Memory madness

[amigakit]

The chips we sell have been tested on a BlizzardPPC 060 64Mhz / 210Mhz and they are fine on that overclocked system.  

I'll try them on a 64Mhz overclocked PPC and report the results here...

[x56h34]

@amigakit:

Forget about the 68k side and its speed. The problems arise with 240Mhz PPC cpus which are running at 60Mhz PPC busclock (totally unrelated to 68060 clock, mask, type, speed, etc.).

[Karlos]

[x56h34]

Perhaps a particular revision of the 603e is more picky than others?

[TjLaZer]

@x56h34

I see you are selling a Blizzard PPC card on eBay, is this one underclocked to 210MHz?  I was looking to bid on it but its getting a little pricey.
 
I see a idiot with a -1 bid on it too !!!

What the hell!  Why do these freaking idiots keep bidding on eBay with legatives like that.  Man that pissed me off.

[x56h34]

All the biders which have retracted their bids with the lame excuse such as "entered wrong bid amount" have been blocked from ever bidding on my auctions again. It's a dirty trick of figuring out the highest bid for the leading bidder without paying for it in the end. :-(

Look at the bidder called "marc-james" for example. 48 bid retractions within 6 months!!! Entered wrong bid amount, my a$$. :-)

As for the PPC card question, yes this one is an actual 210Mhz card which works find with the 128MB simms.

[amigakit]

The test BlizzardPPC is socketed for both the 060 and PPC.  To test the memory, I'll change the 50Mhz PPC crystal for a 64Mhz Crystal and run the PPC faster.  This will test the tolerances of the RAM.

[patrik]

@all:

Does these 128MB HP SIMM problems affect both the 040/PPC and 060/PPC combos? I must add that it would be more likely that the BPPC is the source of these problems than server class SIMMs.

It sounds quite wierd with SIMMs dying from running them in a too high frequency. First of all, SIMMs are not synchronous devices - they are asynchronous devices that arent clocked. The memory-controller waits for the memory to be ready for say a read by waiting a number of clockcycles. This means that if you increase the frequency of those clocks, the memory-controller will wait less time for the memory to be ready. If that time becomes too short it will result in corrupt data, not in a corrupt SIMM. The only thing that should reasonably be able to kill the SIMM is either too high voltage applied to the Vcc, too high voltage applied to the io pins relative to the Vcc or heat.


/Patrik

[Hyperspeed]

Do a search on Amiga.org for `FPM'...

Those server SIMMs are not what I would put in my Amiga. Not only do
they have parity/ECC but they are often EDO (as opposed to the lovely
Fast Page Mode modules).

How are you physically fitting 2x 128mb SIMMs on your Blizzard anyway?

On my card you can only get a single sided SIMM onto the main board,
and a rogue capacitor stops you fitting a double-sided to the SCSI-IV.

I hope you aren't using those ultra-thin, ulta-MadeInTaiwan SIMMs..

;-)

One thing you might like to try (and that Phase5 thought of) is the
PPC boot menu. Hold ESC on bootup and alter the settings relating to
pre-charges. This might allow the HP SIMMs to work.

Again, I would think over your decision to use a HP SIMM (Phase 5
specifically say NOT to use laser printer modules) and Compaq ones are
particularly dodgy for Amiga.

Also, try to find out what the refresh of them is. There are 4x types
of refresh (1k, 2k, 4k & 8k). I suspect a 1k or 8k would be too
extreme in power requirement/speed for a sensitive Amiga setup.

[Cyberus]

Experienced no problems so far.

SIMMS fit fine in my Blizzards, certainly in the SCSI kit, although the SIMM sockets on the accelerators don't 'click' the SIMMs in - thus booting (as in with your foot) the tower would probably send the SIMM crashing into the abyss....

[x56h34]

The simms fit fine on BlizzardPPC cards. It's a bit of a tight fit on the 90 degree slot though.