The Atari Coldfire Project (ACP) is a volunteer project that has created a modern Atari ST computer clone called the FireBee.

Reason for the project

The Atari 16 and 32 computer systems ( ST, TT and

Falcon Falcons () are birds of prey in the genus ''Falco'', which includes about 40 species. Falcons are widely distributed on all continents of the world except Antarctica, though closely related raptors did occur there in the Eocene. Adult falcons ...

) were popular home computers in the 1980s and the first half of the 1990s. Atari withdrew largely from the computer market in 1993, and completely in 1995-1996 when Atari merged with JTS and all support for the platform by Atari was dropped. The systems Atari had built became increasingly left behind as newer and faster systems came out. The few dedicated users who were left wanted more processing power to develop more-advanced TOS applications, paving the way for a number of "clone" machines, such as the

68040 The Motorola 68040 ("''sixty-eight-oh-forty''") is a 32-bit microprocessor in the Motorola 68000 series, released in 1990. It is the successor to the 68030 and is followed by the 68060, skipping the 68050. In keeping with general Motorola nam ...

-based Milan and the

68060 The Motorola 68060 ("''sixty-eight-oh-sixty''") is a 32-bit microprocessor from Motorola released in 1994. It is the successor to the Motorola 68040 and is the highest performing member of the 68000 series. Two derivatives were produced, the 68LC ...

-based Hades, both of which were considerably more powerful than the

68030 The Motorola 68030 ("''sixty-eight-oh-thirty''") is a 32-bit microprocessor in the Motorola 68000 family. It was released in 1987. The 68030 was the successor to the Motorola 68020, and was followed by the Motorola 68040. In keeping with general ...

-based TT and Falcon and the

68000 The Motorola 68000 (sometimes shortened to Motorola 68k or m68k and usually pronounced "sixty-eight-thousand") is a 16/32-bit complex instruction set computer (CISC) microprocessor, introduced in 1979 by Motorola Semiconductor Products Secto ...

-based ST/STe. These machines support ISA and

PCI PCI may refer to: Business and economics * Payment card industry, businesses associated with debit, credit, and other payment cards ** Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard, a set of security requirements for credit card processors * Prov ...

buses, which make the use of network and graphics cards designed for the PC possible (something no original Atari machines could do). The machines also support tower cases, making it possible to use internal CD drives. A new clone named Phoenix never made it to market in final form. However, the powerful rev. 6

CPU it would use did make it into a new accelerator board for the Falcon, the CT60/CT63 series, which meant that, for the first time, the Atari platform had a

CPU A central processing unit (CPU), also called a central processor, main processor or just processor, is the electronic circuitry that executes instructions comprising a computer program. The CPU performs basic arithmetic, logic, controlling, an ...

rated at over 100 MHz. The use of a high-speed

bus A bus (contracted from omnibus, with variants multibus, motorbus, autobus, etc.) is a road vehicle that carries significantly more passengers than an average car or van. It is most commonly used in public transport, but is also in use for cha ...

and PC133

RAM Ram, ram, or RAM may refer to: Animals * A male sheep * Ram cichlid, a freshwater tropical fish People * Ram (given name) * Ram (surname) * Ram (director) (Ramsubramaniam), an Indian Tamil film director * RAM (musician) (born 1974), Dutch ...

also accounted for a big performance improvement and significantly increased the Falcon's on-board memory limit from 14

MiB The byte is a unit of digital information that most commonly consists of eight bits. Historically, the byte was the number of bits used to encode a single character of text in a computer and for this reason it is the smallest addressable unit ...

to 512 MiB with a CT60. These systems were not mass-produced and are now hard to find. While the CT60/CT63 needs a Falcon “donor” system, and is still not as powerful as the ACP potential system could be, the ACP will use a completely new design, moving away from 68K CPUs to the newer

ColdFire The NXP ColdFire is a microprocessor that derives from the Motorola 68000 family architecture, manufactured for embedded systems development by NXP Semiconductors. It was formerly manufactured by Freescale Semiconductor (formerly the semiconductor ...

class, more powerful than even the fastest

68K The Motorola 68000 series (also known as 680x0, m68000, m68k, or 68k) is a family of 32-bit complex instruction set computer (CISC) microprocessors. During the 1980s and early 1990s, they were popular in personal computers and workstations and ...

chips while still having a largely similar (but not completely compatible) instruction set. It will also allow for the integration of many I/O ports that are currently only available through extensive hardware modification on the Atari platform.

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 forme
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 on Board 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 2MegaPixel, 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) *Asynchrone static RAM for DSP or similar already planned extensions in the future: Falcon DSP in the FPGA *Format: Card *Power consumption of the complete board:

Operating systems

On the 8MB ROM, FireBee devices have the following pre-installed software: * BaS (BasicSystem) * FPGA config * FireTOS *

EmuTOS EmuTOS is a replacement for TOS (the operating system of the Atari ST and its successors), released as free software. It is mainly intended to be used with Atari emulators and clones, such as Hatari or FireBee. EmuTOS provides support for more ...

There's a ready to use FreeMiNT and GUI environment setup with applications ported to work on

which can be ordered on

CompactFlash CompactFlash (CF) is a flash memory mass storage device used mainly in portable electronic devices. The format was specified and the devices were first manufactured by SanDisk in 1994. CompactFlash became one of the most successful of the ...

card with the device. µClinux has also been ported to FireBee.

Compatibility

There are different strategies for dealing with the differences in

and

instruction set and opcodes: * FireTOS includes

emulation based on an illegal instruction exception handler and CF68KLib
68Kemu
program (based on Musashi 68k emulator) can be used to run

programs with

* 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 Shareware is a type of proprietary software that is initially shared by the owner for trial use at little or no cost. Often the software has limited functionality or incomplete documentation until the user sends payment to the software developer ...

Atari SW packages have also either been ported to ColdFire or open sourced so that they could be ported to FireBee FireBee

FPGA A field-programmable gate array (FPGA) is an integrated circuit designed to be configured by a customer or a designer after manufacturinghence the term ''Field-programmability, field-programmable''. The FPGA configuration is generally specifi ...

doesn't yet provide DSP functionality which means that any

Atari Falcon The Atari Falcon030 (usually shortened to Atari Falcon), released in 1992, was the final personal computer product from Atari Corporation. A high-end model of the Atari ST line, the machine is based on a Motorola 68030 CPU and a Motorola 56001 ...

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
/ref> C-compilers and their libraries have fully working ColdFire support * Digger disassembler supports ColdFire * RSC-editors like ResourceMaster work on Firebee *

GFA Basic GFA BASIC is a dialect of the BASIC programming language, by Frank Ostrowski. The name is derived from the company ("GFA Systemtechnik GmbH"), which distributed the software. In the mid-1980s to the 1990s it enjoyed popularity as an advanced BA ...

has been modified to support FireTOS * SDL library and its (Atari specific) LDG dependency are ported to ColdFire/FireBee

References

External links

*{{official website, www.firebee.org
former websiteACP FireBee
on YouTube Home computer remakes Atari ST