Welcome, Guest. Please login or register.

Author Topic: What are the real speeds of Zorro II and III ?  (Read 9529 times)

Description:

0 Members and 2 Guests are viewing this topic.

Offline alexh

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Join Date: Apr 2005
  • Posts: 3644
    • Show all replies
    • http://thalion.atari.org
Re: What are the real speeds of Zorro II and III ?
« on: April 29, 2007, 09:55:35 AM »
Quote
If the Zorro II slot operates at 7.16 MHz and it is a 16 bit bus (16bit = 2 byte) then its transfer speed should really be 14.32 MByte/s.

That would be true if only there were not four clocks per bus cycle (Amiga Hardware Reference Manual, Page 391). There doesnt seem to be a burst mode and so 1 bus cycle is 16-bits. This is where the 3.58Mbyte/s value that is quoted in lots of places comes from.

(Note that Zorro II is a CPU clock synchronous bus and so PAL systems are 7.09MHz or 3.54Mbyte/s)

Quote
And if the Zorro III bus operates at 25MHz and it is a 32 bit bus (32bit = 4 byte) then its real transfer speed should be 100 MByte/s.

Zorro III is a totally asynchronous bus and so "25MHz*32-bit" is meaningless. The maximum speed of the Zorro III bus is determined by the setup-and-hold times of strobe signals going to the BUSTER. These are discussed in the HRM but I am not going to quote/prove them here.