 🤷 would be a nice video to compare size and Benchmarks 🙏

[@LemaruX]

You can use a Pi 3b+ but you need to remove a USB socket, or use a GPIO riser, else it will hit the PiStorm board. Else just stick to a Pi 3a+ or Pi Zero2

[@nothingtosee6776]

hello, i now have a Lazarustorm and have plugged my Pistorm and when i turn on my amiga the pistorm just "flashes" on the TV the emu68 logo, if i plug the pistorm in to the Amiga it works straight away, i have a rev6 and yes done the jumper blob how to it get to BOOT the rest of the way?

[@JanBeta]

It should technically work the same through the Lazarus as it does in the CPU socket. Maybe try another jumper configuration on the Lazarus itself (I misread the instructions when I made the video, so the recommended settings are different than what I’m showing). You might want to give the connector a good cleaning, too. Sometimes they get dusty and that’s enough for not making a reliable connection.

[@mattkingaby]

Thanks

[@JanBeta]

Thank YOU! 😊

[@mattkingaby]

@JanBeta Not a problem sir, by far my favourite YT channel wish I could afford more.

[@LeChucky]

Cam someone.please explain when using a PI accelerator ( which one doesnt matter ) , how about to use the ports like HDMI, USB, ETHERNET? , is there a board like the omniport for the Pi, or do we need to beeing creative again and use rare methods?

[@JanBeta]

The PiStorm also works with the Pi 3B+ which has all the ports already on board, I guess that’s the easiest way if you have enough room to fit that model. The A Pi board is only really needed if you plan on using the PiStorm internally in an original Amiga case. Any adapter boards for the Pi should work with this to get the needed ports, too (although I haven’t tried). You just have to activate them in the configuration file.

[@user-hx5jw1mf8v]

Hi. I've ordered Lazarusstorm... my motherboard is rev 6A.. I cannot run lazarusstorm without removing the original MCU. In Your video @JanBeta, I see that You use external piStorm without removing procesor from Your Amiga. Any additional configurations or jumpers are needed to keep the original MCU inside and run piStorm externally?

[@JanBeta]

Did you close the jumper I pointed out on the Amiga PCB? That provides the clock signal to the PiStorm, it won’t start up without it. It should work without any problems with the original CPU in place. I’ve tried it on a couple of different A500 models now and it works fine with all of them.

[@user-hx5jw1mf8v]

@@JanBeta Yes, the JP6 jumper was closed.

[@xav500011]

I killed an Amiga PSU 3 weeks after starting to use it using with a Pistorm. Now I use a Astec AA21430 power supply

[@JanBeta]

Yup, as I pointed out the original PSUs are super marginal for supplying the Amiga and the Pi. I’m probably going to be using my homemade PSU in the long term (which supplies 5A+ on the 5V rail).

[@yorkan213swd6]

What about Amiga Unix ? Can PiStorm execute Amix ?

[@aetheralmeowstic2392]

Do you think an external USB RAM expansion for the Wii would be possible? It would be useful to be able to port Firefox and Tor to the Wii.

[@big0bad0brad]

It's "possible" but USB is so slow in terms of latency that it would be much, much worse than using swap over USB. USB couldn't even keep up with the RAM speed on... well, anything that uses solid state RAM. You're talking like ~1ms access speed. RAM access speeds are normally measured in nanoseconds or maybe microseconds on really, REALLY old stuff. Now if you have a computer that uses a rotating drum or mercury delay tube for RAM, maybe that could be done over USB. But of course those machines can't use USB so you also have to make the USB controller as well, and by that point, why use USB?

[@aetheralmeowstic2392]

How would you even implement a swap partition on the SD card that Wii homebrew could use?

[@big0bad0brad]

@@aetheralmeowstic2392 Run linux instead or hack the OS to implement it. Either way sounds disgusting (and I'm a fan of linux, but it never supported Wii very well - in particular the wifi over SDIO was atrocious)

[@amigadude6409]

I use a "normal" Lazarus Relocator plugged into my A500+ and Pistorm Emu68....850 mips 040/88882 356mb fast ram...and Super Fast RTG that put my ZZ9000 back in its box as there is no Zorro II bottle neck.....its housed in a GVP HD8 case.....running CaffineOS

[@JanBeta]

Noice! I’m definitely going to check out Emu68k and CaffeineOS soon, too. I might steal the idea with the GVP case, I actually have to broken ones sitting in the lab waiting to be used. Maybe I can resurrect one and use the case from the other as a PiStorm enclosure. Thanks for that idea. ;)

[@davidewhite69]

could you do a speedtest please?

[@davidepreziusi9254]

What is jumper 6 for? Does shorting it make other functions inaccessible? Thank you

[@JanBeta]

It provides a 7MHz clock signal to the expansion port. I'm not aware of any expansions that wouldn't work with the jumper closed. The signal is present on some Amiga 500 models by default anyway. My guess is that the option was added for compatibility with older Amiga 1000 expansions but I didn't research that any further so not 100% sure.

[@davidepreziusi9254]

@@JanBeta thank you very much for the very detailed explanations! and congratulations again for the video, you gave me a great inspiration!

[@systemchris]

Jan beta and Amiga gets a thumbs up

[@naib_stilgar]

Finally something to challenge my ACA500Plus..

[@peddersoldchap]

7:15 What's this Lad-brrrr accelerator you are talking about? It sounds amazing!! 😂

[@BenjaminVestergaard]

I may be of the old school... But I think that using a Pi to emulate being an accelerator in original hardware seems a bit odd. How does an original Amiga with Pi Storm compare to just a Pi 400 with an emulator setup? You may say it's a compatibility thing, but even back then, the accelerators came with a compatibility warning, and that was all on original chips.

[@systemchris]

If you do emu68k it's a bare metal CPU emulator, so all the custom chips are still their usual jobs so it's compatibility should be really good... Some floppy based games still have issues due to how they was coded for a regular 68k The pistorm really is a blurred line between emulation and authentic hardware, as it could be argued it's just a modern CPU accelerator using off the self parts lol

[@ruimagro72]

Does the Software Emulator have all the actual Physical Co-Processors sequentially Emulated? (One op code at a time, even with threads) Yes Does the software Emulate all of them at the same clock pulse when emulating those Co-Processors? No Well the answer is different timings, different experience. Its because of all of that, that its called Emulation, or in case of an FPGA Parallel Simulation, this one is almost the same as the REAL Thing. But nothing compares to an REAL Amiga. So if you emulate a processor and the rest of the hardware is the same, you have REAL Amiga experience, with REAL Hardware, with the exception of the CPU. For example there is several software that takes advantage of timings, bugs and non documented features and behaviors of some integrated circuits that in emulation would not be possible to emulate. But the list goes on and on.

[@Felice_Enellen]

@@ruimagro72 If undocumented features and bugs are known, they certainly _are_ possible to emulate. _Any_ known behavior can be emulated. Whether or not this actually happens is down to the emulation authors' skill and attention to detail.

[@BenjaminVestergaard]

@@ruimagro72 i know it's not the same as the real thing,, I would like to see some real life benchmark differences, it should be possible to do a frame by frame and clock by clock comparison of the timings. What if the emulation has faster memory access? And faster graphics? That's something that can be optimised on an FPGA, but original hardware doesn't change. And if you anyway just want original timing why even bother to accelerate?

[@rockDJalNIGHTY]

Does someone know if the PiStorm in the future will be able to add more chip mem to the Amiga in some way?

[@CollinBaillie]

Chip RAM is RAM which is accessible by the Amiga's custom chips. Unless you modify those custom chips, their ability to address and access more RAM will never change. Maybe someone could theoretically re-implement them in an FPGA or something, but then it's not the original custom chip is it? The 128MB of Fast RAM the PiStorm adds is CPU only RAM. Since it's primarily emulating a CPU, making that RAM appear to be on the bus (via the CPU) is pretty straight forward.

[@Felice_Enellen]

@@CollinBaillie Maybe if it had a ribbon cable that went underneath and plugged into the trapdoor memory expansion slot? I think that can do chip mem.

[@CollinBaillie]

@@Felice_Enellen It still depends on Agnus and the other custom chips. If you have a 512k A500 but you have the Fatter Agnus, you can add Chip RAM in the trapdoor slot, if you don't want to solder chips onto the mainboard. But still can't add something like 4MB of chip RAM, because the custom chips are not able to be modified. I think a mod to the mainboard is still required to make that extra chip RAM work through the trapdoor slot.

[@Felice_Enellen]

@@CollinBaillie Ok, fair, but whether you have a fat or fatter Agnus, then a ribbon cable from the underside of the card to the trapdoor might at least be an option to fill the remaining .5 or 1.5MB without another add-in card. Plus I think the trapdoor card is where the battery-backed-clock was, right? That's an option too.

[@CollinBaillie]

@@Felice_Enellen indeed, the RTC was on many trapdoor expansions.

[@garyhart6421]

I got my PiStorm B fairly easily but had to pay extra for the PiZero 2W.

[@tarzankom]

You need to find a place that sells clear key caps. It would look much better with the case you've got.

[@JanBeta]

I‘m waiting for the A1200net replacement keycaps at the moment. I chose black ones (but I didn’t have the clear case when I made that decision). Going to look great I think.

[@eugenios2006]

what revision of Amiga Motherboard was this tested on as i have built one and it doesnt seem to work....

[@JanBeta]

It should work with all revisions. Did you do the modification to the jumper on the mainboard? That’s essential for operation because some of the clock signals are not present on the expansion port on some mainboards.

[@eugenios2006]

@@JanBeta Thanks jan for the reply i could not locate the jumper jp6 on my rev 5 board

[@eugenios2006]

@@JanBeta ok so after some testing it seems its true the clock signal is missing from the side bus of the earlier revisions of the A500 Motherboard i added the patch wire from and it works a treat.

[@hansu-nihon]

You did not start the SysInfo utility to show us the speed, would have liked to see how it compares to other Amiga's.

[@JorgeCarvalho_web_dev]

Hi Sir! Can you give us please a follow up video with the incompatible software? I heard that in paper the PiStorm is good but in daily use is very incompatible. I dont know if this is still truth today Many Thanks for this great video

[@LeftoverBeefcake]

As far as I remember, the "incompatibility" comes from using 68030 or 68040 as your CPU type in the config file, as not all the special features of these processors were implemented in PiStorm (using the default Musashi 68K emulator). That may have been fixed by now, it's been a while since I followed the project. If you use 68000 or 68020 as your CPU type, you can run pretty much anything you throw at it with blistering speed.

[@JorgeCarvalho_web_dev]

@@LeftoverBeefcake Hi Sir! Thanks for your kind answer. So, if I understand correctly, if I stay in the config file for an 68020, all software will run flawless? I am saving money for a PiStorm and an Pi Zero in order to keep the build thin and fit all inside a 500+

[@LeftoverBeefcake]

@@JorgeCarvalho_web_dev Not a problem, hopefully I helped! I am not certain, but I thought I read somewhere that the 68000 and 68020 were the most "mature" processors under PiStorm, meaning that they are pretty much completely functional and will work best with the widest variety of software out there. Now we both know that nothing is ever flawless, so I'm certain there are various software programs that may crash with PiStorm. However, even with software back in the day, we had Kickstart ROM switchers to easily downgrade our machines because certain programs were not optimized for use with Kickstart 2.0 and later. Or we had ways to slow down the processor and turn off RAM because programs (mainly games) were expecting only a 7 Mhz machine with 1 megabyte of RAM. So if a certain software package crashes, it might not have anything to do with PiStorm. The only thing to do really is try things out and see if they run successfully or not. There is a Discord channel devoted to the PiStorm, so that is going to be your best bet for up-to-date information on how to get everything up and running properly. I wish you much success!

[@sikkepossu]

That's interesting thing. Sadly there's no Rasberry Pis available at all currently. Some estimates are that in december 2023 might be available. :(

[@JanBeta]

Yeah, component shortages make things difficult at the moment. Fortunately I got this Pi when they were still readily available. Hope things are going to get better eventually. :/

[@rayf2145]

What about power-off? The Pi is powered by the Amigas PSU and boots up, what about graceful shutdown when switching off the PSU?! It´s still a Pi OS running, which won´t like hard shut-offs. I don´t want to SSH-shutdown the Pi before turning off Amiga. I guess the same question applies to internal pistorms? Can´t remember 10MARC or anyone else talking about shutdowns. Sorry if I missed this topic?

[@JanBeta]

There’s a way to access the Pi command line from the Amiga by installing some of the extra software. Didn’t get to that part in this video yet, but it should be easy to make a shutdown script.

[@LemaruX]

It's pretty rare to corrupt the SD card even with an ungraceful shutdown. The underlying Linux isn't really doing anything once the emulator is loaded. Just treat it like any other harddrive solution on the Amiga, and don't shut it down until disk activity is finished. If you really want to gracefully shut it down, there's both a tool included they has a shutdown option, and a command line utility that can do it. If really wanting to make it easier then just use a utility to add the shutdown command to the drop down menu. Simple

[@UpLateGeek]

Wow! Is there anything that can't be done with a raspberry pie?

[@LogicWheels]

Does anyone know if this will work with the Raspberry Pi Zero 2?

[@LemaruX]

Yep, works with both the Pi 3a+, 3b+ (if you remove a USB connector, or use a GPIO riser), or a Pi Zero2

[@LogicWheels]

@@LemaruX Thanks! Have some Zero 2's lying around, going to play with it :-)

[@spudhead169]

Why can no one ever release code that's 100% clear of errors and warnings?

[@hollgo626]

Damit das in winuae erstellte hdf file auf dem pistorm funktioniert, musst du du das hdf image im Amiga festplattenformat rdb, also mit rigid disk block, erstellen. Das stellst du direkt beim Erstellen des hdfs in qinuae ein, nachher klappt es nicht mehr.Stamdardmässig nutzt winuae in windows z.b. den standard mdb oder gpt....

[@JanBeta]

Hab ich so versucht, aber aus irgendeinem Grund funktionierte das erstellte File dann trotzdem nicht. Ich werde da nochmal rumprobieren. Wahrscheinlich hab ich irgendwo auf dem Weg was übersehen.

[@borayurt66]

I have nothing but respect for those people who devote their time and intellect to create these open source projects for the retro computer community. But it feels kind a funny to attach a computer which is actually orders of magnitude stronger in all aspects than the host computer just to make the host run faster. It kind of contradicts with the idea of using an retro computer IMHO 🙂

[@espressomatic]

It's no different than adding a multi-function expansion from the 80's/90's - except faster. What I don't see any point in is something like TerribleFire cards today.

[@obsoletepowercorrupts]

USB CDROM boot off it (like CDTV)?

[@JanBeta]

No, I don't think that feature is implemented.

[@obsoletepowercorrupts]

@@JanBeta Mention in a video that you think it is a cool idea.

[@arjanvanraaij8440]

a Jan beta video so i like.

[@JanBeta]

Thanks! :D

[@KarpowSCX]

Finally! Something is faster than C64 booting to basic. 😂

[@mzwandula]

Unter Windows in der Kommandozeile ssh pi@ip-adresse - ganz einfach. Dazu braucht es keine Zusatzsoftware. Ist in Windows 10 und 11 bereits per Default installiert. Also den User-Namen vor dem @, im Fall eines Raspi halt Pi.

[@JanBeta]

Oh, ich wusste nicht, dass das in den neuen Windows-Versionen endlich auch "out of the box" an Bord ist. Das vereinfacht die Sache natürlich ein bisschen! :D

[@Qyngali]

The instructions don't include changing the pi password? Seems like an oversight...

[@JanBeta]

What could possibly go wrong?! 🙃

[@RebellohneGrund]

Quiet ironic to have an Amiga on the Workbench 🙂

[@JanBeta]

Meta workbench!

[@stevesether]

I'm impressed the Pi can emulate a 68000 chip at several times the realtime speed of the 7mhz 68000. It almost seems like cheating a bit to run an entire Linux OS just to run an accelerator for an Amiga 500. I wonder if anyone has thought about an approach of running an emulator more close to the RGB2HDMI that doesn't really run an OS, but runs on bare metal. Boot would be nearly instant, and it likely would "feel" more like a true accelerator.

[@JanBeta]

There’s Emu68k for this hardware which runs a bare metal processor emulator and is even faster than the original PiStorm software. I’m definitely going to try that soon, too!

[@stevesether]

@@JanBeta That's great. Let us know how it goes.

[@sumplais]

I always feel like Totoro's watching me!

[@JanBeta]

Totoro is watching all of us! ;)

[@Alphadec]

can we call this a Amiga product(PI). ?

[@peterfoldesi1754]

Why not Emu68? :D

[@ChapmanWorldOnTube]

I believe you're missing a space in the label on your monitor. POKE 53281,0 It's been a long time, but from memory, the keyword has to be space separated 🙂

[@JanBeta]

The BASIC that Commodore used in their machines doesn’t require spaces. In fact, adding spaces even slowed down the interpretation of the code a bit. Which lead to people (including myself) writing code that was pretty difficult to read at times. 😅

[@ChapmanWorldOnTube]

@@JanBeta wow, all those years coding the commodore and I never knew that! I never did use the instruction abbreviations either.

[@WoollyMittens]

Wow, that keyboard looks like a tragedy in that polycarb case. :'(

[@JanBeta]

I know! It's basically just a stand-in. Waiting for the new replacement keycaps for this keyboard. ;)

[@blackterminal]

would like something like this for Atari ST

[@Voyager_2]

Why do people still use this instead of EMU68?

[@JanBeta]

I wanted to try the "basics" at first, definitely going to try Emu68k soon, too.

[@LemaruX]

As the Linux based Emulator has network support and some other features not yet implemented in Emu68, like keyboard and mouse passthrough, using USB storage options, etc. It also allows you to specify exactly what CPU you wish to emulate, rather than Emu68 which always identifies as a 68040

[@jimmihenry]

Nice case you have there! I decided about 30 years ago i would build my own case which i did. And it sucks, it is full functional has cylindrical brass feet and so on but it sucks. I went to the seller of the Amiga case in the video. It's only 248,38€ total, yes that's ridiculous! Ridiculous high, with other words expensive as phuck! Are there any alternatives except the acrylic one, acrylic is my DIY one and i think it sucks.

[@JanBeta]

They are going to produce less expensive regular textured cases soon, clear variants are also going to be available again but no "crystal clear" ones.

[@jimmihenry]

@@JanBeta Thank you for the info!