Can I fit a 68010 into my A500

[Cyberus]

Can I just fit a 68010 into my a500 in place of the 68000, and is there much point

[Damion]

As I recall it's just a drop - in replacement. It should provide
a small speedup.

[danamania]

I did just that with mine (perhaps a decade ago). It just went in the same socket as the 68000, and worked fine.

I didn't notice anything better when it came to speed. the only test I did at the time was an hour long sculpt4d render, which was quicker by a few seconds on the 68010. Not a lot, for that kind of number crunching .

dana

[Lo]

Agreed! I did the same, but a 10% increase was such a score, back *then*

[Rob]

I remember a review in CU Amiga around 1993.  They said the speed
increase was barely noticable and not worth the £80 or so it cost at
the time.

I think the 68010 had an MMU, but as a drop in replacement for the
A500's 68000 it seems to have been a bit of a waste of time.

[Dagon]

I remember that there were some incompatibilities on some games. Bomber and Falcon F16, Well neither I saw any serious improvements...

OT: Welcome danamania

[Quixote]

;-) Remember that as soon as someone writes software that uses features found only in the new processor, the old model becomes obsolete.  As I understand it, Commodore didn’t see enough improvement in the 68010 over the 68000 to justify adopting it, and upsetting their existing customer base.  The 68020, on the other hand, did offer sufficient advantages to justify using it.

[Cyberus]

I think the 68010 had an MMU, but as a drop in replacement for the
A500's 68000 it seems to have been a bit of a waste of time.

I've done a bit of reading, and it seems that the 68010 doesn't have an onboard MMU, although in some sources it seems people think it does. I have found information on them being used in Sun 'stations with Sun-designed MMUs, but nowhere does it mention them using a Motorola MMU, such as the 68451 or 68851.
The GigaMem manual in front of me insists that at least a 68020 is necessary to use the software, and that doesn't have a on-chip MMU, as the 68030 does (but the EC variant is sans MMU). So if a 68020 can do it (with a 68851 I assume) than why not a 68010? I assume they weren't expecting people to have Amigas with 68010s in!
Just wanted to know if I could use virtual memory, and it seems that it should be possible....
Anyway, I'm babbling 'cos I'm tired...

 :ranting:

[jdiffend]

*IF* I remember correctly, the 68010 had some built in support for virtual memory,  no memory protection though.

The 68010 could probably use an external MMU but not in the way the Motorola ones worked.  I *think* the MMU would generated interrupts through the standard lines on the CPU and the interrupt handlers had to read from the chip through memory mapped I/O rather than special MMU instructions and registers.  

FYI, the speedup came from using the CPU prefectch memory to allow one (two???) instruction loops to take place without reloading instructions.  Sort of an instruction cache.  That's why you won't see a noticable difference in benchmarks.  It's the same clock speed and most loops are longer than that.

I did write some stuff that took advantage of it and the difference was noticable.  It sped up some color fade in/out routines and I was able to do color cycling in an interupt without garbling the Amiga speech.  On a 68000 we had to turn off the color cycle when using speech.  As it turned out... the other programmers didn't want to check what CPU they were on so they always turned off the color cycle to use the speech.  

[huronking]

It has been a while... The 010 was pin compattible
but I think is had a few extra instructions and did
a few specific operations differently that caused
some obscure problems...

A freind went to an Amiga show- I think it was in Bonn back in '91 and bought an "Accelerator" for his
A500... In the kit was a 68010, an oscillator can and
some wire all in a jewell case.

While there were a few issues they were nothing
compared to the pains of migrating from 1.3 to2.x to3.x... Why not throw it in and see if it helps?

[Indoro]

The M68010 added instruction caches, and processor state saving. I have the Motorola 68k family manuals in my file cabinet of you have specific questions, but overall there is no real reason to bother witht he M68010 unless ou plan on using an application that can take advantage of this.

In regards to the MMU questions: There is no on-chip MMU on the M68010. The original intent may have been to use it with the M68551, but from what I remember, this was not a very practical solution.

You might see a slight speed increase if you use a 68010..you migh tnot. If you do, it will be marginal and only in spefic applications. If you have one handy, by all means pop in it. It can't hurt.

On a side note, you can upgrade an A500 to a 68020 or 68030..I did this with one of my systems some time ago..more for grins than anything else.

Hope this helps.

Cheers //R//

[Indoro]

The M68010 added instruction caches, and processor state saving. I have the Motorola 68k family manuals in my file cabinet of you have specific questions, but overall there is no real reason to bother witht he M68010 unless ou plan on using an application that can take advantage of this.

In regards to the MMU questions: There is no on-chip MMU on the M68010. The original intent may have been to use it with the M68551, but from what I remember, this was not a very practical solution.

You might see a slight speed increase if you use a 68010..you migh tnot. If you do, it will be marginal and only in spefic applications. If you have one handy, by all means pop in it. It can't hurt.

On a side note, you can upgrade an A500 to a 68020 or 68030..I did this with one of my systems some time ago..more for grins than anything else.

Hope this helps.

Cheers //R//