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Author Topic: A project I'd like to see from Jens...  (Read 27948 times)

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Offline freqmax

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Re: A project I'd like to see from Jens...
« on: June 21, 2014, 03:43:07 AM »
You could perhaps do it quick & dirty. The Raspberry-Pi runs att 700 MHz. The Amiga 500 (bus) runs at 7,14 MHz. So 98 cycles available to catch I/O signals. Connect enough Raspberry-Pi GPIO to the Zorro bus or parallell port. Then activate interrupt-on-change on the ARM CPU. Capture the bits and use them.

And the ARM CPU has some really good but complicated DMA engines. It's even possible to chain RAM --> DMA --> VGA video etc.

A quick feasability study is to measure the response time of the RPi. Let it watch one I/O using interrupt-on-change and the interrupt routine will then toggle another I/O. Wire to an oscilloscope and catch the result which you can dump here..
 

Offline freqmax

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Re: A project I'd like to see from Jens...
« Reply #1 on: June 22, 2014, 12:41:30 AM »
New production run of 6581 and 68060 .. ;)
 

Offline freqmax

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Re: A project I'd like to see from Jens...
« Reply #2 on: June 22, 2014, 07:04:44 AM »
Exactly, all digital 6581 replication solutions won't cut it. They just don't have the same sound.
 

Offline freqmax

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Re: A project I'd like to see from Jens...
« Reply #3 on: June 23, 2014, 04:35:43 PM »
The only interesting chip to reproduce is likely the 68060 because it's hard to replicate in FPGA right now.
 

Offline freqmax

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Re: A project I'd like to see from Jens...
« Reply #4 on: June 24, 2014, 02:03:20 AM »
Since most projects seems to end up with a super computer with an Amiga attached ;-)
Perhaps it's time to have a look at FPGA Replay again?
It's a full Amiga with chips that can actually be bought. And many periphials can be synthesized in FPGA. Way less unreliable connectors and card stacking.
 

Offline freqmax

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Re: A project I'd like to see from Jens...
« Reply #5 on: June 25, 2014, 12:33:38 AM »
What has to be taken into account is also the amount of expensive and complex support circuitry to support various CPU:s. Doing GHz signal routing between CPU and memory ain't fun!

A single chip core with CPU+RAM is way simpler to deal with.

A few vendor caveats. Watch out for Intel EOL:ing chips and Broadcom tend to have their own brand of NDA and secrecy hell.

Majastas A600 accelerator is now being done by @biggun here? and Cyclone-5 being the descendant?

Has the source for the FPGA Arcade come out yet? I think it's a great platform. But stuff that actually gets used is even better ;)
 

Offline freqmax

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Re: A project I'd like to see from Jens...
« Reply #6 on: June 25, 2014, 03:37:21 AM »
What FPGA does the Cyclone-5 use?
 

Offline freqmax

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Re: A project I'd like to see from Jens...
« Reply #7 on: June 25, 2014, 04:57:22 AM »
Guess that makes doing VHDL/Verilog development on Linux a hard choice.
 

Offline freqmax

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Re: A project I'd like to see from Jens...
« Reply #8 on: June 25, 2014, 05:52:08 AM »
Yeah there is a licensed pay version asfaik. Xilinx is free for all Spartan-3E (XC3S__E).
 

Offline freqmax

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Re: A project I'd like to see from Jens...
« Reply #9 on: June 25, 2014, 02:39:26 PM »
crowth?

What is the most nice one to program when it comes to MIPS vs ARM?
 

Offline freqmax

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Re: A project I'd like to see from Jens...
« Reply #10 on: June 25, 2014, 03:34:19 PM »
Will that stand even to other one-chip embedded architectures like C28x, Coldfire, CPU32, 603e, 200e, 300e, M-CORE, MIPS32, MPC500, RISC, TLCS-900, TMS320C28x, TriCore, TX19A, MSP430 etc ..?

And will also be available as a single chip in LQFP for less than 10 EUR per single chip and go into 1 µA @ 3,3V power usage when at sleep?

But if 68k does beat both ARM and MIPS on doing DCT, FFT, convolution etc.. And can be had for a reasonable price then I'm all for it ;)
 

Offline freqmax

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Re: A project I'd like to see from Jens...
« Reply #11 on: June 26, 2014, 01:57:12 PM »
The point of the Amiga was that you could do something that wasn't possible at all previously for that price.

To then go for a more expensive route that does less than the current options seems to be wrong and is also part of the explanation for the irrelevance in the market place. Competing for raw performance is hard against a 4 GHz CPU with high ops/Hz rating. So something that does new things is likely make use of existing technology in a clever way.
 

Offline freqmax

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Re: A project I'd like to see from Jens...
« Reply #12 on: June 26, 2014, 05:43:22 PM »
A single chip 68k with a standby current of 5 mA and sleep current at 1 µA, 128 kB RAM, 1024 kB flash, would be nice. Now where does one get that below 10 EUR ?
 

Offline freqmax

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Re: A project I'd like to see from Jens...
« Reply #13 on: June 27, 2014, 01:33:29 AM »
Motorola 68060 is the last Amiga hardware beast to conquer ..

There is a die shot (1851 x 1757) but translating that to HDL code is another matter.

As for quantity. 1000 is the magic number when there's enough units to order directly from manufacturers.
 

Offline freqmax

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Re: A project I'd like to see from Jens...
« Reply #14 on: June 27, 2014, 03:50:30 PM »
S-ATA is the way to go these days. Because the ATA interface has evolved to have some technical decency and it's the option with reasonable prices. SAS (serial SCSI) cost a fortune in comparision.

Regarding the 68060. To compete with the real thing any CPU would have to be as fast as 68060 @ 75 MHz. And then one has to make the decision if one should skip those instructions that Motorola did. Not doing it may cause incompabilities but it may actually be a better processor. So perhaps an configuration option would be suitable.