A1 - adjustable ram timings/FrontSideBus?

[ple3003]

Does the A1 have something like the BIOS on my x86 based mobo? From where i can adjust ram timings and so on...
I'm thinking of buying a cas2 sd-ram stick (yes, reg. ECC)  but those beauties are somewhat more expensive then the cas3 sticks.
Is there some way to raise the FSB over standard 133mhz? (i know it probably hasn't locked pci/agp dividers and stuff like the nVidia nForce2 but anyway...)
At least those of you who have already got the g3se might now something. (and don't tell me you've never thougt of of oc'ing the little beauty  ;-)   )

[mikeymike]

Without seeing the motherboard in action, no idea, but I guess the more likely possibility is that it would be done through onboard jumpers.

[strobe]

Yuck.

On the Mac it's always been automatic. Who the hell wants to go through BIOS screens or use jumpers?!

[Rob]

You can overclock the A1.  There is one important side effect though.
The warranty period will suddenly get very short.

[Kurt]

The A1 reads the SPD from the SRAM
and adjusts automatically.
Pretty aggressive
on the timings I've been told.
You can set FSB speed with a jumper
100 or 133 no overclocking here.
On the bright side you can select your clock multiplier
I overclocked the G3 to 800mhz..
I Wouldn't recommend you do that.
I'm chicken I set it back to 600 after trying it.
Warning Just make sure you are setting the clock jumpers not the voltage jumpers.

Kurt

[Elektro]

Well for serious overclocking, voltage should also be increased but as always it's a risk.

[JoannaK]

Considering how unstable that ArticiaS NorthBridge -chip is I would be hightly supriced if some people would ot have to use UnderClocking to keep their machines stable enough to serious work.

[m3x]

Considering how unstable that ArticiaS NorthBridge -chip is I would be hightly supriced if some people would ot have to use UnderClocking to keep their machines stable enough to serious work.

Underclocking? :-?
You need to reduce the fsb only with a few unregistered ram modules. My dev AmigaOne mobo run @ 666 Mhz, with fsb @ 133 Mhz and udma100 enabled (with a registered 256 Mb ram module) :-D
I'll post a few screenshots on my website today or tomorrow.

Ciao

Massimiliano Tretene, S o f t 3

[Elektro]

Heh Joanna chill  :-D I haven't seen any info that it's unstable.

[JoannaK]

Elektro wrote:
Heh Joanna chill  :-D I haven't seen any info that it's unstable.

I would call it Marginal...  Yeah.. that's most accurate word of that chip. It happens to be best what's available to PPC (with AGP that is) but unfortunately it ain't Great.

I can't tell how many actual problems it has, but considering those two widely announced (this Ram issue and PCI DMA) it's to me quite obvious it's not as good as it's specs would give (their own datasheets mention chip supporting both buffered and UNbuffered rams).

(sorry.. goes technical)...
Ram issue looks too much like weak drivers on bus, they do work on easy load but on serious load they fail. I have seen that 'Alan's positive spin' about 'low power chip' but actually this kind of weaknes comes from design mistakes and/or errors in manufacturing.  Never before has  some kind of 'energy saving feature' has been used as a  excuse for errorneous behaviour.

What I have gathered about DMA.thingy ... It sounds like there is some errors on PCI side state machine logic. It's not biggie itself  but some glitches do happen and they cause data corruption and loss. It may work OK on light load but I would be worried to hell on selling those to Server use.

Anyway.. It's still too early to make final judgement on this one. I really would like to see more real and accurate raports what indeed does  work ... issues like stability/speed of high.speed high volume USB transfers would be intersting and so are actual CPU usage (including interrupt/kernel %) during Disk IO (both on board Ide and SCSI card on PCI bus).

 

[Minion]

m3x wrote:

Considering how unstable that ArticiaS NorthBridge -chip is I would be hightly supriced if some people would ot have to use UnderClocking to keep their machines stable enough to serious work.

Underclocking? :-?
You need to reduce the fsb only with a few unregistered ram modules. My dev AmigaOne mobo run @ 666 Mhz, with fsb @ 133 Mhz and udma100 enabled (with a registered 256 Mb ram module) :-D
I'll post a few screenshots on my website today or tomorrow.

Ciao

Massimiliano Tretene, S o f t 3

Guess bill gates isn't the antichrist then.  Why not set it to 667MHz?