Sonnet crescendo 7200 and OS4.1

[trixster]

Considering there is basically ZERO availability of Sonnet's why would someone put time/money into this type of development?

This is not quite true. They come up from time to time on Amibay, and a number of people have found them by using the Wanted section there. The problem is they are scarce so the price is high. The 'rapture' variant of the sonnet is readily available but again it costs quite a lot. But you are right, sonnet/rapture is a very very niche corner of the Amiga market, so I doubt there'll ever be anything 'official' from the bigger players. Any development will come from the handful of guys you see posting in the big EAB sonnet thread. IMO they're doing brilliantly so far!

Here's a list of sonnet/rapture compatible software. It hasn't been updated for a little while but it gives an idea as to why someone might want one.

https://github.com/Sakura-IT/SonnetAmiga/wiki/Compatible-Software-(PowerPC.library-version)

[trixster]

The Sonnet 'team' are actively working on getting faster G4 PMC cards running, and there is even talk of them producing a bespoke very fast (1Ghz+) card at some point.

[trixster]

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

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

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

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

Selected quotes from the thread:

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

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

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

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

[trixster]

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

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

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

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