Home grown A1200 accelerator project

[AmigaNow]

Does anyone in our community have the skills and tools such as hSpice or similar to design a new accelerator ourselves? I'm thinking of something similar to the Efika, with the same PPC, with maybe a 68060 @ 75Mhz, 2 Dimms for up to 2 GB Ram.

Would prefer to have it work like the Blizzard 1260+PPC. I noticed both are from the 603e family...

With the design in place, couldn't we contract the boards manufacture like the MiniMeg?

Also, would be great if Morphos could be ported to it. :-D

Lets take away the waiting and vaporware. Lets make this ourselves...

AmigaNow

[McVenco]

 :horse:

[nadoom]

how about something less grand like a simple 68060 accelerator with support for modern memory formats etc?

[AmigaNow]

68060 at 75 Mhz, Real Time Clock, 2 DDR or DDR2 sockets. Would also require a memory controller.

I forget, was the 68882 math coprocessor built into the 68060?

AmigaNow

[motorollin]

AmigaNow wrote:
I forget, was the 68882 math coprocessor built into the 68060?

Depends on the version of the CPU.

--
moto

[pyrre]

What if....

Someone made a new version of the 060..
perhaps running at.. uum.. lets say... 250MHz...
That should not be to hard, or what...?

(for starters...and later on, make an ATX form A4000T MB w/pci)
dreams, sweet dreams...

[AmigaNow]

pyrre wrote:
What if....

Someone made a new version of the 060..
perhaps running at.. uum.. lets say... 250MHz...
That should not be to hard, or what...?

--------------------------------------------------

What kind of speed could be obtained if the 68060 was programmed into a PLCC?

AmigaNow

[motorollin]

The evolution of the 68k processor line is called ColdFire. It is questionable whether it is capable of running 68k (Amiga) code natively.

--
moto

[pyrre]

The evolution of the 68k processor line is called ColdFire. It is questionable whether it is capable of running 68k (Amiga) code natively.

Yes, but was not the Cold Fire project abandoned in favor of PPC?

[Doppie1200]

Would be a nice project. Although I would like to see an A600 accelerator as they are more uncommon. I think quite difficult a project to get going.

Most feasable 'accelerator' is currently build at home using the following steps (roughly);

1. Empty the case
2. Install mini/nano/pico -itx motherboard
3. Install hardisk and such
3. Hook the keyboard to that USB interface from Jens
4. Hook up the leds
5. Run UAE and have all the speed and ram you want.

Just pretend. No but really. The A1200 has adequate accelerators around. The PPC boards with those BVisions clearly reveil you really want to get rid of the old hardware.

[Damion]

Some type of A1200 desktop turbocard with on-board video and a fast HD controller would be great. The prices for even lowly '030 cards is ridiculous these days.

Weren't there a few decent A1200 cards actually completed (AmiJoe)? Maybe it would be easier to build from something like that, rather than starting from scratch with a new design.

Anyhow, as much as I would love to see something like this, it's basically dreaming. Even a basic card with a 68060 would be crazy expensive due to the cost of the CPU alone.

[skurk]

AmigaNow wrote:
Does anyone in our community have the skills and tools such as hSpice or similar to design a new accelerator ourselves? I'm thinking of something similar to the Efika, with the same PPC, with maybe a 68060 @ 75Mhz, 2 Dimms for up to 2 GB Ram.

OK, here's a crazy thought:

A CPU accellerator board with an Intel CPU.  Before you all start kicking and screaming, let me explain.

The whole thing should behave like a 68060, because it's basically a CPU emulator.  No Intel instructions are available from the Amiga.

The board also holds 128MB RAM which behaves like the fastram, and is accessible at the board's local bus speed.  The chipram, located on the Amiga motherboard, will be as slow as before.

So, picture a 4 GHz Intel CPU doing nothing but 68k emulation.  No Windows hogging resources in the background, no multitasking.  Just one mission: Emulate the 68060 at full speed.

I would not be surprised if something like this would measure in the neighbourhood of a 7-800 MHz.  Only stuff in fastram would truly gain from this, but still - things would be *a lot* faster.

Hell of a project, though.

[AmigaNow]

AMD62x4 would be awesome! Also, think about this... You could even run AROS on that!  :-o

AmigaNow

[Donar]

So, picture a 4 GHz Intel CPU doing nothing but 68k emulation. No Windows hogging resources in the background, no multitasking. Just one mission: Emulate the 68060 as fast at full speed.

Yeah a bicycle with a turbine can be really fun... but most people will be annoyed seeing it. Maybe take a less fast (and non intel) CPU for a "Classic" add on?  :-D

[skurk]

Donar wrote:
Yeah a bicycle with a turbine can be really fun... but most people will be annoyed seeing it. Maybe take a less fast (and non intel) CPU for a "Classic" add on?  :-D

Sure, I know it's blasphemic, but Intel does offer the "most bang for the buck" at the moment.

Anyway, I know it might not even be plausible, but still - a crazy, but fun thought