Some questions after upgrading Blizzard 2040 with 68060 CPU

[rodney37]

Hello all,

Yesterday I upgraded my Blizzard 2040 with a 68060 CPU, according to this very detailed web page by GMB:

http://www.g-mb.de/P5Rework.html


I used a Motorola XC68060RC50C 71E41J CPU(from Ebay), a 50Mhz oscillator from amigakit, a LT1085CM3.3 voltage regulator en 3 1N4001 SMD diodes, moved the power jumper wire and resistor underneath the CPU, removed R1, etc.

It's all clearly explained on the page. I did it carefully and also cleaned off all the flux leaving a neat result.

After doing everything carefully, I put the Blizzard back into my A2000 with R6.2 mainboard, powered it up, everything works fine so I am very happy. I did notice that at powering up you can now breefly see some flashing colours on the TV output

After doing all this there are a few things not yet clear to me:

- the CPU which I read somewhere is a 'mask 6' or 'revision 6' 68060 - 71E41J, gets a bit on the hot side after a few minutes. I would estimate that it's over 50 degrees centigrade, just barely can hold my finger on it for a few seconds but it's on the uncomfortably hot side. As I understood it from what I read before, this CPU is supposed to run nearly cold at 50Mhz? I should say that I have only tested the temperature without the top cover on. So airflow is not at it's best inside the case.

I checked the board's traces and found that the oscillator is powered from the voltage converter's output at 3.3V so I am sure that the resulting output clock signal is also at 3.3V, same as the CPU's supply voltage. Everything seems in order.

- running ShowConfig (OS3.1) gives the result:
PROCESSOR:      CPU 68040/68040fpu

I also tried sysinfo V3.24 which also says it's a 68040 CPU in the right area of the resulting screen. Performance measures 2.04 times compared to the performance of a A4000 68040 25Mhz. So basically it looks like a 68040 at 50Mhz performance-wise.

I am wondering, do I need to upgrade the firmware?
I already tried booting without any RAM plugged into the Blizzard (which is mentioned elsewhere on this forum), which might initialize some ICs as I read, but afterwards I got the same results.

I did install the Blizzard software through the installer but that was before converting the Board to fit the 68060 CPU.

Does anyone have some idea about my results?

Also, I would appreciate some tips about how to get the most performance from the Blizzard by installing the right software libraries and such.

Sorry about all my questions but some things have me a bit puzzled and I couldn't find any clear info on this until now. Perhaps other users could also benefit from any info posted here.

Thanks in advance for any advice :-D

kind regards,

Rodney

[rodney37]

@Piru
Thanks for the information. From the SysSpeed results it shows that it is a 68060 CPU. So it seems that everything works correctly after all. I am very happy about this! :-D

Now I am only wondering about the temperature issue and how to install the right software to get the best performance from the 68060 in OS3.1

[rodney37]

@stefcep2

Thanks a lot for your info, that's very useful.:-)

At the moment, even after already doing the install from a Blizzard install disk there is no blizkick in my wbstartup drawer. I will check out the things you mentioned.
 

[rodney37]

@stefcep2

Thanks for the explanation, I see about blizkick. I suppose this will speed up everything since the Blizzard's memory is much faster. I will have a try with this. Sounds like a great idea.

I did see cyberpatcher as part of the Blizzard installation package. I will put it in the wbstartup drawer.

About the CPU, my board had it socketed as it's the Amiga 2000 Blizzard 2040 board. Desoldering a CPU would not have posed a great problem if I had to do it. At least, I would have risked it if it was needed. Desoldering is all about the right tools and technique. Otherwise the risk is too great to try it without those. Of course, if it's not necessary at all, that's always better. There is a lot of heat involved in desoldering such a big IC, at least there would be if you want to do it as carefully as possible to have the least risk of damage to the solder pads.
 
I did desolder all the IC's and sockets on my A2000 mainboard and put precision IC sockets in, and also I replaced all the electrolytic capacitors(since these can sometimes degrade over time) and even added some more. I also had to repair a poorly desoldered IC where the repair technician had damaged some traces during some old repair. It took me about a week to do all this.

[rodney37]

@adolescent
Yes, the CPU was indeed from China...
Now I am a little bit suspicious about this  :-)
I will definately try CPU060 to make sure.
I already tried to use whichamiga but it crashed and froze up so I cannot get any result from that.

[rodney37]

@rkauer

That's very strange because it does say:
XC68060RC50C

on the right of this:
71E41J
QEGM9830A
MALAYSIA

and sideways there is this code:
S23328-002

I hope I have not been sold a fake one but now I am not so sure...

[rodney37]

I just ran cpu060 and MyCpu060, they both said:

System: 68060MC Revision 6

[rodney37]

@-D-
It sure looks like it's the sample like mentioned in your URL. I'm relieved about that.

I will look into a cooling solution. I don't think a heatsink is really needed, I prefer not to use one if not necessary. I like the way the Blizzard looks without a heatsink on the CPU. I will try to create some airflow over the CPU with a fan placed near it at low RPM and then test for a few hours with the cover in place to see if it remains cool. I hope that will do the trick. :-)

[rodney37]

I tested with just a small fan(the one which came from the 68040 heatsink) pointed at the CPU from a small distance without any heatsink attached to the CPU. I temporarily attached the fan to my harddisk with a cable tie. That already turned out to be more than enough to keep the CPU cool. I will figure out a permanent solution using a new fan at low rpm placed next to the Blizzard.

I used the advice from stefcep2 to use the Phase 5 68060 libraries. After restoring a copy of OS3.1 which didn't have the Phase 5 libraries to start from scratch I found that without these Phase 5 libraries my A2000 won't even boot from the harddisk but crash instead. I had to boot from a floppy disk to put the libraries on my harddisk. GMB also warned to put the libraries in libs on his website before modifying the Blizzard.

It seems if I am correct that the default 68040 library which came with OS 3.1 is replaced by a library with the same name which is much smaller in size than the original, along with a new 68060 library. I searched for the latest versions and put those in my libs drawer. If I am correct the latest 68060 library is from 5-7-2005. This set of libraries can be found at http://phase5.a1k.org/

I want to thank everyone who replied for their excellent advice and valuable info to tackle my questions. Super community here! :-D

[rodney37]

@Piru
So that is what the 'old' and 'new' libraries are for.  It didn't look like they had any purpose. I thought they are just backup copies :-) It was a bit confusing in the end after seeing so many libraries added compared to a clean install so I felt I should start again from scratch.

Anyway I kept a backup of my previous OS 3.1 so I can easily copy the old and new 68040 libraries back into my libs drawer which I will do now. I also prefer an OS3.1 installation the way it was meant as long as it makes sense to me. :-) I always keep a habit of archiving my entire OS partition in a drawer on another partition just at those moments when everything is working well just before I am planning to install some software which might modify the OS. I have a lot of archived copies of everything. I just made some drawers with a useful name to remember the things which were included in that install. Several times it has been useful for quickly restoring everything back the way it was when I found some software had an undesirable effect on the entire OS after installing it.

[rodney37]

@stefcep2
Okay, I will add cyberpatcher in my wbstartup as I already planned to do, along with the 68040 old and new libraries as Piru explained. That seems like the right way to configure everything.

I do see your point as the 68060 seems to have very powerful features which the original OS in it's cleanly installed state would not know how to get the absolute most out of.

Would I have any problems with games after installing executive? I suppose that a lot of games and demos also bang the hardware? So then I would have to exclude those too?

If executive could be shut down prior to running software like games and such that would be conveniant too I think.
I want to optimize OS3.1 as much as possible but still be able to play games as well. Most of the time I am more interested in playing around with the OS trying to enhance it's capabilities and looks but games are also a fun way to see what the Amiga can do. So occasionally shutting down executive would not be a problem for me.

[rodney37]

@delshay
Thanks for the advice about recognizing a faked version 68060. From the test results which I did earlier and the URL which -D- provided I am satisfied that my 68060 is a real one as indicated. I did get worried for a moment that I might have had a fake so I can very well understand the importance of being informed about this...

@thread
For anyone who likes to see my CPU I put a photo online at this address. Here you also can see some of the modifications which I made to support this CPU.
Anyone who wants to see it can open this URL:

http://www.xs4all.nl/~echorod/amiga/DSC07667.JPG