The Atari Coldfire Project (ACP) is a volunteer project that has created a modern

Atari ST Atari ST is a line of personal computers from Atari Corporation and the successor to the company's Atari 8-bit computers, 8-bit computers. The initial model, the Atari 520ST, had limited release in April–June 1985, and was widely available i ...

computer clone called the FireBee.

Reason for the project

The 16- and 32-bit

microcomputers were a popular line of home computers in the 1980s and the first half of the 1990s, to which the mostly- or semi-compatible

Atari TT The Atari TT030, more commonly known as the Atari TT, is a member of the Atari ST family, released in 1990. It was originally intended to be a high-end Unix workstation, but Atari took two years to release a port of Unix SVR4 for the TT, which ...

and

Falcon Falcons () are birds of prey in the genus ''Falco'', which includes about 40 species. Some small species of falcons with long, narrow wings are called hobbies, and some that hover while hunting are called kestrels. Falcons are widely distrib ...

computers were added in the early nineties. However, in 1993, Atari largely withdrew from the computer market, and in 1995-1996, when Atari merged with JTS, the company withdrew completely and dropped all of its support for the platform. The systems Atari had built got increasingly left behind as newer and faster systems came out for other platforms. A hard core of dedicated users still wanted more processing power to develop more advanced applications for their preferred platform's

Atari TOS TOS (The Operating System) is the operating system of the Atari ST range of computers. This range includes the 520ST and 1040ST, their STF/M/FM and STE variants and the Mega ST/STE. Later, 32-bit machines ( TT, Falcon030) were developed using a ...

operating system. This demand paved 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 ...

-based Milan and the 68060-based Hades, both of which were considerably more powerful than even the 68030-based TT and Falcon, as well as 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 Sector ...

-based ST/STe computers. These machines supported 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 made use of network and graphics cards designed for the PC possible (something no original Atari machines could do). The machines also supported tower cases, making it possible to use internal CD drives. A new clone named Phenix never made it to market in final form. However, the powerful rev. 6 68060 CPU it was to 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 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 motor vehicle that carries significantly more passengers than an average car or van, but fewer than the average rail transport. It is most commonly used ...

and PC133

RAM Ram, ram, or RAM most commonly refers to: * A male sheep * Random-access memory, computer memory * Ram Trucks, US, since 2009 ** List of vehicles named Dodge Ram, trucks and vans ** Ram Pickup, produced by Ram Trucks Ram, ram, or RAM may also ref ...

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 un ...

to 512 MiB with a CT60. These systems were not mass-produced and became hard to find. While the CT60/CT63 needed a Falcon "donor" system, and was still not as powerful as the ACP system, the ACP's FireBee used a completely new design, moving away from 68K CPUs to the newer ColdFire class, more powerful than even the fastest 68K chips while still having a largely similar (but not completely compatible) instruction set. It also allowed for the integration of many I/O ports that hitherto were 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 onboard for operating systems *Atari compatible interface ports: ** TT/Falcon- IDE, ** ST/TT-Floppy ** TT-

SCSI Small Computer System Interface (SCSI, ) is a set of standards for physically connecting and transferring data between computers and peripheral devices, best known for its use with storage devices such as hard disk drives. SCSI was introduced ...

(but faster) ** ACSI ** ROM-Port: 2×2 mm Connector **Printer Port, parallel ** ST/TT-serial **

MIDI Musical Instrument Digital Interface (; MIDI) is an American-Japanese technical standard that describes a communication protocol, digital interface, and electrical connectors that connect a wide variety of electronic musical instruments, ...

** ST-Sound, YM2149 over AC'97 ** ST/TT/Falcon-Video ** Atari-Keyboard with Mouse *Other Ports: **

Ethernet Ethernet ( ) is a family of wired computer networking technologies commonly used in local area networks (LAN), metropolitan area networks (MAN) and wide area networks (WAN). It was commercially introduced in 1980 and first standardized in 198 ...

10/100, 1 Port ** USB 2.0 Host (ISP1563), 5 Ports ** Compact-Flash, 1 Port ** SD-Card, 1 Port **

AC'97 AC'97 (''Audio Codec '97;'' also MC'97 for ''Modem Codec '97'') is an audio codec standard developed by Intel Architecture Labs and various codec manufacturers in 1997. The standard was used in motherboards, modems, and sound cards. The specif ...

Stereo Codec with DMA-Sound Output and Sampling Input ** Sound_Connectors: LineIn, LineOut, Mic (Mono), DVD/CD internal ** New Video Modes about 2

megapixel In digital imaging, a pixel (abbreviated px), pel, or picture element is the smallest addressable element in a Raster graphics, raster image, or the smallest addressable element in a dot matrix display device. In most digital display devices, p ...

s, true color ** PS2 Mouse/Keyboard Port *Battery Powered (if desired) *

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 Static random-access memory (static RAM or SRAM) is a type of random-access memory (RAM) that uses latching circuitry (flip-flop) to store each bit. SRAM is volatile memory; data is lost when power is removed. The ''static'' qualifier differ ...

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

EmuTOS TOS (The Operating System) is the operating system of the Atari ST range of computers. This range includes the 520ST and 1040ST, their STF/M/FM and STE variants and the Mega ST/STE. Later, 32-bit machines ( TT, Falcon030) were developed using a ...

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

card with the device.

μClinux μClinux is a variation of the Linux kernel, previously maintained as a fork, that targets microcontrollers without a memory management unit (MMU). It was integrated into the mainline kernel as of 2.5.46; the project continues to develop patc ...

has also been ported to FireBee.

Compatibility

There are different strategies for dealing with the differences in ColdFire and 68K instruction set and opcodes: * 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

* 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 a type of configurable integrated circuit that can be repeatedly programmed after manufacturing. FPGAs are a subset of logic devices referred to as programmable logic devices (PLDs). They consist of a ...

doesn't yet provide DSP functionality which means that any

Atari Falcon The Atari Falcon030 (usually shortened to Atari Falcon), released in 1992, is the final personal computer 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 digital s ...

specific programs requiring DSP won't run. Many Falcon games and demos use it to play background music.

Development tool support

* GCC,

VBCC vbcc is a portable and retargetable ANSI C compiler. It supports C89 (C version), C89 (ISO/IEC 9899:1989) as well as parts of C99 (ISO/IEC 9899:1999). It is divided into two parts. One is target-independent and the other is target-dependent. vb ...

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