Blizzard PPC604e upgrade discussion

[tasmanian guy]

I'd be disappointed if that was given ANY weight in why he got banned. Is no different to ex-Amiga developers refusing to help the community be releasing source-code to their commercially-dead software eg p96, Ibrowse, Miami.

I think it was more than that, you selectively quoted and did not quote "it then got pretty heated and went down hill fast", so please don't just quote a part of what I typed and try to use that as an excuse for the poor behavour that followed in that thread, it was inexcusable to be honest.  Anyway let's move forward and talk on topic.
 
My personal opinion is I think our energy and money be spent on the clones for speed, reliability and new hardware.

[fishy_fiz]

Also it seem that Amiga OS classic can't deal with more than 512 megs of ram in any senario. Again, not sure if that is a hardware limitation as well, could be a Z3 bus issue as well.

With Amithlon AmigaOS can address 800Meg. With UAE you can assign even more (have used up to 1.5Gig myself). Granted they're emulators so there may be some sort of workaround involved, but I'd be inclined to think if there's typically a roof smaller than what a 32bit system can theoretically address (4GB) it's what Amithlon is hitting.
Anyone know for sure how much RAM os3.x can address?? (disregarding hardware limitations). Not really important, but I'd be interested to find out.

p.s. Sorry for being off topic.

[omnicron10]

I think it has to do with expansion.library and reserved space for Z3 addressing, autconfig etc etc..

The thread on a1k.org on the new ZorRam expansion says 512 megs is the max they can get working including chip and onboard fast ram.

http://www.a1k.org/forum/showthread.php?t=21012&page=4

Here is the thread they talk on a1k.org that links to amiga.org about regarding the memory limitation.

http://www.amiga.org/forums/showthread.php?t=37755&highlight=expansion.library&page=2

[guest7146]

What was the fastest speed the 604e was released at without overclocking it? Mine are both 233mhz PPC's which was the fastest available from Phase5.
 

I think 350MHz was the fastest available processor.  If you google you'll find reference to a 400MHz unit but from what I can tell this was just two 200MHz 604e processors.
 
So it looks to me like 350MHz is the fastest 604e processor you could get hold of.  Still, a significant increase over 233MHz! And perhaps it could be overclocked slightly ;-)
 
Apple Hammer

[Karlos]

A 350MHz 604e, with 64-bit bus and an L2 cache would make for a nice classic upgrade

Seriously though, I can't see any of that working with the existing accelerator designs.

[Lando]

I know the G3 was derives from the 603e.  Perhaps it would be possible to use a G3 as a direct replacement for the 603e on a Blizzard?  Then we could have an A1200 at speeds exceeding 1Ghz which is enough for modern apps.

[Karlos]

@Lando

Engineering concerns aside, the problem with ramping up the speeds that far is that the memory bus is going to be left so far behind. Suppose you managed to get a stable 80MHz memory bus (which would require some pretty rare SIMMs, given they need to be 5v). You'd need a 13x multiplier to hit 1GHz. Without L2 cache, that's really going to bite.

[stefcep2]

I think it was more than that, you selectively quoted and did not quote "it then got pretty heated and went down hill fast", so please don't just quote a part of what I typed and try to use that as an excuse for the poor behavour that followed in that thread, it was inexcusable to be honest.

No-one is OBLIGATED to help anyone.  If someone got banned for that, than thats disgraceful.  If they got banned for something more than that, thats different.

[guest7146]

A 350MHz 604e, with 64-bit bus and an L2 cache would make for a nice classic upgrade

Seriously though, I can't see any of that working with the existing accelerator designs.

It's more plausible that it could work the Cyberstorm accelerators.  But I think you're right, it's definitely not going to work with the Blizzard designs.  This is because the Blizzard designs are restricted to a 32-bit wide bus.  I fail to see why they designed it this way, given that they already used a 64-bit design with the Cyberstorm.  The only thing I can think of is that space limitations on the Blizzard PCB prevented them from routing a 64-bit databus, so they had to resort to a 32-bit bus instead.  I'm not sure how many layers the Blizzard board actually is.
Space restrictions will have been less of a problem on the Cyberstorm boards because they didn't need to fit inside a trapdoor.

No-one is OBLIGATED to help anyone.  If someone  got banned for that, than thats disgraceful.  If they got banned for  something more than that, thats different.

Maybe it was a mistake for me to restart this thread, after all.  All people want to do is discuss the merits of the events that occurred on the old thread!

Apple Hammer

[the_leander]

No-one is OBLIGATED to help anyone.  If someone got banned for that, than thats disgraceful.  If they got banned for something more than that, thats different.

Quite so.

The poster in question was challenged on his attitude (he wasn't just not not helping, but stating that although he knew the answer he wasn't going to tell on the basis that it might give some kind of competitive advantage for some supposed future project or some such). He then went all Vesuvius and got b& for delivering possibly some of the most childish and obnoxious behaviour I've ever been witness to on here (including my own, so you know damn well how far down it must have been).

[the_leander]

It's more plausible that it could work the Cyberstorm accelerators.  But I think you're right, it's definitely not going to work with the Blizzard designs.  This is because the Blizzard designs are restricted to a 32-bit wide bus.  I fail to see why they designed it this way, given that they already used a 64-bit design with the Cyberstorm.  The only thing I can think of is that space limitations on the Blizzard PCB prevented them from routing a 64-bit databus, so they had to resort to a 32-bit bus instead.  I'm not sure how many layers the Blizzard board actually is.
Space restrictions will have been less of a problem on the Cyberstorm boards because they didn't need to fit inside a trapdoor.

If I were to guess I'd say as a cost saving measure as much as space saving - those cards were hideously expensive as it was, not to mention complex.

Maybe it was a mistake for me to restart this thread, after all.  All people want to do is discuss the merits of the events that occurred on the old thread!

Apple Hammer

Not at all sir, getting it out in the clear in a calm, pleasant manner is a valuable and useful thing. Tbh I think it's all done with at this point anyway.

[Karlos]

If I were to guess I'd say as a cost saving measure as much as space saving - those cards were hideously expensive as it was, not to mention complex.

Yeah, the dual CPU design can't have been simple to pull off. I wouldn't be surprised if that was part of the reason behind getting rid of the L2 cache. I really can't see the 68040/60 + 603/604 playing nicely with L2 present. It was bad enough with just the L1 caches and associated context-switch management.

When Phase5 announced the Blizzard G4, I was prepared to sell any non critical organ to get one. Alas, it never materialised.

[LoadWB]

When Phase5 announced the Blizzard G4, I was prepared to sell any non critical organ to get one. Alas, it never materialised.

NON-critical?  You, sir, lack dedication. :laughing:

[guest7146]

When Phase5 announced the Blizzard G4, I was prepared to sell any non critical organ to get one. Alas, it never materialised.

...along with the SharkPPC, which has also never materalised.  I was disappointed about that.  The impression I had from Elbox's website was that the design was pretty much finished, and that all they were waiting for was OS4.0 to be completed.

Such a shame when things like this happen.  I still hold hope that Elbox can release the Shark, but I feel it's doubtful that we'll ever see it.

Apple Hammer

[Karlos]

NON-critical?  You, sir, lack dedication. :laughing:

Well, I thought about it, but I didn't think the card would do me any good if I were dead...

[Karlos]

...along with the SharkPPC, which has also never materalised.  I was disappointed about that.  The impression I had from Elbox's website was that the design was pretty much finished, and that all they were waiting for was OS4.0 to be completed.

Such a shame when things like this happen.  I still hold hope that Elbox can release the Shark, but I feel it's doubtful that we'll ever see it.

Apple Hammer

The impression I got was that it was complete, but never intended to run OS4. As far as I could see, it was a Sonnet Crescendo card with a different heat sink.