Change processor

[SidVicious]

Is it possible to just remove the 030/50mhz processor in a Blizzard expansion card and put a MC68EC060RC66 processor there insted to get it run faster?

[odin]

Nope, without designing an almost complete new CPU board this is impossible. A 040 based card however, is (in comparison) easy (easier) to upgrade to a 060.

[StormLord]

DON'T even dream of it !
:-)

odin wrote:
Nope, without designing an almost complete new CPU board this is impossible. A 040 based card however, is (in comparison) easy (easier) to upgrade to a 060.

How "easy" is it to upgrade a BPPC/040 to an 060, and is it worth the speed increase? What parts are required besides the 060 CPU?

You can safely assume i don't know one end of a soldering iron from the other, figuratively  speaking.

[StormLord]

you will need a cpu , some type of socket , and a regulator to drop the voltage from 5v to 3.3v that 060 needs. if you have an PPC card don't need a regulator just a change of a choke jumper. As for someone that hasn't had ENOUGHT experience with  iron and desoldering : AGAIN FORGET IT ! or take it to someone that knows!.
As for speed improvement ... its just.... umbelivable!!!!
about 4 times the speed of the 040@25..

StormLord wrote:
you will need a cpu , some type of socket , and a regulator to drop the voltage from 5v to 3.3v that 060 needs. if you have an PPC card don't need a regulator just a change of a choke jumper. As for someone that hasn't had ENOUGHT experience with  iron and desoldering : AGAIN FORGET IT ! or take it to someone that knows!.
As for speed improvement ... its just.... umbelivable!!!!
about 4 times the speed of the 040@25..

:-o

That fast huh? Nice.

I have soldered before, but not for a while and for medical reasons I couldn't solder if i tried right now!

Might be worth looking into in the future, though if/when OS4 comes out, it switches the 68k off and uses the PPC to emulate all 68k code, so I imagine it would be a waste to upgrade the 040 to an 040. Or would it not?

Thanks for your advice.

[StormLord]

mdma wrote:

That fast huh? Nice.

I have soldered before, but not for a while and for medical reasons I couldn't solder if i tried right now!

Might be worth looking into in the future, though if/when OS4 comes out, it switches the 68k off and uses the PPC to emulate all 68k code, so I imagine it would be a waste to upgrade the 040 to an 040. Or would it not?

Thanks for your advice.

For me my classic migy will always run 3.9.. and maybe 4 but only for experience.. if software come out for 4 the our little 603 will be TOO little for the progies/demos..
For OS4 I'll buy an mA1 if it ever succed to be released and supported...

[Framiga]

Take a look at this Ryu's OS4 video on BlizzardPPC:

BlizzardPPC 166 Mhz

http://movies.intuitionbase.com/OS4_BPPC.mpg (30 MB)

http://movies.intuitionbase.com/OS4_BPPC.avi (50 MB)

and its only a mere 603 at 166 Mhz ;-)

EDIT- no more available!?!

Someone knows where is it "gone"?

Found it mirrored here:

http://www.infokanal-tv.de/AmigaVideos/OS4_BPPC.mpg

[ciVic]

What about the A3640? A 060 in my A4000 would be nice :-)

[spirantho]

Heh.. that's like putting a Ferrari engine in a Yugo. The A3640 has no onboard RAM - it's already throttled as it is, and that's only with a 25MHz 040. It'd be like sticking an 060 in an A1200 with no Fast RAM - it'll barely be faster than before.

There's more to a card than just the CPU.

[Karlos]

mdma wrote:

StormLord wrote:
you will need a cpu , some type of socket , and a regulator to drop the voltage from 5v to 3.3v that 060 needs. if you have an PPC card don't need a regulator just a change of a choke jumper. As for someone that hasn't had ENOUGHT experience with  iron and desoldering : AGAIN FORGET IT ! or take it to someone that knows!.
As for speed improvement ... its just.... umbelivable!!!!
about 4 times the speed of the 040@25..

:-o

That fast huh? Nice.

I have soldered before, but not for a while and for medical reasons I couldn't solder if i tried right now!

Might be worth looking into in the future, though if/when OS4 comes out, it switches the 68k off and uses the PPC to emulate all 68k code, so I imagine it would be a waste to upgrade the 040 to an 040. Or would it not?

Thanks for your advice.

Motorola rate the 68060's typical integer throughput as 1.7x that of the 040 at the same clockspeed for the same object code where no exceptions occur. So yes, a 50MHz 68060 would almost be 4x faster than a 25MHz 040.

Regarding OS4, the 680x0 processor makes no difference, it's basically shut down (so as not to steal bus cycles from the PPC). At that point only your PPC and memory speed matter.

You'll be quite surprised at how fast 680x0 stuff can run on that old 603 ;-)

It's worth upgrading to 060 if you want the best overall performance for OS3.x. Even the PPC is affected (I don't know what the exact cause is - slight differences in bus access maybe) but the PPC under WarpOS is faster with a 68060 than it is with 68040 (in every test I've thrown at it I see a completely systematic increase in PPC performance, even for stuff where no 680x0 calls are made by the PPC, so it has to be more than just context switch times).

I'd do it myself, but I'm a bit reluctant to screw the card up if I make a mistake :-)

Karlos wrote:
Motorola rate the 68060's typical integer throughput as 1.7x that of the 040 at the same clockspeed for the same object code where no exceptions occur. So yes, a 50MHz 68060 would almost be 4x faster than a 25MHz 040.

Regarding OS4, the 680x0 processor makes no difference, it's basically shut down (so as not to steal bus cycles from the PPC). At that point only your PPC and memory speed matter.

You'll be quite surprised at how fast 680x0 stuff can run on that old 603 ;-)

It's worth upgrading to 060 if you want the best overall performance for OS3.x. Even the PPC is affected (I don't know what the exact cause is - slight differences in bus access maybe) but the PPC under WarpOS is faster with a 68060 than it is with 68040 (in every test I've thrown at it I see a completely systematic increase in PPC performance, even for stuff where no 680x0 calls are made by the PPC, so it has to be more than just context switch times).

I'd do it myself, but I'm a bit reluctant to screw the card up if I make a mistake :-)

:-D  I'm petrified of breaking it, and it's still in the post from Canada yet!

When I've had it for a while, and the shakes wear off from this bloody new medicine I might have a go at it myself.  I could take it into college and get one of the teachers in the engineering faculty to do it, but most of them are old farts so i wouldn't really trust them! :-D

[jlariv8957]

Hi,

Just one question : why PPC board on amiga make use of 680X0. I tought PPC had a 68K compatibility mode that could run old software. Macs wasn't using any 680x0 to execute 68K code!

Thanks.
 

[Karlos]

jlariv8957 wrote:
Hi,

Just one question : why PPC board on amiga make use of 680X0. I tought PPC had a 68K compatibility mode that could run old software. Macs wasn't using any 680x0 to execute 68K code!

Thanks.
 

The PPC has no 680x0 compatibility mode as it is in no way connected to the 680x0.

Macs just used a software emulation of the 680x0 for compatibility, just like OS4 and MOS do.

Of course one difference is that 680x0 emulation has improved enormously since macs first started doing it. My 603 runs rings around a 604 based mac I used (OS for running 68K code :-)

[darkcoder]

@Karlos:

 I remember that the old MacOS used "fat binaries" (executables with both the 68k and PPC code) to solve the issue of the two cpu families. From which version do they have 68k software emulation, and from which OS version?