Sonnet 7200 PCI programming

[mousehouse]

Quick question... trying to get my head around this...

How does the PPC tie into the bus? I would assume that on the CyberstormPPC cards the PPC CPU shares the address and data bus with the Amiga and some stuff of the PPC is exposed into memory. The Sonnet cards are on PCI and can DMA into memory, right? How do the PPC and 68k then arbiter the bus?

[Hedeon]

The PPC ties into the PCI bus.
The current pci bridges don't allow for DMA from PCI to Amiga. The PPC north bridges have their own pci/cpu bus arbiters. How that ties in with the Zorro/PCI arbiter on for example mediator, I wouldn't know.

[DarrenHD]

Hedeon, do you know what this error is? Happens fairly frequently. Yes I have WarpDT (datatypes) running. It crashed on Amidock:

Task name: 'AmiDock_PPC' Task address: 7C718C40
Exception: Data Storage

SRR0: 7C6EF7E4 SRR1: 0000F030 MSR: 00003030 HID0: 0000C0A4
PVR: 00088302 DAR: 00000040 DSISR: 40000000 SDR1: 03F80007
DEC: 0005020C TBU: 00000000 TBL: 0BF1712A XER: 00000000
CR: 42000000 FPSCR: 00000000 LR: 7C6EF7D4 CTR: 00000000

R0-R3: 22000000 7C7A0C80 7C640E8E 7C7A3CC0 IBAT0: 0000003E 00000002
R4-R7: 7FF7FDFA 7C7A1480 00000000 00000040 IBAT1: 700003FF D0000002
R8-R11: 00000004 7C7A3D00 7C7A1960 00000000 IBAT2: 7C20003F 00200002
R12-R15: 00000003 7C7A141C 00000000 00000000 IBAT3: 00000000 00000000
R16-R19: 00000000 00000000 7C639980 00000000 DBAT0: 0000003E 00000002
R20-R23: 7C6390F8 01010101 00000000 00000000 DBAT1: 700003FF D0000042
R24-R27: 00000000 7C7A14C0 00000000 00000001 DBAT2: 7C20003F 00200022
R28-R31: 00000000 7C7A21A0 7C7A14C0 7C6FFDE4 DBAT3: 00000000 00000000

[Hedeon]

Zero page access. Equivalence to an enforcer hit.

[Timtheloon]

So A while back I posted a picture of a PMCPCI carrier that I had but wasn’t sure if it would work so I thought I would give it a try

Here it is so you don’t have to hunt for the picture again



And it does work and allow the apocalypse PPC to start but I think due to it not having a fan the PPC get to hot and then it crashes when I make it work it seem to play doom fine but didn’t wanna keep it running with out a cooler

So need to work on a cooling method to keep it cool

[johnnybarker]

Thanks Tim for posting the picture.

I am still on the hunt for a carrier card.

[grelbfarlk]

There's at least one Ramix on ebay (oops there was one fairly cheap-gone), though it might be unpalatable to pay more for the carrier than the PPC board.

[johnnybarker]

Thanks grelbfarlk. I was the one who just bought the (relatively) cheap one on ebay from Israel!

You are right, I was expecting the carrier card to be the cheaper part of the equation. At least the postage was free and there is normally no import changes to UK from Israel for items of this value. I often have to pay a lot more to have things sent to the Highlands of Scotland even from such far away places as England.

[mrluff]

Hey, I'm getting into the new-school PPC-world (have CSPPC from earlier).

Does anyone know the full theoretical specs/reqs of the PMC-to-PCI carrier cards?

- PCI (not PCI-E, any specific version of PCI? Mediator is 2.1)
- Must support 33Mhz but can support other freq also(?)
- 3v and/or 5v support depending on your PPC-card/PCI-bridge and if your Mediator can supply enough current for eg. 3.3v
- Can be any size as long as it fits the Mediator/cabinet(?)
- Passive or active cooling is optimal but not neccessarily needed
- Can be 64 or 32-bit as long as it has the right connector physically (half of the 64-bit connector is not used)

[johnnybarker]

I think 64bit cards are usually backwards compatible. The Ramix card looks like it is 64bit.

[grelbfarlk]

Originally Posted by johnnybarker

I think 64bit cards are usually backwards compatible. The Ramix card looks like it is 64bit.

Right 64 bit is fine as long as the card edge has the slotting for a 32-bit slot.

Beware of the full length carrier cards that have two PMC headers on it. The one I tried both of the PMC slots sit behind a PCI bridge and thus it does not work.

Beware of any PMC cards which seem to have any sort of logic chip on them, aside from stuff that looks like power.

Other than that as long as you have a 3.3V Mediator or a 5V Mediator with a 3.3V converting PMC carrier it usually should work.

[mrluff]

Thanks, what about this one? It's a Technobox version 4930. https://www.technobox.com/adapters-carriers/4930. Should be similar to the confirmed 1447, but newer.

[Wrangler]

Ones with fans to cool the PMC card are definitely to be preferred but it looks like it ought to work as there are no obvious bridge chips on it. There's no 3.3v converter which might mean you'll need to mod it, though.

[mrluff]

Yeah, it has an optional assembly for fan, but I have experience with fans/cooling so will mount something probably.

The board is passive and but supports both 64/32-bit and 5v/3.3v, so if the mediator supplies enough current it should work. The PRPM800 450mhz I have ordered 5 of is probably not the most powerhungry.

[johnnybarker]

Originally Posted by mrluff

I have ordered 5 of

I hope you are not planning on reselling them at inflated prices. It kind of goes against the spirit of this adventure...

[trixster]

The answer to that lies within the thread

[grelbfarlk]

I used that particular PPC carrier with a Ragnarok with reasonable success. Can't say for anything else, I might have tried a Rapture on it, as I recall that was when the VRM on the Mediator Desktop got blazing hot.

[trixster]

Youre back!

[Timtheloon]

Hi RetroUsers

Don’t know if this has been mentioned but noticed there is another update for the PCI.Library now on 13.10 (Sorry if it has been mentioned before)

So my question is..... I seen the supported software list but was wondering if there is any guides on setting up said software listed on these Apocalypse/Sonnet setups because I’m struggling with wipeout!!! I can get it to work with sound. If I deselect AHI it just gives me a horrible looping sound

And if I select AHI it gives me a fail error the game still loads and is very smooth but no sound

Here is a screenshot of the fail message



Quake II runs sound no problem via my AHI setup

Hope you can lead me in the right direction

[Hedeon]

They maybe use different units (Music or 0). What are your settings for AHI for those units?

Or maybe a snoopdos log would help.