Sonnet 7200 PCI programming

[trixster]

Originally Posted by k0x

I think Apocalypse userbase will explode in next few days thanks to trixster

Hopefully fewer people will get ripped off by scalpers.

After what happend with the Sonnets, anyone who imports these boards in bulk and then sells them on amibay for £££ profit should be kicked squarely in the nuts, repeatedly.

[dayowalker]

Originally Posted by trixster

Hopefully fewer people will get ripped off by scalpers.

After what happend with the Sonnets, anyone who imports these boards in bulk and then sells them on amibay for £££ profit should be kicked squarely in the nuts, repeatedly.

Or banned. Ups. Did I say that?

[dayowalker]

Maybe I asked this in the wrong thread. Trial and error would also be possible and at least without big financial harm in this case.

Originally Posted by trixster

https://rover.ebay.com/rover/0/0/0?m...2F254476574167

In the corresponding manual it’s afair stated, that the 256MB version has Samsung RAM chips. Does an expert have an idea, what about replacing Micron RAM by the right Samsung RAM chips?

[BULI]

Originally Posted by trixster

Hopefully fewer people will get ripped off by scalpers.

After what happend with the Sonnets, anyone who imports these boards in bulk and then sells them on amibay for £££ profit should be kicked squarely in the nuts, repeatedly.

Yes, we need more users, and that cheap solution could do that.

Especially with 256 of ram :-)

[slaapliedje]

Originally Posted by BULI

Real DVD on my A4000 PPC (Ragnarok):

[ Show youtube player ]

Nice, I've been attempting to get a DVD to play smoothly on my 420mhz PPC Cyberstorm. It is maybe 8fps? Been testing with an appropriately 80s movie, Howard the Duck. Yes, I bought it on DVD, don't judge me!

[BULI]

Originally Posted by slaapliedje

Nice, I've been attempting to get a DVD to play smoothly on my 420mhz PPC Cyberstorm. It is maybe 8fps? Been testing with an appropriately 80s movie, Howard the Duck. Yes, I bought it on DVD, don't judge me!

He, he Howard the Duck is ok in my opinion
And seriously so, on Sonnet 400mhz on some DVDs I had near smoothly playing, but sound was in 8bit DMA, nad 11025 frequency.
And on some others DVDs was bigger problem with synchronize Sound and Video.

[slaapliedje]

Originally Posted by BULI

He, he Howard the Duck is ok in my opinion
And seriously so, on Sonnet 400mhz on some DVDs I had near smoothly playing, but sound was in 8bit DMA, nad 11025 frequency.
And on some others DVDs was bigger problem with synchronize Sound and Video.

Makes one wonder what exactly the minimum specs are for DVD playback on an Amiga. (Another one of those, should I? Probably not, but can I? Maybe!)
I haven't tried it yet, but my G4 1.67ghz MorphOS laptop in theory should be able to handle DVD playback just fine.
But when you're talking only 400~ mhz, you're probably going to need some hardware decoders.

[grelbfarlk]

Originally Posted by BULI

He, he Howard the Duck is ok in my opinion
And seriously so, on Sonnet 400mhz on some DVDs I had near smoothly playing, but sound was in 8bit DMA, nad 11025 frequency.
And on some others DVDs was bigger problem with synchronize Sound and Video.

What AHI settings are you using with Ragnarok and what player? I take it that you set a deficon to that, what are the settings?

Originally Posted by dayowalker

Maybe I asked this in the wrong thread. Trial and error would also be possible and at least without big financial harm in this case.
In the corresponding manual it’s afair stated, that the 256MB version has Samsung RAM chips. Does an expert have an idea, what about replacing Micron RAM by the right Samsung RAM chips?

Someone is about to attempt this either this weekend or next week.

[Timtheloon]

So I ordered one of the cards off eBay and also found a cheapish Ramix too so I will try it in my 1200

I’ll let you know how it gets on

Do I need to get a special heatsink to work with the ramix fan and CPU???

[AMike]

Does anyone know a source for the Ramix expect ebay? Thanks

[Timtheloon]

Originally Posted by AMike

Does anyone know a source for the Ramix expect ebay? Thanks

I don’t think it has to be a ramix maybe one like this will do

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Dynamic-Eng...cAAOSwPsBd8np0

But I would confirm with the experts on here I am new to this.

[grelbfarlk]

Originally Posted by Timtheloon

I don’t think it has to be a ramix maybe one like this will do

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Dynamic-Eng...cAAOSwPsBd8np0

But I would confirm with the experts on here I am new to this.

You are correct that others work, the Ramix is just convenient. That card you linked above has not been tested to my knowledge but it might not supply enough amps with the 1.5A VRM onboard. It might be ok with a 3.3V or "Black" Mediator, but is probably going to be a problem with a 5V only Mediator.

We've tested a couple other PMC carriers and assuming power is not a problem they usually should work.

Exception where they won't work are like if the PMC slots are behind a PCI bridge, which is the case with a dual PMC carrier board that was tested.

It would be really nice to get a custom board built someday.

Originally Posted by Timtheloon

So I ordered one of the cards off eBay and also found a cheapish Ramix too so I will try it in my 1200

I’ll let you know how it gets on

Do I need to get a special heatsink to work with the ramix fan and CPU???

The PPC board should have a heatsink already but most Ramix fans are not in good shape. The Evercool EC4007 is a good-ish option for a replacement Ramix fan but you'll need to use a drive connector to power it. Something like a commonly available blower style fan would be nice.

[AMike]

Originally Posted by grelbfarlk

We've tested a couple other PMC carriers and assuming power is not a problem they usually should work.

Thanks for your help @Timtheloon & grelbfarlk Is there a list of useful carriers available? In the wiki I found "only" the PPC cards. I bought already a cheap Apocalypse in Israel.

[Wrangler]

@AMike It's on the wiki here: https://github.com/Sakura-IT/SonnetA...rd#bridge-card

[BULI]

Originally Posted by grelbfarlk

What AHI settings are you using with Ragnarok and what player? I take it that you set a deficon to that, what are the settings?

AMP2 Beta (AMP 2 v2.03 works too, but sometimes is little slower, but more stability).


AHI Unit 0 SoundBlaster 16bit Stereo++ 44100, but now I prefer frequence Divisor 2 in AMP2, and 22050 in AHI- more smoothly.


Yes, deficon for .VOB is going to script file S:AMP_DVD, like this:

.KEY FILE
.BRA {
.KET }
SYS:Prefs/AHI SYSTEM:Expansion/Switches/16bit-22khz USE
Programy:Playery/AMP2-BETA/AMP AHI STEREO LOWCOLOR TRIPLE OVERLAY DIVISOR 2 {FILE} >NIL:
SYS:Prefs/AHI ENVARC:sys/AHI.prefs USE



Changed AHI prefs for divisior 2.
LOWCOLOR (8bit Screen) is not important if VLAYER works correct, but it use less VideoMemory

[grelbfarlk]

Thanks Buli! I'll have to give this a try. I take it, it only works so well if you copy the VOB to the HDD?

[BULI]

Originally Posted by grelbfarlk

Thanks Buli! I'll have to give this a try. I take it, it only works so well if you copy the VOB to the HDD?

Yes, it works also direct from DVD (if DVD hasn't copy protection).
Of course You must have enought fast controller FastATA/SCSI2 or faster.


If DVD has copy protection (almost my new DVDs) I copy it on my PC to direct SSD disk (Fat32 or NTFS), and I play it direct from PC SSD on my Amiga

[grelbfarlk]

Tried this with some 720x576 VOBs that came up in a search and it actually runs pretty well on Apocalypse too.
Tested with Paula 8-bit DMA and SB128 at 16bit Stereo ++ @ 22050 and it's not bad, no sound skips, video looks reasonably fast. Unfortunately my driver doesn't seem to like OVERLAY (vlayer).

[BULI]

Originally Posted by grelbfarlk

Unfortunately my driver doesn't seem to like OVERLAY (vlayer).

Ooo very strange!
On Voodoo3 and AMP2?

[Hedeon]

The cards with the Motorola Harrier/PowerPlus III chipset write a lot faster to the PCI bus it seems than the others. And the Apocalypse does it faster than Ragnarok. See SDL benchmarks; 2D SDL stuff that isn't CPU bottle-necked runs faster on the Apocalypse.

However, I don't know at what CPU speeds DVD decoding becomes no longer an issue for WarpOS.

I am actually mostly running with my Apocalypse for stuff like Diablo and ScummVM and the likes.