User:Miro.nohaj/sandbox

CosmosEx is a device for Atari ST / TT computers, which replaces a hard drive, floppy drive, network card and converts USB devices like mouse, keyboard and joystick to Atari ST / TT specific interface called IKDB, so they can be used as native devices to replace the old peripherals.

The origin of the name comes from phrase 'Cosmos (is) Expanding', the phrase in the name is also used as a motto of the device and project: 'Your peripheral cosmos is now expanding'.

The device is based on Raspberry Pi, model B, rev. 2, and connects through the GPIO expansion port. Older revision is not supported due to different pin out of expansion port and due to missing mounting holes on Raspberry Pi. The linux distribution used for running the device is a custom linux distribution built using Yocto project, the SD card image has 168 MB, the boot of the device takes from 13 to 19 seconds until it becomes usable for Atari ST since the power on.

Hardware (excluding Raspberry Pi part) contains two STM32F103 chips and Xilinx XC9536XL chip which handle the Atari peripherals are the lowest level to offload the Raspberry Pi from handling real time events and to prevent issues caused by Raspberry Pi not responding to the signals fast enough while serving other processes. All these chips can be updated (flashed) from Raspberry Pi, so even bugs in the firmware can be fixed after the devices are at the end consumers. The updates are available through a tool used on Atari ST either when the device is connected to the internet or from the update zip file from USB drive inserted into Raspberry Pi USB port.