# DSP Programming on Atari Falcon

In these pages I will try to teach how to use the DSP in Atari Falcon. It consists of a number of pages, some not yet written, which will explain step by step now the DSP works and how to use it the best way, or at least the best way I know of.

I will mainly keep to programming at the Falcon and whenever I use the word DSP I mean DSP56001 made by Motorola, even though there are a lot of other kinds made by other companies.

First of all I would like to point out that I am not at all an expert on this subject, but simply a happy hacker who wants to share some of his knowledge. I might also just as well tell you now that it is very helpful if you have programmed before, preferrably in 68K assembly or possibly in C. Assembly because the DSP assembly language is quite like the 68K assembly, and C is a common and easy language to use for controlling the DSP, if you don't count demo programming. I will often compare the two assembly languages and point out main differences.

Another thing that has helped me a lot for my DSP programming is "DSP56000/DSP56001 Digital Signal Processor User's Manual", a book written by Motorola. The User's Manual is also available as PDF documents from Motorola's DSP homepage. The manual has no Atari specific things, but contains all instructions and desciptions of all registers in the DSP. The Atari specific parts is documented, among other places, in "Atari Developers Manual" and in "The Atari Compendium".

There are some public assemblers for the Falcon and Hisoft has also made a Devpac DSP. But the one I use is a public one made by Motorola and is called ASM56000.TTP. Together with some other programs it's quite simple to use.

These page contains these parts, so far:

1. The basic structure of DSP56001
2. Fixpoint numbers and ALU registers
3. Addressing modes
4. Short descriptions of instructions (not yet finished)
5. Host communication (not yet written)

More will come soon. I will make those pages more html:ish to, with links between, and within the parts.

Current project using the DSP is a Dolby Surround encoder, which directs the input sound and outputs the encoded signal to the amplifier in real time. The use of this in demos and games will make the feeling, and reality much greater.

Also take a look at Fredrik Noring's DSP page

If you have any comments, suggestions, complaints or something else you would like to share with me, feel free to contact me in some way.

Tomas Berndtsson - tobe@lysator.liu.se

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