Skip to article frontmatterSkip to article content
Site not loading correctly?

This may be due to an incorrect BASE_URL configuration. See the MyST Documentation for reference.

Peripherals and expansion

Zorro autoconfig (zorro.rs)

The ZorroChain implements the Zorro II/III autoconfig protocol -- nibble-encoded config ROMs in the $E80000 window, base-address assignment, shut-up, chain advance, and power-on reset. Boards are described by data (BoardSpec) rather than a trait; the built-in fast and Z3 RAM options and user [[zorro]] metadata boards all build the same specs. The user-facing guide, including the metadata file format and the autoconfig walk-through, is Writing Zorro board plugins.

Gayle IDE (gayle.rs)

A600/A1200 machines get the Gayle gate array: the ID register at $DE1000, the IDE task file at $DA0000 (byte registers on the odd word half, 4-byte stride), and the IDE interrupt and status bits. Drives are raw flat HDF images with an RDB inside, opened read/write; PIO transfers complete synchronously within the access. One hardware subtlety worth knowing: Gayle byte-swaps the IDE bus, so IDENTIFY data words are low-byte-first while sector data passes through untouched -- Kickstart 3.1 expects exactly this. The absent-slave behaviour follows the WinUAE-verified model so device scans terminate correctly. PCMCIA reports an empty slot (the status/config registers exist so card.resource behaves); credit-card device emulation is a non-goal.

A2091 SCSI (a2091.rs, scsi.rs)

The [scsi] option attaches a Commodore A2091: a Zorro II device board pairing the Commodore DMAC (rev 02 modeled) with a WD33C93A SBIC, plus the board’s autoboot ROM whose scsi.device drives them. The autoconfig identity comes from the DMAC -- Commodore West Chester (514), product 3, ERTF_DIAGVALID with er_InitDiagVec pointing at $2000 -- while the ROM supplies the DiagArea and the driver; the ROM image therefore is a required configuration input (rom/rom_odd, split even/odd EPROM dumps interleaved U13-first).

Board window layout: ISTR $40, CNTR $42, WTC $80/$82, ACR $84/$86 (low bit forced even), DAWR $8E, the WD33C93 SASR/auxiliary status at $90/$91 and data port at $92/$93, the ST_DMA/SP_DMA/CINT/ FLUSH strobes at $E0/$E2/$E4/$E8 (read- or write-triggered), and the boot ROM repeating from $2000 to the end of the 64K window. Unpopulated decode below the ROM reads as floating bus ($FF): the boot ROM’s drive probe ANDs the A590 XT-interface bytes at $A1/$A3/$A5/$A7 and only takes the SCSI-only path when they all read $FF -- zeros wedge it polling a phantom XT drive.

The WD33C93A model covers both ways drivers run the bus, verified against the real 7.0 boot ROM booting a Workbench install end-to-end:

Data phases run through the DMAC handshake (a word per DMAC cycle into chip, slow, or Zorro RAM with the 24-bit ACR auto-incrementing) or through the PIO data register with DBR. Like the Gayle model, transfers complete within the access; completion interrupts are delivered after a short emulated delay, and INT2 is the level CNTR_INTEN && ISTR & (INTS|E_INT) fed to Paula’s PORTS latch each tick. DMAC bus-master cycles are not yet arbitrated against the CPU (TODO in a2091.rs).

Both IDE and SCSI drives share the harddrive.rs sector backend: raw HDF images, bare partition hardfiles wrapped in a synthesized RDB (bootable DHn named after the unit), and host directories built into in-memory FFS volumes by dirfs.rs (whose volume label defaults to the directory name, or a name override configured on the drive). The SCSI-2 target layer in scsi.rs answers INQUIRY, MODE SENSE pages 3/4, READ CAPACITY, READ/WRITE(6)/(10), REQUEST SENSE, and the no-op housekeeping commands, with sense state kept per target.

CDTV (cdtv.rs, cdrom.rs)

The CDTV model pairs the DMAC (which autoconfigs ahead of the Zorro chain, as on the real machine -- the CDTV firmware requires the DMAC to be the first configured board) with a Matshita drive speaking its fixed-length command/response protocol: seek, read, play (LSN/MSF/track), status, SubQ, and TOC queries, with responses delivered byte-by-byte with STEN pulses. Data sectors DMA onto the system bus at the 24-bit ACR address -- chip, slow, or Zorro board RAM, like the A2091’s DMAC; Kickstart allocates the CD buffers in fast RAM when a board is fitted -- paced at single speed and raising the DMAC interrupt on completion. The 256 KiB extended ROM sits at $F00000.

CD32 Akiko (akiko.rs)

Akiko sits at $B80000 with its $C0CACAFE ID: the chunky-to-planar converter, the I2C lines to the 24C08 NVRAM EEPROM (persisted to the [cd] nvram file), and the CD command/response rings talking to a Chinon drive model (stop, pause, seek/play/read, LED, SubQ, status). Data sectors stream as 2352-byte raw frames at 75 (or 150 at 2x) sectors/second; CD audio mixes into the host output, and both light the blue CD LED. The 512 KiB extended ROM sits at $E00000, and the CD32 pad protocol drives port 2.

cdrom.rs parses BIN/CUE cue sheets (single- or multi-file; MODE1/2048, MODE1/2352, and AUDIO tracks) for both machines.

RTC (rtc.rs)

An MSM6242-compatible register view at $DC0000, present on machines configured with rtc = true. Reads reflect host time; guest writes only affect the emulated latch/control state, never the host clock.

Input (gamepad.rs, window input paths)

Host keyboard events translate to Amiga raw codes and feed a 6500/1 keyboard-MCU model (chipset/keyboard.rs) that clocks each event into CIA-A bit by bit over the emulated KCLK/KDAT lines: 60 us bit cells, the KDAT handshake after every byte (the MCU samples the line within microseconds and accepts any deliberate pulse, so software that reads the keyboard with a brief handshake -- e.g. Pinball Dreams at ~13.5 us -- works, not just the boot ROM’s longer pulse), lost-sync recovery (lone sync bits, F9,retransmission),theF9, retransmission), the FD/FEpowerupstream,theFE power-up stream, the 78/KCLK-low reset protocol behind Ctrl+Amiga+Amiga, Caps Lock’s keyboard-owned LED toggle, a 10-event type-ahead buffer with $FA overflow, and ghost suppression on the real A500 key matrix (the seven qualifiers are on dedicated lines and never ghost). The protocol was cross-checked against real-hardware-validated replacement keyboard firmware. Mouse deltas feed the JOY0DAT quadrature counters. Gamepads are read through raw gilrs events against the per-UUID calibration described in The window, status bar, and menus; on CD32 machines the pad output is serialized through the CD32 pad protocol instead of the plain digital joystick lines.

The window layer has one host-source policy for the emulated port-2 joystick/CD32 pad: auto, keyboard, or gamepad. Auto is the default. It polls the calibrated gamepad first and, when no usable pad state is available, resolves the keyboard joystick state instead. Keyboard mode skips gamepad polling for port-2 input; gamepad mode disables keyboard joystick capture so the mapped keys take the normal Amiga keyboard path. All three sources ultimately call the same InputState::set_joystick_port2 and set_cd32_buttons_port2 helpers, so JOY1DAT, /FIR1, POT1Y/POTGOR, and the CD32 serial bits remain hardware-derived.

Keyboard joystick emulation is deliberately a host input source, not a guest-keyboard behaviour. When active, the winit key handler consumes the mapped host keys before rawkey translation: cursor keys drive directions, Right Ctrl/Right Alt drive fire, and the CD32 extras are C/X/D/S/Return/Z/A. Each alias is tracked independently before resolving to a single joystick state, so releasing one fire alias does not clear fire while another alias is still held. Releases for keys already captured as joystick controls are also swallowed if the source mode changes before key-up, preventing stray Amiga rawkey releases.

Audio output (audio.rs)

AudioSink abstracts the host boundary: a cpal live sink, a WAV-file sink (--audio-wav), and a null sink (--noaudio). Paula renders in emulated time; the live sink resamples and buffers against wall-clock. The CPAL_* lead/prebuffer/stale-drop targets in audio.rs are fixed rather than adaptive (currently a 131072-frame ring, a ~150 ms prebuffer equal to the ~150 ms steady lead, and a ~300 ms stale-drop threshold at 44.1 kHz). Playback starts only after the first audible frames have filled that prebuffer, so silent boot/load periods do not queue seconds of zeros. If the cpal callback later drains the queue completely, it stops playback, outputs silence, and waits for the same prebuffer depth before restarting. While an already-started queue is merely below target, the sink reports the missing buffer depth as extra live-audio lead so the real-time pacer runs ahead and restores the cushion without forcing a host-side silence gap first.

The live queue is host presentation state, not Paula state. A save-state or reverse-debug timeline jump keeps the restored Paula/CD/floppy mixer state but discards queued cpal frames from the abandoned timeline, then rebuilds the live prebuffer from the restored emulated audio stream. Offline WAV capture is not affected by any of this buffering policy.

Two profiling knobs cover the audio/pacing boundary, both emitting one info line per second:

Default live-audio warnings are emitted from the producer side at the same one-second cadence, and only when an underrun, overrun, or stale-frame counter is nonzero.

Serial (serial.rs)

Paula’s SERDAT transmit path lands on stdout through StdoutSink -- this is how DiagROM’s diagnostic stream and the timing-test/ results are captured in terminals and CI logs.

A SerialSink that can produce input (none of the built-in sinks do) must override has_pending_input alongside read_byte/read_word: Paula’s per-tick UART step takes an idle fast path that skips the receiver entirely while it reports false.

MIDI serial bridge (midi/)

[serial] mode = "midi" (or --midi-out/--midi-in) bridges Paula’s serial port to host MIDI, behind the optional midi cargo feature -- a plain build compiles none of it and the mode falls back with a clear message. The whole thing hangs off one SerialSink, MidiSerialSink, so the emulator core is unchanged from any other serial target.

The load-bearing detail is that byte timing survives to the wire. Paula stamps each transmitted byte with the emulated colour clock it left on (SerialTimeAnchor); MidiSerialSink maps that to a host Instant and asks the backend to schedule the message for that instant rather than send it now, so a frame’s worth of bytes flushed together still leaves at the original spacing. Two host-agnostic pieces sit above the backend: a MidiFramer reassembles the single-byte serial stream into whole MIDI messages (a receiver rejects lone data bytes), tracking running status and SysEx and passing interleaved real-time bytes straight through; and Active Sensing (0xFE) is forwarded by default -- a real Amiga passes it down the wire -- and only dropped under COPPERLINE_MIDI_STRIP_ACTIVE_SENSE=1. Input arrives on a lock-free SPSC ring the receiver drains on its idle fast path, so the poll never locks.

The host connection lives behind the MidiBackend trait, chosen by cfg(target_os): macOS drives CoreMIDI (coremidi.rs), Linux the ALSA sequencer (alsa.rs), and Windows WinMM (winmm.rs); any other target gets stub.rs, which enumerates nothing and refuses to open. Each backend links its platform library directly with no wrapper crate, and each maps the scheduled send onto that platform’s timed-delivery primitive: a CoreMIDI packet timestamp, an ALSA real-time queue event, or -- since WinMM carries no timestamp -- a scheduler thread that fires each message when it comes due. A new backend implements send/set_output/set_input/current_output/current_input plus free enumerate/open; nothing else changes. The raw FFI is layout-sensitive -- CoreMIDI packs its packet list to 4 bytes, the ALSA snd_seq_event_t scheduling helpers are header-only inlines whose field writes are replicated by hand, and WinMM’s MIDIHDR is packed -- so the mirrors are pinned with compile-time layout assertions and want checking against live MIDI, not just review.

Two debug knobs help tell a dead path from a routing one: COPPERLINE_MIDI_DEBUG=1 reports per-second tx/rx byte counts and the first bytes sent (no tx while a song plays means the guest is not driving serial, i.e. the fault is upstream of the bridge); =2 decodes every message in each direction. COPPERLINE_MIDI_IMMEDIATE=1 bypasses scheduling and sends each message for immediate delivery, to separate a timing problem from a connection one.