MiniMig + PowerPC = OS4 Hardware for all

[HenryCase]

Minimig is an OCS machine, like the A500,right? An A2000 is almost the very same machine as an A500.

But there is a 2060 accelerator for it, and better than that: exists a "PPC evaluation board" for it.

So here come the idea: create a minimig with both 68k AND PPC CPUs! Exactly like those from A2000.

This is the best solution as far as I can see. The changes needed to the Minimig side would be smaller than trying to emulate A1200 hardware. Probably need a more powerful FPGA so that you could add the correct upgrade interface for the card (ZorroII?) as well as a more modern interface type for further upgrades.

However, there are a few problems with taking the A2000 route...
1. Finding the original expansion hardware to reverse engineer.
2. Preparing yourself to pay extortionate amounts to whomever owns the hardware.
3. Putting in the hard graft and copying the device (using FPGAs or otherwise).
4. Once hardware emulation complete, fixing the bugs in the original device (check out this site: http://s.guillard.free.fr/GForce/GVP-m.htm).

Having said all that I think it's the best chance that the Amiga community has for taking control of the hardware situation for OS4. Check out these links to see what cool stuff this upgrade could bring:

http://8bit.dk/pepe/a2000ppc.html
http://eab.abime.net/showpost.php?p=362602&postcount=6

:-D

[HenryCase]

freqmax wrote:
I think this all point in one direction documentation..
So anyone sitting on information on AGA or PPC or for that part any amiga hardware docs. Upload it, so that projects like minimig etc.. may take of.

That is a great idea freqmax. I am currently in the process of searching the internet for as much information on the A2060 (my preferred solution) as I can, and I'll upload whatever I get here.

I do have a question for the hardware heads out there. There seem to be two accelerator boards for A2000 with the same name (GVP-m A2060 and Phase5 A2060). The GVP one seems to be an 68k expansion while the Phase5 board is a PPC one. My question is this: Would a Minimig running with an 060 accelerator be fast enough for OS4?

In any case, here is the first bit of documentation I've found, for the TekMagic A2000-060/040 accelerators (same model as the GVP A2060 AFAIK):
http://www.gregdonner.org/gvp4060/TekMagic040-060.pdf
It is a user manual, but has some useful technical information too.

[HenryCase]

Crumb wrote:
@HenryCase

You are mixing specs of different accelerators:
-one accelerator is the Blizzard2060, it's a 680x0 accelerator with *no* ppc
-a developer edition powerUp PPC board exists that you can plug into a 040/060 socket of CyberstormMK2 or Blizzard2060. It includes a 680x0 cpu and a slow 603e

Now once that's clear, remember that:
-OS4 is PPC *only*. It won't run on 680x0
-A developer edition powerUp PPC board may or may not work with OS4, but that's not confirmed.
-OS4 lacks drivers for the Blizzard2060 onboard SCSI, so it won't be able to boot from it. It may work with catweasel or any other *PIO driven* IDE/SCSI card.

Crumb, thank you for your very helpful reply to my question (on a random note, your current post count stands at 777, how cool is that!).

So as far as I can see it, the Blizzard2060 accelerator isn't guaranteed to work with OS4 but at the same time, there's a possibility (with the developer board plugin). Once OS4 Classic is released we'll have a clearer view on this.

From a purely hypothethical standpoint, if the hardware and drivers of the Blizzard2060 (in their current state) were to be released under an open source licence, so that the Amiga community could develop the technology for their own needs, would that provide a good starting point for a PowerPC MiniMig? This open source approach would speed up development of SCSI drivers as well as sorting out the seemingly unfinished nature of the PPC support.

One thing that worries me, you say that the developer PowerUp PPC board includes a slow 603e chip? How slow are we talking here? I mean it's all well and good if we get a Minimig capable of running OS4 but I'd be looking for a responsive OS, not just an impressive technical achievement. If the PowerUp PPC plugin was also made open source is there anything in the architecture that would stop a more powerful chip being used? I'm thinking pin compatibility, etc...

[HenryCase]

MarkTime wrote:
OS 4 is still out of date, and behind the times, and nearly useless.

I agree that it isn't the most modern OS out there, but it's the newest stable platform we have (excluding AROS which is impressive but still WIP).

MarkTime wrote:
Modern system.   OS with dev. tools.  Available to buy...all parts included.

Oh, now look who's being the dreamer....sorry for the rant.

This topic is about making the best community led h/w. When I saw the specs for the top of the range ACK machine I was very impressed but the fact of the matter is that h/w is not with us. Neither is any other h/w that really gets me excited on the high tech side of things (of course you may see this differently: Efika, SAM, etc...).

The Minimig is one of the best things to happen to the Amiga community in recent years simply because it offers an opportunity for the community to take control of their platform whilst events outside of our control conspire against us.

Anyway, it's good to be a dreamer, no harm done by your rant. :-D

[HenryCase]

Skyraker wrote:
An accelerator which was designed to plug into the CPU Fast Slot of the A2000. Unfortunately this card never got past the prototype stage and so it was never released to the public. Since Phase 5 went bust, DCE bought the rights to all their designs but it is unlikely that they will ever release this card.

Thank you for your post on the Blizzard2060 Skyraker, very informative. I didn't realise DCE bought the rights to the designs, I thought bPlan may own it.

Going to investigate further now.

[HenryCase]

Kronos wrote:
@HenyCase

Don't know, what it is with you and the PPC-developer-board, but there were probraly only a dozen or so ever made, and I know of only 2 in the hands of community memebers.

The Blizzard2060 is also in short supply ( :cry: why oh why did I sell mine  :cry: ), so thats a no go.

@Skyraker

Bringing the Blizzard2604 to market (if it was ever finished that is) is just as "easy" as bringing back the CS-PPC and BPPC ..... you know, non-ROHS compatible out-of-production components to be mounted in very expensive production-methods
 :roll:

Kronos, please let me explain my plan, as this will hopefully help you see why the Blizzard 2060 might not be the dead end you describe it as.

Clearly the hardware as it stands now is not suitable, for the following reasons:
1. As you state, there aren't enough of them around.
2. The hardware, whilst almost fully developed, doesn't exist in a finished state.

To get around these issues, I have been trying to contact the patent owners to see if we can come to an agreement about releasing the technology to the Amiga community (i.e. open sourcing the h/w and software in its existing state). Considering how close to complete the h/w is, and the fact that it runs OS 3.9 pretty well I think it would be a great way to have an affordable OS4 machine in the hands of the community.

Open source the hardware you say, are you mad? Well, if you don't ask, you don't get. Certainly the current h/w owners don't have a viable use for the tech, I am hopeful I can come to some agreement. I e-mailed bPlan thinking that they may hold the payments (got a reply too, still early days mind), but I'll contact DCE too after Skyraker told me they hold the rights. Not promising anything, which is why I kept this secret before.

Hope that explains my madness!  :-D

[HenryCase]

AJCopland wrote:
Does anyone remember the Alpha 21164 CPU which the Siamese team were trying to build a machine around? :-D

I don't remember this, sounds interesting. Got a link?

Hans_ wrote:
However, a 64-bit PowerPC CPU would make the transition easier as there's no emulator to write.

Can you please explain what you mean when you say there is no emulator to write? Is it because OS4 already runs off PPC, or are you talking about running 68K native code on the chip? Not trying to be rude, just looking for a bit more information.

downix wrote:
I don't see a future for our platform until we stop trying to do something just because Apple does it, which remains the only reason we went to PowerPC in the first place.

 

Back in the day, going to PPC rather than another architecture probably was in part decided because it was an easier sell, due to the fact that people looking for a new Amiga could easily imagine the speed increase given by Mac-like architecture. The fact the chips were mass produced in large quantities probably helped too (from a price point of view).

Without trying to be too much of a purist, Amiga to me, hardware wise, is always going to be linked to the custom chips. That is what was special about the system architecture the first time around. Even if we used x86 architecture for the main CPU we could expand on its capabilities with more chips. That isn't to say that the CPU choice isn't important though, we should be looking for the most elegant h/w solution possible.

downix wrote:
SPARC, ARM or SuperH would be my recommendation (in that order)

Reading your other posts downix, I do like the sound of SPARC. I know it's not the correct measurement of speed, but what's the fastest SPARC CPU out there clock cycles wise? This looks awesome...http://www.sparc.org/news/07aug7.01.html

SuperH sounds pretty good too (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SuperH). What would be the advantages/disadvantages of this architecture compared with the other ones examined in this thread?

[HenryCase]

freqmax wrote:
@HenryCase:
Don't wake the patent bear
Amiga was not only the custom chips, but also how things were wired together
on a system level. And software to go with it that was efficient.

The patent bear has already been woken, I e-mailed DCE earlier tonight. I'm only asking for information at the moment. In any case, Yogi is my lawyer, and he's smarter than the average bear.  :roll: :-D

I agree that the whole system needs to be well thought through, but thought I'd mention the custom chip thing just in case we forgot that was an important part of the identity of Amiga hardware. Maybe we should think about DSP options too, like the final Commodore Amiga h/w designs (i.e. the ones that never made it).

downix wrote:
*Lots about SPARC*

Downix, the more you say about SPARC, the more I can see it as the absolute best solution we have for moving the Amiga platform forward. If a version of AmigaOS or AROS could be made for it (even without support for the multithreading at first), then it would be a brilliant step in the right direction. The parallel processing part would take a long time to implement, but would be worth it in the end. Are SPARC CPUs expensive?

downix wrote:
SuperH is a very good mix of technology, coming in dead between the MIPS and ARM for performance/scalability. I still have not gotten good information about licensing, but it seems approachable.

I see. Well, certainly a good alternative to SPARC, but I prefer the sound of SPARC.

freqmax wrote:
As for hardware my point was that one can build hardware and use a off the shelf cpu. And build software for that solution. Later on one can replace the cpu, because most code is high level and not assembler. Thus the only needed replacement is the compiler.
Allowing people to iron out other issues in the meantime. Parallel development would be enabled this way.

Freqmax, you make the changing of CPU architecture seem a little trivial here. Even if all newly written programs are run through the OS rather than directly from the h/w (so you would only need to recompile them), you would still need to rewrite the OS if you moved to a new processor architecture. If the Amiga does change processor architecture, it should be made as a long term decision.

Hans_ wrote:
Amiga OS 4.0 is PowerPC (32-bit), so running it in a sandbox on a 64-bit PowerPC means that you don't need to write an emulator for Amiga OS 4.0 programs to run in. Switch to a different CPU, and you need to write an emulator on top of writing the sandbox.

Thanks for answering my question Hans, I did suspect that is what you meant but I'd rather ask a dumb question than stay ignorant.

[HenryCase]

downix wrote:
A basic entry-level can be had for less than $20, a server-grade unit for over $1000.  I picked up my UltraSPARC IIi system for $50 used, and while it lacks the multithreading support of the T1, it is a good development platform.

 :-o

That. Is. Unbelievable.

Seriously, if making the switch was an easy process, this would be the architecture I'd pick. I'm sure there are other equally impressive CPU architectures out there, but SPARC has the right price, power, availability and suitability for next-gen Amigas.

However, in reality I would rather Amiga Inc didn't touch it, simply because they can't seem to get anything out to sell us. Let them finish that ACK design and get it out to us, then we should be in discussion with them about the future. Unless AROS could be made to run on SPARC architecture, then we'd really be in business.  :-D

[HenryCase]

downix wrote:
Not bad for 5 minutes on ebay. I just type in Sun Ultra and here they are.

I searched on eBay just like you described, plenty of cheap SPARC hardware. It's looking good.

Skyraker wrote:
Speaking of Patents... i'm sure I read recently that Gateway are about to be bought out / taken over.

I'll go find out some more.

** Bloody interesting thread btw **

*Edit* Gateway now belongs to Acer. Can we have our patents back please?

Do you know which Amiga patents Acer owns? Have AInc ever tried to obtain these patents?

downix wrote:
Just looks like AROS on Linux, but I can grab a shot for you in a bit once I recompile it.

That's a very good point, anything that will run Linux can run AROS hosted. This means we are free to choose whatever hardware we want for AROS as Linux runs on pretty much everything.

This topic seems to have split a little between OS4 solutions and AROS solutions. Ideally I'd like h/w that can run both, and as AROS runs everywhere hosted (and native given enough development time) we need to focus on OS4 h/w (that was the subject in the original post).

RW222 wrote:
You'd have a kind of dual boot machine, one option would boot to classic, just the minimig and a classic 68k OS, the other option would be to use it to bootload OS4 on the PPC hardware.

I'm sorry, I don't see the benefit of the dual booting you describe. If you can run both alongside each other (like the PPC accelerator solutions) for increased processing capability, why limit yourself? Is it just because it is easier to implement?

AJCopland wrote:
Or would it make more sense for us all to increase AmigaKits sales a little and order the Efika whilst turning the MiniMig into a PCI card for it?

That does sound like an elegant solution, but surely it would require a rewrite of OS4 (thus negating the benefits)?

Also, whatever solution we come up with should be something the Amiga community can do. Since OS4 is currently locked down in legal stuff with new hardware support looking a long way off, we need to look at getting OS4 running on new hardware without requiring a complete rewrite of the software. To me it seems we have two possible solutions to do this:

1. Reverse engineer the authorization system used by AmigaOne, put this on a chip, develop new PPC hardware around it (possibly illegal).

2. Develop new PPC compatible acceleration cards that can be used with a modified MiniMig.

If anyone can see another solution to this (OS4 emulator maybe?) please let us know.

nBit7 wrote:

No way to do a 2 layer board, but i think that using a embedded chip like the MPC5200 could allow to use less layers. Four or six, maybe. It is something to analyze.

4,6,8 layers really is not an issue.  The minimig PCBs , can't generally be produced at home.  More layers don't add that much cost these days.  In fact it is often cheaper (at least in higher volumes) because you can make the board smaller.

If you start looking at DDR, then it is near impossible to do in less that 4layers.

Just out of interest, how do multiple layer PCBs get made? Is there a homebrew way of producing this type of board? Also, does anyone know how many layers the PCBs for the old Amiga PPC accelerators used (CSPPC for example, but any information on the other boards also very welcome)? Thanks.

[HenryCase]

Could this be useful for designing a PPC based Minimig:

http://www.techonline.com/learning/webinar/199203327

We could copy the Minimig architecture within a PPC chip for 68k apps and have PPC instructions for OS4 on the same chip. Or have I got this completely wrong?

[HenryCase]

Again, need some feedback on whether this would be suitable...

http://www.xilinx.com/products/silicon_solutions/fpgas/virtex/virtex4/capabilities/powerpc.htm

If it is though, the Virtex-4 may be a good solution, especially considering the price, speed and expandability of the architecture:

Price: Depends on chip used. For example, the 'XC4VLX25-10FFG668C' is 253.20USD from Digikey:
http://parts.digikey.com/1/parts/586328-ic-fpga-virtex4-24k-668fbga-xc4vlx2510ffg668c.html
If this seems too much (Spartan-3 is 25.45USD from Digikey, though you wouldn't need both chips for a PPC MiniMig), think about the prices being paid for Amiga PPC accelerators now.

Speed: 700MHz max. Plenty fast enough for Amiga users needs at the moment.

Expandability: In-built Auxiliary Processor Unit (APU) supports hardware accelerators. Since the platform would be open, we would have a system that could support our needs for a long time.

This Virtex-4 development board is rather pricey (not that I know what the average price of such a device is) at 995GBP, but does include some decent features, including built in Spartan-3 FPGA (may be optional), which would speed up the development of a PPC MiniMig:

http://www.enterpoint.co.uk/moelbryn/broaddown4.html

Any thoughts?

[HenryCase]

Been doing a bit of research into PowerPC architecture, initially to see if this Virtex-4 option is worthwhile pursuing. As far as I can tell, all PowerPC chips are compatible with each other, so the PowerPC 405 core(s) in the Virtex-4 should be able to handle all the calls made to it. The only tricky part would be to reverse engineer the control electronics from a PPC accelerator board so that we don't have to write new drivers (this might not work, in fact it might be easier just to write new drivers).

I came across a few pieces of useful information during my internet search. Firstly, found out about how PowerPC came about, how PowerPC and Power architecture are linked but not compatible. Check out this Power architecture family tree:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:POWERhistoryfamilydiagram.png

Found the PowerPC 405 user manual, which will be useful should anyone decide to use the Virtex-4 solution:
http://www-01.ibm.com/chips/techlib/techlib.nsf/techdocs/A07CE56994E69BFE0025731C005C9BFE/$file/ppc405S_um_01_pub.pdf

Finally, read the last paragraph of the first post here:
http://www.power.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=712
Free SPARC and MIPS clones of PPC chips exist! Tried to find them, no luck so far, but I would imagine it's a cheaper solution than the Virtex-4 one. If we made our own SPARC or MIPS core we could even integrate the MiniMig (complete with 68K CPU processes) into one chip capable of running OS4, given enough time.

[HenryCase]

downix wrote:
No, that's not what he said.  He said that free clones of SPARC and MIPS CPU's exist.  You can find both on the opencores.org website.  SPARC is an open standard, Sun even released the code to their high-end UltraSPARC T1.  MIPS, however, is not, and true clones are liable for lawsuit due to patents.  Same with PowerPC.

Damn. Well, thanks for clearing this up for me downix.

Slightly OT, I was looking around the opencores.org website yesterday, came across this device:
http://www.opencores.org/projects.cgi/web/usbhostslave/overview
If the 68k core is integrated into the MiniMig FPGA, freeing up enough I/O capacity, this seems like a cheap way of adding the much requested USB functionality to the MiniMig. Of course we'd have to write our own drivers for it.

Incidentally, wouldn't there be legal repercussions if the 68k chip was emulated in FPGA form? And could we be sued by the A500 custom chip patent holders (I doubt OCS is open source)?

[HenryCase]

Been having some more thoughts on how to do this Minimig+PPC solution for new OS4 h/w. I'm trying to work out the different ways Amigas were able to be upgraded with fast co-processors. Considering the Minimig is currently A500 compatible (mostly), I have focused on the A500/A2000 solutions. I have a few questions:

1. Which one of the custom chips in the A500 controlled access to the side expansion slot?
2. On the A2000, what chip was mainly responsible for control of the CPU fast slot (as far as I can tell it is likely to be either the Buster, Paula or Gary OCS chips)?
3. How did the A2000 handle having so many expansion slots at once? Did it have a chip that switched between Zorro slots for instance, or were all devices running simultaneously?
4. Of all the connectors/ports/sockets found on this list (http://www.amiga-hardware.com/connlist.cgi), which is likely to be the easiest to implement (not counting the connections the Minimig already has)?

The question that is causing most confusion for me is question 3. The A500 side expansion slot is 86pin, the A2000 CPU Fast Slot is 86pin, and I can't find a OCS chip that has enough pins to deal with either (Buster OCS is 50pin, Paula OCS is 48pin and Gary OCS is 48pin). How was it done? How do PCs do it (something to do with the Northbridge/Southbridge combo AFAIK)?

Thanks in advance.