Will there be an ACA1240 or ACA1260?

[donpalmera]

True, I regret bringing that up.
And the fact that LC or EC parts are still available isn't a reason to call for their use either.
After all, a $220 part without an FPU or MMU isn't that useful.

The problem with using LC or EC parts would be that basically all Amiga software is frozen in time and when that freeze happened it was assumed that all machines with an 060 had a working FPU. So LC and EC parts are basically useless for the Amiga..
If you want a super fast Amiga on the cheap then your best bet is to wait for the FPGAReplay and hope that their 68K core kicks ass... or lower your expectations with regards to this dead technology and just have some fun with it instead.

[glitch]

Sorry man, don't agree with you there.  I sold a ton of 68LC040 A4000's in my day and they were plenty adequate for most people then.  Still awesome today for what they are running.  Frozen in time, just like any other retro platform.  Dead?  No.

[donpalmera]

Sorry man, don't agree with you there.  I sold a ton of 68LC040 A4000's in my day and they were plenty adequate for most people then.  Still awesome today for what they are running.  Frozen in time, just like any other retro platform.  Dead?  No.

Well, I did say "68060".
The 68k (000,010,012,020..) series is officially dead. Freescale will be taking the last orders for parts next year. I have a feeling they stopped fabbing any of the real 68k series years ago either way. Dead technology. The Amiga technology is very much dead if you ignore the FPGAReplay.

Of course the "amiga community" or whatever isn't dead but there aren't many people left with any of the skills required to make any progress on the hardware side of things. There are two type of people here as I've said before. The people that want stuff and the people that can't work out way no one has done it before because "it's sooo easy".. there is no third group of people that actually produce anything.

[bbond007]

Well, I did say "68060".
The 68k (000,010,012,020..) series is officially dead. Freescale will be taking the last orders for parts next year. I have a feeling they stopped fabbing any of the real 68k series years ago either way. Dead technology. The Amiga technology is very much dead if you ignore the FPGAReplay.

Of course the "amiga community" or whatever isn't dead but there aren't many people left with any of the skills required to make any progress on the hardware side of things. There are two type of people here as I've said before. The people that want stuff and the people that can't work out way no one has done it before because "it's sooo easy".. there is no third group of people that actually produce anything.

and ignore WinUAE....

and Indivual computers....

and Aros...

and Amiga os 4.x

which of those groups of people do you belong?

[ChaosLord]

- If it was easy Jens or someone else would have done it..

 it's not easy and wouldn't turn a profit. So no one has done it.
 Sourcing the parts, putting together a schematic, laying out a board with a ton of layers,

How many layers does an A1200 060 accelerator have?

[donpalmera]

How many layers does an A1200 060 accelerator have?

I've never made one so I can't say. Restricting yourself to things you have first hand experience of is something that's sorely missing around here..
A board with a 68SEC000, some level convertors and a CPLD for glue logic required 4 layers to route and it was barely possible then.. 4 layers is basically the most complex board you can do as a hobbyist. Unless you happen to do this stuff for a living..

And after all of this.. why would you use the QFP parts and not use the BGA parts that are actually documented as existing and can be bought for similar prices from Chinese brokers*.

I remember correctly Jens is the only person in the world right now that has the edge connectors for the A1200 trap door. It might be a good idea to listen to what he says. :elvis:


* Likely to be fakes.

[ChaosLord]

I remember correctly Jens is the only person in the world right now that has the edge connectors for the A1200 trap door. It might be a good idea to listen to what he says. :elvis:

I remember correctly Jens is the only person in the world right now that has the schematics and the rights to produce the Apollo 1260 accelerator.

I wonder why he bought the rights for the 060 accelerator?
I wonder why he keeps cranking out 020 accelerators but not 060 ones?
I wonder why he keeps cranking out 030 accelerators but not 060 ones?

[donpalmera]

I remember correctly Jens is the only person in the world right now that has the schematics and the rights to produce the Apollo 1260 accelerator.

I wonder why he bought the rights for the 060 accelerator?

Because he had the money to do so and the rights were for sale. He might have considered using them. Who knows. I don't tell you what to do with your stuff do I?
Again, if you are so sure about everything get some cash and offer to buy them from him. I'm sure if you have a big enough pile of dosh he'll be happy to get rid of them.

I wonder why he keeps cranking out 020 accelerators but not 060 ones?

Because in reality opposed to magic-fairy-pony dream land producing working products is more complicated than wishing them into existence.
I see trays of real 68020s on Yahoo Auctions every few weeks. There seem to be some stock piles of the lower end chips around in the US,Europe and Japan.. so maybe it's an availability of parts thing? Maybe there is more market for basic cards that will allow 90% of the Amiga software out there to run just fine? Maybe most of the people in the market for a turbo card right now only want to run games via WHDLoad so there is no point wasting time on anything else?

The only things we can say for sure are: Making an 68060 card isn't a walk in the park. The 68040 and 68060 are considerably more complex than the 020/030. Jens has the designs of a "working" 68060 which he said more or less that he thinks is a piece of crap. You can agrue all you like that Jens is wrong.. but I know who's opinion I trust over people that have zero experience with this stuff. Jens has produced a bunch of turbo cards and other hardware .. sum total of hardware produced by people with big ideas about using shady chips here.. safe to say zero right?

I wonder why he keeps cranking out 030 accelerators but not 060 ones?

Because it's working for him? Maybe he's actually managing to make a bit of money out of them? I'm not sure how you guys have the cheek to say basically "someone else should risk their time and money doing something for me even though I have no intention of actually listening to anything they say".

[ChaosLord]

The problem with using LC or EC parts would be that basically all Amiga software is frozen in time and when that freeze happened it was assumed that all machines with an 060 had a working FPU. So LC and EC parts are basically useless for the Amiga..

Can u name a single piece of software that makes such an assumption?

I have never met a program that did such a thing.

I don't think anyone assumed that except you.

Tons of ppl used LC and EC parts and I never heard of them not working.

[Blinx123]

Can u name a single piece of software that makes such an assumption?

I have never met a program that did such a thing.

I don't think anyone assumed that except you.

Tons of ppl used LC and EC parts and I never heard of them not working.

Supposedly, Quake will not work without a fully functional FPU. Can anyone confirm this?

[spirantho]

I remember correctly Jens is the only person in the world right now that has the schematics and the rights to produce the Apollo 1260 accelerator.

I wonder why he bought the rights for the 060 accelerator?
I wonder why he keeps cranking out 020 accelerators but not 060 ones?
I wonder why he keeps cranking out 030 accelerators but not 060 ones?

1) I don't know. But I very much doubt it was to produce 060 cards.
2) Because 020 chips are plentiful and well tested genuine parts can be found.
3) Because 030 chips are plentiful and well tested genuine parts can be found.

The 060 is a MUCH more complicated design than the 020 and 030. Development costs would be too high for the tiny market we are today, and even if he did produce one, there's no chips available. What chips there are that are guaranteed known genuine working (which is what he would require) are very expensive, and the accelerator would be more expensive than what's already available.
There's just no point in it unless he finds a good cheap source of guaranteed genuine, tested 68060 chips; and I don't think that's going to happen any time soon.

[donpalmera]

Can u name a single piece of software that makes such an assumption?

I have never met a program that did such a thing.

Any application that tries to make use of the FPU or MMU..

Tons of ppl used LC and EC parts and I never heard of them not working.

And we're back to "my mate Dave said his dad had a special 68060 specially imported by James Bond" again. Did you not get the memo about a lot (most?) LC and EC 060 parts having working MMU and FPU?

[donpalmera]

Unless he finds a good cheap source of guaranteed genuine, tested 68060 chips; and I don't think that's going to happen any time soon.

Wait.. random Chinese sellers on Alibaba aren't reliable? Ones that can offer products at less than 10% of the price of trusted distributors like Digikey etc? Offering products that have never officially existed? I am shocked.
On a serious note.. stop making so much sense.

[AJCopland]

So basically, even the people that have supposedly "tested" them have no idea what they are. If they do work I doubt they are "replicas". There is no profit in reverse engineering the 68060 for the amount of units you could sell. I'm not sure how insane you have to be to imagine anyone in China spending years reverse engineering the 68060 to produce "replicas" of something they might sell a few tens of units of.. but it's pretty high up on the scale.

It is much more likely that one guy in Shenzhen got some other QFP 68060s (rejected parts, recycled parts from telecoms hardware..) and relabelled them and told all the brokers about them... and this is why if you google that part number you get 3 posts from Amiga forums about how great these chips are from people with no evidence than "my friend's mate's sister's dad's mate's next door neighbor's dog's friend apparently used them and said they are ok". Who are the Natami "guys" anyhow? There seemed to be loads of team members when only one person was doing any work and that guy decided to go it alone.. shame not one of all of those team members actually posted anything showing those chips working..

What's with the attitude? You asked, I answered as best I could, no-one on the Natami team has even though there's a few of them with boards out there including with these chips. I get the frustration about finding out more about these parts and where they come from but you have your answer, buy some, mount them on a board with a rom and start dumping output to get what you want.

I cannot access the section of the forum to get you that information anymore so I'm just repeating what info I remember. The output from the test programs, and the test programs themselves were available to us, the chips were tested and clocked upto 120MHz. Only 120Mhz because past 100MHz there were problems with the sync-zorro interface between Natami and the CPU board rather than a limitation of the chip. They didn't have Motorola based numbering/revision and didn't appear to be repackaged 75Mhz QFP parts. Partly because they were a different physical size to the older QFP parts.

I've never really cared where they came from but speculation has always been that Motorola produced some QFP 68060 chips in China and so the designs were just blatantly stolen. I doubt we'll ever get an official answer from anyone.

[ChaosLord]

Any application that tries to make use of the FPU or MMU..

You don't understand the way Amiga software works.

And we're back to "my mate Dave said his dad had a special 68060 specially imported by James Bond" again. Did you not get the memo about a lot (most?) LC and EC 060 parts having working MMU and FPU?

So now you are admitting that Freescale LIED when they marked their chips as LC or EC ?  When in fact they were full 060s?

So now you are admitting that Digikey sells fake untested cpus for high prices?

[AJCopland]

@donpalmera
This is one reason I don't bother posting on these or other Amiga forums anymore, personally I'd think the only real future route for an Amiga accelerator board would be using an FPGA or large CPLD depending on cost. You asked about the FE133, I've seen the tests done and answered, as has ChaosLord and all we've got from you is attitude.

Neither is saying that they're genuine, neither of us is saying that we should all rush out and build a board with them. If you're so wound up about what they are or are not then buy one and test it because I don't think that either of us would advocate that as a future chip for us in an accelerator board.

Whatever you do, drop the attitude. You come across as rude bordering on outright insulting.