Sonnet 7200 PCI programming

[grelbfarlk]

So reposting this since no one responded. Here's a guy that's talking about maybe making a PMC carrier with sufficient power capacity to allow the currently supported board to 'just work' in a PCI slot and allowing for future boards with much higher power requirements. Nobody is interested?

Originally Posted by Stedy

A straddle mount PCI connector is expensive, I can get cheaper right angle connectors but that would 'remove' one PCI slot. Pricing it all up, a custom riser with the 3.3V converter, additional 5V feed and connectors would be £35-40 each for a batch of 40+.

Would there be sufficient interest in this if I pursue the idea further?

A custom PMC carrier card would cost more, factoring in larger PCB and cooling fan + finger guards.

[trixster]

Yes! Interested

[BULI]

Originally Posted by grelbfarlk

The crashiness after 640x480 is actually "normal". Depends on the game but 800x480 tends to work, 960x540 tends to work. ..

Yes, I agree. On my Sonnet with Mediator in Warp3D games, I use 720x540 and 768×576 resolutions (I have 4:3 monitor), and this resolutions, like 640x480 are working fine.
Interesting is that On this Mediator, but with 68k applications, higher resolutions work fine, just like on my A1200 with Blizzard PPC and Mediator too.

[Wrangler]

Originally Posted by grelbfarlk

So reposting this since no one responded. Here's a guy that's talking about maybe making a PMC carrier with sufficient power capacity to allow the currently supported board to 'just work' in a PCI slot and allowing for future boards with much higher power requirements. Nobody is interested?

Put me down as a definite maybe! It kind of depends how this would work from a space and cooling POV with my case. But a proper 5V feed would be better than my hack. I'm assuming that the Ramix card's own 3.3V converter is going to be enough to power a son-of-Rapture card when it's ready??

[nexus]

which ramix?

[OSH]

Erm, one question. Your driver will work with Sonnet Crescendo 7200 only? Or could be possible to use it with other Crescendo cards (i.e. Crescendo PCI G3)?

[nexus]

also you can get cheap 5v to 3.3v stepdown buck converters on ebay etc

[nexus]

Originally Posted by OSH

Erm, one question. Your driver will work with Sonnet Crescendo 7200 only? Or could be possible to use it with other Crescendo cards (i.e. Crescendo PCI G3)?

that isnt a PCI card so not compatible the sonnet 7200 was the only they made that was a PCI card
all other are a mac cpu slot card that why they are only cpu and cache no bridge ram etc

[Wrangler]

Originally Posted by nexus

which ramix?

239/f

[grelbfarlk]

Originally Posted by OSH

Erm, one question. Your driver will work with Sonnet Crescendo 7200 only? Or could be possible to use it with other Crescendo cards (i.e. Crescendo PCI G3)?

Also the Force PowerPMC-250 with a PMC to PCI adapter which we're calling the Rapture. There is a company that posted here that has over 100 in stock. Though since said company has decided to grift people for them this is unsupported from that vendor.

Basic specs:

• PowerPC G4 7410 450MHz
• 256 MB of SDRAM
• 1MB of L2 Cache

I noticed this thread is almost up to 2000 posts which probably half of them are from me which contain no useful information. Maybe we should start some separate threads at 2000 or clean up the first post.

[nexus]

well its also not just sonnet anymore either

[Stedy]

Originally Posted by grelbfarlk

So reposting this since no one responded. Here's a guy that's talking about maybe making a PMC carrier with sufficient power capacity to allow the currently supported board to 'just work' in a PCI slot and allowing for future boards with much higher power requirements. Nobody is interested?

Ok, I've done some detailed estimating for this, want to see what the reaction is before proceeding further.

A PCI riser card, with a PCI straddle mount connector and 3.3V, 12A converter would retail for:
£65 each in a batch of 25 units,
£50 each in a batch of 50 units

Power is via a 'Molex' connector and can be either +12V or +5V.

For a PMC card, the power converter and input power connector are the same. I have added in a 3mm high cooling fan, to fit under the PMC card and it has some support mounts for the PMC card.

£80 each in a batch of 25
£65 each in a batch of 50

This is the trickier card to design as it breaches PCI rules but I believe I have a viable solution.

Thoughts, opinions?

[grelbfarlk]

Originally Posted by Stedy

Ok, I've done some detailed estimating for this, want to see what the reaction is before proceeding further.

A PCI riser card, with a PCI straddle mount connector and 3.3V, 12A converter would retail for:
£65 each in a batch of 25 units,
£50 each in a batch of 50 units

Power is via a 'Molex' connector and can be either +12V or +5V.

For a PMC card, the power converter and input power connector are the same. I have added in a 3mm high cooling fan, to fit under the PMC card and it has some support mounts for the PMC card.

£80 each in a batch of 25
£65 each in a batch of 50

This is the trickier card to design as it breaches PCI rules but I believe I have a viable solution.

Thoughts, opinions?

Sounds pretty good as a PMC adapter already will cost more than $100 (often, not always).

For those that were not really privy to the whole discussion:
Option 1 is sort of a "power injector" for PCI. You plug that into the PCI slot then plug the PCI card into it, you wouldn't necessarily have to plug the PPC card into it, you could use that slot for a low profile NIC or something unobtrusive. At least that was the idea.

Option 2 is just a new PMC to PCI adapter with a Molex connector to connect power directly to the PMC adapter.

I think both are good ideas for different people.

[Stedy]

Hi again,

For the riser card, original idea was to plug the PPC card into it and power it but I can make the converter run in parallel with the 3.3V converter on the mediator.

For the PMC card, I'm looking at an ultra slim fan, https://www.digikey.co.uk/product-de...068-ND/7403225. If I can get the position right, I can cool the CPU nicely with a little fan like this. Have used similar parts with Nvidia GPUs and kept them nice and cool.

Ian

[Hedeon]

In regards to option 2. Is it possible to place connectors on both sides so we can choose on which side to connect the PMC card? I then could place a PMC card with a PPC with a cooler in my top PCI slot for example. (just a thought).

[utri007]

Could somebody write short summary about this? There is 97 pages to browse. I tried to find info about Rapture, PMC thing, current state of software, etc.

If you please.

[nexus]

just make a copy of the rami239/f but without the io etc
for cards that have everything facing towards the carrier that intake and exhaust slot works same way a blower style gpu today does
sucking in air from inside and tossing out the back of the case

[nexus]

Originally Posted by Hedeon

In regards to option 2. Is it possible to place connectors on both sides so we can choose on which side to connect the PMC card? I then could place a PMC card with a PPC with a cooler in my top PCI slot for example. (just a thought).

that should not be a issue to add but it might have to be reversed so you mount everything upside down

[Wrangler]

Originally Posted by utri007

Could somebody write short summary about this? There is 97 pages to browse. I tried to find info about Rapture, PMC thing, current state of software, etc.

If you please.

Have a look at the wiki for starters: https://github.com/Sakura-IT/SonnetAmiga/wiki

[grelbfarlk]

Originally Posted by utri007

Could somebody write short summary about this? There is 97 pages to browse. I tried to find info about Rapture, PMC thing, current state of software, etc.

If you please.

There are currently two types of boards supported.
1) Sonnet Crescendo 7200 400MHz-500MHz, G3 or G4
Up to 192 MB of memory is supported via 3x168pin 5V FPM or EDO DRAM DIMM slots. 2k refresh RAM is required though some 4k refresh ram works too, but that's a fluke, assume 2k refresh is required. EDO works but it's actually slower (when EDO mode is turned on). Currently no one has found 128MB DIMMs that definitely work. Though the 128MB DIMM memory will be added and appear to work, you can even write to this memory and read it back ok, but expect random crashes. Best guess for this is that there are no 2k refresh 128MB DIMMs.
Specs are:
400-500MHz G3-750 or G4-7400
64-192MB of RAM
512KB or 1MB of L2 cache between 133-200MHz extra address lines for 2MB appear to be present but 2MB requires a G4-7410.
3.3V power supply required (via PCI slot or VRM on the Sonnet)

2) PMC cards. The Force Computers PowerPMC-250 which we call the Rapture G4 is supported. This is a PMC format board, which is basically just a funny shaped PCI slot for embedded computing. This requires a PMC to PCI adapter of which a couple are known to be working.
Specs for this board are:
450MHz 7410 G4
256MB of SDRAM@100MHz chips soldered to board
1MB of L2 cache@150MHz extra address lines for 2MB are not attached unfortunately.
3.3V power supply required (Via PCI slots or via VRM on PMC adapter board) This is a bit more demanding than the Sonnet which exceeds the power draw supplied by the 3A Black Mediator VRM.

The library which supports this is powerpc.library which is application compatible to the old powerpc.library on the BlizzardPPC/CSPPC.

In theory other PPC boards could be supported, maybe easily, if they have an MPC107 Northbridge (PCI/Memory controller), don't have a flashrom that autoboots the board on their own and aren't hardware forced into "Master" mode. Other MPC107 "clone" or "compatible" controllers might work too, for instance the MPC842x or Harrier controllers, but it hasn't been done yet so "might" work applies.

These are sort of rare/sort of common, as they were used in embedded computing and telecom gear.

Requirements are:
A3000/A4000 with Mediator, though A1200 support has been worked on-is not complete.
040 works as far as I know but 060 is recommended just mainly for AHI speed.
Voodoo 3 is highly recommended as it is the only PCI GFX board with Warp3D support.

Software support is up on the wiki, though this isn't kept up much lately. "Almost" everything works with the exception of Ifusion, OS4 Classic and MorphOS Classic.
https://github.com/Sakura-IT/SonnetA...ary-version%29
Hedeon has built a pretty good version of SDL and extensions which makes porting SDL software pretty easy. Recommended development environment is MorphOS GCC 5.3 with a WarpOS cross compiler. G++ >2.95.3 is experimental but works somewhat. Otherwise classic Amiga WarpOS 2.95.3 GCC works too.

Future support:
Faster PPC boards are being tested-that's all that really needs to be said.

Don't want to keep talking otherwise I'm going to go off on long tangents about this stuff.