| New 1Ghz PPC Board for A3000/4000 | page 1 2
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Marcel Verdaasdonk
Netherlands
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Posts 3991
24 May 2012 22:20
| Golgoth 27 wrote:
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On AmigaImpact, they will buy a batch of 060, around 30 for now, maybe more.
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Golgoth it's a design decision, it's but one of many such choices.
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Golgoth 27
France
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Posts 185
24 May 2012 22:26
| It was a thought, not a request. As i told before, they made a choice and it's good that way.
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Marcel Verdaasdonk
Netherlands
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Posts 3991
25 May 2012 02:14
| Golgoth 27 wrote:
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It was a thought, not a request. As i told before, they made a choice and it's good that way.
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May i add something to that I find is more interesting to find out the reason why one came to a specific decision.
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Golgoth 27
France
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Posts 185
25 May 2012 12:35
| As i'm not a technical guy, i don't think i'm able to tell if any technical decision is right or not.
They have good reason to choose the 040 as the most important part of their board is the PPC anyway because most people will want to use OS4 or Morphos on it.
When i wrote my comment, i just thought about the cosmos blog and some forums where lot of people want to turn 040 boards into 060 boards. Was just a thought in the air (next time i will keep it for me) without judging the choices of the board developpers. Last message from me.
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Michael Ward
USA
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Posts 234
25 May 2012 13:17
| Golgoth, Don't worry about your thoughts, they are fine. I wish I had an 060 something myself but I can't justify purchasing a now older accelerator that all seem to be going for way too much $. Converting from 040 to 060 possible but not easy. There was once a company that actually made a chip adapter that did this. As far as I remember it had to change supply voltage as well as tie all of the pin signals together. It too was expensive I believe. Oh well.... The thing that sells me on this new accelerator are its integrated features; more ram for the 68K, ethernet, sata, and usb. This does not even count the PPC and its ram. One card doing the same thing as at least 4 typical expansion type boards do in an Amiga. Plus they should perform better than any of the standard expansions, many of which I have in the A3K machine. Sure wish there was a PCI expansion ability like being done on the Atari (CTPCI). But I am not complaining. This new board is looking great.
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Marcel Verdaasdonk
Netherlands
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Posts 3991
25 May 2012 17:13
| Golgoth 27 wrote:
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As i'm not a technical guy, i don't think i'm able to tell if any technical decision is right or not.
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A design decision is not a technical decision by default it can be economical too.
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Ralph Ewers
Germany
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Posts 42
26 May 2012 15:29
| Golgoth - thanks for posting that link! My first thought when reading the website was "Finally someone tries to deliver what phase5 originally had planned for the Cyberstorm Mk-I". Hopefully the software problems won't make this another "Mk-I" with many features announced but few delivered (due to missing programmers). Good luck, guys! What stroke me most, though, is that you can get a 68040 into a plastic package these days (even if it's only an XC68040 on their proto) and the 68060 seems only to be available in a ceramic package - although the '060 always ran much cooler than the '040...
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Matt Hey
USA
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Posts 737
26 May 2012 17:42
| Ralph Ewers wrote:
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What stroke me most, though, is that you can get a 68040 into a plastic package these days (even if it's only an XC68040 on their proto) and the 68060 seems only to be available in a ceramic package - although the '060 always ran much cooler than the '040...
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For some reason, Motorola/Freescale has tried to suppress the existence of the 68060 since they decided to go PPC. The MC68360, one of the later CPU32 compatible integrated processors, supports a 68040 or 68030 "companion" processor but no mention of the 68060. The 68000PRM never got updated for the 68060. The prices of the 68060 have remained high and they will try to sell you a performance crippled ColdFire if you start asking about availability and quantity. It looks like a conspiracy theory for them to kill and hide their own excellent 68060. They needed to when it came out as it outperformed early PPC processors 8).
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Casey Bakker
Netherlands
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Posts 20
24 Jun 2012 23:00
| Michael Ward wrote:
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The thing that sells me on this new accelerator are its integrated features; more ram for the 68K, ethernet, sata, and usb. This does not even count the PPC and its ram. One card doing the same thing as at least 4 typical expansion type boards do in an Amiga. Plus they should perform better than any of the standard expansions, many of which I have in the A3K machine. Sure wish there was a PCI expansion ability like being done on the Atari (CTPCI). But I am not complaining. This new board is looking great.
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I totally agree with that. This is a great way to upgrade my ageing A3000: I like it!
I would surely consider OS4 to run on it, where could this OS be purchased& downloaded? Or does it require an old-fashioned CD-ROM player (which I don't have)
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Igor Majstorovic
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Posts 51
25 Jun 2012 19:18
| When I look at this only one thing comes to my mind. It is easy for me to assembly all of this, it is easy to design it, to send it to production, to get parts, to solder everything, to include few new technologies here, but there is no way to solve technical problems between different CPU families. There is no way to write softcores to solve all of the problems. Regarding to hardware design it is easy but I just don't think that few people can solve all software technical differences needed to get this working. Maybe I m wrong here but looking at every hardware design it could be done by only one person but for softcores you need army of people to do it, to split jobs and to debug everything even using hundreds of beta testers. Again, maybe I m wrong here but I m not optimistic about this at all, regardless of knowledge, will or something else. Please don't understand me wrong but my experience says that creating hardware part is simplest thing here, just follow basic rules and in 2 month you will have PCB in your hands but what then, maybe 2 or more years to solve all softcore problems.
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Marcel Verdaasdonk
Netherlands
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Posts 3991
25 Jun 2012 19:54
| I have somethings to say about that Igor.
A1060, A2088, A2286, A2386.
what softcore?
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Igor Majstorovic
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Posts 51
25 Jun 2012 21:52
| Looking at the pictures there is Spartan FPGA... Enough said... You think that they will used only for memory controller who can be build on 200 or 300 LE's using any basic Cyclone FPGA:) There are also projects with PCI PPC cards but there are GALs for some reason, there was Phase5 design who included programmable devices. I just wanted to say that creation of hardware part is easy, and with detail examination you can recreate anything but what is inside programmable devices and how to recreate that or how to start project like that for me it is impossible. You may ask yourself just one question why someone for last 12 or so years didn't recreate Phase5 design or created something like that using logic probes to investigate behavior of signals and recreate it into FPGA or something because it is hard and only team of people can do it. I just have no idea how to finish complicated project like this and all of my mails, papers regarding to this telling me the same. There was also number of coldfire project with finished nice looking hardware part but all of them stuck at some point because they didn't wanted to share information's and maybe there was someone who could help. The same is here with this project but maybe they don't need any help and I m wrong with everything I said. But first question would be why did they said that there are no usable softcores for MC68K family and that they needed to use Mc68040 instead. Those statements telling me that they didn't talk with few people who have working cores and those cores are much faster then those on opencores. Also I don't see any point using MC68040 instead of using softcore Mc68K acting as slave state machine. I don't know there are lot of things there to talk about but they will not finish this until all amiga community contribute to this project.
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Wojtek P
Poland
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Posts 1597
26 Jun 2012 09:20
| Golgoth 27 wrote:
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A new PPC board is announced for the end of 2012.
More details here.
EXTERNAL LINK |
New way to suck a bit more money from amigans. Natami must not be produced as it will be stopped!Just as most offerings - this is too "almost" done.
No software support, "Maybe" it will run this, "Maybe" that.
But who cares, the most important is that it is "new" for amiga and stupid herd has to buy it.
No need to use it, just BUY it. Natami had to be a first CONSISTENT new amiga, really compatible and real amiga. HAD, but was stopped. Just not announced yet to hold you waiting.
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Lord Aga
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Posts 129
26 Jun 2012 09:36
| igor majstorovic wrote:
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You may ask yourself just one question why someone for last 12 or so years didn't recreate Phase5 design
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Actually I do think about this often. Phase5 boards seem to be the best of the bunch. Most compatible with all MB revisions and generally problem free. So, how did Phase5 make them ? Did they know something no one else knows ? Is that knowledge lost ? Where are Phase 5 engineers now ?
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Flash Lab
Netherlands
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Posts 166
26 Jun 2012 17:59
| Wojtek P wrote:
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HAD, but was stopped. Just not announced yet to hold you waiting.
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Sigh, ok... I'll bite. Who is trying to stop Natami from being finished?
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Marcel Verdaasdonk
Netherlands
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Posts 3991
26 Jun 2012 20:05
| Flash Lab wrote:
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Wojtek P wrote:
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HAD, but was stopped. Just not announced yet to hold you waiting.
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Sigh, ok... I'll bite. Who is trying to stop Natami from being finished?
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hm, my bet is Wojtek.
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Wojtek P
Poland
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Posts 1597
10 Jul 2012 11:15
| Marcel Verdaasdonk wrote:
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Flash Lab wrote:
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Wojtek P wrote:
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HAD, but was stopped. Just not announced yet to hold you waiting.
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Sigh, ok... I'll bite. Who is trying to stop Natami from being finished?
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hm, my bet is Wojtek.
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No need to. it is already stopped.
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Flash Lab
Netherlands
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Posts 166
10 Jul 2012 17:41
| You still didn't answer the question. WHO is trying to stop Natami?
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Joe M
Norway
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Posts 500
10 Jul 2012 18:37
| Flash Lab wrote:
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You still didn't answer the question. WHO is trying to stop Natami?
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I guess the answer is Microsoft! :-D Well, I'm 99.9% sure no one is trying to stop Natami. Wojtek has only had a bad dream. ;)
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Welcome to the Natami lounge.