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Author Topic: Wicher 500i - classic turbo card for A500  (Read 12496 times)

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Offline Pat the Cat

Re: Wicher 500i - classic turbo card for A500
« Reply #14 on: March 10, 2017, 06:56:33 PM »
Quote from: amyren;823171
What is a spi controller and what is the practical usage of it on an A500?

General purpose serial port for devices is my understanding.

Only high speed though - used a fair bit for ad hoc networking. Wireless and wired (wireless is probably more common). Bluetooth too.

VERY handy if you do crazy things with Arduino's etc.

Hooking up SD card reader/writers also becomes easier (and cheaper). Sometimes they come built into an LCD display with a touch screen. But only a few bucks for a simple SD card adaptor.

Quote from: Rob;823172
You can get new membranes for £23.50 including delivery.

http://www.sellmyretro.com/offer/details/%2Abrand-new%2A-commodore-amiga-a500-~~-a500%2B-keyboard-membranes-2871

OOh... I checked a few days ago when they mentioned new A1200 membranes! Couldn't find, thank you! :)

OK, got an A1000 keyboard I can hook up - but it's not ideal (even if they do seem to last forever).
« Last Edit: March 10, 2017, 07:09:23 PM by Pat the Cat »
"To recurse is human. To iterate, divine."

A1200, Vanilla, Surf Squirrel, SD Card, KS 3.0/3.z, PCMCIA dev
A500, Vanilla, A570, Rev 5, KS 1.2/1.3 Testbench system
Rasp Pi, UAE4ARM, 3D laser scanner, experimental, hoping for AmigaOS4Arm, based on Watterott Fabscan Pi
 

Offline SpidiTopic starter

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Re: Wicher 500i - classic turbo card for A500
« Reply #15 on: March 10, 2017, 07:22:17 PM »
Quote from: amyren;823171
What is a spi controller and what is the practical usage of it on an A500?

In external version Wicher500 I connected RTC DS1306
 

Offline Pat the Cat

Re: Wicher 500i - classic turbo card for A500
« Reply #16 on: March 10, 2017, 08:29:31 PM »
Quote from: Spidi;823174
In external version Wicher500 I connected RTC DS1306

I did not know SPI real time clock existed.

Nice fact about SPI devices - is already a lot of open source C code to support them.

So should be fairly straightforward to get Amiga drivers written.

I doubt SD card would be bootable, would be much much more difficult?

But cheap network or WiFi should happen pretty quick. :) Faster than PlipBox.

I did say thank you to TerribleFire for putting SPI on his accelerator, so thank you too Spidi. I think there are enough A500s out there to support the 2 different styles - TF is quicker but not so easy to get quantities of 68030 chips these days, especially at high speed.
« Last Edit: March 10, 2017, 08:55:23 PM by Pat the Cat »
"To recurse is human. To iterate, divine."

A1200, Vanilla, Surf Squirrel, SD Card, KS 3.0/3.z, PCMCIA dev
A500, Vanilla, A570, Rev 5, KS 1.2/1.3 Testbench system
Rasp Pi, UAE4ARM, 3D laser scanner, experimental, hoping for AmigaOS4Arm, based on Watterott Fabscan Pi
 

Offline Iggy

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Re: Wicher 500i - classic turbo card for A500
« Reply #17 on: March 10, 2017, 09:09:31 PM »
Quote from: zipper;823170
The original 68HC000 in Supra Turbo 28 clocked happily to 28MHz - I did see some mentions that somebody did clock it to 42 MHz. Those CMOS chips were very tolerant.


I know about the Supra, and I have heard the claims of higher clocks, I've just never heard of anyone pushing one to 50MHz.

I'd love to know if they are overvolting it.
"Not making any hard and fast rules means that the moderators can use their good judgment in moderation, and we think the results speak for themselves." - Amiga.org, terms of service

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Amiga! "Our appeal has become more selective"
 

guest11527

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Re: Wicher 500i - classic turbo card for A500
« Reply #18 on: March 10, 2017, 09:27:22 PM »
Quote from: Iggy;823176
I know about the Supra, and I have heard the claims of higher clocks, I've just never heard of anyone pushing one to 50MHz.

The problem is that not all of the chips will make it to 50Mhz. There are good samples, and there are bad samples, depending on the quality of the die. Note that it can clock the CPU *up to* 50Mhz, not that it runs *always at* 50Mhz. If you're lucky, it will. Otherwise, it will run at a slower speed, in "worst case" at the nominal speed of the CPU.
 

Offline kolla

Re: Wicher 500i - classic turbo card for A500
« Reply #19 on: March 10, 2017, 11:36:44 PM »
The most annoying thing about a 50MHz 68000 is all the software that require 020+.

Btw, Minimig v1.1 can push the 680SEC00 to 49MHz.
B5D6A1D019D5D45BCC56F4782AC220D8B3E2A6CC
---
A3000/060CSPPC+CVPPC/128MB + 256MB BigRAM/Deneb USB
A4000/CS060/Mediator4000Di/Voodoo5/128MB
A1200/Blz1260/IndyAGA/192MB
A1200/Blz1260/64MB
A1200/Blz1230III/32MB
A1200/ACA1221
A600/V600v2/Subway USB
A600/Apollo630/32MB
A600/A6095
CD32/SX32/32MB/Plipbox
CD32/TF328
A500/V500v2
A500/MTec520
CDTV
MiSTer, MiST, FleaFPGAs and original Minimig
Peg1, SAM440 and Mac minis with MorphOS
 

Offline Rob

Re: Wicher 500i - classic turbo card for A500
« Reply #20 on: March 11, 2017, 06:14:03 AM »
Quote from: kolla;823182
The most annoying thing about a 50MHz 68000 is all the software that require 020+.

Btw, Minimig v1.1 can push the 680SEC00 to 49MHz.


Yaqube managed to get a stable 56.72Mhz  but only one of his Minimigs was able to go that fast.
 

Offline kolla

Re: Wicher 500i - classic turbo card for A500
« Reply #21 on: March 11, 2017, 06:03:15 PM »
Yeah, the rest of us run it at 49MHz or 42MHz, iirc.

Anyways, it's a bit annoying to have such a fast and stable system and not being able to use a lot of the software I want :)
« Last Edit: March 11, 2017, 06:05:20 PM by kolla »
B5D6A1D019D5D45BCC56F4782AC220D8B3E2A6CC
---
A3000/060CSPPC+CVPPC/128MB + 256MB BigRAM/Deneb USB
A4000/CS060/Mediator4000Di/Voodoo5/128MB
A1200/Blz1260/IndyAGA/192MB
A1200/Blz1260/64MB
A1200/Blz1230III/32MB
A1200/ACA1221
A600/V600v2/Subway USB
A600/Apollo630/32MB
A600/A6095
CD32/SX32/32MB/Plipbox
CD32/TF328
A500/V500v2
A500/MTec520
CDTV
MiSTer, MiST, FleaFPGAs and original Minimig
Peg1, SAM440 and Mac minis with MorphOS
 

Offline psxphill

Re: Wicher 500i - classic turbo card for A500
« Reply #22 on: March 11, 2017, 07:26:28 PM »
Quote from: kolla;823182
The most annoying thing about a 50MHz 68000 is all the software that require 020+.


Something like cyberpatcher/oxypatcher that trapped and patched code to run on 68000 would be great.

Back in the day I had a supra turbo 28mhz and wrote a couple of patches. One was for unaligned reads that a jpeg datatype used, but otherwise it ran fine on the 68000. It happened infrequently, so using the exception was good enough.
 

Offline Akiko

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Re: Wicher 500i - classic turbo card for A500
« Reply #23 on: March 13, 2017, 06:09:30 AM »
Any word on pricing?
 

guest11527

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Re: Wicher 500i - classic turbo card for A500
« Reply #24 on: March 13, 2017, 06:49:49 AM »
Quote from: psxphill;823206
Something like cyberpatcher/oxypatcher that trapped and patched code to run on 68000 would be great.
The result would be still very slow, and not very compatible. To list you a couple of problems this idea has:

First, while the 68060 had a separate exception for "instructions it should have implemented, but did not", the 68000 does not. Any advanced instruction just triggers the "invalid isntruction" exception, regardless of whether this instruction is valid on some member of the 68k family or not. Unfortunately, the same exception is used for debugging, and "true" invalid instructions.

Second, the result would be very slow. Remember, there is no support for extended instructions in the 68K, so it would have to decode these instructions manually, execute them manually, and write the results back manually. While the 68060 has enough horsepower to do that, the 68K does not.

Third, tools like MuRedox depend on the fact that the unimplemented instructions are all at least four bytes in size, so it can replace them by a 16-bit JSR instruction. That is not always the case here.
 

Offline psxphill

Re: Wicher 500i - classic turbo card for A500
« Reply #25 on: March 13, 2017, 08:59:46 AM »
Quote from: Thomas Richter;823262
First, while the 68060 had a separate exception for "instructions it should have implemented, but did not", the 68000 does not. Any advanced instruction just triggers the "invalid isntruction" exception, regardless of whether this instruction is valid on some member of the 68k family or not. Unfortunately, the same exception is used for debugging, and "true" invalid instructions.


As long as the handler looks for the emulated instructions first, then I don't see this as a big deal.

Quote from: Thomas Richter;823262

Second, the result would be very slow. Remember, there is no support for extended instructions in the 68K, so it would have to decode these instructions manually, execute them manually, and write the results back manually. While the 68060 has enough horsepower to do that, the 68K does not.


If the instructions were patched on the first use to jump into generated code then the overhead wouldn't be that great & it would run way faster than not being able to run it at all.

Quote from: Thomas Richter;823262
Third, tools like MuRedox depend on the fact that the unimplemented instructions are all at least four bytes in size, so it can replace them by a 16-bit JSR instruction. That is not always the case here.


Just move the following instruction as well in that case, using offsets that will trap if jumped to directly. I'll grant you that it's way more complex at that point.
 

Offline kolla

Re: Wicher 500i - classic turbo card for A500
« Reply #26 on: March 13, 2017, 09:34:44 AM »
Too much patching going on already, OS3.x needs a serious cleanup.
Software should very well be able to ask the OS what CPU they are running on, and use optimised functions accordingly.
B5D6A1D019D5D45BCC56F4782AC220D8B3E2A6CC
---
A3000/060CSPPC+CVPPC/128MB + 256MB BigRAM/Deneb USB
A4000/CS060/Mediator4000Di/Voodoo5/128MB
A1200/Blz1260/IndyAGA/192MB
A1200/Blz1260/64MB
A1200/Blz1230III/32MB
A1200/ACA1221
A600/V600v2/Subway USB
A600/Apollo630/32MB
A600/A6095
CD32/SX32/32MB/Plipbox
CD32/TF328
A500/V500v2
A500/MTec520
CDTV
MiSTer, MiST, FleaFPGAs and original Minimig
Peg1, SAM440 and Mac minis with MorphOS
 

Offline psxphill

Re: Wicher 500i - classic turbo card for A500
« Reply #27 on: March 13, 2017, 10:48:25 AM »
Quote from: kolla;823269
Too much patching going on already, OS3.x needs a serious cleanup.
Software should very well be able to ask the OS what CPU they are running on, and use optimised functions accordingly.


It can already, it's too much of a pain. What you want is a compiler which can generate mixed binaries and have the OS load the correct code for each.

That doesn't help with software written in the last 30 years though.
 

guest11527

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Re: Wicher 500i - classic turbo card for A500
« Reply #28 on: March 13, 2017, 12:05:18 PM »
Quote from: psxphill;823266
If the instructions were patched on the first use to jump into generated code then the overhead wouldn't be that great & it would run way faster than not being able to run it at all.
Actually, the overhead is rather big. The exception is a minor detail in the overall story.



Quote from: psxphill;823266
Just move the following instruction as well in that case, using offsets that will trap if jumped to directly. I'll grant you that it's way more complex at that point.
Ok, then let's make a compuation: Two instructions to be emulated together, so around 2^32 possible combinations. Ok, not exactly, there are less instructions, but you get the picture.

There is another problem, though. The MuRedox trick only works because it can relocate the last 32K of the addressing space to RAM, by means of the MMU. Now, the 68K only has a 24bit address space, and the first 32K are for exception vectors and chip memory, and the last 32K are ROM.

Hence, you'll need a full 32-bit jump, or 6 bytes, not just four bytes.

Anyhow.... If anyone wants to attempt this, go ahead. I even have here a partial solution which emulated a couple of instructions for the first Phoenix core, so you get a full EA decoder already, and an implementation of the bitfield instructions. You "only" have to fill in the rest... (-:
 

Offline wawrzon

Re: Wicher 500i - classic turbo card for A500
« Reply #29 from previous page: March 13, 2017, 01:25:57 PM »
Quote from: kolla;823269
Too much patching going on already, OS3.x needs a serious cleanup.
Software should very well be able to ask the OS what CPU they are running on, and use optimised functions accordingly.


but the current software doesnt ask the os what cpu it is running on. instead it relies on the user to choose the right version of the binary for the cpu by hand. awful! the only solution i can think of is a cpu that is backwards compatible or almost fully backward compatible to all 68k cpu versions out there. the closest realisation of which is apollo fpga core, for what ive heard.