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Amiga computer related discussion => Amiga Hardware Issues and discussion => Topic started by: AmigaClassicRule on December 10, 2012, 07:28:42 PM
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I am not so sure if this topic already was posted here but I am wondering will there be ever an ACA1240 or ACA1260?
I like the way ACA1232 looks, I like the cheap price of it and I like the power behind it, especially where the RAM is soldiered in and not a SIMM which saves a lot of space for A1200D, especially. I love how it comes already with 128 MB of RAM too.
I was wondering, will there be something like that for an ACA1240 or ACA1260 where it will be running on 040 or 060 instead of the 030? This will be better than the outdated and over priced accelerator cards we get from eBay or AmiBay where there also risk being rarer and rarer to find.
If the price factor and the fact that it is not economically feasible for profit wise for manufacturer, why not then increase the speed of the ACA1232 itself from 33 Mhz (which seems a little slow for me) to something like 100 or 200 Mhz? This way we get the full compatibility of all the applications and games that 030 provide and it could outspeed even the 060. I am sure I can spend 800 dollars for a 200 Mhz 68k if I am willing to spend 1k on an outdated 060 card on eBay.
Thanks in advance.
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I'm pretty sure a 030 won't run at 100MHz, let alone 200MHz.
As for availability of higher end accelerators. I asked Jens that very question a couple of weeks ago. His reply was along the lines of "not in the foreseeable future" and "way too complex to be practical".
EDIT: Actually, cut that last part. He never mentioned it to be too complicated to achieve. He did, however, say that if I was interested in a fast Amiga now I should invest in one of his 1230 series cards.
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I'm pretty sure a 030 won't run at 100MHz, let alone 200MHz.
As for availability of higher end accelerators. I asked Jens that very question a couple of weeks ago. His reply was along the lines of "not in the foreseeable future" and "way too complex to be practical".
EDIT: Actually, cut that last part. He never mentioned it to be too complicated to achieve. He did, however, say that if I was interested in a fast Amiga now I should invest in one of his 1230 series cards.
Jens if you are listening or reading this it is for you. I am going to INVEST in one of your 1230 series because I am hoping you are a man of your words and you will make a new faster ACA series for the Amiga. Because I love everything about your ACA design, the color, the shape, AND ESPECIALLY HOW EVERYTHING is in soldiered into the card ITSELF,for example the ram and how it is fixed to 128 MB. I love that!! It is really a space saver for my Amiga 1200 and I love how it is a completely new hardware and not old. If you see a new sale on it, it is because I bought one.
I added it to my shopping cart in AmigaKit. I am just waiting for the new supply of them to show up right now they are unavailable in AmigaKit.
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I have a feeling that ACA1240 is quite plausible :)
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I can understand why he isn't making 060 cards. He is saving all the 060 chips for Natami and FPGAReplay boards.
I donno why he isn't making 040 cards tho.
Jens please please please please make an 040 card!
I wrote a game that really needs a cpu with a real L1 cache and high execution speed. I burn all available cpu power rendering animations in the game at super high speeds. In all of my many timing tests 040 provides a big boost over 030.
I can't realtime decompress mods, mp3s or soundfx on slooooooooow 030.
I can't do fullscreen rotation on 030. Its just entirely too slow.
Please make an 040 card with 128MB of ram (or more) onboard. The 128MB of RAM really helps out with the coding, debugging, multitasking etc. etc.
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Most of the old 68040 accelerators were 25Mhz which is like a 75Mhz 030.
But there was the WarpEngine 4040 which was 40Mhz for A2000 which was really zooooming fast. I assume there is no way to use that in an A1200?
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Maybe with some modern-type, active cooling...
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I can understand why he isn't making 060 cards. He is saving all the 060 chips for Natami and FPGAReplay boards.
I donno why he isn't making 040 cards tho.
Jens please please please please make an 040 card!
I wrote a game that really needs a cpu with a real L1 cache and high execution speed. I burn all available cpu power rendering animations in the game at super high speeds. In all of my many timing tests 040 provides a big boost over 030.
I can't realtime decompress mods, mp3s or soundfx on slooooooooow 030.
I can't do fullscreen rotation on 030. Its just entirely too slow.
Please make an 040 card with 128MB of ram (or more) onboard. The 128MB of RAM really helps out with the coding, debugging, multitasking etc. etc.
AFAIK, NATAMI is going to rely on it's own softcore which they call the 68070. So no 68060 required. And isn't the goal of the FPGAReplay developers to eventually end up with an integrated solution (perhaps even one based on NATAMI) as well?
Amen on the programming part.
I recently got back into programming games and this would certainly be a nice minimum spec for a render adventure. Though I'd probably still want a 68060 at one point.
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All Natamis produced to date include a real 060 @~90Mhz
The expansion board for FPGAReplay also has a similar 060. Probably the exact same kind.
If you can get ahold of an Apollo 040 or 060 card then Cosmos can mod it into an 80Mhz 060 for u.
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@AmigaClassicRule
Please don't buy an ACA because you expect a faster one later - I think it's very unlikely Jens will make one, and he's never promised he will.
Things to bear in mind:
The 68030 is based on the 68020 - it's a simple accelerator. The 68040 is NOT - it is quite different, which is why you need 68040.library and not a 68030.library. 68060 is closer to 68020 in many ways, but in other ways even more incompatible.
The 68040 is a real heat monster. This is why you should only use 68040s in towered Amigas. 68060s are better.
68060s are near impossible to find new, I believe. Chinese suppliers claim to have them but there's doubt as to how genuine they are. 68040s the same, but I don't even think the Chinese sell them.
I can't speak for Jens, but I get the strong impression that there will be never be a faster ACA than the 56MHz one - and he's already discontinued that one.
Certainly don't just buy an ACA in the expectation of getting a faster one down the line - the ACA is a fantastic accelerator as it is, buy it for that reason. Then you won't be disappointed.
Incidentally, a 200MHz 68030? Maximum speed on a 68030 is 50MHz (the 56MHz is overclocked and pushing it) I believe? 200MHz or even 100MHz is completely impossible without a major redesign - and it wouldn't be a 68030 any more. :)
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68060s are near impossible to find new, I believe. Chinese suppliers claim to have them but there's doubt as to how genuine they are. 68040s the same, but I don't even think the Chinese sell them.
Chinese don't sell 68040s because they are too busy relabeling them as 68060s.
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Chinese don't sell 68040s because they are too busy relabeling them as 68060s.
:laugh1:
u r joking, right?
btw: 2 teams of ppl have acquired numbers of those 060s and they really can go 100Mhz and they are real 060s. Some have FPU some don't. I think only the nonFPU chips can reach 90Mhz but I can't remember right now.
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Jens has already indicated that FPGA is the way to go for high-end cards.
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@AmigaClassicRule
Please don't buy an ACA because you expect a faster one later - I think it's very unlikely Jens will make one, and he's never promised he will.
Things to bear in mind:
The 68030 is based on the 68020 - it's a simple accelerator. The 68040 is NOT - it is quite different, which is why you need 68040.library and not a 68030.library. 68060 is closer to 68020 in many ways, but in other ways even more incompatible.
The 68040 is a real heat monster. This is why you should only use 68040s in towered Amigas. 68060s are better.
68060s are near impossible to find new, I believe. Chinese suppliers claim to have them but there's doubt as to how genuine they are. 68040s the same, but I don't even think the Chinese sell them.
I can't speak for Jens, but I get the strong impression that there will be never be a faster ACA than the 56MHz one - and he's already discontinued that one.
Certainly don't just buy an ACA in the expectation of getting a faster one down the line - the ACA is a fantastic accelerator as it is, buy it for that reason. Then you won't be disappointed.
Incidentally, a 200MHz 68030? Maximum speed on a 68030 is 50MHz (the 56MHz is overclocked and pushing it) I believe? 200MHz or even 100MHz is completely impossible without a major redesign - and it wouldn't be a 68030 any more. :)
Oh, the only downside or fear I have with ACA is that it may not be fast enough for a smooth 20 fps ScummVMAGA games and it may not run 20 fps easily HAMP.RUN movies as well as say a 040 or a 060? If it can run games of ScummVMAGA with 20 fps smoothness as well as HAMP movie then the ACA1232 is most perfect card ever, because it comes with 128 Mb of RAM and very financially easy to me.
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btw: 2 teams of ppl have acquired numbers of those 060s and they really can go 100Mhz and they are real 060s. Some have FPU some don't. I think only the nonFPU chips can reach 90Mhz but I can't remember right now.
Yup. It's Mc68060fe133.
Kinda weird looking, and lacking MMU (FPU?), but legit, and capable of 100+ MHz clocks.
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Jens has already indicated that FPGA is the way to go for high-end cards.
I wish people stopped indicating and started doing things.
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:laugh1:
u r joking, right?
There's certainly some counterfeiting going on so it wouldn't surprise me if they were.
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Yup. It's Mc68060fe133.
Kinda weird looking, and lacking MMU (FPU?), but legit, and capable of 100+ MHz clocks.
Yeah I want one of the "slow" ones that is limited to 90Mhz but has MMU cause I needz it 4 my debuggin :)
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It's getting tough to source quantities of 68060s, don't expect anything there.
And the 68040 is a hot chip. I had an A1200 25MHz 68040 accelerator back in the day, and it had a fan and it was noisy and barely fitted in the trapdoor.
Maybe the FPGA Arcade softcore will evolve to a state where it competes in overall performance with a 68040 or even higher, and then Jens could create an ACA12FPGA running that soft core, using a modern FPGA to get the most performance out of the soft core. I wouldn't worry about putting money aside for that right now though. Hopefully he can find some more 50MHz+ '030s for more 56MHz ACA1230s.
I don't have much faith in the Natami project to come through with their 68050 however. The project is pretty much dead.
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Bought the ACA-1231. Looked at the ACA-1232 but it's a slower card, 64MB RAM should do me fine with a 68030 for the meantime, plus Ill be getting 9+ Mips which is great for most things where the ACA-1232 is 7 odd Mips?
Anyway, it's new hardware so can't complain. Just have to wait for it to turn up boohoo.
Although a 68060 would be great. But that will be next year and it'll be a second hand card :-( An FPGA would be the way go, would be cheaper?
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what is it that you ppl want to do on an amiga w/ AmigaOS with a 68060 that you can't do with an o'clocked 030 w/128+ megs ram?
just curious.
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what is it that you ppl want to do on an amiga w/ AmigaOS with a 68060 that you can't do with an o'clocked 030 w/128+ megs ram?
just curious.
A lot.
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what is it that you ppl want to do on an amiga w/ AmigaOS with a 68060 that you can't do with an o'clocked 030 w/128+ megs ram?
just curious.
DosBox, ScummVM etc etc
;)
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If you can get ahold of an Apollo 040 or 060 card then Cosmos can mod it into an 80Mhz 060 for u.
Ohohoho ! 80 Mhz is too slow... I reach 105 Mhz since a long time with 50ns Simm !!
==> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PqefbQMRQx0&feature=g-crec-u
And 90 Mhz with my Blizzard 1260 :
==> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kCGV1twOSDI&feature=g-crec-u
:o
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engines/emulators with the 060? I guess I can see that. I personally did not see much difference in the wholesale computing capability from 030 to 040 | and then from the 040 to the 060, I've had them all with up to 256M ram...
It was nice to say that I could run mame 0.35 or whatever under 060, or unzip stuff faster, but beyond that I couldn't see the overall advantage in it for anything other than a retrocomputing novelty.
same can be said for PPC - a few utils here and there...
if you are talking about highly optimized assembly routines and programs for 040/060 then I guess you have a point, esp when coupled w/ some of the overclocked 060s I'm hearing about. Those apps are few and far between, however.
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I would probably be very happy with my 68030. But it's kind of cool and fun at the same time to be able to run something other than WHDLoad games. Quake would be fantastic, anyway we'll see.
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It's curious that Motorola never did a process shrink of the 040(or did they), which would have solved the heating issue...
First 060 chips were 0.6 microns and they don't overclock nicely. Second gen is 0.42 and lastly, latest revisions made in 99' are 0.32 - these will overclock to 100+ MHz easily. Atari guys seem to run them comfortably well over 100 MHz with SDRAM.
With this in mind, it was possible to make a 0.35 micron 060 in late 95/early 96 - this would have allowed speeds up to around 100 MHz and would have made 68K Amiga competitive, CPU wise, with Pentium P5 PCs and early PPC Apple machines. A shame that Motorola dumped 68K.
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I am very happy with my 060, but would like one with higher clock and better RAM.
If Jens made an ACA1260 I would seriously consider buying one
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I am very happy with my 060, but would like one with higher clock and better RAM.
If Jens made an ACA1260 I would seriously consider buying one
I would be interested on an ACA 060 if it included some SATA ports with DMA, PIO isn't fun
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Yup. It's Mc68060fe133.
Kinda weird looking, and lacking MMU (FPU?), but legit, and capable of 100+ MHz clocks.
Nope, sent an inquiry to Freescale about the part number.
Return message stated the following:
"I can confirm that MC68060FE133 is not a valid Freescale part number".
Who are you going to believe, the company that designed the 68K series or some Chinese vendors?
These are probably relabeled 75MHz MC68EC060s (which lack an FPU).
That chip can be successfully overclocked to 90 or 100MHz.
But that does not alter the fact that the fastest 68060 ever produced was only rated for 75MHz.
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There is a 3.3V variant of the 040 that should run a lot cooler, but I don't know what it might be missing functionality wise.
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Why not just make an interface with an cabel to the PC and let the PC emulate a 060 for maximum speed?
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Nope, sent an inquiry to Freescale about the part number.
Return message stated the following:
"I can confirm that MC68060FE133 is not a valid Freescale part number".
Who are you going to believe, the company that designed the 68K series or some Chinese vendors?
Freescale did not design the 680x0 series.
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I would be interested on an ACA 060 if it included some SATA ports with DMA, PIO isn't fun
I agree with u that PIO sux.
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Freescale did not design the 680x0 series.
Why not make an accelerator for A1200 using FPGA instead? No need to buy those expensive and hard to find original 68K CPU. This way we can assign any speed we want, set any RAM we want on the FPG accelerator and put any feature we want: SCSI port, etc and still be cheaper than the original Blizzard or Apollo or even may be cheaper than ACA itself?
I am dreaming huh?
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what is it that you ppl want to do on an amiga w/ AmigaOS with a 68060 that you can't do with an o'clocked 030 w/128+ megs ram?
just curious.
Realtime audio codecs.
Trying to play mp3s on 030 is not fun.
Compiling giant sources.
Calculating giant animations.
Full screen rotation.
Hispeed lha.
Webbrowsing at a decent speed.
Hispeed .jpg viewing.
030 has no built-in FPU. Anything requiring FPU is horrifically sloooooooooooooooooow. The FREE FPU built into the normal 68040 is much faster than an external 68882 FPU for 68030. The FPU in the 060 is much faster than the 040 FPU.
68060 FTW!
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There is a 3.3V variant of the 040 that should run a lot cooler, but I don't know what it might be missing functionality wise.
Good point! I forgot about that!
The original hot 68040 was a 5v chip.
The 3.3v 68040 should be nice and cool and able to do 40Mhz.
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Good point! I forgot about that!
The original hot 68040 was a 5v chip.
The 3.3v 68040 should be nice and cool and able to do 40Mhz.
Yeah, but then I do not have an excuse to install a fan :D:D:D
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Freescale did not design the 680x0 series.
So out of curiosity, if not them, who did?
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/02/16/motorola_renames_chip_division_freescale/
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Freescale did not design the 680x0 series.
Freescale for all intents and purposes is Motorola Semiconductor.
They inherited all of Motorola's IP, fabs, and stock.
And they still list several Motorola designed products on their website.
Type Motorola Semiconductor into a Goggle search and see what the first company they point to is.
And they deny that there has ever been a 68060 binned and marked above 75MHz.
They also say that chip number is fake.
They ought to now, the 68060 is still part of their product line.
http://www.freescale.com/webapp/sps/site/prod_summary.jsp?code=MC68060&fsrch=1&sr=1
The Natami team has bought into a Chinese falsehood.
Those chips ARE re-marked with a fake ID.
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The Natami team has bought into a Chinese falsehood.
Those chips ARE re-marked with a fake ID.
Maybe. :)
But if so, well everyone has bought into it since they are the same chips everyone is using these days for fast 060 cards.
As long as they work and are affordable, that is the main thing that ppl care about.
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I have a bunch of '040s and '060s here just begging to go into accelerator cards. I wish Jens would produce an ACA040 or ACA060 - even A3000/A4000 versions or models for the A2000 as well. I think there are lots of people that currently running older accelerator cards that would gladly move their existing CPUs and FPUs over to newer, more efficient boards. You all have seen what an '030 can do with a decent (okay to be fair - 'modern') RAM interface. Let's see a socketed '040 and/or '060 board, 256MB of RAM soldered on to start Jens!
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In today's world, RAM is so cheap. I don't see the point of making any CPU card with less than 1GB of RAM. That is my view. :)
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Maybe. :)
But if so, well everyone has bought into it since they are the same chips everyone is using these days for fast 060 cards.
As long as they work and are affordable, that is the main thing that ppl care about.
Absolutely, they do work well at 90 or 100MHz and since they're based on some of the last '060s they run cool.
And they're available.
Where as the standard chip (in late masks) is getting hard to find.
I've been offered them for as low as $19.99
I think Peter and Thomas know designation is suspicious.
But I'm impressed with results.
Someone ought to do a math library for these chips.
The FPU on standard '60s wasn't that great anyway.
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The FPU on standard '60s wasn't that great anyway.
I donno what u mean by that. I say the 060 FPU is awesome. Sure it has less instructions than 040 FPU but it has the most common ones and they are sooooooooooooooooooooooooo faaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaast.
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But if so, well everyone has bought into it since they are the same chips everyone is using these days for fast 060 cards.
Yeah?? I thought the chips "everyone" was using for fast 060 cards were the standard MC68060RC50 with mask E41J (Revision 6).
People are now using these fake MC68060FE133 with adapter boards and living without FPU and MMU?
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Nope, sent an inquiry to Freescale about the part number.
Return message stated the following:
"I can confirm that MC68060FE133 is not a valid Freescale part number".
Who are you going to believe, the company that designed the 68K series or some Chinese vendors?
These are probably relabeled 75MHz MC68EC060s (which lack an FPU).
That chip can be successfully overclocked to 90 or 100MHz.
But that does not alter the fact that the fastest 68060 ever produced was only rated for 75MHz.
I know Freescale denied any connection to these FE CPUs. But...
This is how an FE CPU looks like:
(http://i50.tinypic.com/9kpdas.jpg)
Can you find a pic of the 75MHz MC68EC060 ?
Do they look the same ? If not, then they are not relabeled CPUs.
Copies maybe. Probably. But if they work who cares ? If Freescale doesn't want to push 060s any further I salute the one who does. Hell, give us 200MHz 060 copies in even smaller production process.
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The 68LC060 75Mhz found on the Apollo 1260 daughter card was an SMT package too. I think the FE is simply the same chip relabled.
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The 68LC060 75Mhz found on the Apollo 1260 daughter card was an SMT package too. I think the FE is simply the same chip relabled.
I am 100% confused at the conclusion of the OP. What is the conclusion? :huh:
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I am 100% confused at the conclusion of the OP. What is the conclusion? :huh:
The conclusion is that AFAIK Jens said that few times before that any 040/060 accelerator won't happen. You better hold your breath on FPGAArcade and 060 daughterboard.
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The conclusion is that AFAIK Jens said that few times before that any 040/060 accelerator won't happen. You better hold your breath on FPGAArcade and 060 daughterboard.
What is a 060 daughterboard? Wait is FPGAArcade like MiniMag an emulator in a hardware or is it a REAL THING? Like real CPU, real Custom chip, etc?
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What is a 060 daughterboard? Wait is FPGAArcade like MiniMag an emulator in a hardware or is it a REAL THING? Like real CPU, real Custom chip, etc?
The 060 daughterboard is just an 060 accelerator +128MB RAM for the FPGAreplay/arcade.
The 060 daughterboard has a REAL 060 and REAL 128MB RAM.
The custom chips in the FPGAreplay are REAL custom chips engineered by a bunch of Amiga guys who got tired of waiting around for new hardware. So they are not 100% compatible but they are supposed to be opensource so the compatibility steadily rises each year.
I don't have one yet because I have been waiting and waiting for the 060 accelerator option to be released. As any Amiga with less than 060 is just not interesting to me. No reason for me to buy a brand new Amiga that is worse than my 20 year old one.
When I get one I can give you more detailed info.
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The 060 daughterboard is just an 060 accelerator +128MB RAM for the FPGAreplay/arcade.
The 060 daughterboard has a REAL 060 and REAL 128MB RAM.
The custom chips in the FPGAreplay are REAL custom chips engineered by a bunch of Amiga guys who got tired of waiting around for new hardware. So they are not 100% compatible but they are supposed to be opensource so the compatibility steadily rises each year.
I don't have one yet because I have been waiting and waiting for the 060 accelerator option to be released. As any Amiga with less than 060 is just not interesting to me. No reason for me to buy a brand new Amiga that is worse than my 20 year old one.
When I get one I can give you more detailed info.
So is the output of the FPGAreplay then is the same quality as a classic Amiga and not like the emulator (pixelated and stuff like that)?
Can I hook it in a TV or my Commodore 1084s if I wanted too?
Finally if they are improving it each year, is it hardware improvement or software based improvement? Since it is not emulated and since it is a real hardware and since it is a custom chipset real...I am planning to buy this hardware instead of MiniMag then! I know it does not come in a sexy case like A1200 but this is another Amiga classic alternative with 060 I may enjoy it as I would with the real A1200 too.
I have my eyes on it. I do hope they plan to upgrade the Chip RAM from 2 MB to something higher than that...while they are at it...it would be awesome if they can do an "AAA" like custom chipset while supporting AGA/ECS/OCS too...then this would be something of a feat that Natami have failed on. Imagine a new custom chipset that improves over AGA, then you do not need RTG..it would be faster, support higher resolution, build in 3D, etc.
OH ONE MORE THING. I am bolding this because it is very important to me, but can I use real HD and Disk Drive? I prefer it better than virtual...if they are going real..they should give me the option to use everthing real too including disk drive and HD.
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So is the output of the FPGAreplay then is the same quality as a classic Amiga and not like the emulator (pixelated and stuff like that)?
Pixelated graphics is because of the monitor. If you plug your Amiga into a modern monitor then it will look bad. If you plug your PC into a 1084ST then it will look like an Amiga did.
While an FPGAReplay is cool, it's not worth buying one just because you think emulators are bad because of pixelated graphics.
I don't plug my Amiga into my TV because of that, I won't even plug a PlayStation into it.
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Why is it that you total chaos site does not work?
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I know Freescale denied any connection to these FE CPUs. But...
This is how an FE CPU looks like:
(http://i50.tinypic.com/9kpdas.jpg)
Can you find a pic of the 75MHz MC68EC060 ?
Do they look the same ? If not, then they are not relabeled CPUs.
Copies maybe. Probably. But if they work who cares ? If Freescale doesn't want to push 060s any further I salute the one who does. Hell, give us 200MHz 060 copies in even smaller production process.
All three variants of the 68060 (standard, LC, and EC) were offered in that form (its called a CQFP) and were all pin compatible.
Here's the layout for one.
http://cache.freescale.com/files/32bit/doc/package_info/MC68060PP2.pdf?fpsp=1&WT_TYPE=Packaging%20Information&WT_VENDOR=FREESCALE&WT_FILE_FORMAT=pdf&WT_ASSET=Documentation
BGA variants have pretty much replaced this design.
And, of course, PGA is still offered for those that prefer socketed processors.
I don't understand your point.
CQFPs predate BGAs.
And as far as I know, I can't get that much good technical info or illustrations of obsolete parts.
I was lucky to dig up this reference (Freescale has things like this tucked away).
After all, Thomas must have used a similar diagram to create the '060 board based on this package.
But I would be willing to bet that the final masks of EC and LC parts can clock as high as the fictional FE.
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Why is it that you total chaos site does not work?
Because the fan who ran it disappeared :(
It was such a beautiful site. A black background. Nice forums. All reviews were there and easy to find. All gone :(
There are other fansites but they have no forums and are hopelessly out of date. They don't even have links to reviews or anything. :cry:
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@Chaoslord,
You are so right. When it comes to processors for an FPGA (or original) Amiga, nothing beats a real '060 yet.
And earlier someone mentioned the idea of relabeling '040s as '060.
Since per cycle, the '060 performs better, it wouldn't be hard to detect.
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if you are talking about highly optimized assembly routines and programs for 040/060 then I guess you have a point, esp when coupled w/ some of the overclocked 060s I'm hearing about.
Amiga community is filled with guys who sit around all day writing highly optimized asm routines.
Only Amiga makes it possible. :)
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All three variants of the 68060 (standard, LC, and EC) were offered in that form (its called a CQFP) and were all pin compatible.
BGA variants have pretty much replaced this design.
And, of course, PGA is still offered for those that prefer socketed processors.
I don't understand your point.
There is no point :) I was really asking because I don't know anything about the latest versions of 060s. Thanx for the info :)
So they are most probably relabeled chips. Or copies. But if they work well who cares. Maybe someone can "persuade" the Chinese to try and make a new version on smaller process.
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@lordaga
Not only do they work really well, but they're still plenty around.
That's why I don't understand why they aren't being used in accelerators.
Sure, there are some challenges (getting around the lack of an FPU is probably the biggest).
But they're cheap!
And since they are usually based on later masks they have less bugs and run cooler (lacking an FPU and MMU helps too).
If we had a good public domain design, we could be using these right now (and they would way out perform an '030).
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Knowing the Chinese, they probably took one 68060 LC/EC apart, duplicated the whole logic and started mass-producing them.
I don't think they've simply relabeled the old ones, since they would run out of stock way too fast that way.
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Knowing the Chinese, they probably took one 68060 LC/EC apart, duplicated the whole logic and started mass-producing them.
I don't know.
The fact that they're selling the surface mount version instead of a ball grid array makes me think they're salvaging embedded processors.
A bga can be reused too.
But re-balled is complicated and tedious.
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Check this thread out.
http://boardreader.com/thread/My_68EC060_has_an_FPU_Will_it_have_a_MMU_1jo99Xuiw.html
Apparently LC and EC CPUs don't always have non-functioning FPUs and MMUs.
Although the chips might not run at 75MHz or more while using this parts.
Apparently there are CyberstormPPC cards and Apollo 1260s with EC components installed on them.
Now we know why some of these overclock well.
Anyone with a 1260 willing to install a 75MHz EC processor on it?
I'll even pay to have it done and set up to run at 80MHz.
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Check this thread out.
http://boardreader.com/thread/My_68EC060_has_an_FPU_Will_it_have_a_MMU_1jo99Xuiw.html
Apparently LC and EC CPUs don't always have non-functioning FPUs and MMUs.
Although the chips might not run at 75MHz or more while using this parts.
Apparently there are CyberstormPPC cards and Apollo 1260s with EC components installed on them.
Now we know why some of these overclock well.
The part number on my Apollo 1260 indicates that it is lacking an MMU and/or FPU. I thought I had been ripped off!
But the MMU an FPU are both in there and they work.
You can't completely trust the markings.
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The part number on my Apollo 1260 indicates that it is lacking an MMU and/or FPU. I thought I had been ripped off!
But the MMU an FPU are both in there and they work.
You can't completely trust the markings.
Apparently not.
BTW - BGA 68EC060RC75 is available.
And PGA 68LC060RC75 is available in quantity up to 1000.
I'm getting suspicious that Jens is jerking us around.
Claims the Apollo design is unstable when users have some running @ 80MHz and also claims 68060s are not available in quantity for production.
WTF?
I'm not sure I have as much faith in the guy as I used to.
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How much do those 060s cost that you are looking at?
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Apparently not.
BTW - BGA 68EC060RC75 is available.
And PGA 68LC060RC75 is available in quantity up to 1000.
I'm getting suspicious that Jens is jerking us around.
Claims the Apollo design is unstable when users have some running @ 80MHz and also claims 68060s are not available in quantity for production.
WTF?
I'm not sure I have as much faith in the guy as I used to.
Lol. So I'm not the only one.
Prices seem pretty high though. Perhaps that's why Jens isn't ordering them.
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Claims the Apollo design is unstable when users have some running @ 80MHz
I know a friend who has had his Apollo 060 running at 100Mhz+ for many years. Never had a problem.
I would say there are a lot of ppl with them running at 80Mhz+
There is nothing wrong with Apollo 060 cards in and of themselves.
The problems are with the SCSI addon cards. A lot of ppl complain about the SCSI addon card. But that in no way means that the Apollo 060 card cannot be used a great accelerator.
It is possible that there was some kind of problem in the first batch of Apollos or something like that and maybe that has him confused?
Or maybe all Apollos were perfect, except for the last batch?
I am not saying any Apollos are bad, I am just throwing out ideas.
All I know is mine seems to work ok at 50Mhz for 13+ years
Maybe Jens got stuck with a giant stockpile of 030s that he is trying to clear out?
Maybe if we wait 5 years for him to sell them all then he will make us an 060 card?
Who knows?
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Prices seem pretty high though. Perhaps that's why Jens isn't ordering them.
Pretty much the reason I'd think, too.
Can't make much profit on a board which has a $220 processor (that ought to sell for about $19.95)
Maybe buying "FE133s" isn't so dumb after all.
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$220.00 for just the cpu in 2012 is quite ridiculous.
How much are the FE133s?
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$220.00 for just the cpu in 2012 is quite ridiculous.
How much are the FE133s?
One company quoted $19.95.
Most slightly higher (although not as silly as US pricing).
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$19.95 for some 68060 goodness? :-) As long as they do the job I'm not fussed to how real it is. Still 60+ Mips?
Sure beats the 68030 :-)
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Told ya FEs were good stuff :)
They may lack MMU and/or FPU, but they are still blazing fast for such a price.
I think the FE accelerator is bound to happen sooner than later. Someone will always pick up a torch.
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$220.00 for just the cpu in 2012 is quite ridiculous.
How much are the FE133s?
I don't even know where he's got that quote from.
Last I looked, they charged almost $500US at a batch order of 1000.
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The problems with Apollo cards are that they stupidly did not solder the timing crystal. The crystal moves, if the computer is powered, you can fry parts of it. The card may not die altogether right away, but it will be flaky. One day you'll power up and get a black screen. BTW this happens with 68040' cards as well.
This happened to my Apollo 1240.
I did get it repaired, and had an 68060 installed, but it runs at 40 mhz, still better than any 68040 out there and cooler with no fan needed. So yeah I have the slowest 68060 card in the world..
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I don't even know where he's got that quote from.
Last I looked, they charged almost $500US at a batch order of 1000.
I think that might have been a quote on 10,000. I'll have to check.
In any case you virtually never have to pay an initial quote price (there's usually room for negotiation.
However, this may not be the case with the 75MHz LC as there appears to be only about a low four digit number of them left (they've long been eol'd).
And most of those are sitting at a distributor that sells a lot of product to arms manufacturers. Those companies will pay a premium to obtain something that has limited availability.
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The problems with Apollo cards are that they stupidly did not solder the timing crystal. The crystal moves, if the computer is powered, you can fry parts of it. The card may not die altogether right away, but it will be flaky. One day you'll power up and get a black screen. BTW this happens with 68040' cards as well.
This happened to my Apollo 1240.
I did get it repaired, and had an 68060 installed, but it runs at 40 mhz, still better than any 68040 out there and cooler with no fan needed. So yeah I have the slowest 68060 card in the world..
Is this true for any Apollo? Couldn't one manually solder the crystal?
@Iggy
Makes sense.
Still rather high.
EDIT: I've been offered a Blizzard 1240 for 280 euros. It's without packaging and without any RAM. Is this one of much greater value than the Apollo 1240 with 32MB I've been offered for 260 euros?
Furthermore, do most accelerators on the used market today come without packaging? I'm kind of reluctant to buy something that isn't in it's original box anymore.
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I.
EDIT: I've been offered a Blizzard 1240 for 280 euros. It's without packaging and without any RAM. Is this one of much greater value than the Apollo 1240 with 32MB I've been offered for 260 euros?
Furthermore, do most accelerators on the used market today come without packaging? I'm kind of reluctant to buy something that isn't in it's original box anymore.
I rarely have the original packaging for what I sell on Ebay.
The point is to make sure it still functions and that the seller warrants it as good.
BTW - I'd go with the one with the RAM.
And modify it for an '060.
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Any reason you'd go for the one with RAM?
From what I've seen, RAM is still widely available and doesn't really cost that much (20 bucks, last I checked).
Assuming I want to play some games (Quake/ScummVM) as well. What would matter more? Pure raw power (Apollo) or more RAM (Blizzard)? My own applications will probably never consume more than 64MB, but it would be nice to be covered.
If someone was offering me one, I'd probably jump for a Falcon 1260, but no one seems to own one, lest sell one.
Here's a review of the Falcon, btw.
(http:// [url]http://amr.abime.net/amr_popup_picture.php?src=amiga_magazine/magscans/am34_1995_07/018.jpg&c=22256&n=1&filesize=354861[/url] )
(http:// [url]http://amr.abime.net/amr_popup_picture.php?src=amiga_magazine/magscans/am34_1995_07/019.jpg&c=22256[/url] )
It's in Dutch, unfortunately. But the conclusion (from what little Dutch I still know) is that it's supposedly faster than any of the other cards they reviewed (though it's unclear whether this includes the Apollo or Blizzard line of accelerators).
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Different 040/25 cards for A1200 are quite similar in performance. The greatest factor may be the speed to the native chips, where Apollo beats Blizzards but if it is significant overall it depends on the use. Don't remember if a Falcon 040/25 was tested in CU or AF.
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The problems with Apollo cards are that they stupidly did not solder the timing crystal. The crystal moves, if the computer is powered, you can fry parts of it. The card may not die altogether right away, but it will be flaky. One day you'll power up and get a black screen. BTW this happens with 68040' cards as well.
Very interesting! Thanx 4 da info.
This happened to my Apollo 1240.
I did get it repaired, and had an 68060 installed, but it runs at 40 mhz, still better than any 68040 out there and cooler with no fan needed. So yeah I have the slowest 68060 card in the world..
:roflmao: I am sorry to laff at ur misfortune. But an underclocked 060 is funny :)
So I hope u r not wasting a 100Mhz at 40Mhz?
I hope u r using one of the old original 50Mhz 060s at 40Mhz?
Is the 40Mhz limit typical for A1240 cards?
Or is that specific to your A1240?
I have a friend with an A1240 that he has not used for years and I am thinking of buying it from him and sending it to cosmos for an upgrade then send that to a friend of mine to use.
I am wondering what to expect.
p.s. Yes a 40Mhz 060 still blows away any 040.
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Has anyone ever heard of a Blizzard 1260 with a socketed 040 CPU? Seen mention of this in at least one thread on here and someone is offering me his Blizzard 1260 with a 40MHz 68040.
So is this some sort of hybrid or did someone downgrade it to a 1240? Seller said all I'd have to do is add a 68060 socket.
Considering the intended use (software development for the most part, ScummVM/Quake/Quake II/Feeble Files when I'm bored or need inspiration or simply want to programm a game in the SCI Engine or on top of id Tech) and me being somewhat of a RAM whore (I have 16GB in my Windows rig and even that isn't entirely enough yet), Blizzard is probably the better choice.
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Different 040/25 cards for A1200 are quite similar in performance. The greatest factor may be the speed to the native chips, where Apollo beats Blizzards but if it is significant overall it depends on the use.
Modern Amiga games, (loosely defined as games from 1995+ that require fastram and render their animations from fastram to chipram) and also any animation software, all have 1 bottleneck which is how fast the cpu can copy data from fastram to chipram. So it is really important to have a good bus interface so the cpu can access chipram as fast as possible.
Also Desktop Publishing software needs fast cpu-access-to-chipram for screen updates.
And if you are running Fblit/Ftext then you need fast chipram access 100% of the time for everything.
So the chipram access speed is really important.
If your chipram access speed is only 50% of theoretical maximum then your maximum framerate is only 50% of what it could be.
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Modern Amiga games, (loosely defined as games from 1995+ that require fastram and render their animations from fastram to chipram) and also any animation software, all have 1 bottleneck which is how fast the cpu can copy data from fastram to chipram. So it is really important to have a good bus interface so the cpu can access chipram as fast as possible.
Also Desktop Publishing software needs fast cpu-access-to-chipram for screen updates.
And if you are running Fblit/Ftext then you need fast chipram access 100% of the time for everything.
So the chipram access speed is really important.
If your chipram access speed is only 50% of theoretical maximum then your maximum framerate is only 50% of what it could be.
Way to rain on my parade. Lol.
Now I'm, once again, unsettled.
Gee. I guess I'll need to look up benchmarks to see just how bad Blizzard's chipram access is compared to Apollo.
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EDIT: I've been offered a Blizzard 1240 for 280 euros.
:eek: DAM!
It's without packaging and without any RAM. Is this one of much greater value than the Apollo 1240 with 32MB I've been offered for 260 euros?
These guys really charge top dollar! I didn't know they cost that much!
WTF doesn't it have RAM?
Will it even run that way?
Maybe its broken?
If its broken, cosmos can likely fix it. But your seller should charge a lot less.
I hope this stuff isn't from ripoffEbay.
Furthermore, do most accelerators on the used market today come without packaging? I'm kind of reluctant to buy something that isn't in it's original box anymore.
I don't have original packaging for mine and all my 060s were obtained used without packaging. But they worked.
I used to keep all my original Amiga computer boxes and Monitor boxes but my beloved boxes got lost when I moved. :(((((((((((((((((((((((
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So the chipram access speed is really important.
Which is why you do all the work in FastRam and then only copy the result to chipmem
If your chipram access speed is only 50% of theoretical maximum then your maximum framerate is only 50% of what it could be.
Well, that's only true if you do absolutely nothing else than copy a frame from fastram to chipram (in other words, you don't do any kind of calculations or other operations). Fortunately the differences in chipmem access on different accelerators aren't really that big.
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Never mind.
It was a case of lost in translation. He's actually shipping the Blizzard with a 16MB SIMM (which I'll gladly remove upon upgrading and finding out whether this card works).
Furthermore, it's not a Blizzard 1240 but a Blizzard 1260 with a socketed 40MHz 68040 (didn't even know those existed. Wondering how I'll go about upgrading these to a 060).
As for costing much: Did they ever go much lower? I've been offered another card for the princely sum of $800 (not Ebay), so those two seem quite inexpensive.
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Way to rain on my parade. Lol.
Now I'm, once again, unsettled.
Gee. I guess I'll need to look up benchmarks to see just how bad Blizzard's chipram access is compared to Apollo.
You are talking about buying an A1240 and upgrading it to 060.
I have no data on such a card. I never did any timing tests on a card like that.
So it could have rocking hot performance at chipram access or really horrible performance. I have no clue.
You could ask Cosmos to run Bustest on one of his cards like that. Make sure he tells u the exact screenmode that the screen was in when running the test. It makes all the difference.
I prefer tests done in 640x512x8bitplanes. As I still have all my timing test results for that mode from various cards stashed on my HD somewhere.
(My games run in that mode so that is the mode we normally test.)
In any case, no matter what, u will get fantastic CPU calculation performance.
Anything that happens inside the 060 (remember it has 2 8K L1 Caches) will be zoooming fast.
So any 060 card will be an upgrade, its just a question of how much of an upgrade. :)
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N
Furthermore, it's not a Blizzard 1240 but a Blizzard 1260 with a socketed 40MHz 68040
Sounds really weird.
Does he have an explanation for how that happened?
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Has anyone ever heard of a Blizzard 1260 with a socketed 040 CPU?
I haven't. But I guess anyone could downgrade an A1260 like that. I just don't know why anyone would do that.
Considering the intended use (software development for the most part, ScummVM/Quake/Quake II/Feeble Files
The only way to run Quake in a reasonable manner is to have a fast 060 + a gfx card.
when I'm bored or need inspiration or simply want to programm a game in the SCI Engine or on top of id Tech) and me being somewhat of a RAM whore (I have 16GB in my Windows rig and even that isn't entirely enough yet), Blizzard is probably the better choice.
How did u use u 16GB in windoze?
I just bought a 10GB windoze7 rig, thinking 10GB would be enuff.
I am typing this on my old 1GB XP box.
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You are talking about buying an A1240 and upgrading it to 060.
I'm actually talking about buying a Blizzard 1260 with a 040 CPU and upgrading it to a 060 now.
I have no data on such a card. I never did any timing tests on a card like that.
Me neither. But I know that the Apollo is supposed to have quite a bit faster chip access rates.
So it could have rocking hot performance at chipram access or really horrible performance. I have no clue.
Afaik, it's a bit worse than Apollo but still good. Just wondering how much of an impact that will make though.
Where the Blizzard is supposed to shine is with HD access speeds and SCSI.
You could ask Cosmos to run Bustest on one of his cards like that. Make sure he tells u the exact screenmode that the screen was in when running the test. It makes all the difference.
Will do.
Is he still a member of this community?
I prefer tests done in 640x512x8bitplanes. As I still have all my timing test results for that mode from various cards stashed on my HD somewhere.
(My games run in that mode so that is the mode we normally test.)
That's pretty much the same resolution I'm shooting for. Albeit interlaced and on my TV I bought just for this kind of hardware.
In any case, no matter what, u will get fantastic CPU calculation performance.
Anything that happens inside the 060 (remember it has 2 8K L1 Caches) will be zoooming fast.
It has two L1 caches? Wow. I wasn't even aware of this.
I think I'm more excited for this than any CPU before (including Bulldozer and Sandy Bridge/Ivy Bridge)
So any 060 card will be an upgrade, its just a question of how much of an upgrade. :)
Hear, hear.
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I haven't. But I guess anyone could downgrade an A1260 like that. I just don't know why anyone would do that.
This stuff gets more and more confusing by the hour. I just found out that some of those cards actually have jumpers to go from 040 to 060 and back? What gives?
The only way to run Quake in a reasonable manner is to have a fast 060 + a gfx card.
Novacoder's Quake video on a plain AGA 060 says otherwise :wink ;)
How did u use u 16GB in windoze?
I just bought a 10GB windoze7 rig, thinking 10GB would be enuff.
I am typing this on my old 1GB XP box.
That's an easy one.
Just create a RAM-Disk of 12-14GB. Fills up rather quickly. Especially if you run games like Skyrim off your Ramdisk.
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This stuff gets more and more confusing by the hour. I just found out that some of those cards actually have jumpers to go from 040 to 060 and back? What gives?
Maybe Apollo made them like that to save money?
That's an easy one.
Just create a RAM-Disk of 12-14GB. Fills up rather quickly. Especially if you run games like Skyrim off your Ramdisk.
Woah! When did windoze invent a ram disk?
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Where the Blizzard is supposed to shine is with HD access speeds and SCSI.
Ok, but that is only if you buy the SCSI addon card.
A proper SCSI DMA controller, such as the one in the 1990 A3000 uses 20x less cpu power and is 2x to 4x the transfer speed. So its 80x better than the lame A1200/A4000 IDE PIO controller.
Is he still a member of this community?
Didn't u see him pop up in a thread recently? Where I said u could get an 80Mhz 060 and he popped in to say 80Mhz was way to slow and he runs at 105Mhz. Donno how u missed it.
It has two L1 caches? Wow. I wasn't even aware of this.
I think I'm more excited for this than any CPU before (including Bulldozer and Sandy Bridge/Ivy Bridge)
060 competed against Pentium. IIRC Pentium only had 1 lame unified L1 cache.
060 had a much more efficient system where code gets its own cache and data gets its own cache.
Motorola used dual L1 caches since 1987 with the 68030. Eventually, years later, Intel caught up with Motorola in this regard.
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The Apollo had quite a bit faster access to the custom chipset (even better than many '030 cards), which was ideal for demanding AGA demos, and made the system feel a bit snappier in general. HD access as far as internal IDE was faster with the Apollo, but ofc the Blizzard had a much much better SCSI option.
The fast chipset access apparently caused compatibility problems with some motherboards (not unlike the ACA), which could be remedied by the usual timing fixes. Outside of that, I had mine running at 80MHz for days on end without crashing, and it worked fine with all my clockport cards (unlike the Blizz). The only thing I preferred WRT my Blizzard 1260 was the ability to take more RAM, but with the CPU facing down (it's up on the Apollo), keeping the trapdoor on wasn't really an option.
BTW - If you do a search over at eab in the hardware section, you'll find a thread from a few years back with a bunch of bustest results.
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I hope this stuff isn't from ripoffEbay.
Hey! I'm an Ebay seller and so was Redrumloa (who you'll notice doesn't bother posting anymore).
Here's the trick with Ebay.
Check out the seller.
Has he had a fair number of transactions?
Is his feedback rating good?
Mine's 100% positive with over 400 feedback comments.
Next, and this is important, read the description.
If there are any qualifiers (like, hey no guarantees this is functional), don't buy it.
If the seller says its good, even if he's not offering to take returns you're covered.
Because you're going to pay with Paypal (created by the great Elon Musk - yeah the guy that runs Tesla Motors).
If you buy it and it doesn't match the description, contact the seller and file a complaint with Ebay.
If the seller doesn't offer you a fair resolution, Ebay will get you your money back (including the shipping).
After all, they own Paypal and can backcharge the Ahole.
Its that simple.
I've never had a bad transaction following these steps, because if I get screwed I get it all back (and I can keep the piece of crap and even leave negative feedback for the seller which he won't be able to retaliate about).
Like I said, simple.
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One company quoted $19.95.
Most slightly higher (although not as silly as US pricing).
Long time lerker .. first time poster..
I have a few questions; You are raving about these 68060FE133 chips being the best thing since sliced bread but have you actually tried any? It's very easy to say that someone should make a board based on those chips.. but it begs the question; If it is so easy why aren't *you* doing it instead of bad mouthing Jens for not doing it?
What's left of the "amiga community" seem to come up thing "I want a turbo card with n gigs of DDR, PCI blah blah" on a daily basis but there seems to actually only be three or four people actually still making serious efforts on producing new hardware (Jens, MikeJ etc).
Back to technical details.. Ok, so you can get these 68060FE133 parts from Chinese parts brokers. They don't exist according to Freescale but some of the documentation on some of the late 68k parts is a bit patchy.. i.e. what are all of the different 68SEC000 part numbers about? I suspect it's ROHS compliance or something but none of the datasheets or Product Change Notifications seem to go into any detail about what the different versions of the 68SEC000 are. The details on the 3.3v static 68040V parts is equally thin on the ground. So lets give these 68060FE133 parts the benefit of the doubt. It's possible that Motorola/Freescale produced them for one customer or something and there just happens to be a bunch of them around.
I'm not sure if you have any experience with Chinese parts brokers.. but there is a reason why Digikey etc have $200+ for certain 68k parts and a parts broker will quote you ~$20 for the same part. The reason is the Chinese broker has no idea if the parts are real or work and they don't care either. I did an experiment with 68SEC000 parts; I bought ~$200 worth of sample parts from about 5 or 6 brokers. The prices ranged from about $6 each to as low as $2 for 68SEC000FU10 (Motorola marked, 10Mhz). I have 5 - 10 parts from each broker.. To a certain extent you can use the mask revision,date code and assembly stamp on the underside of the chip to verify the parts. There are 3 masks of the 68SEC000 that I know about and via the PCNs on Freescale site I can work out if the date code is weird for that mask and from some other PCNs I can guess where a chip of that date code should have been packaged (Hong Kong or Malaysia). Out of all of the parts I think only one order *seems* like real parts. A lot of them are obviously suspect by the weird texture of the top of the chip (i.e. it feels like it has been sanded to remove the real markings) or the markings on the chip are just wrong. I have a theory that Chinese brokers will re-label chips to order (i.e. they have a pile of chips that are equivalent or at least the same form factor and they re-label them to suite whatever the customer has ordered). To test this I ordered some Freescale 68SEC000AE16 parts.. These should be Freescale marked (the part number is a freescale one, not a Motorola one) and should be a .5mm QFP not a .8mm QFP like the ones I had order up to that point.. I intentionally didn't put what package that the part should be in the Request For Quote. Out of all of the 20 or so quotes I got I had only one that stated the parts they had were LQFP as they should have. I ordered some from 2 or 3 of the brokers... guess what turned up a few weeks later? .8mm pitch QFPs with AE part numbers (If you haven't followed what I'm saying so far.. they shouldn't exist).
This is for hobby stuff so I don't really mind as long as the chips work. So I made up a small test jig with a BeagleBone that resets the chip and clocks it a few times to check if the stobes etc start doing the right things. I tested one chip from each batch (I have to solder them to a carrier, so I can't test them all) and they all seem to pass this basic "looks like a 68000 starting up" test. So .. what do you reckon is inside of these things? Without decapping them I will never know. I don't have the stuff to do it or I would have done it already.
Back to the 68060FE133 and Jens or whoever making a turbo card with them. The only place you can get them is Chinese brokers which are shady to say the least (See above). If you have followed MikeJ's FPGAArcade posts you will realise how difficult it is to get existing-according-to-Freescale 68060's that haven't been relabelled to a newer mask revision.
So any of these you buy should be treated as suspect from the get go. If you are shipping a product to end users you can't go shipping those parts without doing a lot of testing. They could be working chips with the part number changed to make them look faster.. they could be reject parts that have been saved and labelled, they could be empty plastic lumps with legs sticking out of the side. Who knows? If you could trust Chinese brokers I would have a pile of the 68040V's on my desk (They quoted $20 for those when the Digikey price is ~$200) and I would be designing a machine to use them in.. a 3.3v 68040 + FPGA sounds good to me. Hell, I can get some of those BGA 68060 parts from China for ~$20 .. maybe I should get some of those too? Maybe I would get really lucky and have real parts that worked 100% but it's more likely that they will be utter crap and the broker will disappear when I contact them about it.
The only person that seems to have actually tried those chips seems to be the Netami guy.. but I can't find anything that says if they actually worked or not, what the revision register said etc. Does anyone have a link? At least with the 68060 there is some data you can verify the revision against burnt into the chip..
The only cheap way I would recommend sourcing 68k parts is via surplus sellers in the US or similar. I have sourced some 68SEC000 parts for better than Digikey prices and recently some bog standard 68040FE parts for a tenth of the Digikey price this way. You can't be 100% sure they aren't fakes but it's a lot less likely... But for people shipping a product this is really still too risky IMHO and the quantities you can get hold of are in the tens of units (Maybe enough considering the market?). So you either have spend ages sourcing and testing the hell out of cheap parts or pay the crazy price that decent distributors want. Sounds like an awful lot of hassle for a product that might ship 50 units and for customers that harp on about how they could do better all the time..
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What he said, basically.
The 68060 is a dodgy deal at the best of times. Jens has worked very hard to build up a reputation of quality hardware, it just doesn't make sense that he'd risk a lot of time and money in developing a board when the only supply of processors he has is from Chinese resellers who are apparently selling chips which the manufacturer denies all knowledge of. I know I wouldn't do that in a million years.
And what is the gain of making a 68060 accelerator anyway? It's not necessary for 95% of Amiga stuff, and for the other 5% die-hard Amigans can still get 68060 accelerators on eBay or whatever - sure they're more expensive, but a lot less expensive than developing a new accelerator. Like it or not, most Amigans use 68030 because it's probably the best compromise of compatibility and speed, and often use WinUAE for stuff that depends high power. There's not really a great many people out there who would cough up the extra for a 68060, as most people just don't have the need.
I keep seeing people posting about how "x should do y" all the time. Building an accelerator isn't just a matter of soldering a processor onto a board, shoving on a few RAM chips, and packaging it in a nice glossy box. It takes a LOT of time and effort to design new hardware like accelerators, jamming a processor into a machine that was never designed for it. The more different the CPU, the more work (and therefore cost) it is - and the 68060 is very different to the 68020/30.
@donpalmera
Welcome to Amiga.org - nice to see such a useful and pragmatic poster!
@Iggy
Quite right. eBay isn't the seller, it's the person who's doing the selling who's the seller. If people only bought from reputable sellers like you or I, they wouldn't have the same problems.... but I keep seeing eBay getting the blame because they bought something cheap off a shady bloke with no feedback.
Caveat Emptor, and you'll be just fine on eBay.
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Furthermore, it's not a Blizzard 1240 but a Blizzard 1260 with a socketed 40MHz 68040 (didn't even know those existed.
Sounds really weird.
Does he have an explanation for how that happened?
I think he may have been walking around with a CPU-less card, like many of us often do, then tripped, and fell right onto a 040 CPU. I can't see it happening any other way :)
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What he said, basically.
I keep seeing people posting about how "x should do y" all the time. Building an accelerator isn't just a matter of soldering a processor onto a board, shoving on a few RAM chips, and packaging it in a nice glossy box. It takes a LOT of time and effort to design new hardware like accelerators, jamming a processor into a machine that was never designed for it. The more different the CPU, the more work (and therefore cost) it is - and the 68060 is very different to the 68020/30.
This is what prompted me to post to be honest. I'm sure there are a few really skilled software devs and hardware guys still around.. but they are definitely in the minority... you could probably count them on your hands alone. Aside from them there seems to be two types of people. Type 1: "I want 68060/Soft core in FPGA/PPC etc!! I must have it. NOW!" Type 2: "68060/Soft core in FPGA/PPC is so easy, I'm not sure why no one has done it yet. I wrote an enhanced 68060 core while I was on the toilet one morning.". The Type 2 people get the Type 1 people all excited by spouting drivel. I don't have the time or desire to mull over "the good old days" or "what if..." hence I have never posted before. I read amiga.org to keep up to date with interesting stuff like the FPGAArcade. Some of the people here seem to be on crack or have no grasp on reality. It's a shame people like Piru seem to have left. They might have been a bit sour but they added some much needed reality.
I doubt there are many people left "in the scene" that could put together a 68000 or 68020 system from scratch and those are the easy ones. The 68040 and 68060 are monsters in comparison. Yes.. it's nice to have a bit of a day dream when you see some cheap 68060s on Alibaba or whatever but unless you have the skills of Jens or MikeJ you'd be better off keeping it to yourself.
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Got word from Cosmos.
Unfortunately, he is unable to assist me (or anyone else, for that matter) in the procedure.
A bunch of Frenchmen reported him for what they assumed would be moonlighting, so he quit.
I seriously hate Europe.
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Has anyone ever heard of a Blizzard 1260 with a socketed 040 CPU? Seen mention of this in at least one thread on here and someone is offering me his Blizzard 1260 with a 40MHz 68040.
So is this some sort of hybrid or did someone downgrade it to a 1240? Seller said all I'd have to do is add a 68060 socket.
If it's got an 040 on it then it's a 1240. The only difference between the 1240 and the 1260 is the processor and power regulator.
http://amiga.resource.cx/exp/blizzard1260
According to this site http://g-mb.de/P5Rework.html#B12x0 (http://g-mb.de/P5Rework.html#B12x0) some of the cards came with socketed processors. So it sounds like it could just be a 1240 to me.
It's possible that it started as a 1260 and it got downgraded because it got repaired with whatever parts they had, or someone wanted an 040 over an 060. But if it's only got the 040 socket, then only pay 1240 prices for it because that is essentially what it is.
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And what is the gain of making a 68060 accelerator anyway? It's not necessary for 95% of Amiga stuff, ...
68060 accellerators are useful on 100% of all Amiga productivity software.
68060 accellerators are useful on 100% of all Amiga cli commands.
That is thousands of programs that benefit.
68060 accellerators are useful on 100% of all properly coded games.
Trying to do web browsing, DAW or DTP on 68030 is nonsense. :)
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@ the 68060FE133 haters
Various ppl have bought them. They used them. Nobody has ever reported them as being fake or defective. So why the hate?
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The guy still hasn't replied back with the photos I asked for.
By the time he has, I'll let you all know.
BTW: This guy seems to have a 1260 with 040 CPU, as well.
http://www.amiga.org/forums/showthread.php?t=36906
Is it true that it will need a new socket, btw? The seller told me I'd need a 060 specific socket (but never even mentioned voltage regulators)?
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040s were 5v and 060 was 3.3v. They each have a different socket.
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040s were 5v and 060 was 3.3v. They each have a different socket.
Thanks.
I've been offered a 060 socket now.
10 euros (9 if I take two) + 4 euros shipping.
Does that sound fair?
Furthermore, I've already sourced a 060 CPU. Unfortunately, it's the old 50 MHz variant that doesn't clock as high as the later revisions or the LC/EC deriatives.
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A bunch of Frenchmen reported him for what they assumed would be moonlighting, so he quit.
WTF ?!? What does this mean ?
How is helping people who ask for help with electronics illegal ?
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WTF ?!? What does this mean ?
How is helping people who ask for help with electronics illegal ?
Some people just don't take kindly to people accepting donations for their work (ironically, the same people seldom oppose to illegal immigration, even though that's a far bigger issue).
It very much sucks.
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@ the 68060FE133 haters
Various ppl have bought them. They used them. Nobody has ever reported them as being fake or defective. So why the hate?
Because according to the manufacturers themselves they don't exist. Therefore what are they and who are they by?
They may be genuine enough to work well, that's true - but if it were your reputation on the line that you'd build up over several years, would you take the risk?
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Some people just don't take kindly to people accepting donations for their work (ironically, the same people seldom oppose to illegal immigration, even though that's a far bigger issue).
It very much sucks.
But, but, butbutbut...
I don't know what to say. I'm stumped really.
I'd like to meet those guys who reported him. In a dark alley...
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But, but, butbutbut...
I don't know what to say. I'm stumped really.
I'd like to meet those guys who reported him. In a dark alley...
I would gladly join you.
What a bunch of morons.
Probably don't even know that moonlighters are the backbone of the European economy.
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@ the 68060FE133 haters
Various ppl have bought them. They used them. Nobody has ever reported them as being fake or defective. So why the hate?
I have yet to find one report of them working.. links please. The only thing I could find that went into any detail was the thread on MorphOS zone or whatever it was called.. and no one there could provide/find an example of one of these things working either. You're also assuming that all of these chips that are floating around the Chinese brokers are the same thing.
If everything is so crystal clear you'll have some evidence to back up what you're saying.. If you are really sure about this I will order a tray of them. If they turn out to be relabelled parts or just outright fakes you'll give me my costs back for the parts and making up a test jig right? :roflmao:
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Because according to the manufacturers themselves they don't exist.
The manufacturer did not say that.
Freescale (who may or may not be the manufacturer) said FE133 was not a Freescale part number.
This means nothing.
If I walk up to freescale and hand them a million bucks to make a TCAGA060133 cpu. Then I take all the chips and they are my part number not freescale's part number.
That happens all the time in manufacturing.
Therefore what are they and who are they by?
They may be genuine enough to work well, that's true - but if it were your reputation on the line that you'd build up over several years, would you take the risk?
You obviously do not want an 060 accelerator and that is ok with me. You should stay with 030 :)
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BTW: This guy seems to have a 1260 with 040 CPU, as well.
http://www.amiga.org/forums/showthread.php?t=36906
he goes on to refer to it as a 1240 "They simply do not with the Blizzard 1240 (68040@40)... same configuration but... nothing! :( "
He also calls it a 1240 in his signature:
"A500 +A600 +A1000 +A1200 +CDTV
A500 +K3.0 +Viper520CD +
A1200T +K3.1 +Blizzard 603+ (240/50) +
A1200T +K3.1 +Blizzard 1240/40 +
A1200 +K3.1 +Blizzard 1230/50+CoPro +
A2000 +K3.1 +A2630 +
A3000 +K3.1 +Cyberstorm MkIII +
A4000 +K3.1 +A3630 +
A4000T +K3.1 +A3640 + "
The 68060 has an extra row of pins, so the socket will need to be changed (although online it suggests you can bodge I and just add the extra pins). You need a voltage regulator and there is a suggestion that some resistors or diodes need moving/changing.
Someone was doing the mods professionally a while back, I wouldn't even begin to think about doing that myself.
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If everything is so crystal clear you'll have some evidence to back up what you're saying.. If you are really sure about this I will order a tray of them. If they turn out to be relabelled parts or just outright fakes you'll give me my costs back for the parts and making up a test jig right? :roflmao:
The Natami guys tested them, they're exactly what they seem to be, someone just needs to make a board to test them with a regular Amiga. They seem to be a Chinese knockoff, i.e. a replica.
Wherever they come from though they passed all of the instruction tests. Sadly a lot of that stuff is discussed on the "Team" side of the Natami forum and I'm no longer involved over there.
So yes what it requires is someone actually building up a rig to try them. Sorry, no shorter answer to that.
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I have yet to find one report of them working.. links please.
If they didn't work then Thomas would have told me. It would be a really big deal. That is my view.
The way I remember it is that Thomas plugged one into his 060 card and it worked and it did not have MMU or FPU.
You could try datamining the Natami forum.
The only thing I could find that went into any detail was the thread on MorphOS zone or whatever it was called.. and no one there could provide/find an example of one of these things working either. You're also assuming that all of these chips that are floating around the Chinese brokers are the same thing.
Supposedly some Atari guys are using them. You could search Atari forums if u want.
Of if they are really $20.00 why not just buy one and see what happens?
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Silly question, but why do people even care?
If it has neither an FPU nor MMU, is it even a valid option?
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Silly question, but why do people even care?
If it has neither an FPU nor MMU, is it even a valid option?
Loads of Amigas do not have FPU or MMU. Are they valid options?
Is A500 invalid? Is A1200 invalid? What all the zilions of 030 accelerators that have no FPU?
I need an MMU because I am a developer but lots of ppl specifically do not want an MMU. The 060 FPU is awesome but I could live without it. But I really need my MMU. :knuddel:
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Loads of Amigas do not have FPU or MMU. Are they valid options?
Is A500 invalid? Is A1200 invalid? What all the zilions of 030 accelerators that have no FPU?
I need an MMU because I am a developer but lots of ppl specifically do not want an MMU. The 060 FPU is awesome but I could live without it. But I really need my MMU. :knuddel:
True.
I think I'd very much miss the feel of completeness though.
Buying a 060 sans MMU/FPU definitely isn't an option for me.
Well. Perhaps one without the FPU, since it isn't even that good compared to the one on an Intel Pentium, but the MMU is kind of mandatory.
BTW: What do you program your games in? I'm very much interested in trying out GameSmith ASM. Is there anything similar to this but with 060 support?
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Got word from Cosmos.
Unfortunately, he is unable to assist me (or anyone else, for that matter) in the procedure.
A bunch of Frenchmen reported him for what they assumed would be moonlighting, so he quit.
I seriously hate Europe.
What does this mean?
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BTW: What do you program your games in?
JC + asm
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What does this mean?
Moonlighting? It's the practice of working without paying any taxes to the government.
It's what he told me. Three Frenchmen had him reported for that.
I stopped Amiga repair : three french amigamem here want me big troubles (was a black job)
Sorry,
A+++
I think he's German, as "Blackjob" isn't really an English term but Germans use it all the time ("Schwarzarbeit" = Moonlighting)
@ChaosLord
Is that an abbreviation of some sorts? Can't find anything to the extent of Amiga JC or JC ASM or even Amiga JC Library.
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Moonlighting? It's the practice of working without paying any taxes to the government.
It's what he told me. Three Frenchmen had him reported for that.
I think he's German, as "Blackjob" isn't really an English term but Germans use it all the time ("Schwarzarbeit" = Moonlighting)
@ChaosLord
Is that an abbreviation of some sorts? Can't find anything to the extent of Amiga JC or JC ASM or even Amiga JC Library.
Ah. Well, not many governments like you doing work without paying your protection money. What kind of lamer reports someone for it?
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Ah. Well, not many governments like you doing work without paying your protection money. What kind of lamer reports someone for it?
Well. Some people just have really screwed moral standards.
When I was grocery shopping today, I saw a foreign lady stealing stuff in the public. They all just looked into the other direction and when I reported her to the cashier, that fellow behind me had the indecency of calling me out on it*
I really don't want to have to spill it out, but the term by which those kind of people** go starts with an "l" and ends in "efty" ;)
*Quote: "Way to go! Thanks to you, that lady may have to go to bed hungry"
**According to my own personal observations, those really are the same people who would willingly report others for moonlighting and the likes. Doesn't really make sense, but neither do they.
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Pics are in.
(http://img822.imageshack.us/img822/2448/61849960.jpg)
(Is it just me, or does the upper right half look like something went up in smoke before?)
(http://img577.imageshack.us/img577/7359/97824828.jpg)
(http://img19.imageshack.us/img19/7139/46865865.jpg)
To buy or not to buy?
EDIT: Just realized this is a Phase5, so it will only accept single-sided SIMMs.
Is there any way to change this behaviour (some sort of mod)?
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depends on the price, but there are guides on how to upgrade with a 060
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It's 265 + shipping.
Kinda bugs me that it only accepts 64MB though. 192MB with the optional SCSI board (which, as everything, will probably be hard to find. Right?)
Makes me wonder though. Is the 64MB a physical limitation (i. e. single-sided 128MB sticks were less common back then, so Phase5 labelled it as max.64MB) or a logical (i. e. even I could fit in a 128MB module, it will only show up as 64MB or not at all)?
I'm not sure it would make sense to buy it if won't be able to upgrade it to 128MB. Could as well buy an Apollo then.
EDIT: Just had a more thorough look at the photo and it appears he installed a double sided SIMM.
Is this guy screwing with me?
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(Is it just me, or does the upper right half look like something went up in smoke before?)
To buy or not to buy?
EDIT: Just realized this is a Phase5, so it will only accept single-sided SIMMs.
Is there any way to change this behaviour (some sort of mod)?
Its fine. The fan contacts were obviously soldered by the owner (not a great job, but OK).
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Thanks.
I've been offered a 060 socket now.
10 euros (9 if I take two) + 4 euros shipping.
Does that sound fair?
Furthermore, I've already sourced a 060 CPU. Unfortunately, it's the old 50 MHz variant that doesn't clock as high as the later revisions or the LC/EC deriatives.
I have one that I bought foe $10.
Ten euro is a little high but not bad.
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@ the 68060FE133 haters
Various ppl have bought them. They used them. Nobody has ever reported them as being fake or defective. So why the hate?
So, do you still thinks these are real or relabeled MC68EC060RC75s (which is still my opinion, but it doesn't bother as they still look attractive).
Currently trying to get prices on EC75, LC75, and FE133.
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@Iggy
I'm actually more concerned with that diode thingy a fair bit more to the right
See here:
(http://img690.imageshack.us/img690/8900/75396370.jpg)
PS: While I definitely like the idea of having hardware that is customizable to some extent, I still have large issues dealing with all the information.
Saw an older thread on EAB in which a few people said Phase5 Blizzard 1260s would recognize 128MB SIMMs, if one can find one that is slim enough. Is that true?
If I could fit in larger RAM by either finding really slim SIMMs or replacing the socket with a flat one, I would be ok with that.
Lastly, are there any Amiga hardware geeks in southern Germany or Switzerland (near Zurich)? If I end up buying this card, I'll need help modifying and installing it. I burned my hands half a dozen of times this year, which should tell you plenty enough of my lackluster soldering skills.
If someone wants to spend a short vacation here (in case there are no local Amiga geeks), I'd also be more than willing to provide for food, accommodation and leisure.
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Its a capacitor and it looks like it might have leaked.
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Its a capacitor and it looks like it might have leaked.
Urgh.
So no buy then?
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See if he's willing to warrant that it works and is willing to accept payment through Paypal.
Otherwise, pass.
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The Natami guys tested them, they're exactly what they seem to be, someone just needs to make a board to test them with a regular Amiga. They seem to be a Chinese knockoff, i.e. a replica.
So basically, even the people that have supposedly "tested" them have no idea what they are. If they do work I doubt they are "replicas". There is no profit in reverse engineering the 68060 for the amount of units you could sell. I'm not sure how insane you have to be to imagine anyone in China spending years reverse engineering the 68060 to produce "replicas" of something they might sell a few tens of units of.. but it's pretty high up on the scale.
It is much more likely that one guy in Shenzhen got some other QFP 68060s (rejected parts, recycled parts from telecoms hardware..) and relabelled them and told all the brokers about them... and this is why if you google that part number you get 3 posts from Amiga forums about how great these chips are from people with no evidence than "my friend's mate's sister's dad's mate's next door neighbor's dog's friend apparently used them and said they are ok". Who are the Natami "guys" anyhow? There seemed to be loads of team members when only one person was doing any work and that guy decided to go it alone.. shame not one of all of those team members actually posted anything showing those chips working.. :D
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Thanks Don,
Its nice having some backup on this.
After all, as I've said repeatedly, Freescale says there is no such thing as an FE133.
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If they didn't work then Thomas would have told me. It would be a really big deal. That is my view.
Great.. a view.. I'm looking for evidence here. If they do work where are all of the posts showing them off? If you google this part number there are only about 3 results that aren't Chinese brokers and those results are all threads like this.. not a single result about one of these things working. Strange for something so amazing eh?
The way I remember it is that Thomas plugged one into his 060 card and it worked and it did not have MMU or FPU.
You could try datamining the Natami forum.
.
There is no evidence there either... more he said she said. No one has posted "They work, they clock up to xyz, the mask revision according the the register in the chip is...". For something people are so sure about there is so little evidence it's laughable.
Supposedly some Atari guys are using them. You could search Atari forums if u want.
Of if they are really $20.00 why not just buy one and see what happens?
And we're back to "my mate Dave down the pub said they work, so they must work". There's nothing about these chips in the Atari forums either.
Having actually ordered parts like these from brokers I can tell you that the unit cost might be $20 but it will cost a lot more than that to actually have something in your hands.
You need to order 5 parts at least and tell the broker you want n hundred in the future to get those prices. You will then pay $30 or so to have them Fedex them... and then you'll pay a fee for daring to pay with something traceable like Paypal. So we're talking about at least $100 at the end of the day... then I would need to put together a little board to test them. I can get a 4 layer 10cmx10cm board made up for about $100 shipped.
So we're now talking $200 to test some chips that are "100% working according to Dave!!1!1!!!". Yeah, I think I'll pass on that. My barter still stands but the way you just side stepped it with more "someone down the road out of their head on smack said they worked" makes me think you don't have the confidence in these parts to put your money where your mouth is..
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See if he's willing to warrant that it works and is willing to accept payment through Paypal.
Otherwise, pass.
Done.
Shame there's no one creating new 1260 accelerators. Life could be so much easier.
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Its a capacitor and it looks like it might have leaked.
It's the crystal for the clock.
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Thanks Don,
Its nice having some backup on this.
After all, as I've said repeatedly, Freescale says there is no such thing as an FE133.
I would love to be proved wrong. It would save me so much time to have a 3.3v 68040 or 68060 vs having to wire up a mass of level convertors to a 5v 68040..
The only way anyone will know what they are is to buy some, test them (and publish better results than "some guy somewhere on the internet said they worked, I just can't actually give you a link to it..") and take some fuming nitric acid to the chip package to see what is inside.
Until someone does that all this harping on about Jens being a bad guy for not making a turbo card out of these parts is basically just rude. I'm not sure why Jens bothers doing anything for this "community" to be totally honest.
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Mongo beat me to it! Yes, a crystal. Looks like a bunch of solder resin around it to me - not that bad...
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Geez, I don't think anyone is being made out be be a bad guy here. I 1000% appreciate the work Jens has done. What I said is that I would LOVE a 68060 accelerator card - and think that any manufacturer could make a few $ in the process. I can't speak for the others here though.
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Its a capacitor and it looks like it might have leaked.
It's a clock crystal with it's can soldered down to the board (very normal) with some flux residue left over that has probably collected some dirt over the years...
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Until someone does that all this harping on about Jens being a bad guy for not making a turbo card out of these parts is basically just rude. I'm not sure why Jens bothers doing anything for this "community" to be totally honest.
True, I regret bringing that up.
And the fact that LC or EC parts are still available isn't a reason to call for their use either.
After all, a $220 part without an FPU or MMU isn't that useful.
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By the way Don, thanks for commenting. The more opinions and facts here - the better! I wonder how many other long time lurkers we can flush out in the next while!
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Ok.
So let's see
The card is fine after all.
I can upgrade it to 128MB, assuming I can find RAM that is slim enough
It can be upgraded to a 060, although I'll need to buy (a) buy a socket and CPU and (b) find someone to solder/desolder some parts.
265 + shipping isn't too princely a sum.
A good buy then?
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and think that any manufacturer could make a few $ in the process. I can't speak for the others here though.
- If it was easy Jens or someone else would have done it.. it's not easy and wouldn't turn a profit. So no one has done it. Sourcing the parts, putting together a schematic, laying out a board with a ton of layers, creating all of the glue logic and software etc is not a weekend job in the shed at the bottom of the garden.
- The Apolo design is a dead end. This is according to Jens, someone who has built similar products .. knows what he's talking about. A "reliable source".
- 68060s that aren't very very suspect are very very expensive if you can get them at all.
The best you could hope for is that a tray of 68060s finds it's way into Jens hands from a reliable surplus dealer (i.e. not Alibaba) and he decides to have a go for ****s and giggles. I suspect there are enough 060 cards already floating around in the market for the people that really want them though.
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True, I regret bringing that up.
And the fact that LC or EC parts are still available isn't a reason to call for their use either.
After all, a $220 part without an FPU or MMU isn't that useful.
The problem with using LC or EC parts would be that basically all Amiga software is frozen in time and when that freeze happened it was assumed that all machines with an 060 had a working FPU. So LC and EC parts are basically useless for the Amiga..
If you want a super fast Amiga on the cheap then your best bet is to wait for the FPGAReplay and hope that their 68K core kicks ass... or lower your expectations with regards to this dead technology and just have some fun with it instead.
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Sorry man, don't agree with you there. I sold a ton of 68LC040 A4000's in my day and they were plenty adequate for most people then. Still awesome today for what they are running. Frozen in time, just like any other retro platform. Dead? No.
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Sorry man, don't agree with you there. I sold a ton of 68LC040 A4000's in my day and they were plenty adequate for most people then. Still awesome today for what they are running. Frozen in time, just like any other retro platform. Dead? No.
Well, I did say "68060".
The 68k (000,010,012,020..) series is officially dead. Freescale will be taking the last orders for parts next year. I have a feeling they stopped fabbing any of the real 68k series years ago either way. Dead technology. The Amiga technology is very much dead if you ignore the FPGAReplay.
Of course the "amiga community" or whatever isn't dead but there aren't many people left with any of the skills required to make any progress on the hardware side of things. There are two type of people here as I've said before. The people that want stuff and the people that can't work out way no one has done it before because "it's sooo easy".. there is no third group of people that actually produce anything.
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Well, I did say "68060".
The 68k (000,010,012,020..) series is officially dead. Freescale will be taking the last orders for parts next year. I have a feeling they stopped fabbing any of the real 68k series years ago either way. Dead technology. The Amiga technology is very much dead if you ignore the FPGAReplay.
Of course the "amiga community" or whatever isn't dead but there aren't many people left with any of the skills required to make any progress on the hardware side of things. There are two type of people here as I've said before. The people that want stuff and the people that can't work out way no one has done it before because "it's sooo easy".. there is no third group of people that actually produce anything.
and ignore WinUAE....
and Indivual computers....
and Aros...
and Amiga os 4.x
which of those groups of people do you belong?
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- If it was easy Jens or someone else would have done it..
it's not easy and wouldn't turn a profit. So no one has done it.
Sourcing the parts, putting together a schematic, laying out a board with a ton of layers,
How many layers does an A1200 060 accelerator have?
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How many layers does an A1200 060 accelerator have?
I've never made one so I can't say. Restricting yourself to things you have first hand experience of is something that's sorely missing around here..
A board with a 68SEC000, some level convertors and a CPLD for glue logic required 4 layers to route and it was barely possible then.. 4 layers is basically the most complex board you can do as a hobbyist. Unless you happen to do this stuff for a living..
And after all of this.. why would you use the QFP parts and not use the BGA parts that are actually documented as existing and can be bought for similar prices from Chinese brokers*.
I remember correctly Jens is the only person in the world right now that has the edge connectors for the A1200 trap door. It might be a good idea to listen to what he says. :elvis:
* Likely to be fakes.
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I remember correctly Jens is the only person in the world right now that has the edge connectors for the A1200 trap door. It might be a good idea to listen to what he says. :elvis:
I remember correctly Jens is the only person in the world right now that has the schematics and the rights to produce the Apollo 1260 accelerator.
I wonder why he bought the rights for the 060 accelerator?
I wonder why he keeps cranking out 020 accelerators but not 060 ones?
I wonder why he keeps cranking out 030 accelerators but not 060 ones?
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I remember correctly Jens is the only person in the world right now that has the schematics and the rights to produce the Apollo 1260 accelerator.
I wonder why he bought the rights for the 060 accelerator?
Because he had the money to do so and the rights were for sale. He might have considered using them. Who knows. I don't tell you what to do with your stuff do I?
Again, if you are so sure about everything get some cash and offer to buy them from him. I'm sure if you have a big enough pile of dosh he'll be happy to get rid of them.
I wonder why he keeps cranking out 020 accelerators but not 060 ones?
Because in reality opposed to magic-fairy-pony dream land producing working products is more complicated than wishing them into existence.
I see trays of real 68020s on Yahoo Auctions every few weeks. There seem to be some stock piles of the lower end chips around in the US,Europe and Japan.. so maybe it's an availability of parts thing? Maybe there is more market for basic cards that will allow 90% of the Amiga software out there to run just fine? Maybe most of the people in the market for a turbo card right now only want to run games via WHDLoad so there is no point wasting time on anything else?
The only things we can say for sure are: Making an 68060 card isn't a walk in the park. The 68040 and 68060 are considerably more complex than the 020/030. Jens has the designs of a "working" 68060 which he said more or less that he thinks is a piece of crap. You can agrue all you like that Jens is wrong.. but I know who's opinion I trust over people that have zero experience with this stuff. Jens has produced a bunch of turbo cards and other hardware .. sum total of hardware produced by people with big ideas about using shady chips here.. safe to say zero right?
I wonder why he keeps cranking out 030 accelerators but not 060 ones?
Because it's working for him? Maybe he's actually managing to make a bit of money out of them? I'm not sure how you guys have the cheek to say basically "someone else should risk their time and money doing something for me even though I have no intention of actually listening to anything they say".
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The problem with using LC or EC parts would be that basically all Amiga software is frozen in time and when that freeze happened it was assumed that all machines with an 060 had a working FPU. So LC and EC parts are basically useless for the Amiga..
Can u name a single piece of software that makes such an assumption?
I have never met a program that did such a thing.
I don't think anyone assumed that except you.
Tons of ppl used LC and EC parts and I never heard of them not working.
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Can u name a single piece of software that makes such an assumption?
I have never met a program that did such a thing.
I don't think anyone assumed that except you.
Tons of ppl used LC and EC parts and I never heard of them not working.
Supposedly, Quake will not work without a fully functional FPU. Can anyone confirm this?
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I remember correctly Jens is the only person in the world right now that has the schematics and the rights to produce the Apollo 1260 accelerator.
I wonder why he bought the rights for the 060 accelerator?
I wonder why he keeps cranking out 020 accelerators but not 060 ones?
I wonder why he keeps cranking out 030 accelerators but not 060 ones?
1) I don't know. But I very much doubt it was to produce 060 cards.
2) Because 020 chips are plentiful and well tested genuine parts can be found.
3) Because 030 chips are plentiful and well tested genuine parts can be found.
The 060 is a MUCH more complicated design than the 020 and 030. Development costs would be too high for the tiny market we are today, and even if he did produce one, there's no chips available. What chips there are that are guaranteed known genuine working (which is what he would require) are very expensive, and the accelerator would be more expensive than what's already available.
There's just no point in it unless he finds a good cheap source of guaranteed genuine, tested 68060 chips; and I don't think that's going to happen any time soon.
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Can u name a single piece of software that makes such an assumption?
I have never met a program that did such a thing.
Any application that tries to make use of the FPU or MMU..
Tons of ppl used LC and EC parts and I never heard of them not working.
And we're back to "my mate Dave said his dad had a special 68060 specially imported by James Bond" again. Did you not get the memo about a lot (most?) LC and EC 060 parts having working MMU and FPU?
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Unless he finds a good cheap source of guaranteed genuine, tested 68060 chips; and I don't think that's going to happen any time soon.
Wait.. random Chinese sellers on Alibaba aren't reliable? Ones that can offer products at less than 10% of the price of trusted distributors like Digikey etc? Offering products that have never officially existed? I am shocked.
On a serious note.. stop making so much sense.
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So basically, even the people that have supposedly "tested" them have no idea what they are. If they do work I doubt they are "replicas". There is no profit in reverse engineering the 68060 for the amount of units you could sell. I'm not sure how insane you have to be to imagine anyone in China spending years reverse engineering the 68060 to produce "replicas" of something they might sell a few tens of units of.. but it's pretty high up on the scale.
It is much more likely that one guy in Shenzhen got some other QFP 68060s (rejected parts, recycled parts from telecoms hardware..) and relabelled them and told all the brokers about them... and this is why if you google that part number you get 3 posts from Amiga forums about how great these chips are from people with no evidence than "my friend's mate's sister's dad's mate's next door neighbor's dog's friend apparently used them and said they are ok". Who are the Natami "guys" anyhow? There seemed to be loads of team members when only one person was doing any work and that guy decided to go it alone.. shame not one of all of those team members actually posted anything showing those chips working.. :D
What's with the attitude? You asked, I answered as best I could, no-one on the Natami team has even though there's a few of them with boards out there including with these chips. I get the frustration about finding out more about these parts and where they come from but you have your answer, buy some, mount them on a board with a rom and start dumping output to get what you want.
I cannot access the section of the forum to get you that information anymore so I'm just repeating what info I remember. The output from the test programs, and the test programs themselves were available to us, the chips were tested and clocked upto 120MHz. Only 120Mhz because past 100MHz there were problems with the sync-zorro interface between Natami and the CPU board rather than a limitation of the chip. They didn't have Motorola based numbering/revision and didn't appear to be repackaged 75Mhz QFP parts. Partly because they were a different physical size to the older QFP parts.
I've never really cared where they came from but speculation has always been that Motorola produced some QFP 68060 chips in China and so the designs were just blatantly stolen. I doubt we'll ever get an official answer from anyone.
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Any application that tries to make use of the FPU or MMU..
You don't understand the way Amiga software works.
And we're back to "my mate Dave said his dad had a special 68060 specially imported by James Bond" again. Did you not get the memo about a lot (most?) LC and EC 060 parts having working MMU and FPU?
So now you are admitting that Freescale LIED when they marked their chips as LC or EC ? When in fact they were full 060s?
So now you are admitting that Digikey sells fake untested cpus for high prices?
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@donpalmera
This is one reason I don't bother posting on these or other Amiga forums anymore, personally I'd think the only real future route for an Amiga accelerator board would be using an FPGA or large CPLD depending on cost. You asked about the FE133, I've seen the tests done and answered, as has ChaosLord and all we've got from you is attitude.
Neither is saying that they're genuine, neither of us is saying that we should all rush out and build a board with them. If you're so wound up about what they are or are not then buy one and test it because I don't think that either of us would advocate that as a future chip for us in an accelerator board.
Whatever you do, drop the attitude. You come across as rude bordering on outright insulting.
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What's with the attitude?
He's a new account created for trolling.
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Great.. a view.. I'm looking for evidence here. If they do work where are all of the posts showing them off?
There are posts and pics and videos proving that they do work. NatAmi's softcore CPU was never completed so all tests were done with 060 (regular and FE) CPU daughterboards.
There is no evidence there either... more he said she said. No one has posted "They work, they clock up to xyz, the mask revision according the the register in the chip is...".
Yes there is. Team members posted about their test boards working at 100+ MHz. Not 133, but they believed it could be achieved with some tweaking and better cooling.
And we're back to "my mate Dave down the pub said they work, so they must work".
You are pretty harsh on people for allegedly talking about something they haven't tried, or have very little info about, but you seem to be doing exactly the same thing. Many of us followed the NatAmi forum daily, so I can pretty much say that we know more on this matter then you do. There is no need for such an offensive attitude here.
So... say hello to your mate Dave down the pub who told you that they didn't work, and inform him that they do work.
EDIT:
In the meantime AJC explained pretty much the same thing.
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There are posts and pics and videos proving that they do work. NatAmi's softcore CPU was never completed so all tests were done with 060 (regular and FE) CPU daughterboards.
Please link them then..
Many of us followed the NatAmi forum daily, so I can pretty much say that we know more on this matter then you do. There is no need for such an offensive attitude here.
Sigh, you followed some forums.. great. These chips very well may have "worked". But as I said.. I have 0.8mm pitch AE package 68SEC000s that don't exist that apparently work too.. would you ship a product based on these parts?
The fact that none of you even brought up the fact that Motorola mentions CQFP parts in their documentation when they apparently don't exist surprises me to be honest. I would have thought you would have mentioned it right away..
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What's with the attitude? You asked, I answered as best I could, no-one on the Natami team has even though there's a few of them with boards out there including with these chips.
There's no attitude. Sorry for asking people to back up what they are saying.
I get the frustration about finding out more about these parts and where they come from but you have your answer, buy some, mount them on a board with a rom and start dumping output to get what you want.
Sigh.. this is exactly what I'm asking the people that are saying "hey, you hardware guys, you should make board with these super chips or else!?!!?".
I cannot access the section of the forum to get you that information anymore so I'm just repeating what info I remember. The output from the test programs, and the test programs themselves were available to us, the chips were tested and clocked upto 120MHz,
That information would have been interesting. I'm surprised no one can remember what mask these things are though.
They didn't have Motorola based numbering/revision and didn't appear to be repackaged 75Mhz QFP parts. Partly because they were a different physical size to the older QFP parts.
I'm very doubtful anyone would go the the effort to package bare dies or attempt to re-package already packaged dies. For Motorola QFP packages there is a stamp on the underside of the package that says where that die was packaged (For the 68000 series the dies have been fabbed in the US, Japan etc but it seems from the PCNs that most of the parts got packaged in Hong Kong or Mayalsia). You can use the information in the PCNs to verify the datecode on some parts (The PCNs say where parts should have been packaged on certain years).
I've never really cared where they came from
For your own use, yeah, whatever any old working chip will do. You can't ship that in a product as was being suggested..
but speculation has always been that Motorola produced some QFP 68060 chips in China
Motorola never had fabs in China.. and they don't seem to have every packaged chips in China either. Motorola's own documents mention QFP parts though. So it is possible they did produce some that didn't get to the point of general sale.. and some parts broker managed to get hold of them. Even if that is the case they are still a massive unknown and not something you would want to ship in a product.
and so the designs were just blatantly stolen. I doubt we'll ever get an official answer from anyone.
That's where it gets hairy.. no one in China is that crazy. Fab'ing bootleg chips from "motorola designs" would be beyond uneconomical.
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Please link them then..
Sigh, you followed some forums.. great. These chips very well may have "worked". But as I said.. I have 0.8mm pitch AE package 68SEC000s that don't exist that apparently work too.. would you ship a product based on these parts?
The fact that none of you even brought up the fact that Motorola mentions CQFP parts in their documentation when they apparently don't exist surprises me to be honest. I would have thought you would have mentioned it right away..
Why does it surprise you? We've discussed this rubbish on and off for years, even if we haven't mentioned the part numbers in posts to make it easy for you to find. What exactly should we be guessing you'll "expect" us to mention next? They made QFP parts? Yes. Some of these show up rebadged? Yes.
We know there are parts that exist which Moto' don't list anywhere official. Whoop-dee-doo. So far people have "asked" if it's worth finding out about the FE133 parts, the answer has been "no".
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So now you are admitting that Freescale LIED when they marked their chips as LC or EC ? When in fact they were full 060s?
It's very common for multiple products to be produced from the same mask...
EC parts having working FPUs and MMUs is something you can go and verify yourself fairly easily. Whether those FPUs and MMUs actually work to spec is another matter but they weren't sold as such..
So now you are admitting that Digikey sells fake untested cpus for high prices?
Digikey is a distributor. They distribute stuff. They are a trusted distributor and they get their parts from the vendors. Vendors like Xilinx etc will only deal with trusted partners like Digikey. Digikey shouldn't need to test parts coming from vendors as the vendor has their own testing and you can get mask qualification data etc from Freescale. Fake/Non-working parts shouldn't get into Digikey etcs stock but if they do you have a chain all the way back to the original vendor. Compare that to Chinese parts brokers; 1: you buy some parts, 2: they come in the post 3 weeks later (Digikey ship parts from the US to here in Japan in about 3 days), 3: You unwrap the food wrapping film that has been used to pack the parts, 3.5: You wash your hands as for some strange reason parts from China/HK usually come stinking and covered in some sort of thin oil, 4: you notice the parts are fake, 5: you contact the broker .... you get no response.
P.S. Trolling does not mean asking people to backup what they are saying.
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The first five revisions are far from rare, are they?
Talked to a distributor today and they still had eighty 50MHz CPUs with MMU and FPU in stock.
Guy warned me not to use these without dedicated cooling though. At least not when I'm overclocking them to 66MHz.
I was also looking around for inexpensive 128MB sticks, but couldn't get a definite answer on whether 60ns RAM (of which I should still have a few sticks) is good enough for serious OC (as in an 80MHz 060).
As nice as 50ns sticks would be, they're kind of out of my budget.
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Why does it surprise you? We've discussed this rubbish on and off for years, even if we haven't mentioned the part numbers in posts to make it easy for you to find.
It surprises me because you would have thought instead making up some colourful story about Chinese guys reverse engineering the Motorola designs someone would have looked that the information Motorola put into the public.
I know what the part numbers are.. and they only ever appear on broker sites. You can give parts brokers any old part number you like and get something in the post.
So far people have "asked" if it's worth finding out about the FE133 parts, the answer has been "no".
Ok, so we can agree that people shouldn't be harping on that people should make turbo cards with these things then because no one has any idea what they are. Case closed. :banana:
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The first five revisions are far from rare, are they?
Talked to a distributor today and they still had eighty 50MHz CPUs with MMU and FPU in stock.
First five revisions of what? the 68060? There are only 4 masks of the 060 from what I can tell.
I'm not sure if having the latest greatest revision is all that big of a deal either. From all of the 68060 turbo cards I have seen and all of the photos I can find online there seem to be a fair amount of them with the "buggy" revisions.
Here is the errata sheet if you actually want to check for yourself:
http://cache.freescale.com/files/32bit/doc/errata/MC68060DE.pdf?fpsp=1&WT_TYPE=Errata&WT_VENDOR=FREESCALE&WT_FILE_FORMAT=pdf&WT_ASSET=Documentation
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It's very common for multiple products to be produced from the same mask...
EC parts having working FPUs and MMUs is something you can go and verify yourself fairly easily. Whether those FPUs and MMUs actually work to spec is another matter but they weren't sold as such..
Motorola frequently produced full 060s and just marked them as LC or EC when they weren't LC or EC.
I have one. Its not supposed to have FPU/MMU and yet there it is, working perfectly, all these years.
You would rather trust a few characters of writing to tell you if something works rather than to test the product itself to see if it works or fails.
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I am curious, is it the limitation of the actual 68k that it cannot continue to 68070, 68080 and so on and that it cannot go beyond 50 Mhz like 230 Mhz or 1 Ghz or is it the limitation of the Amiga classic itself that forces the maximum limit of 50 Mhz for all 68K except with forced over clocking?
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First five revisions of what? the 68060? There are only 4 masks of the 060 from what I can tell.
I'm not sure if having the latest greatest revision is all that big of a deal either. From all of the 68060 turbo cards I have seen and all of the photos I can find online there seem to be a fair amount of them with the "buggy" revisions.
Here is the errata sheet if you actually want to check for yourself:
http://cache.freescale.com/files/32bit/doc/errata/MC68060DE.pdf?fpsp=1&WT_TYPE=Errata&WT_VENDOR=FREESCALE&WT_FILE_FORMAT=pdf&WT_ASSET=Documentation
Ok.
Thanks.
I assumed there were six revisions since the last one commonly goes by "68060 Rev6"
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Motorola frequently produced full 060s and just marked them as LC or EC when they weren't LC or EC.
I have one. Its not supposed to have FPU/MMU and yet there it is, working perfectly, all these years.
This is exactly what I said. It could be the case that your EC parts failed some test and you just haven't noticed. If it works fair enough. If you were selling EC units as full parts and Motorola* suddenly started actually fabbing EC parts without the FPU and MMU you would be up **** creek without a paddle.
For another example of the same sort of thing some of the FPGA vendors will sell chips that are only verified to run a single bitstream as some of the part failed but not one of the bits you are using.. Those parts turn up as fully working parts sometimes. This is why semiconductor vendors now burn identifying information into chips.
If you buy these "no one knows what the hell they are" parts you might find you get some that work, some that don't, some that have visible signs that they have been recycled (I have had *new* chips with traces attached). If you want to hack up a board with one of those knock yourself out... producing a product for sale with such parts probably isn't legal.
*This is a fantasy situation. Motorola doesn't exist and Freescale aren't making any 68060 parts.
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I am curious, is it the limitation of the actual 68k that it cannot continue to 68070, 68080 and so on and that it cannot go beyond 50 Mhz like 230 Mhz or 1 Ghz or is it the limitation of the Amiga classic itself that forces the maximum limit of 50 Mhz for all 68K except with forced over clocking?
The limitations are purely political and religous.
Motorola intentionally stopped improving the 680x0 line in order to try to force everyone over to PPC. Motorola managers did a lot of stupid things.
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I am curious, is it the limitation of the actual 68k that it cannot continue to 68070
The 68k series continued in the Coldfire which isn't compatible enough. The Coldfire is another one of those things that people often bring up in "someone must make xzy" threads.
cannot go beyond 50 Mhz like 230 Mhz or 1 Ghz"
There is technically possible and economically possible. I don't see why you couldn't make a stinking fast 68k but there is no market for a desktop 68k processor in this day and age so there aren't any.
Amiga classic itself that forces the maximum limit of 50 Mhz for all 68K except with forced over clocking?
Or just dump the hardware and do it all in software instead. If back when I bought a BlizzardPPC new there were X86 systems that could run WinUAE as fast as they do now I would have never bought the BPPC.
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The 68k series continued in the Coldfire which isn't compatible enough. The Coldfire is another one of those things that people often bring up in "someone must make xzy" threads.
There is technically possible and economically possible. I don't see why you couldn't make a stinking fast 68k but there is no market for a desktop 68k processor in this day and age so there aren't any.
Or just dump the hardware and do it all in software instead. If back when I bought a BlizzardPPC new there were X86 systems that could run WinUAE as fast as they do now I would have never bought the BPPC.
No there is not now, but back then when it was used and needed why did they migrate to PPC when it was possible to be more than 50 MHz?
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No there is not now, but back then when it was used and needed why did they migrate to. PPC when it was possible to more than 50 MHz?
It might not have been possible to go further with the current design, maybe it would have needed a complete redesign.. so they just designed a new architecture. I don't think they did it out of spite.
This is sort of like saying "the z80 worked.. why isn't everything just a really fast z80"?
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I am curious, is it the limitation of the actual 68k that it cannot continue to 68070, 68080 and so on and that it cannot go beyond 50 Mhz like 230 Mhz or 1 Ghz or is it the limitation of the Amiga classic itself that forces the maximum limit of 50 Mhz for all 68K except with forced over clocking?
You could probably clock a 68060 to 230MHz or 1GHz, but then it really wouldn't be a 68060 anymore.
A shrink alone is certainly not enough. You would have to redesign vast parts of the pipeline.
In the end, it would turn out to be somewhat like an Intel Core 2 Duo (Pentium 3).
As for not continuing to 68070/68080/etc. Blame Motorola for going PPC.
Lastly. It's probably worth mentioning that a 68060 isn't just a souped up 68000 (your first sentence seems to insinuate that).
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Going RISC was "in" in the late 80s/early 90s.
At the time, it was possible to design a fairly competitive and cheap RISC design on a budget. So pretty much everyone did. Most every bigger workstation maker had an inhouse RISC design in the works(SPARC, DEC Alpha, HP PA RISC, SGI bought MIPS..). Add to that that most IT experts prophesized the death of CISC/x86.
But in the early-mid 90s, Intel(and Motorola with 040 and 060) showed that RISC features can be implemented in a legacy x86/68k... Rest is history.
Sad thing is 68060 was pretty competitive at that time, especially in integer performance. All it needed was a fully pipelined FPU(P5 Pentium had one) and out of order execution(P6 Pentium). P6 evolved to Core processors of today(Pentium 4 was a different design). So 68K in 2012 was very doable
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Please link them then..
Sure, knock yourself out:
http://www.natami.net/knowledge.php?b=0
Tons of valuable technical data and knowledge. Not just the 68060FE stuff.
Sigh, you followed some forums.. great.
Yeah, and you followed what... exactly which proves that those CPUs don't work ? How many of those 68060FE133s have you tested, or seen someone test to prove faulty ?
We were on the forum day and night following that really great engineering work. Thomas Hirsch said that they worked and that they passed the tests (without MMU and FPU but still). NAe60F board has been seen in action and we have seen it running games and benches. Are you saying Thomas and the rest of the team are liars ? That NatAmi project was just an elaborate scheme going on for years just to fool the people into thinking how FE CPUs are ok when in real life they are not ? Well... if that was the case then they sure fooled me. Hats off to them.
These chips very well may have "worked". But as I said.. I have 0.8mm pitch AE package 68SEC000s that don't exist that apparently work too.. would you ship a product based on these parts?
To the US military ? Probably not. To a small niche enthusiast segment ? If they work well and are tested, why not. Who cares about labels ?
The fact that none of you even brought up the fact that Motorola mentions CQFP parts in their documentation when they apparently don't exist surprises me to be honest. I would have thought you would have mentioned it right away..
What surprises me is that you believe that Motorola's actions through the history are so flawless that it is utterly impossible for some of their CPUs to slide out of the "official" charts. If anything, Motorola has a history of cock-ups (to counter the list of brilliant stuff I guess) and illogical moves. So why not just go with the flow ?
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How about 66mhz 68k cpu, with integrated gpu, usb controller, memory controller, etc. That would be DragonBall Super VZ.
http://cache.freescale.com/files/32bit/doc/prod_brief/MC68SZ328P.pdf
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Chimming in to say that I've just been offered a Blizzard 1260 (well. Blizzard 1240 modified by Stacho, actually. But that shouldn't make a difference, aye?) with a Rev 6 68060@77MHz.
Waiting for some pics now, then I'll decide whether to buy it or not.
But looking good, so far.
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How about 66mhz 68k cpu, with integrated gpu, usb controller, memory controller, etc. That would be DragonBall Super VZ.
http://cache.freescale.com/files/32bit/doc/prod_brief/MC68SZ328P.pdf
Freescale: "The End of life for this family is complete."
So, that's not even available.
At least I can still get certain 68060s.
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Chimming in to say that I've just been offered a Blizzard 1260 (well. Blizzard 1240 modified by Stacho, actually. But that shouldn't make a difference, aye?) with a Rev 6 68060@77MHz.
Waiting for some pics now, then I'll decide whether to buy it or not.
But looking good, so far.
That would do nicely.
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That would do nicely.
It sure would.
I mean, it costs quite a bit more than all the other accelerators I've been offered before. But then I realize that labour isn't free either and it would probably cost me quite a penny to let someone rework a 1240, as well.
I hope I can easily remove the coolers though.
The seller placed two on there (one on top of the CPU and one below it) and I'm quite positive that I won't be able to keep it that way without towerizing my Amiga 1200.
Which reminds me of another fun project.
Modifying a standard ATX tower, so it will suit a Amiga 1200 plus busboard, accellerator and RTG.
Has anyone done something like that before?
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I hope I can easily remove the coolers though.
The seller placed two on there (one on top of the CPU and one below it) and I'm quite positive that I won't be able to keep it that way without towerizing my Amiga 1200.
I'd be interested in why they added the coolers.
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I'd be interested in why they added the coolers.
"They" didn't.
The seller did it by himself.
As he explained it to me, he's kind of a cooling junkie and very fond of his Rev 6 060, so back then he didn't want to risk screwing up his CPU.
I asked him to do some tests on it and post a video. He doesn't have Quake and while he was more than willing to find some wads, I told him that there was no need and that ScummVM (Sam&Max) would be plenty enough.
Always wanted to play Sam&Max on an Amiga. This will be interesting.
Probably still not enough horsepower for another personal alltime favourite of mine, The Feeble Files.
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"They" didn't.
The seller did it by himself.
As he explained it to me, he's kind of a cooling junkie.............QUOTE]
LOL I am cooling junkie too! I thought I am alone, hehehe.
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Personally, I'd try to find a way to keep the CPU cooler.
My guess is that with that overclock, you may need it.
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Pics and video are in:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2P2xKWUP5Gg&feature=youtu.be
(https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-OMaGuyH4bM0/UM31hg8lpuI/AAAAAAAAAno/H28HgLl2Gtg/s512/IMAG0479.jpg)
(https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/--e6iP9J5c4o/UM31OePAlPI/AAAAAAAAAnM/ksSCSGYltxI/s512/IMAG0475.jpg)
(https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-LQAlkVYuBdo/UM31EYDzisI/AAAAAAAAAm8/4ij4pos9SAs/s512/IMAG0474.jpg)
(https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-edCLXzgP5QY/UM31BMK9oCI/AAAAAAAAAm0/i0JvGwq74gI/s512/IMAG0471.jpg)
(https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-cZq0TY9Nwok/UM31CAjYH9I/AAAAAAAAAnE/d6OT5bgmflI/s512/IMAG0472.jpg)
What really got me though, is the fact that he said something to the extent of the CPU not being a Rev 6, after all. Apparently, while the markings on the CPU point to Rev 6, it's recognized as a Rev 5.
EDIT: There were some other pictures of the trapdoor, but that stuff is like the SAW V of Amigas. Don't think I would want to do that to my trapdoor (drilling a large hole into it).
I wonder if I should just slightly rise my machine (by adding some large metal feet to it) and tuck away the trapdoor. Surely, the amount of dust can't be that tremendous.
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I wonder if I should just slightly rise my machine (by adding some large metal feet to it) and tuck away the trapdoor. Surely, the amount of dust can't be that tremendous.
Sounds like the ticket.
BTW - That cooler on the '060 looks a little small (and no fan).
If possible, I'd replace it.
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Sounds like the ticket.
BTW - That cooler on the '060 looks a little small (and no fan).
If possible, I'd replace it.
If I end up buying it (still have to think about it, since it's only a Rev 5 and a bit more expensive than the Rev 6 carts with 64MB 50ns EDO Stachu used to sell), I'll probably just switch the coolers.
I don't really see the sense of having an inward facing fan, while the CPU itself basically starves from the lack of aforementioned fan.
BTW: Is there any way telling whether a CPU has been socketed or not? For an Amiga newbie like me, it's always hard to tell from the photos and I almost always forget asking the seller.
EDIT: WhichAmiga reports a Rev 5, indeed.
Is there any known issue with WhichAmiga and Rev6 CPUs or is it really a Rev 5 then?
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If I end up buying it (still have to think about it, since it's only a Rev 5 and a bit more expensive than the Rev 6 carts with 64MB 50ns EDO Stachu used to sell), I'll probably just switch the coolers.
Probably a good idea.
BTW - PM sent.
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I have decided to take this guy up on his offer.
However, I'm still in contact with three other sellers. So if anyone is looking for an Apollo/Blizzard, PM me.
On another note: I've just received an offer for a Mikronic Z3i for 150 euros + shipping.
Might this be a worthwhile future update?
EDIT: Ok. It cost me quite a lot of money, but I'm 80% there.
After waiting 12 years for my Amiga (about the same amount of time people in the USSR waited for their cars. Lol), it took me less than a month and approximately 700 euros to source nearly all the components I ever wanted to have.
Bought 2*128MB 50ns Superslim EDO (the last the Ebay seller had in stock) today (they cost me about the same as my 16GB high-end DDR3. Ouch), already sourced a Z3i for a possible future upgrade to Cyberstorm(PPC) or UltraPPC (if that ever comes out and supports Amiga 1200 busboards) and am about to drop some money on Amiga OS 3.9.
Am I one lucky son of a bitch or is it money that plays a huge part here? Personally, I'd have imagined it to cost about two to three times as much as it ended up costing me. Going by what someone on here said, the Micronik alone should've cost me quite a dime.
The only thing that is now left finding out is whether I can install a Micronik Z3i and a Mediator at the same time or not.
This and I'll need some documents on how to successfully mod an ATX midi/big tower, since I really don't want to spend money on something as generic as the Amiga specific towers.