Poll, new accelerator for A500/A600.

[Doppie1200]

I would be happy when there was a cheap board that adds 4MB of fastram and clips over the A600's CPU.

It would allow me to play WHDLOAD games and have the PCMCIA free.

It is just a fasram upgrade and that is much easier to accomplish. If you'd create that you might even finish it some day.

[Doppie1200]

A simple fastram expantion around 40 euro's is something I would buy. Having an 030 board in an A600 is nice but I'm interested in whdload gaming and then all I need is some fastram.

The advantage of having only 4M is that the PCMCIA is still usable.

Perhaps you could add one thing to attract more buyers; an MP3 decoder.
Then the MAS player won't be needed. The decoder could be fed data using some glue logic via a free address in the memory map of the A600. Perhaps where the clockport is on the A1200.

Edit: ofcourse the buyer would be required to connect the audio output of the decoder to something. That could be a drawback but on the other hand creates the hack factor we all love so much


But you must be carefull not to make the board too complex since that is what makes it feasable and affordable.

[Doppie1200]

alexh wrote:

The advantage of having only 4M is that the PCMCIA is still usable.

Edit:

Yeah unfortunately the standard A600's address range is limited to 24-bits (16Mbytes)

Yes I know. But 4M would still stay clear of the PCMCIA. 8M will clash. But perhaps the MP3 trick can be done using one of the so calles reserved spaces. I don't know where the A1200 clock space resides. But I thought it was withil 68000 addressable range.

[Doppie1200]

Great! Normally, when I see someone starting threads like this going about putting god knows what in an A500 or 600, I think 'yet another accelerator dream thread'.

But when someone actually acquires a substantial lot of EC020 and is not desposing the lean accelerator idea, I think this might even come to see the light of day.

Too give you insight on what people are willing to pay you could ask wayne to start a real poll.

Place your specs (for example):
A600 accelerator (or A500 whatever you decide)
??MB Ram
and so on.

Price:

A. < 40 euro
B. 40 - 60 euro
C. 60 - 80 euro
D. 80 - 100 euro
F. I'll pay whatever you ask.

How about that for an idea.

[Doppie1200]

RTC is mostly present on chipram expantions. This goes for the A500 as for the A600.

How would one create a version suitable for both machines?
You'd need an DIL socket as an PLCC clip over socket on the same board. This might make it too big to fit in the A600.

Would it be an idea to make a simple header that connects to either a PLCC for the A600 or a DIL for the A500 via a cable. That would make the PCB smaller. However you can expect trouble with when the bustiming using cables.

For the A500 you would not need the original CPU anymore. But on the A600 the CPU must be disabled somehow.

As for fast connectivity with an A500 the on board ethernet could make things too complex. How is a high speed UART as option?

[Doppie1200]

if the A500 version is going to be the one, is there a way to make it small enough so that it will be hackable into an A600. Then all would be satisfied.

Glad to see the end price of the auction is not driving up the cost per component greatly

[Doppie1200]

Yes I would love to use the 600 for that purpose. I think it would make a kick ass game machine!

It has been some years since I last designed hardware. But I'd love to give a shot at a fastram expansion. I would first make a proto board using an A500. Just a hacked together board using neat wires. Then I would turn it into a PCB suitable for the A600. That should work.

Sadly I don't have the financial muscle to finance a small batch of PCB's.

As for newton flash; how can flash memory be turned into random access memory?

[Doppie1200]

I think it is someone who works or used to work at the distributer. Amiga Inc might have done a Life Time Buy when they where producing A1200 boards. This means they estimate how much they intend to produce and buy all obsolete components before the manufacturer runs out.

In 1995 the EC20 sure was obsolete. So they might have had to order a substantial lot so motorola could run another batch and make a profit. This might be the left overs.

But I'm not going to buy them. I won't finish an accelerator anyway because of earlier mentioned reasons.

[Doppie1200]

hehe this implicitly tells me your after an A600 accelerator.
Otherwise I'd go for an A600 version and you can go for the A500 version. Then again I don't have the financial backbone to invest such a thing. The return is too uncertain.

[Doppie1200]

Ok, here a heads up for production;

What about RoHS compliance. Will there be a board manufacturer that is still able to mount the old 020EC IC.

The IC is one from the past and is surely not tested for a lead free production process.

I recall manufacturers are required to have their production processes RoHS compliant by law somewhere 2006.

That would mean the 020EC is not surface mountable by default. The lead free soldering process uses higher temperatures the 020EC can cope with.

This could pose a problem. Can someone with more knowledge investigate.
I will ask collegues of mine that work at the hardware dept.

Just thought I should mention it.

[Doppie1200]

what is your plan? Are you going to create two seperate boards? One for the 500 and one for the 600?