Low-cost A600 acceleration theory

[Matt_H]

So we'd need a 1.4 divider for a 20Mhz chip. Or maybe overclock it to 28Mhz with a divider of 1. Where is this setting controlled from?

I did a quick glance through motorola's documentation. 68000-type chips in the 68pin Lead Quad Pack (that is the format used in the 600, yes?) look to be fully pin compatible (See this , page 173), even the 010.  Anyone got any 600 schematics?

[Gaidheal]

Well, Amiga expert I am not.. but electronics I do know and I overclock PCs... and I have to say I think your chances are about zero.

Unless you REALLY know what you are doing, in which case, it ought to be possible to:

Supply the processor with a faster timing signal to the rest of the system, probably with a daughterboard type setup, which plugs into the original location of the CPU.  Overclocking the chipset is basically a no go as I understand it, because of the way the Amiga is designed in terms of synchronizing the video out, floppy access, etc.

John

edit: P.S.  Just buy a cheap PC and get an emulator and/or AROS

[Cyberus]

Wrong, the 68010 does not have an FPU. On-chip FPUs arrived with the 68040; 68030 and lower have to use external chips. The only difference between the 68010 and 68000 is that the former has a special 2-byte instruction cache for very small loops; plus it handles exceptions a bit better, putting more useful information on the stack. It is not worth your money going for a 68010 under any circumstances.

The 68010 also has the pins for an external MMU, I looked into fitting one into my A500....
I think the 68010 would  make a good project for a linux box, because of the possibility of using virtual memory...

In reference to the other point about getting together and manufacturing limited runs of accelerators etc, I have thought that recently myself. I remember DCE made great accelerator for the A500, with SCSI II connector, 3.5" IDE, 2.5 IDE and an 030, and people tried to petition them to do another run. If we could all get together (and possibly design our own) and get a run done, that truly would be great. But hell, this is the Amiga community!

[Dietmar]

What's the fascination with the A600 to waste money on it?

[Piru]

I think the 68010 would make a good project for a linux box, because of the possibility of using virtual memory...

No way. The extenal MPU interface was unbearably slow and was dropped completely later on. Even if motorola would still manufacture 68010 chips, I'm pretty sure you'd be unable to find the matching MMU to plug into this extenal interface.

MC68030 is the first m68k cpu to seriously consider for linux.

[itix]

I mean, the ECS chipset in the A600 is basically the same as the one in the A500+, and only slightly modified from the OCS one in the original A1000, but with newer manufacturing processes.

Overclocking chipset is not that easy. Certain chips just arent reliable at higher clock rates. Cooling is only minor problem here. And if you were able to overclock chipset how would chip ram work?

Double data transfer rate from chip ram? No way.

On Amiga everything was carefully designed to work in good order. If you clock 68000 to 14MHz you have small chip ram bottleneck.

[Stew]

"The 68010 also has the pins for an external MMU, I looked into fitting one into my A500....
I think the 68010 would make a good project for a linux box, because of the possibility of using virtual memory..."


   I had a 68010 in a 500. It was a dirrect replacement. I noticed no increase in speed but used the mmu for JOTD.  Also had an Adspeed in another 500. I believe it was a 14mhz 68000. Tried to overclock that a bit but it was a no go.

Stew

[redbaron]

I dunno about the A600, but I found instructions on how to stick a 14mHz 68000 in a 500. Dunno if it'd work in the 600

http://www.savel.org/old/amiga/upgrade2.html

[Agafaster]

Matt_H,

if you can just drop it in, you could do that, but dont solder the clock pin to the clock signal on the motherboard (~7.1Mhz). you could then take the clock signal from where the chipset gets it, and plumb that in.
however, you then bugger up the synchronisation of the Chip / CPU taking turns with the Chip RAM  so some sort of state machine would probably be in order, with a little FAST ram attached to the CPU so that you can actually make use of the extra speed.

I think, then,  we're really talking some sort of accelerator I'm afraid, so you may as well build one using a 68020 at least.
however, soldering an accelerator as replacement of the 68000 would be physically more stable than the clip-over-the-CPU variety sold by Power et al.
just less convenient, and probably makes closing the 600 inconvenient !

[vortexau]

Gerald Bull should be able to help you speed up that A600;
it should be able to fit, too:

Bill's page :-)

[Cyberus]

@ vortexau

That's all very well, but I could understand why someone might want to accelerate their A600. It's a neat little machine, very portable and convenient, cheap to replace... A good machine for basic Amiga apps and games...

[iamaboringperson]

CodeSmith wrote:

iamaboringperson wrote:
[color=993399]D[/color][/b]ude,

Anyone else notice an echo?  :-P

 :roflmao:
i dont know what this means, but it really caused me to laugh! please explain