The Atari Coldfire Project (ACP) is a volunteer project that has created a modern Atari ST computer clone called the FireBee.Atari Firebee – An Atari Coldfire Clone Built for Music , 18 May 2010, Atari Music NetworkAtari Coldfire Project, 16 December 2010, Noble Master Developer's Blog
Reason for the project
A new clone named Phenix never made it to market in final form.
Specifications
The specifications for the ACP have changed considerably over time, in response to advancing technology and price considerations. However, it seems the following will be in the final design according to former Atari Coldfire Project homepage:
Processor: Coldfire MCF5474, 264 MHz, 400 MIPS RAM: DDR, 512 MB Main- + 128 MB Video- and Special-RAM on Board, Speed: 1 Gbit/s Flash: 8 MB onboard for operating systems Atari compatible interface ports: TT/Falcon-IDE, ST/TT-Floppy TT-SCSI (but faster) ACSI ROM-Port: 2×2 mm Connector Printer Port, parallel ST/TT-serial MIDI ST-Sound, YM2149 over AC'97 ST/TT/Falcon-Video Atari-Keyboard with Mouse Other Ports: Ethernet 10/100, 1 Port USB 2.0 Host (ISP1563), 5 Ports Compact-Flash, 1 Port SD-Card, 1 Port AC'97 Stereo Codec with DMA-Sound Output and Sampling Input Sound_Connectors: LineIn, LineOut, Mic (Mono), DVD/CD internal New Video Modes about 2 megapixels, true color PS2 Mouse/Keyboard Port Battery Powered (if desired) PCI 33 MHz direct Edge for passive backplane Power controller with real time clock, PIC18F4520 Extension socket: 60Pol (DSPI , serial sync or async about , I/O about , I2C-Bus) Asynchronous static RAM for DSP or similar already planned extensions in the future: Falcon DSP in the FPGA Format: Card (90 × 260 × 20 mm (4 × 10 × 1 in.)) Power consumption of the complete board:
Operating systems
On the 8 MB ROM, FireBee devices have the following pre-installed software: BaS (BasicSystem) FPGA config FireTOS EmuTOS
There's a ready to use FreeMiNT and GUI environment setup with applications ported to work on ColdFire which can be ordered on CompactFlash card with the device.
μClinux has also been ported to FireBee.
Compatibility
There are different strategies for dealing with the differences in ColdFire and 68K instruction set and opcodes:Atari ColdFire Project news FireTOS includes 68K emulation based on an illegal instruction exception handler and CF68KLib 68Kemu program (based on Musashi 68k emulator) can be used to run 68K programs with EmuTOS Most of the operating system and basic desktop software has been ported and built for ColdFire and rest is able to run with emulation Several commercial and shareware Atari SW packages have also either been ported to ColdFire or open sourced so that they could be ported to FireBee
FireBee FPGA doesn't yet provide DSP functionality which means that any Atari Falcon specific programs requiring DSP won't run. Many Falcon games and demos use it to play background music.
Development tool support
GCC, VBCC and (Pure C compatible) AHCCAHCC C-compiler C-compilers and their libraries have fully working ColdFire support Digger disassembler supports ColdFire RSC-editors like ResourceMaster work on Firebee GFA Basic has been modified to support FireTOS SDL library and its (Atari specific) LDG dependency are ported to ColdFire/FireBee
References
External links
former website ACP FireBee on YouTube