Sonnet crescendo 7200 and OS4.1

[Motormouth]

So, I am unclear on this.
Will Hyperion eventually support the use of the Sonnet crescendo 7200 when installed on PCI enhanced legacy Amigas?

Sonnet cards range as high as 800 MHz using G4 processors.

Were these boards to be reverse engineered, there are still compatible low wattage G4 processor available that run at 800 MHz and 1 GHz that could be utilized.

This option would bring the cpu speeds up to levels comparable with lower end AmigaOnes.

With full legacy chipset support, PCI expansion, and high speed PPC processors, legacy hardware would be able to run far more Amiga software than any NG platform, at speeds that would make running everything from OS3.1 to OS4.1 practical.

We would have a R200 driver with OS4.1

[Motormouth]

I have a Sonnet in my A4000D Mediator system and most of the time it isn't stable enough to be useful for anything other than dos based benchmarks. Not worth it yet IMHO.

I had several issues getting mine stable, initially issues with the mediator itself that elbox fixed, and then issues with warp3d mostly due to bad memory in a voodoo card.   Now it is rock solid, not really any issues with the Sonnet itself, or the sonnet project software.

As long as you have the correct pci.library from elbox, powerpc.library from jenkins, and a video card properly installed, the sonnet should work.

I agree the biggest limitation is the number of software titles that can be run.

[Motormouth]

As I understand it the Sonnet or Rapture can write to the Voodoo or Radeon graphics memory directly bypassing Zorro and Buster, so it is much faster than getting data from the accelerator slot.  33 MHz PCI gets 133MB/s compared to the typical 10-14MB/s Zorro-3 allows, on a good day.  I don't know what sort of speed the Sonnet gets but from some of the applications that run at the framerates they run it is at least 30MB/s.  

From what I've read on the EAB thread, Voodoo 4 works but the Elbox driver doesn't support Big Endian modes so some applications don't work or have wrong colors.

I got lucky and got a voodoo 4 at a yard sale (in another thread).  I have been using for about a week and it has been working fabulously, not 100% tested yet.  The only thing that has color issues (so far) is wipeout's opening 2-D images, but the voodoo 3 also had this same issue.

[Motormouth]

If I understand this correctly, Elbox pci.library is needed rather than openpci.library.

So a wrapper would need creating to use a Sonnet in an Amithlon machine?

Yes you are correct,Elbox's pci.library, not openpci.

You could use a wrapper or a different version of the powerpc.library.  In theory it could work with the GRex or Prometheus (with the busmastering fix) but this is yet another thread for another time.

[Motormouth]

Of course, if QEMU emulation of the X5000 becomes a reality on the 11,2 PowerMac, I have a Quad 2.5 GHz unit sitting here waiting.

Now you are talking!