Nokturnal CT60-fw-upgrade
CT60/63 firmware upgrade with Xilinx iMPACT
Updates
| 04.09.2025 | Page review. Added content disclaimer. Fixed dead links – most website links were dead, some were mirrored at some point. Added some notes related to newer CT6x hardware. |
| 25.04.2009 | Initial version |
Disclaimer: This page was created long ago, several things happened since then, so some information here might not be up to date, but the general approach is still valid. The page was created when 32-bit operating systems were still a thing; now I would pick 64-bit versions of ISE WebPACK and use it with a USB Xilinx cable. Still, a parallel JTAG Xilinx cable is useful on the Atari, but cables like this might now be difficult to get and need to be modified. Additionally some new models like CT60e and refreshed CT63 were produced, so your mileage may vary.
Introduction
Firmware upgrade is a scary thing – improper operation can turn your machine into junk. Sometimes an upgrade is needed when the manufacturer publishes a new version fixing detected bugs (like preventing use of new add-on hardware as happened with EtherNAT and the announced CTPCI), hardware working optimisations, etc. It can happen that during an upgrade with native tools something will go wrong (e.g. a system crash during programming) which prevents booting of the machine, for instance when upgrading ABE and SDR on the same machine with the flash tool supplied in the Didier Mequignon CT60 software pack. You will not be able to use your Falcon to fix it, because it will not boot at all. In this case you can send the CT60/63 back to the manufacturer (note: not possible anymore, R. Czuba finished Atari business), shoot yourself, or fix it using a PC, iMPACT application and JTAG cable. Below I will cover the third option. A free LPT or USB port is needed depending on what kind of JTAG cable you have (probably USB will be most common).
Prerequisites
ISE WebPACK Software
iMPACT is a part of a quite big (4.3 GB!) software package included in the ISE WebPACK Software by Xilinx. You have to register on the Xilinx website, download the web installer, launch the installation and leave it for half a day or a day (depending on your internet connection speed). You can of course order it on DVD – the tools are free (we will not use these tools for developing “missile, nuclear, chemical or biological weapons applications” so we can use them ;) ), but your credit card will be charged for shipping costs in this case.
This software package is available for:
- Microsoft Windows XP Professional (32-bit only)
- Microsoft Windows Vista Business (32-bit only)
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux WS 4 (32-bit only)
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux Desktop 5 (32-bit only)
- SUSE Linux Enterprise 10 (32-bit only)
In this tutorial I’ve used WinXP Professional 32-bit SP3.
JTAG cable
There are two kinds of them: LPT (RS232 / DB25 connector) and USB ones. You can make them yourself (schematics are freely available) or buy them. If you want to use the cable both with a PC and a Falcon, the LPT version will be the better option.
There is one important thing when programming ABE & SDR on a Falcon with an LPT cable (on the same machine where the CT60/63 is plugged in): you have to modify the JTAG cable:
- Disconnect the wire from pin #13 and reconnect it to pin #10 on the DB25 connector side.
- Reorganise the order of the wires on the JTAG connector side as shown on the schematics or pinout in the CT60 documentation.
For reorganising pins the Rena Electronics cable is the most elegant one, because it has no connector at all, only loose cables with proper labels which you can connect as you want (the company no longer exists; I couldn’t find anything similar). This kind of cable is the one I’ve used in this tutorial. It also has one nice feature – it has a diode which indicates that the cable is powered on (a crucial thing when programming CT60/63 firmware).
When doing the upgrade with a PC, no JTAG cable modifications are needed at all.
Preparation
You have to connect the JTAG to the PC via LPT or USB port. I assume that the CT60 board is plugged onto the F030 already and powered off. Firstly you can remove the SDRAM module (it will not be needed during device programming and you will have better access to the pins marked as “RESERVED” on the CT60 board) and connect the signals according to the diagram below:
Here is the picture how it looked like on my setup:
Now download the newest firmware from the PowerPhenix site (ABE and SDR files), unpack them and put them in some convenient place on your hard disk.
Upgrade procedure description
Now you have to configure your cable setup in iMPACT (sometimes it is not needed and the cable is automatically recognised). Launch iMPACT from Programs → Xilinx ISE Design Suite → ISE → Accessories → iMPACT. When the “iMPACT project” pop-up window appears… If you accidentally close this dialog, you can come back to it by choosing File → New → Impact project.
Now select a new project. A dialog will appear with the option “Configure devices using Boundary-Scan (JTAG)” (it has to be checked). Choose either “Automatically connect to the cable and identify Boundary-Scan chain” or “Enter Boundary-Scan chain manually”. Don’t click the “Finish” button yet.
Now you have to TURN ON your Falcon and after a while click the “Finish” button in the dialog.
If you have correctly configured the cable (as was the case for me), the ABE and SDR chips will be automatically detected and you will be asked to select the JEDEC files with the firmware for them. iMPACT will go through each chip in the chain and you have to assign the correct file to them.
Firstly you have to select ABE*.JED and after that SDR*.JED (if you do it in the wrong order nothing will work after the firmware update).
If there are problems with cable setup/connection, the second option “Enter Boundary-Scan chain manually” will let you configure the cable and perform manual chain initialisation (be sure that the Falcon is powered on).
You will have to right-click on the newly created and empty “Boundary Scan” window, choose the option “Configure Cable” (set it to Parallel III or Parallel IV – both worked fine for me – and the LPT port to which they are connected, or set Xilinx USB Cable in the case of a USB JTAG cable). After that you can select the “Initialise Chain” option by right-clicking on the “Boundary Scan” window or simply by pressing CTRL+I. After that the JTAG cable should be detected and you will be asked to choose the *.JED files as described above in the automatic process.
If everything worked fine you should see the screen as below:
Now for ABE and SDR you have to ERASE the old firmware, program them with the new one and verify that they were flashed correctly.
- Erase the old existing firmware (by right-clicking on the ABE and SDR chip icons and choosing ERASE from the context menu)
- Program the new version (by right-clicking on the ABE and SDR chip icons and choosing PROGRAM from the context menu – the correct files were already assigned in previous steps)
- Verify the programmed chips (by right-clicking on the ABE and SDR chip icons and choosing VERIFY from the context menu)
After each operation on each chip a blue box will appear indicating that the operation was successful, or a red box if an error occurred (in this case you can redo the last operation or, if that does not help, check your cable setup).
Done!
And that’s it. Place the SDRAM module back and launch the machine in 030 and 060 mode to check if everything works OK.
After flashing with iMPACT you will notice that the ABE and SDR versions aren’t correctly reported anymore. That’s because the flash memory region where these values are stored isn’t updated by the iMPACT software. Only the native flash tool from the native CT60 software package updates these values correctly. This is the only issue that I’ve noticed when making the upgrade.
Source article [1]