More than 128 mB on a CSPPC?

[Acill]

Its a 400MHZ CPU that replaces my 233. Overclocked just a tad to 420

[midway]

awesome ! Did Hese do the upgrade ? There is a guy in Poland but he asks as much as a new CSPPC costs currently:confused:

[fishy_fiz]

Just curious, but why 60*7? 70*6 would be faster. Some part of the card not liking a 70mhz clock?

[Gulliver]

There is an alternative:

Use GigaMem and attach an HyperOS Hyperdrive to your scsi interface with a suitable adapter. Map the Hyperdrive as your virtual memory drive. It will be the closest thing to what you want without having to resort doing some heavy hacking that no one has even done yet.

You will reap the benefits of the fast access times that ram provides in your speedy scsi bus.

[jack-3d]

Is there anything at OS3.9 that requires more then 128 MB RAM? I think more RAM is not needed even for WarpOS stuff.

Here is my recent testing of CSPPC 604e/200 060/50 (BLUE color) comparing to CSPPC 604e/366 060/66 (ORANGE color)


(transl: Maximální = Maximum)


(transl: Prumerne = Average)






=> almost double frequency = about 10-15% real speedup (most disapointing was the video encoding result)

[fishy_fiz]

FroggerNG is something I noticed benefits quite a bit from having kick start in fastram. At least on a 40mhz '040 based a1200.

As for benefits of more than 128meg, browsing is an obvious one. Compiling is another. Anything graphics oriented can always use more ram (especially things like imagefx, art effects, 3d rendering, etc.). Emulation of things like a PC or Mac is another. Multitasking is of course another. There's a plethora of reasons why 128meg can be restricting. PDF documents can be huge (and heavy). Using ram: as a temporary drive for uncompressing often causes a shortage in ram too (even just uncompressing a single large file).
It really depends on how a person uses their Amiga. Its easy for 128meg to be more than enough, but equally easy to have it not nearly enough.

[Acill]

awesome ! Did Hese do the upgrade ? There is a guy in Poland but he asks as much as a new CSPPC costs currently:confused:

I did it myself after a lot of debating and used some of the gear at night where I work to do the job. Lucky for me the equipment I work on still used PPC and it wasnt to hard to get some help with the swap.

I got in trouble for using the gear for personal use though and cant do it again.

[nicholas]

How do I get in touch, would love to try that!

http://www.amiga.org/forums/member.php?u=810

[Dandy]

I don't know about adding memory in the way you described, but there's Amiga users out there who have added more than 1GB of memory to their Amiga's through various combinations of other cards. I remember seeing a screenshot of one a while back, the number across the top of the Workbench screen looked so long, lol.

In any case, you're certainly not limited to 128MB, if you have the right budget ($$$).[

Hi Mike,

I know.
But if I got it right, the RAM beyond the 128 mB on the CSPPC cannot be used as FastRAM, it can only be used as 'Virtual Memory'.

And this is not due to lacking $$$ or Euros (hey, these were meant to be three Euro symbols: %&$#?@!%&$#?@!%&$#?@!8364;%&$#?@!%&$#?@!%&$#?@!8364;%&$#?@!%&$#?@!%&$#?@!8364; - is AOrg incapable to display the Euro symbol?), but it is due to technical limitations of the Amiga(OS).
Bummer!

[Dandy]

@dandy

no, he obviously wants it via csppc expansion slot this time,

What do you mean with 'this time'?

because he already opened other threads on similar topics.
you are reffering to a solution similar to alienating rtg ram on pci video cards available via mediator, though those cards are available via zorro memory spacew, while cybervisionppc must be available within 128mb cpu expansion window on a4k memory map, so it wouldnt solve anything, even if an extension laike that was available. the solution would rather be a completely new redesigned motherboard without such bottlenecks. you may wait for vampire standalone or better ask such questions directly on a1k.

I understand.
Bummer!

More FastRAM would be soooo welcome!

And I'm talking about fast FastRAM, as on the CSPPC (60-70 ns; 64 bit interleaved RAM access) - not about the max. 16 mB slow onboard 32 bit FastRAM or virtual Zorro 32 bit RAM...

[Dandy]

...
Sidebar, but I've gotta ask. Is that a man or woman in your avatar pic? I've been trying to work it out for a while now.

:biglaugh:
Looks a bit like Angie Merkel in her twenties...
:roflmao:

[Dandy]

@ jack-3d

@Dandy

Is there anything at OS3.9 that requires more then 128 MB RAM? I think more RAM is not needed even for WarpOS stuff.

Try to load 2 or 3 jpeg photos (each of a size of roughly 12 mB) into ArtEffect (enough virtual Ram enabled), while there are other programs (like Wildfire 7 PPC, SnapShoter and Fantastic Dreams) working in the background, and watch the available RAM disappear...
 :-(

Aside from the applications themselves, a lot of ram is consumed by the graphics you load.

As long as you use photos (each with a size of not larger than - lets say - 3 or 4 mB), all works well.
When I have just the OS and e.g. ArtEffect running and load a jpg-photo of just 4mB, ArtEffect 'unpacks' the jpg and makes roughly 70 mB of it in its working memory...

But we're living in a time where digital cameras are very high-res and one single hi-res photo can easily have a size of 12 mB...

Due to ArtEffect's internal structure already loading one single of such big hi-res photos can eat up all the FastRAM on a CSPPC...not to mention having two of them in memory for certain special effects...

Here is my recent testing of CSPPC 604e/200 060/50 (BLUE color) comparing to CSPPC 604e/366 060/66 (ORANGE color)
...

Thanks for posting the test results!

[Dandy]

...
Its easy for 128meg to be more than enough, but equally easy to have it not nearly enough.

1+

[omnicron10]

I believe the biggest problem with more ram on a CSPPC or MKIII is the fast slot on A3000 and A4000 can only address 128mb of ram.  I don't think there are physically more address lines that can be used to allow the A3000/A4000 to access more than 128MB even with 060 on the CPU card.  It also might be an issue with how the expansion library works with the fast slot to add ram to 32 bit space.  If it is not a hardware issue, it might require patching OS ROM functions to allow them to support more than 128mb on the fast slot.   The best option I could think of that might work would be a Z3 board that connections to a fast slot CPU card that allow the additional config of memory over 128MB of ram on a a fast slot card.  The actual Z3 bus would not have to actually have the ram on it but a few of the signals and allocation functions could work that way and the actual memory would be local on the fast slot for the data transfer.  Not sure that would work but if it is a hardware issue then that could solve it.  Just an idea.

[Dandy]

@ fishy_fiz - #4:

...
In regards to csppc/a4k,
...
Your idea, could in theory work, but I don't think it'd be much faster (possibly slower) than zorram, as while the bus is 25mhz, and the ram 64bit, the bus (correct me if I'm wrong someone) is only 32bit.
...

Assuming you're talking about the data bus on the CSPPC, I got these figures for you from Wikipedia:

...
CyberStorm PPC:

This accelerator board was designed for Amiga 3000 and Amiga 4000. The accelerator board was famous for its high performance due to its 64 bit wide memory bus and PowerPC 604e processor.[25] According to Phase 5 it could sustain memory transfers up to 68 MB/s on the 68060 and up to 160 MB/s on the 604e.

...
Four 72 pin SIMM sockets accepting 128 MB RAM, 64 bit wide

I have no information regarding the speed of the data bus.

[jack-3d]

I believe the biggest problem with more ram on a CSPPC or MKIII is the fast slot on A3000 and A4000 can only address 128mb of ram.  I don't think there are physically more address lines that can be used to allow the A3000/A4000 to access more than 128MB even with 060 on the CPU card.

I specifically asked about 128 MB limit for fast cpu on Apollo core forum and Biggun answered there is no such limit as they plan way more ram for big box Vampire. So I suppose the limit is made by phase5 on their cards.