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Author Topic: Motorola 68060 FPGA replacement module (idea)  (Read 190268 times)

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Offline billt

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Re: Motorola 68060 FPGA replacement module (idea)
« Reply #29 from previous page: January 16, 2013, 04:07:37 PM »
Quote from: Plaz;722694
I took bloodline's reference as a point of study of how to do another cpu project, not necessarily an ARM.

I haven't messed with VHDL in an uncountable number of years. Someone please point me to a good reference where I can retrain some brain cells on some tools needed here.

Plaz


My favorite, and I wish he had a Verilog "port" of this one:
http://www.amazon.com/RTL-Hardware-Design-Using-VHDL/dp/0471720925/ref=la_B001ITRMEY_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1358352110&sr=1-3

and:
http://www.amazon.com/FPGA-Prototyping-VHDL-Examples-Spartan-3/dp/0470185317/ref=la_B001ITRMEY_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1358352110&sr=1-2

http://www.amazon.com/Embedded-SoPC-Design-Processor-Examples/dp/111800888X/ref=la_B001ITRMEY_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1358352110&sr=1-5

And verilog "ports" of a couple of these as well:

http://www.amazon.com/FPGA-Prototyping-Verilog-Examples-Spartan-3/dp/0470185325/ref=pd_sim_b_3

http://www.amazon.com/Embedded-Design-Processor-Verilog-Examples/dp/1118011031/ref=pd_sim_b_2

Note that these won't really talk as much about some things one needs to know for an FPGA softcore sort of project, such as number representation and such, particularly floating point stuff. I'm currently checking out this one too (Verilog, but should be easy to understand and use toward VHDL projects too):

http://www.amazon.com/Computer-Arithmetic-Verilog-HDL-Fundamentals/dp/1439811245/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1358352361&sr=1-1&keywords=verilog+arithmetic
Bill T
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Offline billt

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Re: Motorola 68060 FPGA replacement module (idea)
« Reply #30 on: January 16, 2013, 04:28:02 PM »
Quote from: freqmax;722741
Personally I prefer Verilog. But it lack som capabilities, I think it was in regard to level triggering etc. So VHDL is it.

Btw, those links are books , not hw.


I also prefer Verilog, but am now comfortable enough with VHDL to go either way.

He asked for references to retrain his brain since he hadn't used VHDL in so long... So book links seemed appropriate.
Bill T
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Offline billt

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Re: Motorola 68060 FPGA replacement module (idea)
« Reply #31 on: January 16, 2013, 05:42:08 PM »
Quote from: psxphill;722751
You're very optimistic.
 
It's difficult to predict the future, but I can't imagine there is anyone outside of the retro community that will ever have any interest in a 680x0 cpu core.


That's good enough for me to waste my time on something. Heck, if I had the free time, I'd make an OS4-able PowerPC laptop just for myself. Yes, time is a problem. :(
Bill T
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Offline billt

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Re: Motorola 68060 FPGA replacement module (idea)
« Reply #32 on: January 16, 2013, 08:02:09 PM »
Quote from: wawrzon;722745
pci2amiga, (one could distinguish a4000 030bus, zorro and a1000/500 expansion bus as slave) could be not neccessary with self made fpga board but might be a relief connecting any prefabricated device as master that would usually provide such an interface. having that interface technically working the other part would be to make the cpu of the host device take advantage of the interface. like 68k emulation on x86 to access the amiga chipset via pci.

Sorry, misunderstod first time.

For PCI bridge, you may end up making a different bridge to each of those Amiga targets in order to have it optimized for each. There may be some similarities, but I'm not sure a single thing to fit all of them would be best.
« Last Edit: January 16, 2013, 08:16:35 PM by billt »
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Offline billt

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Re: Motorola 68060 FPGA replacement module (idea)
« Reply #33 on: January 17, 2013, 05:07:30 PM »
Quote from: freqmax;722900
I'll agree. Make it work FIRST. If it ships it's a bonus ;)

The beauty with FPGA is that you can ship first, and code later :P


You gotta do something to prove the FPGA PCB works. No sense in shipping a buggy PCB and leaving the FPGA coders wondering why something doesn't work right... How do we do that? Put something in there and see if it can communicate with the host properly.

PCB things that could come out wrong:
shorts
opens
bad layer stackup choice making signal integrity a mess
bad signal angles can affect signal integrity as well as manufacturability (DFM)
mismatched trace lengths can affect timing

Opens and Shorts should be easy to check with a multimeter and a lot of patience. Ive had to do that before for boards containing 8 sockets for 700+ pin chips. A board like we're discussing here may not be quite that bad.

Timing and Signal Integrity issues are harder to check without running something at real-world speeds. There are expensive simulation tools that can probably a PCB layout as well, but I'm not sure if anyone here has and knows them. (If anyone does, please talk about that, I want to learn!)

While the 060 bus probably isn't the best example of something requiring obsessive-compulsive signal integrity planning, it is at the low end of where you start to care. The general rule of thumb for this starts around 50MHz. Some say they've seen problems as low as 17KHz...

So, how does one prove this PCB before shipping, to ensure it's worth putting hte "real" FPGA coding effort into?
Bill T
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Offline billt

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Re: Motorola 68060 FPGA replacement module (idea)
« Reply #34 on: January 17, 2013, 06:35:31 PM »
Quote from: Heiroglyph;722945
I agree with everything you've said, but I have a question.

Why do we keep mentioning duplicating the 060 bus?

Read the name of this thread's topic.

This started out as a discussion to replace the very difficult to find, legitimate, best mask-set, full-featured and fastest 68060 chips from Motorola/Freescale, to put into 68060 sockets such as the socket found on some Amiga accelerators and on MikeJ's daughtercard for FPGA-Replay system.

Other things, such as the 3000/4000 accelerator slot, 030 socket, 020 socket, 000 socket, etc. have also come up, and could most likley be used via adapter, or do new PCBs directly targetting those and reuse the FPGA softcore stuff there. No reason a TG68 or N050 or whatever can't be plugged into any one of those things, but this topic came from the 68060 issue and desire to have better than whatever it is we already have.
« Last Edit: January 17, 2013, 06:39:45 PM by billt »
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Offline billt

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Re: Motorola 68060 FPGA replacement module (idea)
« Reply #35 on: January 17, 2013, 07:05:03 PM »
Quote from: Plaz;722954
Shout out to Mr. obvious.

To the point..... has Yaqube ever mentioned opening the source?
For the answer to that, I guess I'll just go ask him myself. (predicting the answer is no)

Second question.... anyone know what detailed documentation is available for 060? Schematic of the internals would be the bomb.  I think I still have my 030 motorola dev books from back in the day. Guess I can start there.

Plaz


http://www.freescale.com/webapp/sps/site/taxonomy.jsp?code=68K

But understand that, making a replacement, all we really need are the bus spec and the instruction set, and any configuration/information registers in the original chip that a project such as this needs to reproduce. Anything else can be reimagined as we see fit, preferrably for the better.
Bill T
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Offline billt

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Re: Motorola 68060 FPGA replacement module (idea)
« Reply #36 on: January 17, 2013, 07:17:22 PM »
Quote
If someone wants to pump years of work and thousands of dollars into an easily redesigned FPGA replay addon that a hand full of people own and the already hard to buy 060 cards, that's their time and money.


Then let those interested in wasting their own time and money continue as they see fit. If you prefer an 040 or 030 or CPUslot or whatever, then do that or wait for something here to happen and port it down to your socket of choice. If you beat the 060 people, they can port yours up to the 060 bus. Not a big deal.

Also realize that the bus is probably one of the less difficult parts of this sort of thing. As the CPU core is the "hard part", various people could probably be designing different PCBs for diffeent sockets in parallel to the CPU core designer doing his thing. Regardless, any of these PCB people and bus people will probably be waiting on the CPU core people...

Quote
It just doesn't make sense to me and I hope it doesn't take resources away from anything actually useful to the community.


Different people have different opinions about what is and is not useful, is and is not a waste of time/money, etc. I don't agree that it is taking anything away from anything useful to the community. I don't agree that it's a waste of time, and some of us spend money to do things because we enjoy them, not to bring back a profit. No problems...
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Offline billt

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Bill T
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Offline billt

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Re: Motorola 68060 FPGA replacement module (idea)
« Reply #38 on: January 17, 2013, 08:11:03 PM »
Quote from: freqmax;722939
I'm thinking on developing at least one FPGA just to try it out. And you can't have the core until you have a PCB nor can you have a working PCB test until you have a core ;)

So one make a PCB. Then generate a core that just toggle bits and does basic bus testing. When that is complete. The next step is to code a 68k core.

Perhaps it's possible to run the 68k bus really slow like 1 MHz just to prove it works.


Majsta at least got to 2MHz... :)

What PCB program will you use?
Bill T
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Offline billt

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Re: Motorola 68060 FPGA replacement module (idea)
« Reply #39 on: January 17, 2013, 08:23:59 PM »
Quote from: Plaz;722954
Shout out to Mr. obvious.

To the point..... has Yaqube ever mentioned opening the source?
For the answer to that, I guess I'll just go ask him myself. (predicting the answer is no)

I was under the impression they are working on it for/in conjunction with an AGA version of Minimig. Both TG68 and Minimig are GPL...
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Offline billt

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Re: Motorola 68060 FPGA replacement module (idea)
« Reply #40 on: January 17, 2013, 08:27:09 PM »
Quote from: Heiroglyph;722945
I agree with everything you've said, but I have a question.

Why do we keep mentioning duplicating the 060 bus?

It's hard to find 060 CPU cards.
Real 060's have to be heavily adapted to fit the Amiga bus.

030 cards are dirt cheap and plentiful.

An 060 is no faster than a synchronous 030 with burst for communicating with the Amiga itself.  Actually they can often be slower since many 060's are async, can't burst, are running in 040 bus mode and have a lot of glue logic.

The 3000/4000 local bus are basically straight 030@25MHz, no glue required and I'd think the 1200 would be very similar but slower.  You can't talk to the Amiga faster than 25MHz, period.

Local devices on the CPU card can communicate any way you want them to.  They don't have to be limited to 030 Amiga speeds, they can be custom or off the shelf high speed buses.

030 just seems like the sweet spot for our needs.


There's also been talk of something such as this to other sockets, though anything fancy (bus protocol conversion) can go in the FPGA:
http://www.emulation.com/catalog/off-the-shelf_solutions/production-test_adapters/upgrade_motorola/
Bill T
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Offline billt

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Re: Motorola 68060 FPGA replacement module (idea)
« Reply #41 on: January 17, 2013, 08:27:57 PM »
Quote from: freqmax;722978
KiCad
(free and thus makes sharing easy)

And that's one of my reasons for wanting WxWidgets on AmigaOS. :)

I think KiCad can import Eagle files. Check out the more recent file at http://upverter.com/amigabill/215b379ff943fc80/FP68060/files/ (very quick & dirty)
Bill T
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Offline billt

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Re: Motorola 68060 FPGA replacement module (idea)
« Reply #42 on: January 17, 2013, 09:49:13 PM »
Quote from: yssing;722990
so something like this to some extent?
http://www.gb97816.homepage.t-online.de/gba_tk02.htm


Sortof-kindof. There are 3 FPGA chips (Xilinx) on the GP accelerator card. Consider that we're putting the CPU on his board inside an FPGA, and that's the basic idea of this thread, yes.

For those that prefer the x86 software emulation, replace the CPU chip on GB's board with a PC motherboard of some sort (however small), and again same idea.
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Offline billt

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Re: Motorola 68060 FPGA replacement module (idea)
« Reply #43 on: January 18, 2013, 01:18:21 AM »
Quote from: A6000;723006
I read here that the 060 bus interface is too complex and that the 030 bus is better,  also the 060 is less compatible with amiga software than the 030 because many instructions were not implemented, so why do we want an 060 replica, why not try to implement an 030+882 that runs as fast as an 060?

68060 replacement.

Not 68060 replica.

There's a difference.

Yes, my ideal is something that goes into a 68060 socket, is 680x0 compatible (tg68, n050, n070, whatever), and hopefully outperforms real 680x0 from Motorola/Freescale.

Then do adaptors or different PCB designs for other sockets to hold the otherwise identical CPU core, whatever it may be. (Tg68 or n050 or arm or x86 or whatever)
« Last Edit: January 18, 2013, 01:34:09 AM by billt »
Bill T
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Offline billt

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Re: Motorola 68060 FPGA replacement module (idea)
« Reply #44 on: January 18, 2013, 10:19:41 PM »
Quote from: freqmax;723130
Actually a default model could be to provide just a few instructions and have the rest as trapped instructions. That means one has something workable fast. Then one could make the architecture correct. And then add the full instruction set.

If one start with the instructions and then try to impose the correct architecture.. well it could be messy ;)


That's a big part of why "they" moved away from hardwired control units in favor of microcoded control units. My own education thus far was about hardwired style, which is very dependent on the instruction set. I was hopin gto take the advanced followup course now, but it wasn't on the schedule. I'm trying to go through the Coursera one now, which is pretty advanced. Not sure if they explain microcoding or if that assumes you already know it. Going to try and find some time to read up on it more regardless.
Bill T
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