powerpc blizzard 603 installation

[Chucky]

the PPC work "out of the box"  well yes..  except that it is with powerup and it sucks bad.  more or less all PPC software uses WarpOS instead.

and the 68040 libs that is in rom is outdated.

so lots of patchning needing to be done.

also.. it is VERY critical that you have a GOOD powersupply..   4.5A is not enough.. especially not for the powerhungry 040.. upgrading to a rev6 060 would lower the powerrequirements some.. still it will be more than 4.5A that the best Amiga PSU can deliver.

also it is important that your machine is recapped so the decouplingcaps can manage the high load.

I have written a step by step writeup how to install 3.9 on BPPC with 060 at: http://wordpress.hertell.nu/?p=18  but it can give you a hint how to use bppcfix and bppcfixfix  to patch to the newer libs..  (I have no 040 lib to patch. as I always upgrade 040 cpus to 060

Hi dear Amiga friends,

First of all my setup :
Amiga 1200 (kickstart 3.0)
Gotek floppy emulator
Powerpc Blizzard 603 (68040)met 265 Mb Ram
IDE harddisk (standard Amiga hd)



I have tried to install the Powerpc card, but so far no success. I kept getting the error : C:Setpatch error (#8000002). Although I understood the Ppowerpc should work straight from the box, I thought I was missing some software and startup-sequence settings.

I have downloaded the phase5 system disk and transformed it to adf, so I can use it in the Gotek floppy emulator.

I am not sure if I downloaded the right one. because during the installation it refered to software for the 68060 and mentioned that it works just like Enforcer for the 68040 processor. This made me think I needed another phase5 install disk, but as I could not find one, I tried to install it. Seemingly worked fine, but after reboot I got no error, but also no memory visible to show the card is active. In showconfig it also shows the 68020 which is the native cpu. My Startup Sequence is also adjusted, the SetPatch command now reads;
Setpatch QUIT. My main question is :

1. Did I use the right software ? Is there a phase 5 PowerPC system/install disk for the 68040 only ?
2. I also tried many settings in the Powerpc menu, but I have no idea what they mean, does somebody know ?
In the bios all show (hd, dh0. expansion board).

I hope I gave enough info, would realy appreciate your comments, thanks in advance.

Have a great and sunny day everyone


Lyrical80

[Chucky]

ok, I can't solder so that is a no go road for me, I will definitely ruin my amiga !
I want to sell the PowerPC card, so I just needed to show it working. It is showing in the bios and I did get memory shown at one stage... thanks for your quick reply.

ps: where do you buy the 68060 cpu ?

if you cannot solder ..  then changing cpu is no-go..

anyway.  if it boots and show fastmem.  it works.

[Chucky]

I afraid you did not. If you do not load SetPatch, the 68040.library will not be loaded. If the 68040.library is not loaded, the system will not work stable. In particular, the cache will not be setup correctly, so the system is slow. Caching will not interact correctly with DMA, so DMA transfer may receive damage. Unimplemented FPU instructions will guru, as the support code is missing, and as soon as a FPU instruction causes an overflow or underflow, the machine will crash, too.

So, hence, no, it is *not* working. You absolutely *must* install the right 68040.library, and you absolutely *must* run SetPatch on a 68040 and 68060 machine, or very bad things may happen.

Except that the BPPC have a ROM version of the libs loaded at boot.  old and buggy.. but there is some.  it is however recomended to remove them with the bppcfix command and use proper libs..  descrived in my install-text linked above here somewhere..