General question about Macintosh PPC accelerator in an Amiga

[da9000]

Let me start off by saying that this question is because of curiosity. I realize it's easier, better, faster to use an Amiga PPC accelerator in an Amiga, plus they're plentiful.

Yet I'm curious to hear from the hardware gurus here what are the _issues_ one would face if trying to use the below board in an Amiga setup (assume A3000/A4000 to simplify things):

http://www.daystartechnology.com/Apple_Mac_Products/Daystar_Digital_CPU_Products/Daystar_Mac_CPU_Upgrades/Mac_CPU_PowerPC_601_Upgrades/Mac_CPU_601_Upgrade_2.html

I'm assuming that the 040 part would work great, but in order to get the PPC to work, one would need to know the programmable interaface (IO ports/registers or memory mapped registers) of this board to enable the PPC side of things.

One major difference that I think exists between this and Amiga PPC boards is that they interface directly with the CPU slot of the Amiga, so they can control the Zorro bus and other things, while this wouldn't be able to, since it's going right into the 040 socket.

One more thing that I'm curious to hear opinions about is this: would it be electrically compatible? In the sense that if it's going into the 040 socket, it HAS to abide by the same electrical specs as the 040 itself, right? So the worse thing that could happen is that the machine never boots, but in theory it shouldn't fry anything, should it? (please keep in mind that I don't condone, nor will I try this, I'm just trying to understand things better

Thank you very much in advance!

[trekiej]

I wonder if you would need PPC code in rom to boot from.

[Dr_Righteous]

Pure speculation here, but two problems I would imagine in getting the PPC CPU to work would be address conflicts between the PPC and the Amiga custom chips and code level incompatabilities with WarpOS. This board uses a 601 series processor, and to my knowlege no Amiga accellerator ever used a 601, thus there might not even be support for it in WarpOS.

That said, if there are no address conflicts with the PPC, you might very well get the board to work, allowing use of the 040, since it is designed to go in 040 based Macs. I wouldn't hold my breath on the PPC tho.

[Piru]

- Would not work with PowerUP.
- Would not work with WarpUP.
- Would not work with MorphOS.
- Would not work with AmigaOS4.

Other than that, yeah sure why not...

[djbase]

But hey, it could work with AROS  :lol:

[da9000]

@DJBase:

good thinking!


@Dr_Righteous:

Good info! So most likely the problem to hit first would be address space conflict, and by that I assume you mean memory mapped registers and regions, correct?

[djbase]

Oh and let me add a note....a 68060 with 50 MHz is about 20% faster than a 601 with 66 MHz.

[da9000]

Good point!

Ah well, just was curious

I must say these Mac peripheral companies could have made so much more money if they had made the hardware cooperate with Amigas and Ataris (and who knows what other 68k machine... I mean, most arcade machines were 68k as well, and surely their hardware requirements were going up at the same time frame)

Blah, whatever