New project for the benefit of all classic computing!

[Plaz]

I don't mind waiting for something truly amazing.

Paul I'm not picking on your post at all, just referencing to add my point.....

I'd much rather see some smaller doable projects get done first, then build up to larger things if possible. I've lost count of the times we've all waited on some lofty hardware only to endlessly bash each other over the details, then watch it all end in tears yeeeears later with no product. Absolutely no offense to Rouge, but at this time I'd think the best authority on a 060 type card would be Jens. There must be good reasons he's not tackled one yet.

Rouge do you have any tangible game plan for an 060 design or starting out here from scratch?

Plaz

[ChaosLord]

@Plaz

Jens Schoenfeld has never made an 060 card that I have ever heard about.

However 2 other persons in the Amiga community have recently made 060 cards:

Thomas Hirsch made 5 working 060 cards for the Natami prototypes.

That FPGAreplay guy (I forgot his name) has made at least 1 or 2 060 cards for the replay and will probably start cranking them out en masse before long. But his 060 card only has 128MB RAM which is like exactly what I (and various friends) already have.  So if I buy one its a sidegrade, not an upgrade. :/

[Plaz]

Just saying based on past performance and products Jens would be well qualified to do such a card if he wanted. So far he hasn't. I hadn't followed FPGAreplay lately and didn't know about its 060. I hope it happens, but yeah it's a tad short on memory. A gig or maybe even just 512kb would be nice.

I'd read that the "Natami" version of the project was over with though Thomas is continuing the hardware project at his own pace. Unless there's been some other recent news, I don't know that I'd count on those cards making it out of beta for a while.

Personally I was rooting for the UltimatePPC card, but that may still have lots of development yet to go too.

Plaz

[som99]

maybe even just 512kb would be nice.
Plaz

Ow, I would never buy a 512 kilobit 060 card (or anyone else for that matter) not much to do with 64KB memory

[Plaz]

Opps, should have been 512MB not K. In my defense, it is well past my bed time.

[som99]

Opps, should have been 512MB not K. In my defense, it is well past my bed time.

Accepted I should go to bed also but I got work in 1h ^^

[matthey]

That FPGAreplay guy (I forgot his name) has made at least 1 or 2 060 cards for the replay and will probably start cranking them out en masse before long. But his 060 card only has 128MB RAM which is like exactly what I (and various friends) already have.  So if I buy one its a sidegrade, not an upgrade. :/

Except that the modern memory is likely up to 2x as fast as SIMMs in the old accelerators and the 060 should support full overclocking. That's up to a 4x performance increase over an older 50MHz 060 accelerator when using a newer revision 060. I think the performance would seem more like 2x as fast overall most of the time but that is still pretty good. The one thing the fpga Arcade lacks is a PCI bus for fast RTG including 3D.

[TheRogue]

Paul I'm not picking on your post at all, just referencing to add my point.....

I'd much rather see some smaller doable projects get done first, then build up to larger things if possible. I've lost count of the times we've all waited on some lofty hardware only to endlessly bash each other over the details, then watch it all end in tears yeeeears later with no product. Absolutely no offense to Rouge, but at this time I'd think the best authority on a 060 type card would be Jens. There must be good reasons he's not tackled one yet.

Rouge do you have any tangible game plan for an 060 design or starting out here from scratch?

Plaz

First of all, it's Rogue (as in highwayman), not Rouge (as in makeup) :roflmao: No harm done and please don't take that as an insult, I've just never heard that one before!

Anyway, as for a tangible game plan, I only have some simple block diagrams I drew up when talk of the accelerator came up, I have been busy running down all sorts of designs for other computers, looking into PAL/GAL decapping and board delaminating services, and getting information from owners of hardware and so forth to try and get something small and tangible available as soon as possible for as many different communities as possible. Basically I was drawing up just simple block diagrams for possible ways of putting the hardware together. I am at my inlaws house right now, but when I get home I can scan them for you if you want. Here is one that I did electronically:



This is the extent of the planning that I have done on the accelerator as of yet. Like I said, it's still very early in the game to have something more then this. I think this accurately represents what people are looking for though, so at least it's a place to go from.

[noXLar]

Oh my god.. this card would be a dream come true.. i will buy if it come, i suppose tower only? I

[yssing]

@Plaz

Jens Schoenfeld has never made an 060 card that I have ever heard about.

However 2 other persons in the Amiga community have recently made 060 cards:

Thomas Hirsch made 5 working 060 cards for the Natami prototypes.

That FPGAreplay guy (I forgot his name) has made at least 1 or 2 060 cards for the replay and will probably start cranking them out en masse before long. But his 060 card only has 128MB RAM which is like exactly what I (and various friends) already have.  So if I buy one its a sidegrade, not an upgrade. :/

Well actually Georg Braun who made GBA1000 mobo also made a 060 accellerator that plugs into a 030 cpu socket. I personally think this is way way cool, and could potentially give, every one who has a 030 in a socket, a 060 board.

And actually if you take a look at his rev 5 of the GBA, it has a 68060 directly mounted on the motherboard.

Maybe it could be wise to contact him.

[Linde]

It just seems silly for so many ppl to keep buying slow 030 accellerators and only using 16MB fastram or 32MB.

Sillier than what aspect of the Amiga scene, exactly..?

I'm not trying to deflate your idea, (a lot of RAM would be cool) but maybe the Amiga scene isn't for you if you can't stand the idea of people using outdated hardware. You could extend your notion to include any classic hardware; it's silly not to use top-of-the-line PCs when all classic Amigas are decades behind no matter what you put in the expansion port.

No, not really, unless you come at it from a pure performance perspective.

[ChaosLord]

@TheRogue

Holy Crap!(tm)  If you can make something like your block diagram that is just
Freaking Awesome!

About your "expansion area".  What is easier for you hardware guys to add these days?  An oldsk00l  PCI slot or a newfangled PCI Express x1 slot?

I bought a Gb Ethernet card 1000/100/10 for a PCI Express x1 slot the other day for like $40.00.  I did not check if they make combo cards with Gb Ethernet and USB all in 1 card.

In any case if the card had some sort of way to plug in an off the shelf Gb Ethernet and off the shelf USB solution then that would be really really great and would solve a whole lot of problems all in 1 go.

I am not personally a fan of USB 1.1 to 2.0.  I can't stand it really  But I respect that other people need it for stuff.   But I do love USB 3.0 :knuddel:

[J-Golden]

First of all, it's Rogue (as in highwayman), not Rouge (as in makeup) :roflmao:

Boy is his face RED!!!!  Bwahahahahahahaha *breath* Bwahahahahahahah

Get?! RED! His face is... you know, the Rouge is a shade of..  and you put it on your...

...

Laugh, dang it! It's funny and I'm a moderator!!!

[ChaosLord]

Well actually Georg Braun who made GBA1000 mobo also made a 060 accellerator that plugs into a 030 cpu socket. I personally think this is way way cool, and could potentially give, every one who has a 030 in a socket, a 060 board.

I respect his invention.  It is very clever.

But I just looked over all my AGA Amigas that I currently own + all the ones I gave away and none of them has an 030 in a socket.

So I looked over all my current ECS Amigas + reviewed all the ECS Amigas I gave away and none of them has an 030 in a socket.  I currently own 2 Amiga A3000s with 25Mhz 030s but they are soldered onto the motherboard.

So I fear that his invention will be of limited usefulness to Amiga users.

But hopefully he learned some secret trix for making 060 cards that maybe he would be willing to share with TheRogue?

[ChaosLord]

re: discussing memory speed of "Modern" ram vs. "Oldskool" ram.

Except that the modern memory is likely up to 2x as fast as SIMMs in the old accelerators

I think that the Apollo 1260 and Blizzard 1260 both accessed memory 32-bits at at a time.

But Replay and Natami access memory 16-bits at a time.

So I would not be all that surprised if the memory access speeds of an old Apollo 060 were the around the same as for one of the newfangled fpga systems.

All I am saying is that someone would have to do timing tests to see which one is really faster.  New memory chips can be a lot faster but it is not a guaranteed thing.

It is a lot of complicated work to try to get "modern" memory to actually go fast.  It is very very hard and complex work that requires a lot of thought and cleverness.  This is something that TheRogue will be forced to come to terms with when building his DDR3 2GB 060 card.  If you just use the free memory controller software that comes with FPGA chips then you get, how shall I say this... "slow" or "sad" memory speeds.  Other people might use other words that start with "s"

[wawrzon]

this thread is too promissing to be true. allow me to stand back till anything, just anything, is confirmed and released, then i ll applaud..

in the meantime if you are serious - the homepage of georg braun who created gba1k and consorts is here:
http://www.gb97816.homepage.t-online.de/

he has released documentation what concerns at least part of his projects, i dont know how much exactly. but you can contact him.