Amiga.org
Amiga computer related discussion => Amiga Hardware Issues and discussion => Topic started by: Effy on April 02, 2010, 02:23:45 PM
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I decided to clean up a bit (old story) and found a turboboard that I can not find back in the Big Book. It fits in the 68000 space of my A500 but it does not boot. The little board has got an MC68020RC16 and an MC68882RC25A and on the side of the board I read : TS68020. Google tells me :
"Hcmos 32-bit Virtual Memory Microprocessor - Atmel Corporation
The TS68020 is the first full 32-bit implementation of the TS68000 family of micropro- cessors. Using HCMOS technology, the TS68020 is implemented with 32-bit Registers and data paths, 32-bit addresses, a rich instruction set, and versatile addressing modes. By ATMEL Corporation"
So it belongs to the TS68000 family. Wikipedia tells me about that : "Thomson TS68000 (=Motorola MC68000)."
And here ends my info. Any bright ideas ?
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Any change of getting some picrures? I'm sure we could figure out what it is supposed to do based on the supporting chips...
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Hurricane for A500 ?
http://amiga.resource.cx/exp/hurricane500
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"Hcmos 32-bit Virtual Memory Microprocessor - Atmel Corporation
The TS68020 is the first full 32-bit implementation of the TS68000 family of micropro- cessors. Using HCMOS technology, the TS68020 is implemented with 32-bit Registers and data paths, 32-bit addresses, a rich instruction set, and versatile addressing modes. By ATMEL Corporation"
Sounds very much like just a licensed 68020 clone, probably no connection to the board in question.
Does the board's shape look A500 optimized? Possibly it's intended for another system (Atari, Mac).
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The board itself looks actually far too small to be a turboboard for the Amiga, it doesn't even have a crystal to set the speed, no memory options, and it has less than half the size of a
Mtec 68020i... and also a lot smaller than a Hurricane ...
Unfortunately my stupid pc has decided to give my the finger this afternoon and gives me an
unrecoverable error on my C drive so I guess I can spend the next two days reinstalling XP
again before I can upload any pictures from my cell phone ...
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Trying to attach a picture ...
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Trying to attach a picture ...
Try again ;)
-Edit- Ok, you got it now :)
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It looks a bit like a CDTV accelerator, but no exact match on either Amiga hardware sites.
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Should I remove the processors and throw the backplane in the dustbin ?
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Should I remove the processors and throw the backplane in the dustbin?
No! Unless you're absolutely positive it wouldn't work in an Amiga. Somebody might come around and 'splain what it is. Might be for an Atari ST or Mac as someone suggested.
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Should I remove the processors and throw the backplane in the dustbin ?
Alas, perhaps yes, for the following reasons that I conclude from the small blury photo:
(Neg) Its slow: The board has NO clock oscillators on it, and therefore the 68020 and 68881 would run at bus speed (7.1mhz) and not be much faster than a 68010 - although it would haul ass at floating point calculations even with the slowest speed -881 FPU ever made (16Mhz) running at 7.1Mhz. Is there a clock on the bottom of the board?
(Neg) Its even slower: The board has NO memory chips, and NO connections for adding 32 bit memory. Is there a connector or memory on the bottom of the board?
(Neg) It wont work: The board has only one PAL on it and thats not enough glue logic to arbitrate the 020/881 32 bit bus to the Amiga 16 bit bus and allow and change speed with the custom chip/ram bus. It takes a modern CPLD or 3 large or 4 small PAL chips to glue.
Are there more chips on the bottom of the board?
(Pos) It is well made and uses some extremely good capacitors (the silver Tantalums) and therefore probably has other good design features.
The bottom line is: what speed are the chips?
The last 2 numbers of the chip are the speed grade.
Example - A MC68020RC16 is a 16 Mhz CPU, and a MC68881RC25 is a 25 Mhz FPU
I think you'd have little hope of selling 20 Mhz (or lower) speed chips and therefore the PCB is worth more (to someone, somewhere) than the CPU/FPU chips are. If it was for a system that had a 25Mhz 68000 socket (and the board has a clock doubler) and your chips are RC33 - RC50 speed then the chips are indeed worth more than the PCB, because there is no way that board would work in an Amiga 68000 socket, IMHO.
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The 020 is a rc16e and the 68882 is a rc25a and one of the chips has the name Pal on it ...
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@joetee
It might just be a very simplistic design, running the '020 in 16 bit mode synchronously, reducing glue logic to a minimum. Only speed up you'd get is from instruction cache and FPU.
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No point in removing the chips unless you have use for them, and no reason to throw the board in the bin unless it bothers you or is in your way (I doubt that). If for nothing else, the board seems quite usable for storing a 020 and a 882 together :P
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It's the "storing" that happens to be the problem in my house. If I remove the 68882 then I can use it on a processorboard :)
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Then remove the FPU and use it, but I think we can investigate the board with a better picture.
Can you measure the +5V rail on the card with it hooked into an A500?
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Duhh ?! Do you think that everybody is as intelligent as you ? Measuring ? You're kidding I hope ?! Dude, I just finished kinder garten, don't ask me to do something as complicated as measuring !! I may borrow the videocamera of my parents and try to take a picture with that though ...
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Looks like there are excellent kinder gartens in Belgium! :)
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Looks similar in principal to the following card I found:
http://amiga.resource.cx/exp/sapphire
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Nah, its not a Sapphire, this to me (like save2600 suggested) a possible Atari ST accelerator.
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Duhh ?! Do you think that everybody is as intelligent as you ? Measuring ? You're kidding I hope ?! Dude, I just finished kinder garten, don't ask me to do something as complicated as measuring !! I may borrow the videocamera of my parents and try to take a picture with that though ...
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Are you drunk or something? Somebody states a perfectly reasonable question and you react like like that?
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odin : that was meant as a joke, I am really not technical minded, my skills really don't get much further than changing a processor, it was meant to be offending at all, rather the opposite, I have loads of respect for those guys that can change every part of the computer that they want, I can't do that for sure :)