Interrupts: help with tests

[darkcoder]

Hello!

I am doing a carefull analisys on clearing interrupt request.
In the end it became an interesting (I think) research on the internal working of 040/060 togehter with Amiga hardware.
To refine my conclusion I would like to have some more test performed.
So please, if you have a 060/040 Amiga, download the following small archive (3K) and perform the test. They will only take you few minutes.
Instructions are in the archive.

http://www.di.univaq.it/forlizzi/tests_200505.lha

thanks to all who will be so kind to help me!

[Framiga]

Done :-)

Someone else? please help this guy . . . if you can

[Karlos]

I will try after work today :-)

[Karlos]

Done!

I also included some quick amigados scripts I wrote to run all the tests with each cache combination.

Whatever it is you are doing, the CIA2 version is way the fastest ;-)

[darkcoder]

@ Karlos

 thank you very much for your interesting results and the very useful scripts!!

I am not comparing which is faster, those are only tests to understand how pipeline and interrupt issues work.
I have one question: is it possible to configure the number of waitstates of BPPC ?? You wrote that in your configuration. Can you give me further details? On which other board it is possible to do so?

regards

[Karlos]

I can't configure the number of waitstates, just wether there are any or not (for each CPU) and wether or not to use precharge (again for each CPU).

For best OS3.x performance I have found that 68K with no waitstates or precharge and PPC with no waitstates but with precharge works best.

Without precharge, the PPC seemed to be a little unstable. I should check that again actually, it might not have been the true cause.

[darkcoder]

I read the page that you have linked in the thread about MOVE16 to know what precharge is. From there I understood it is a delay so I would expect you can configure how long such a delay should be. Instead it is just yes/no ?
How do you perform the configuration? boot-menu?

sorry for so many questions!

[Karlos]

darkcoder wrote:

Instead it is just yes/no ?

I'm afraid so. The option is simply on/off for all the memory parameters.

How do you perform the configuration? boot-menu?

Yes, in the BPPC / CSPPC bootmenu (that you get when holding Esc). Once there you can go to the RAM settings and choose one of the following three options from a cycle gadget:

60ns / 70ns / Free Config

Unless you choose Free Config, the other options are ghosted out.

The remaining options are for Read Waitstate, Write Waitsate and Precharge (seperately settable for both 68K and PPC).

Basically all these options are simple on/off switches. You can't manually set any timings.

[patrik]

@darkcoder:

Why not post a new archive with the scripts included, I bet that would motivate more people to run the tests.


/Patrik

[Karlos]

Better still, make it appear to be a benchmark (timing the process). People always love outbenching other people :-D

[darkcoder]

@karlos

  ehehe...

  it could be an idea...indeed I already privately sent the scripts to one betatester who promised me to do the tests but has not yet sent his results.
For now, I had already results with the most common 060/040 boards (namely A3640, Cyberstorm 060 III, BPPC (040), B1260).
Of course other board would be welcome, but the results that I have are sufficient to draw some conclusion...not as interesting as I hoped, but...I am writing a tutorial on interrupts requests for the ADA coding forum.

About the boards, I have a Cyberstorm 060, with a non updated
boot-menu. There is the possibility of setting ram delay (60 or 70ns) but I don't remember this precharge thing. Maybe it's only configurable on the CPPC.

thanks for the info