Blizzard PPC board revision questions

[balrogsoft]

Hi, i'm waiting photos of a Blizzard PPC that maybe i will buy. I know that revision 0 have problems with GRex, and i have a Mediator 1200 so i won't have problems, but what differences exist between revision 0, 1 and 2? How i can see the revision of a board from the photos?

[Lando]

I think it's not possible see the revision from a photo, you must plug the card into your Amiga and run the boardtype command to see the revision.

[x56h34]

Revision 0 are Phase 5 made BPPC cards

Revision 2 - DCE made BPPC cards, or Phase 5 made cards that went back to DCE for logic-chipset firmware upgrade to revision 2

I am not sure that there were any Phase 5 made revision 2 cards, unless upgraded to revision 2 by DCE.

This type of a firmware upgrade is different to the regular, downloadable firmware upgrade which a user can perform by themselves. It requires special equipment available unfortunatelly only at DCE.

There were no revision 1 BPPC cards.

Grex1200 according to my personal tests works flawlessly with revision 2 cards, and with revision 0 cards so and so, or not at all. My current revision 0 BPPC 060/240/SCSI card works fine with Grex1200, however an occasional crash here and there happens, which can be annoying. Another revision 2 BPPC card of mine has no problems or crashes whatsoever with the same Grex1200 busboard used.

Anyways, that's as much as I know about the subject, through personal experience, testing etc. :-)

EDIT: I've corrected an error in my explanation

[balrogsoft]

The guy that sells the BPPC sent me a screenshot showing the specifications of BPPC board, and promised photos of the board, the screenshot show a utility called WhichAmiga, and show this:

1 Warp Up processor: PPC 603p 240 Mhz (rev 2.1), 60 Mhz Busclock

Is "rev 2.1" the revision of the board?
Affect the revision of BPPC to the Mediator 1200?

[doctorq]

The output from WhichAmiga doesn't tell the board revision unfortunately.

However, to my knowledge the revision doesn't matter when running the accelerator together with a Mediator.

[x56h34]

balrogsoft wrote:

Is "rev 2.1" the revision of the board?
Affect the revision of BPPC to the Mediator 1200?

No, that's not it. You need to run a tool called "boardtype" (available for download at the Unofficial Grex support page), and it will report what the logic-chipset revision of the BPPC card is. It is highly unlikely that it will be 2, as these are quite rare.

If you want to use Mediator 1200, then it doesn't matter what the BPPC revision is, as Mediator is not connected to the BPPC's local expansion bus, unlike Grex1200.

Grex1200 is in theory a better product, however getting a compatible BPPC card is a pain in the ass. Mediator offers better support from Elbox in terms of drivers available.

[CLS2086]

Mediator offers better support from Elbox in terms of drivers available.

 :-D
It's true that there was no new release for GREX drivers for Wb 68k, because they were already good (not like the hacky USB RDB killer by Elbox), and it works very well also under MorphOS, especialy for 3D.

A custom CMS support interfaced with a PAL/GAL programmer would be enough to update a rev0 to rev2  :-) .

[x56h34]

CLS2086 wrote:

Mediator offers better support from Elbox in terms of drivers available.

 :-D
It's true that there was no new release for GREX drivers for Wb 68k, because they were already good (not like the hacky USB RDB killer by Elbox), and it works very well also under MorphOS, especialy for 3D.

A custom CMS support interfaced with a PAL/GAL programmer would be enough to update a rev0 to rev2  :-) .

I agree. I have a Grex4000D + CSPPC setup and I couldn't be happier with performance and stability. It's just that the A1200 side of things is a little hard to piece together, in order for everything to work nicely.

[balrogsoft]

Thanks a lot to all, at the moment i didn't received the photos, but if i receive it i will ask to the guy about revision of the board,  using "boardtype" utility.