FPGA Replay Board

[mongo]

Strange from the link on freescale site
 
EC has both
 
LC has no FPU

LC has MMU but no FPU. EC has no MMU or FPU.

[boing4000]

LC has MMU but no FPU. EC has no MMU or FPU.

Not entirely true, as to read at prev. site... or the chip here is printed wrong.

[Gulliver]

@Mikej
Why instead of supplying the expansion board with a built-in 68060, you just sell it in two variants, a cheaper one without 68060, only with its socket.

Another recommendation, is that you enable 5 volts on the cpu socket by changing a jumper, so that you may even use a 68040 and you may avoid 060 shortage or even allow price reduction this way (68040 are way cheaper).

PS: 68EC060 cpus are much more easily overclockable than their counterparts. A fact of life of the 68k line cpus is that the FPU is the less tolerant component to overclock, so if you get rid of it, you can go higher mhz.

[Darrin]

@Mikej
Why instead of supplying the expansion board with a built-in 68060, you just sell it in two variants, a cheaper one without 68060, only with its socket.

Why make 2 variants when you only need one?  If you don't want the 68060 then you buy the main board with the soft CPU (ideal for most uses and gaming) and then buy the daughterboard if you fancy more power, USB, Ethernet, etc.

Mike's idea of having just one main board makes more economic sense.  Two or more options is just going to add to the base cost.

[Hattig]

The base board's enough for me. I am assuming that in the course of the next couple of years the FPGA '020 core will evolve to '040 levels of performance too, but even if not a ~50MHz '30 isn't to be sniffed at! I'd rather chunky graphics were grafted onto the FPGA AGA core first.

[Crom00]

Great job on the replay stuff Mike. I had PM'd you about buying one of these when available will gladly get one of these babies.

So why exactly is the 060 so expensive I checked the freescale parts page...It's a 15 year old design I figure they could make if for pennies or a few bucks...

Is it that it's use today is strictly as a replacement part for military industrial complex projects? For consumer stuff I'd imagine there are a dozen or more economical options..

[Belial6]

Another couple of years, and I would hope that Mike has found the bottlenecks that we can assume exist in this revision (As they do in every computer) and uses any new tech that becomes available, due to new design, or price drops, and we can buy a version 2 that dramatically improves on the current design.  We get two years of really cool retro computing, Mike gets to sell us another product, we get new toys, and then we get a few more years before Mike release a version 3.

Rinse. repeat.

[mongo]

Not entirely true, as to read at prev. site... or the chip here is printed wrong.

An EC is an LC that has a MMU that tested bad or that was never tested.

Don't count on the MMU of an EC to be working 100%, if at all.

[Gulliver]

Why make 2 variants when you only need one?  If you don't want the 68060 then you buy the main board with the soft CPU (ideal for most uses and gaming) and then buy the daughterboard if you fancy more power, USB, Ethernet, etc.

Mike's idea of having just one main board makes more economic sense.  Two or more options is just going to add to the base cost.

You are wrong in your assumption, you should understand you dont need to modify the design, just the amount of components you place on the expansion board (one less). Besides it allows you not to tie the board sales to the availability of Mikej to source 68060 cpus and even allow him to target customers with less income (a 68060 cpu in the 2nd hand market is at least $40).
So this second choice gives both Mikej and customers more freedom without any overhead.

[B00tDisk]

So why exactly is the 060 so expensive I checked the freescale parts page...It's a 15 year old design I figure they could make if for pennies or a few bucks...

I'm just speculating here but I think there could be a couple of reasons: do they still make 060s any more?  If not it's a dead product and they're keeping the prices at what they were when they were new.  They're doing so because they want to drive developers towards different CPU architectures, and bleed the people who insist they "need" 060s for whatever reason for as much as they can.

[Darrin]

You are wrong in your assumption, you should understand you dont need to modify the design, just the amount of components you place on the expansion board (one less). Besides it allows you not to tie the board sales to the availability of Mikej to source 68060 cpus and even allow him to target customers with less income (a 68060 cpu in the 2nd hand market is at least $40).
So this second choice gives both Mikej and customers more freedom without any overhead.

Not really.  It adds components thus price so those who don't want a different CPU end up paying for something they don't need.  Best to keep any "extras" (and the cost of them) on the daughterboard for those who want them.  Remember, you don't need the daughterboard for the FPGA to run, it is an optional extra and the chances are that if you're they type who wants a 68040/68060 then you'll also want USB, Ethernet and anything else you can get your mits on.

[guest7146]

So why exactly is the 060 so expensive I checked the freescale parts page...It's a 15 year old design I figure they could make if for pennies or a few bucks...

The problem is that nobody makes these CPUs anymore, so there aren't very many on the market.  There's still demand for them, but they're in that nasty little area where there's not enough demand to warrant any significant production run, but there is enough demand to inflate the prices of the currently available devices on the market.

There are companies who specialise in this sort of business.  They buy up stock of parts that are about to go obsolete and then they sell them on at a highly inflated price to desperate organisations who need to do a production batch but don't have the budget to design-out the obsolesence.  I've had personal experience with parts that in their day cost a couple of pennies each, but are now being sold by said companies for £50 a time.  That's a price inflation of about 2500 times.  Believe it or not, we still paid this price because for the size of our production run it was far cheaper to suck up the £50 per part cost than to design and make a new PCB to accommodate a new part.

Hop on over to digikey and try to buy yourself a 68060 CPU in a one-off quantity.  Sit yourself down before you look at the price ;-)

AH

[desiv]

It probably won't affect availability of 60's for Amiga users, as they are probably stock on hand (not making them anymore?), but as I understand it, Freescale has a major plant in/near Sendai and the recent events have seriously affected them....

desiv

[wizard66]

Why make 2 variants when you only need one?  If you don't want the 68060 then you buy the main board with the soft CPU (ideal for most uses and gaming) and then buy the daughterboard if you fancy more power, USB, Ethernet, etc.

Mike's idea of having just one main board makes more economic sense.  Two or more options is just going to add to the base cost.

I have my own MC68060RC50 with the Mask 1E41J special for this board.
I think 2 variants are better 1 with and 1 without CPU just the socket, all happy.

[Darrin]

I have my own MC68060RC50 with the Mask 1E41J special for this board.
I think 2 variants are better 1 with and 1 without CPU just the socket, all happy.

You don't want USB, Ethernet, extra RAM and the RTC?

[wizard66]

You don't want USB, Ethernet, extra RAM and the RTC?

Sure I want one, I have the 060 on my desk for the daughterboard :-)
So two variations of the daughterboard will be fine one with and one without cpu
Why buy a other CPU when you have them @home on the shelf

And more RAM?  Yes please !! But I want to know much RAM is on the daughterboard :-)