68EC060 to be placed on a Blizzard ? Good idea or not ???

[Effy]

I´m playing with the idea of having an 68040 on one of my Blizzard 1240´s to be replaced by a fast 68EC060, meaning an 68060/66 or 68060/75 without fpu and mmu. Good idea or not ? What software will it need ? I mean, will it only run 68020 software at high speed ? It will surely crash when I would use 68060 specific software, but on the other hand what about THIS Apollo 1260/LC060@75Mhz  :-? That card does have an mmu but is lacking the fpu. I recall they told that it would run mpeg movies at very high speed but might have some compatibility issues with 68060 specific software like gfx programs ...
So if I had such a processor on a Blizzard or any other card, how would it feel  :-? Would I regret it all the way  :-? This is not like tuning an 68060 that fast so that the on board scsi would fail to work, this is about what software will still work !!  :-o

Please help me out !!!  :angel:

[Lemmink]

You will indeed be stuck to the 68020 Version of programms (including CGX) as nearly all 68040/68060 optimised programms asume the presence of an FPU.
Some programms dont` have different Versions, they just detect the CPU und use the fitting optimised code on their own. Those programms are likely to crash.
Sure integeroperations will be fast, but thing like Raytraceing will crawl because of the lack of an FPU.
I wouldn`t put such a card in my mainmachine, as there are too many compatibilityissues, though it might be a nice toy some special programms.

Don`t forget to install the nonFPU-Version of the mpega library.

[Effy]

Thanks for the positive support. I did check out the price at Vesalia of a normal 68060 and it seems to 95,90 Euro on their site, so I bought me an MC68EC060RC66 for 75 USD or 63 Euro, expensive shipping included :

[keropi]

hey Effy... where have you been?  :lol:
you could try to find a full 060/60 (like mine) why did you get a mmu/fpu-less cpu???

[whabang]

Well, it's going to FLY when calculating integer math!

[Effy]

Let´s say that I really don´t intend on doing heavy calculations  :lol: No raytracing for me  :banana:

[alexh]

$63 euro's for an EC, have you got money to burn??

You should have got a FULL MC68060RC50, with the Mask 1E41J.

These overclock to ANY speed you care to throw at them. They are totally cool at 50MHz.

With a heatsink and fan, they overclock to 90/100MHz in other systems which have SDRAM (wont overclock past 70/80MHz on a blizzard due to low speed DRAM).

[Effy]

The ones with that mask are not so easy to find. I do regularly a search on Ebay but I have been outbid a few times  :boohoo:

[PG]

This is a cool project!..:-)
But i agree with alexh, try to get an MC68060 with the 1E41J mask instead, a much better cpu.
There is one more thing about the Blizzard 1240.
I know there are some people who has upgraded this card to 1260, but will only changing the cpu really do it?
What about the firmware, this should be upgraded to, for optimizing the cpu?
And another thing, both the Apollo and Blizzard turbo cards have multilayer PCB.
You have to think twice about how to desolder the cpu, if you use an ordinary desoldering station, there is a big risk that you will destroy the PCB.

[koaftder]

PG wrote:
This is a cool project!..:-)
But i agree with alexh, try to get an MC68060 with the 1E41J mask instead, a much better cpu.
There is one more thing about the Blizzard 1240.
I know there are some people who has upgraded this card to 1260, but will only changing the cpu really do it?
What about the firmware, this should be upgraded to, for optimizing the cpu?
And another thing, both the Apollo and Blizzard turbo cards have multilayer PCB.
You have to think twice about how to desolder the cpu, if you use an ordinary desoldering station, there is a big risk that you will destroy the PCB.

If one is very very slow and methodical, an easy way to do this is to take an exacto sawblade, and saw off the pins on the original chip. You will need to remove the spot welded header on the blade, so it will be flat. It would take a lot of time to cut off the pins, and make sure the pcb underneath the chip doesnt get scratched. Then you end up with a pile of pins that you can hold onto with some hemostats and bump the undersides with the iron, then clean up the holes with some ribbon, pop in the new chip and tack on all the new pins.

Not too hard, just requires much patience and carefullness.

[motorollin]

Sound scary...

--
moto

[Effy]

PG : About the upgrade from a Blizzard 1240 to 1260, I have a good friend that can do those things and has done it before so I have confidence he won´t screw up the board  :lol:

As for the reason for this particular processor, most other 68060´s are too expensive or at least more expensive than I can afford. I would have paid this one a lot cheaper if it wasn´t for the 45 USD shipping cost from Canada to Belgium  :boohoo:

But don´t worry, I shall keep on searching for a 1E41J masked 060 coz I happen to have two 1240´s  :lol:

[CLS2086]

Putting a 060 EC would crash and hung often due to the lack of specials functions called by the blizzard.
Some french guys tried, it doesn't work.
The 060EC costed around 10 Euros on ebay last year !!
Why does it grow up so much ? it's due to Falcon - CT60 user  :rtfm:
I got a 060RC 1 years on ebay belgium for 49.90 euros.
I asked AmigaCenter to put it on my BPPC1240/240/SCSI, he told me that is around 150e.

PS : for $45 Can, it's in a big box. Ask the seller to put in it a small box in an enveloppe like a book, it will just cost 18 Euros  ;-)

[Effy]

That doesn´t give much hope then to put it on a Blizzard  :boohoo:
This evening I got an offer to buy an 68060 with 1E41J mask for 80 Euro inclusive shipping. Is that much

[PulsatingQuasar]

A guy on Ebay from Germany had 5 of those 68060RC50 for sale with the mask 71E41J.

I bought 2 of them. Don't know if the sold the other 3.