Have you seen this?? (Coldfire accelerator from elbox!)

[PMC]

It might not necessarily return the speed increases we are anticipating, the only way to tell is to see it working on our own systems.

For example, there must be a patch / emulation layer there to execute the instructions absent from the Coldfire.  IIRC Coldfire CPUs aren't fitted with an FPU (someone might want to clarify), so floating point maths will need to be emulated somehow.

Either the system will be held together with patches, retargetting commands and glue logic (the flash ROM is 2Mb in size, four times larger than an A1200's ROM) or it may well require a coldfire specific compile of software to run at it's full potential.

[KennyR]

PMC wrote:
It might not necessarily return the speed increases we are anticipating, the only way to tell is to see it working on our own systems.

For example, there must be a patch / emulation layer there to execute the instructions absent from the Coldfire. IIRC Coldfire CPUs aren't fitted with an FPU (someone might want to clarify), so floating point maths will need to be emulated somehow.

Either the system will be held together with patches, retargetting commands and glue logic (the flash ROM is 2Mb in size, four times larger than an A1200's ROM) or it may well require a coldfire specific compile of software to run at it's full potential.

As Neko told me this morning on IRC in his archetypally unpleasant way, this is no longer true. Freescale have an emulator for missing 68k instructions on Coldfire v4 and will give to anyone who asks. It can be put on firmware. The overhead this way is negligable, and not as scary as popularly believed.

[KennyR]

x56h34 wrote:
If indeed released, this thing would be capable of running 68k environment on steroids, and would not be able to run OS4.0 which is a PPC operating system.

In other words, you would still need either a BPPC/CSPPC card for your classic Amiga, or an AmigaOne, if you wish to run OS4.0.

But...but...but Ben Hermans of Hyperion said that all you have to do is change flags and recompile modules for the same endian processor!!! It's easy, only idiots can't do it!

[Xand]

Quote from Freescale's site:

    * V4e ColdFire core with MMU, dual precision FPU and EMAC - delivering up to 410 (Dhrystone 2.1) MIPS at 266 MHz

It has both FPU and MMU.

We're using the 5484 for a project right now. Very cool stuff.

[the_leander]

Reading the press release it sounds almost like the original A1 prototype - basically a computer in its own right with a connector for an A1200... Very interesting way of doing things :-)

Is it real? Don't know, given the Shark I am somewhat dubious about it, but for the moment I'm prepaired to give them the benefit of doubt.

If it is produced, I can see the interest in it reaching far outside the Amiga community - because there is a lot of interest in the Coldfire archatecture, and dev boards are hidously expensive.

[PMC]

the_leander wrote:
Reading the press release it sounds almost like the original A1 prototype - basically a computer in its own right with a connector for an A1200... Very interesting way of doing things :-)

Is it real? Don't know, given the Shark I am somewhat dubious about it, but for the moment I'm prepaired to give them the benefit of doubt.

If it is produced, I can see the interest in it reaching far outside the Amiga community - because there is a lot of interest in the Coldfire archatecture, and dev boards are hidously expensive.

It seems to be missing an IDE/ATAPI header, which would neatly sideline all the motherboard bottlenecks.  It's the only way to go with our aged hardware IMHO.  I'd love to see this system running some benchmark tests to see how it performs.

One thing no-one's picked up on yet:  It's said to support ATI graphics cards.  That means that someone's coded 68K native versions of drivers?

[Matt_H]

It almost sounds like the original AmigaOne project - a new motherboard with a bridge to the custom chips of a classic Amiga, only with a ColdFire chip instead of a PPC.

But, as said, it's only vaporware at this point. I'll be keeping an eye on this - perhaps an excuse to revive my A1200T.

Note, however, that the press release said most of the expandability would require additional modules, which will definitely jack up the price.

EDIT:
@ the_leander

You beat me to it! (The A1 simiilarity) :-)

[CyberStorm]

Considering the price of buying an 060 board and a Mediator, this seems like a cheap soultion, even if the USB, serial and fastEthernet is optional.

I guess Elbox has written the software needed for the graphics cards, well some of them grahics cards supported actually works with the Mediator.

But I guess the right way to right now is PPC, and of that reason I think the Shark PPC cards are to be sold too, later.

Well, this was a surprise anyway. Would actually be nice to get one, as a second machine after the A1 ofcourse.

[amiga1260]

If this board is real, I'm going to buy it. But I don't have a Tower case. :boohoo:

[whabang]

Oh, my!

I hope this doesn't make Oliver's efforts useless.

[Effy]

Lucky for most Europeans Poland is now also a member of the European Econimic Community, which means that at least here in Belgium I don´t have to pay extra taxes to get an item from Elbox  :lol:

[EntilZha]

maybe OS4 could be ported

There will be no OS4 for 68k compatible CPUs, neither the 68k, nor the ColdFire.

[Rogue]

Perhaps competition for OS4.

Hardly. OS 4 is an OS, not a hardware. This will probably running OS 3.9, and let's face it, both OS 4 and MorphOS are ahead of that, and continue to widen the gap.

[Rogue]

maybe OS4 could be ported - I might be more tempted to go OS4 if I had an alternative to the AmigaOne hardware.

To be honest, I wouldn't see any reason to do so. If there was a non-PPC target for OS 4, it would certainly be x86 or Athlon-64.

[Doobrey]

PMC wrote:
Either the system will be held together with patches, retargetting commands and glue logic (the flash ROM is 2Mb in size, four times larger than an A1200's ROM)

They did say the flash could also softkick a rom image, so it must have at least 512kb free..anyway the A1200 can use a 2mb rom, it`s just that no-one made another rom after CBM went tits up.

As for patches and glue logic, is it a bad thing? Without them we wouldn`t even have 060 cards.

The only thing I don`t like about this, is it`s not a plain trapdoor type accelerator, but (in Elbox`s words) a modular system with separate busboard and cpu card.

[Piru]

anyway the A1200 can use a 2mb rom

It can? There's only 1MB reserved for ROM in the 24bit address map though.