Sonnet crescendo 7200 and OS4.1

[trixster]

I think your best bet would be to ask your questions to Hedeon (the sonnet powerpc.library guy) directly in the EAB sonnet thread.

Regarding other ppc cpus and boards, the team had this to say:

"In theory other PPC boards could be supported, maybe easily, if they have an MPC107 Northbridge (PCI/Memory controller), don't have a flashrom that autoboots the board on their own and aren't hardware forced into "Master" mode. Other MPC107 "clone" or "compatible" controllers might work too, for instance the MPC842x or Harrier controllers, but it hasn't been done yet so "might" work applies."

I have never used AOs4 so I have no idea how it works, but I was under the impression that getting AOs4 to run on sonnet-type processor cards was not an insurmountable problem (just a very difficult one), and it is a low priority for Hedeon at the moment.

Selected quotes from the thread:

"talk of running OS4 is at this moment a pipe dream. There is no work being done in this area."

"Initialising Mediator and Voodoo is a trivial problem (that could be implemented in many different ways - either a binary started from OS3, or a module loaded from Deneb). The real problems are modifications necessary to OS4 kernel and drivers - note that Sonnet CPU can not directly access the Amiga bus, unlike in Phase5 cards. _That_ would be a huge task."

"the Sonnet cannot access the Amiga bus. So if it would ever materialize, you would need some SATA/IDE card to boot from and to connect a mouse, keyboard HDD etc. to as none of the Amiga chipset can be reached."

I am not an expert on this so I don't really know what i'm talking about happy to be corrected.

[Iggy]

Thanks for the multiplicity of clarifications gentlemen.

[Akiko]

It seems like an OS4.1 port is completely out of the question. It would be cool though if these cards could be harnessed as coprocessors under OS4.1 Classic, the same way as they are currently under OS3.9 to run specific WarpOS programs.

[Iggy]

It seems like an OS4.1 port is completely out of the question. It would be cool though if these cards could be harnessed as coprocessors under OS4.1 Classic, the same way as they are currently under OS3.9 to run specific WarpOS programs.

Interesting thought. It would be more powerful than a standard 603/604 PPC processor. Without calling it SMP, could two PPC cpus be implemented under OS4? The cpu plugged into the cou slot would obviously have to be the master, but I can't see why some tasks couldn't be farmed out to the G4.

[billt]

So, I am unclear on this.
Will Hyperion eventually support the use of the Sonnet crescendo 7200 when installed on PCI enhanced legacy Amigas?

How many customers can possibly use this? 1 or 2? Have you ever seen the correct Sonnet card for sale? I've found a couple mislabelled as this on ebay but were incorrect. Does it make sense to support such a board that effectively no one can run OS4 or even OS3.1 on?

[Jeff]

I have a Sonnet in my A4000D Mediator system and most of the time it isn't stable enough to be useful for anything other than dos based benchmarks. Not worth it yet IMHO.

[trixster]

My experience with a sonnet seems to be a little different from yours, Jeff. It took quite a lot of effort to get mine stable but it now runs from first boot for hours without a hitch. The issue ive found with sonnet is there is no easy turn-key set up as its dependant on lots of cobbled-together elements.

It needs a working, stable Mediator. It needs a 3.3v-equipped regulator Mediator or a modded sonnet or modded Mediator busboard. It needs a stable p96 environment, a good psu, enough cooling, a working voodoo or Radeon, the correct FPM ram, a workbench that's not full of conflicting patches, the correct ENV settings etc. These are lots of elements that can trip it up so it's difficult to troubleshoot.

Is it worth it? In my opinion, yes, and I think Wrangler would agree, but it's still time and a lot of cash to spend to get WOS stuff running, so I can see why people do not think it's worth the effort. spending $$$ can be difficult to justify sometimes!

I'd love to see AOs4 or iFusion working on sonnet/rapture.

[Iggy]

How many customers can possibly use this? 1 or 2? Have you ever seen the correct Sonnet card for sale? I've found a couple mislabelled as this on ebay but were incorrect. Does it make sense to support such a board that effectively no one can run OS4 or even OS3.1 on?

I've seen a few, but the majority needed to be repaired.
Currently I don't own an Amiga with a PCI expansion bus.

But I'd assume that anyone with a 4000 with a mediator would be a possible candidate, so I'd assume its more than "1 or 2".

Exploring using the card isn't something we can vote on, the team working on it wants to use it, so its getting done.

My basic question was could it be used for something more than WarpOS packages, since there are only a few of those.

Personally, if a new PPC board for legacy Amigas was created, I'd rather have something that fits in the processor slot and has access to the chipset.

An A4000 equipped with a 1GHz G4 would be very competitive with some AmigaOne's and it would be able to run software that hits hardware directly.
Add a mediator and an RTG card and you've got a legacy system that is as powerful as an AmigaOne, but retains register level compatibility.

[amiadudeorwat]

I've seen a few, but the majority needed to be repaired.
Currently I don't own an Amiga with a PCI expansion bus.

But I'd assume that anyone with a 4000 with a mediator would be a possible candidate, so I'd assume its more than "1 or 2".

Exploring using the card isn't something we can vote on, the team working on it wants to use it, so its getting done.

My basic question was could it be used for something more than WarpOS packages, since there are only a few of those.

Personally, if a new PPC board for legacy Amigas was created, I'd rather have something that fits in the processor slot and has access to the chipset.

An A4000 equipped with a 1GHz G4 would be very competitive with some AmigaOne's and it would be able to run software that hits hardware directly.
Add a mediator and an RTG card and you've got a legacy system that is as powerful as an AmigaOne, but retains register level compatibility.

The fast access to Voodoo graphics memory would be lost with an A4000 accelerator slot unless someone also built a GREX like replacement PCI busboard.

[Kronos]

The fast access to Voodoo graphics memory would be lost with an A4000 accelerator slot unless someone also built a GREX like replacement PCI busboard.

At which point (PPC-CPU+PCI+access2AmigaMobo) you'd be back at what the Escena-A1 was supposed to be.


Well that was a pointless brainfart 20 years ago........

[nicholas]

Has anyone tried a Sonnet in an Amithlon machine?

[Iggy]

The fast access to Voodoo graphics memory would be lost with an A4000 accelerator slot unless someone also built a GREX like replacement PCI busboard.

Fast? Funny, I never thought of 33 MHz as fast, but I see your point, faster than accessing the PCI bus through some bridge.
And it would be nice to have support for something faster than a Voodoo3.
Would a Voodoo 4 4500 work?

[Iggy]

At which point (PPC-CPU+PCI+access2AmigaMobo) you'd be back at what the Escena-A1 was supposed to be.


Well that was a pointless brainfart 20 years ago........

Can you point me to technical info on that?
It doesn't sound like they had the resources to realize it, but the idea sounds practical.

I wasn't really paying attention to the Amiga community at that point.
All I've heard about that project merely made it sound like a scam, but a "pointless brainfart"?
What seems pointless, is that when you tack a PCI bus onto an Amiga everything is coordinated via a bridge to the much slower native bus.
Why not have a direct PCI connection to the PPC cpu?

[amiadudeorwat]

Fast? Funny, I never thought of 33 MHz as fast, but I see your point, faster than accessing the PCI bus through some bridge.
And it would be nice to have support for something faster than a Voodoo3.
Would a Voodoo 4 4500 work?

As I understand it the Sonnet or Rapture can write to the Voodoo or Radeon graphics memory directly bypassing Zorro and Buster, so it is much faster than getting data from the accelerator slot.  33 MHz PCI gets 133MB/s compared to the typical 10-14MB/s Zorro-3 allows, on a good day.  I don't know what sort of speed the Sonnet gets but from some of the applications that run at the framerates they run it is at least 30MB/s.  

From what I've read on the EAB thread, Voodoo 4 works but the Elbox driver doesn't support Big Endian modes so some applications don't work or have wrong colors.

[Motormouth]

I have a Sonnet in my A4000D Mediator system and most of the time it isn't stable enough to be useful for anything other than dos based benchmarks. Not worth it yet IMHO.

I had several issues getting mine stable, initially issues with the mediator itself that elbox fixed, and then issues with warp3d mostly due to bad memory in a voodoo card.   Now it is rock solid, not really any issues with the Sonnet itself, or the sonnet project software.

As long as you have the correct pci.library from elbox, powerpc.library from jenkins, and a video card properly installed, the sonnet should work.

I agree the biggest limitation is the number of software titles that can be run.

[Motormouth]

As I understand it the Sonnet or Rapture can write to the Voodoo or Radeon graphics memory directly bypassing Zorro and Buster, so it is much faster than getting data from the accelerator slot.  33 MHz PCI gets 133MB/s compared to the typical 10-14MB/s Zorro-3 allows, on a good day.  I don't know what sort of speed the Sonnet gets but from some of the applications that run at the framerates they run it is at least 30MB/s.  

From what I've read on the EAB thread, Voodoo 4 works but the Elbox driver doesn't support Big Endian modes so some applications don't work or have wrong colors.

I got lucky and got a voodoo 4 at a yard sale (in another thread).  I have been using for about a week and it has been working fabulously, not 100% tested yet.  The only thing that has color issues (so far) is wipeout's opening 2-D images, but the voodoo 3 also had this same issue.