WTB: Cyberstorm PPC

[Iggy]

In the next few weeks I might be in the market for a CSPPC to put in my A3000.

Anyone want to part with theirs? PM me with offers please.

Wow Nicholas, be prepared to spend big bucks.

[Iggy]

Ouch! Better sell both kidneys Nicholas.

[Iggy]

I have to disagree, though I think the cyberstorm ppc is very valuable $1300 is stretching it. $1k is good

Wow! If they're worth that much why hasn't somebody figured out how to clone them?

[Iggy]

Simple. So far it has cost to much in both time and money for little or no return on investment. Look how much the SAM's cost and be glad they are even available at all. Those are probably as close as you will get for a while.

I don't know. The cost of the components on a Cyberstorm PPC aren't anywhere near that high.
I'm not sure what the market would be, but if Jens can still find buyers for 68K accelerators there ought to be a market for PPC accelerators.

[Iggy]

I used to think that the A3000/T and A4000/T CPU connectors were these rare beasts but somewhere in my multi-hundreds of bookmarks I've got a source for the pin edge connectors for those things.

I think the A1200 edge connectors are a bit harder to source though (they probably have to be custom built)

You'll have to PM me a few of the better sources for those. The only real problem with new PPC accelerators would be obtaining good design documentation/schematics. We could actually build faster units (and possibly add more memory).

[Iggy]

Obsolete parts (and pretty much all parts on the CSPPC are obsolete by now) often have an extremly high asking price when bought NOS.

Then you would need to organize production and end up with a product that can't be sold legally in the EU (unless you do miracle work in turning 15++ years old part RoHS-compatible).

Also remember that the prices are only so high because the small group of potential buyers is meet with an even smaller group of potential sellers.

Just won't work buisness wise.

Are the Europeans really going to enforce RoHS rules on a limited number of hobbyist built devices?
And every time I think an old component is unobtainable or way too high priced, I find a source for them.

And believe it or not there are some 68060s that are RoHS-compatible (although most lack FPU and MMU).
A PPC replacement that is RoHS-compatible should not be nearly as hard as both Applied Micro and Freescale still have older lines in production or available.

Before you completely discount the idea, it ought to be examined.

[Iggy]

@iggy

This is surely way over head for pure hobbist and as soon as you make any kind of buisness out of it your bound bind the law (and yes thats a goog thing).

Neither Applied Micro nor Freescale over 100% pincompatible and RoHS friendly 603/604s and a redisign would blow costs out of water (mind you "we" will probraly also fail at getting the pcb-layout from Phase5/DCE anyways).

If you think that is simple, just look back at all the effort Jens had to put into his rather simple 030 bases ACA-cards.

Yes, I'd absolutely agree with you that where this whole proposal collapses is in obtaining Phase5's schematics or PCB layouts.
As far as redesign goes, I'm not your typical hobbyist in that I have some rather expensive design and layout software and I used to work for a company that built its own 68K based systems.
And yes, I was actually proposing a redesign to use compatible (but not pin compatible) PPCs.
Sounds horribly complicated, but with the right software its actually just tedious and time consuming.
At one point, before the MorphOS team adopted G4 Mac support, I'd completed about 50% of the work to convert a Freescale MPC8640 design to use an ATI SB600 (instead of a Uli Southbridge). Now THAT was difficult.
I don't think this would be as hard, except for one qualifier (two actually). The design would have to remain completely Phase5 software compatible. And, if I'm not mistaken, it violates the MorphOS development teams terms of agreement to use their software on boards built by other companies.

So, I'll place this one on the back burner, and accumulate data and suppliers list for it.

[Iggy]

Its just you. I use my A4000/csppc with mediator daily to do everything from listen to mp3's to handle my web store emails.View pdf's(well most).The mediator gives me 100MB ethernet,SB128 and a 1280x1024x32 workbench.Even tho the browser is old,Ibrowse still works for paying all my credit card bills and with my bank just fine.I print to a color xerox laser with netprinter.device fine.I still like picshow over many picture viewers on most platforms.dvd burning is handled with fryingpan or crazy franko's utilities. using 2-32gb cf's on the UWSCSI chain as hard drives makes it pretty quick and reliable(21MB/s!).Deneb makes using usb anything a breeze.It actually reads pictures in off my sony camera as fast as the 3ghz dell near me.Don't get me wrong,a a bit more speed would always be nice.
I actually get stuff done since i'm not rebooting from updates every 5 minutes
I honestly don't have any need for word documents,so this may be a point of contention to some.
Its costly to do this,but i take good care of my stuff and i have no worries it will bring the price i paid for it easily(i will never sell it...but if i do .
Best of all theres virtually no virus trouble ever(i call it security thru obscurity .
Obviously your results would be half as good on a A1200 which is signifigantly slower with simular expansions because of the bottlenecks and the blizzardppc 32 bit ram addressing and old narrow scsi vs the csppc 64bit memory addressing + UWSCSI and well as mediator bottlenecks..

So when people like you say its not usefull,i just have to think you have a total lack of imagination. You just need to use what works for you and quit obsessing over what it is.

I've been looking for a long time trying to find someone with a legacy system that was powerful enough for typical daily use. Congratulations on proving me wrong (as I've often contested that legacy hardware just couldn't compete with NG systems for daily use).
One of the points you make is very valid. An expanded 4000 would be much more competent then an expanded 1200. Which makes the idea of new PPC accelerators for 3000s and 4000s attractive.

[Iggy]

The problem is that they're only worth that much to a very small number of classic Amiga enthusiasts.  If these were to be re-manufactured in significant numbers (significant as taken to mean >200 for example), then no company would be able to shift them all for that much.  The price would have to come down significantly, to <£500 I would guess.

Re-manufacturing the old BPPC and CSPPC cards would be the cheapest way to go, but this would involve obtaining all of the design information.  It would be good if we could obtain this information (even from a self interest point of view), but I doubt they will ever release it unfortunately, which is a shame.
Assuming we did obtain all the information necessary to re-manufacture the boards, then we'd have all kinds of obselecence and Rohs compliance issues to deal with as Kronos has already mentioned.

The better way forwards would be to develop a completely new PPC accelerator.  But then you're talking about significant design costs, which would need to be recouperated in sales.  There's probably not enough money in the current market to do that, and that's why nobody has come up with a PPC replacement so far.

It seemed like Elbox had got pretty far with their SharkPPC cards.  I'm not sure why these never gor released, and it is a shame for sure.

AH

If I'm not mistaken SharkPPC cards were just modified Apple PCI accelerator cards.
A new PPC design would be attractive, but we'd have no software support.
Convincing Hyperion or the MorphOS development team to support such an effort would be very difficult.
However, when I look at the design for the original Efika, I'm inclined to agree with you.
We have the schematics for that. The Open Firmware would be difficult to reverse engineer. But a 256MB 400Mhz 5200B accelerator is doable and would be cheap.

[Iggy]

It's not a case of whether I accept it or not, it's just down to the simple fact that I've never had to use any of these Word/Office documents in my life. So even if it's a fact or not, it simply doesn't apply to me or affect me...

That's fascinating. Not having used Word format documents is a little like never using a PDF. I have to agree its become a standard. I used to use Ami Pro, then Wordperfect, but Word just stream rolled right over its competitors.
I'm not sure Open Office is the best direction for us to head, but Word format support is essential.

BTW - What's this got to do with PPC accelerators?

[Iggy]

>BTW - this has got nothing to do with PPC accelerators, not quite sure how we got on to this subject...

Like we ever stay on topic.
Actually, the only thing I've found essential with Word files is the ability to read them or convert them to a format I can edit on my own word processor.
This is why I find Open Office to be less then ideal. Its file conversions are often flawed.

[Iggy]

@ AppleHammer

Yeah, the thing that's troubling is a new design could be affordable (compared to making more Phase5 compatible cards).
Less software compatibility would also reduce their appeal.

[Iggy]

Someone, either here or at AW.net said they'd tracked down one of the chief designers of the P5 boards asking about that very thing (releasing the designs) and was quoted $200,000 as the lowest starting price for that info.

That is way beyond realistic. I have my doubts that the entire original run of those cards netted that much.

[Iggy]

Ben is obviously very conflicted. I've exchanged messages with him. Sometimes he can be very charming.
And there are some in the community that would like to spit on his grave.
Ben Hermans, Bill McEwen, Barry Altman - all lightening rods for controversy.

If I had a broken Phase5 card and a lot of time, I could figure out the layout.

[Iggy]

I
Obviously, board layout isn't the whole story.  There's plenty of programmed devices to consider as well.

It's a shame we can't just get our hands on the info though.  The technical info is useful for just keeping our machines going, even if we can't ever justify designing out the obselecence/non conformity and doing a new production run.


AH

That top part is what slowed me down with a re-implementation of a Freescale evaluation design. But even that can be overcome if you can figure out what it does (not how, what).

The board layers, yes an x-ray could prove useful, but then you have to figure out how to separate the layers. Another, much longer process, would be to test all the leads for continuity and re-create the schematic from the results.

But would all this hard work make sense? I don't know. But there would be the sense of accomplishment in defeating this and gaining the info.