Sonnet 7200 PCI programming

[wXR]

Really, reproducing the card? Has anyone asked Sonnet for the designs?

[grelbfarlk]

Yes, and yes. But aside from the board layout, there's nothing really we need from Sonnet(some help on how they supported 4K refresh memory withstanding).

One idea was to strip a board down to the PCB and send it out to a pcb cloner but that was decided to not be necessary since the design is pretty much all in the Motorola docs.

Nothing set in stone yet but there may be news when more progress is made.

[jack-3d]

Originally Posted by DarrenHD

OK, so I'm back also. I now have a Cyberstorm MK2 060-66MHz in my a4000 along with the Sonnet, Mediator 4000Di 3.3V, Sonnet G3 500Mhz with 64MB ram, RTL8029 Network, Voodoo 4 32MB.

I am using the new powerpc.library replacement option, so far it's mostly working. AmigaAMP can play back using the PPC, although the AmigaAMP drawtask even with visualizations turned off uses rather high 16-18% of the 060 cpu...maybe it's because it's an older version of AmigaAMP? It is AmigaAMP 2.25.

I just tested Amiga AMP and it plays MP3 quite well when I load the file into RAM. I use USB Soundcard 16bit 44kHz because Paula is not good quality.

Anyway what I am surprised is Frogger NG now works very well and its way better then AMP2. I am now also able to play XVIDs up to 360p in a very good framerate.

What I am missing is still Wipeout fullscreen (window mode works) and Shogo (Demo or Full, it stucks in the game menu screen).

Still I am very happy and I wish the germanz will soon share some progress with Sonnets reproduction.

[grelbfarlk]

I have found AMP2 is just a little bit smoother/faster for mpegs. Of course if you want divx or xvid you need to use Frogger but, I can play 640x480 videos in AMP2 a bit better than Frogger. 720x480 seems to be the max AMP2 supports.

[grelbfarlk]

The last couple days I have been playing with the memory timings, in hopes to turn on EDO. That failed in that it was actually slower when the EDO bit was flipped on, but I changed some of the memory timings to be a little more aggressive. Here's a turbo-mode PowerPC.library compiled from today's source (235) if anyone wants to try it, no warranty expressed or implied and if it blows up your RAM, Sonnet card, Cat or Amiga I can't be held to blame.

The write speed is mostly the only thing improved, on WriteB by about 15MB/s.
Though the rest of the mem tests should show a little improvement. In Quake2 I average about 1 lousy frame per second faster but hey that's like +2%.

Happy bunnies and eggs day.

[grelbfarlk]

Note to self: Check upload before uploading.
Last post still had EDO on so here it is with EDO off for more fasterlierness.

[kev]

https://www.amazon.co.jp/gp/product/...?ie=UTF8&psc=1

i tried no email for payment yet and soon after they changed to unavailable

[Hedeon]

Originally Posted by kev

https://www.amazon.co.jp/gp/product/...?ie=UTF8&psc=1

i tried no email for payment yet and soon after they changed to unavailable

Been there, done that.... A year ago, I think. Went to unavailable too, back then. Surprised they messed it up again.

[amigoun]

Originally Posted by grelbfarlk

Last post still had EDO on so here it is with EDO off for more fasterlierness.

Thanks for this, works well.

[grelbfarlk]

Originally Posted by amigoun

Thanks for this, works well.

It didn't work for Hedeon and he's already updated the library couple times so you should probably update to the latest.

And here's another version with the same fasterlierness. Again if you run into problems use the OFFICIAL version and don't bug Hedeon about this. Also curious about what RAM you are using if this does work for you. Get the model info off of the chips on your DIMM if you can.

[DarrenHD]

On My system (using latest sonnet archive) and powerpc.library SysSpeed only shows about 2.2 MIPS for my 060...Greg did you have a similar problem and solve it?

Darren

[jack-3d]

8 MIPs on my 040/40 ;o)

[DarrenHD]

Originally Posted by jack-3d

8 MIPs on my 040/40 ;o)

Well...maybe my 68k is executing code from the sonnet memory which is why it's having slowdowns sometimes.

Anyway I will try a clean install as I should not be having some slowdowns when programs start (like Scout_OS3 or AmigaAMP). Once they load they are fine. It's kinda strange. But then again my system has turned out to be strange

Darren

[grelbfarlk]

It could be that yeah, the on the fly patching is running Sysspeed from Sonnet Memory. I'm getting 2.29 MIPS on the 68k MIPS test. It didn't do this with the executable patched for sonnet.library as you can see from my screenshot many pages back.

AmigaAMP when launching has always had a long pause and that as I recall was render.library loading. If I broke it by renaming render_wos.library to render.library it would just fail, which actually made AmigaAMP load quicker. And it didn't seem to actually need render.library.

[jack-3d]

I just tested the memory boost library on 400/512 and I am reporting positive feedback:

powerpc.library 238
-------------------
Mips: 456.81
Mflops: 376.13
Readb: 148.10
Readh: 134.95
Readw: 114.65
Writeb: 76.30
Writeh: 64.93
Writew: 59.85
Copyb: 38.94
Copyh: 38.24
Copyw: 37.40

QuakeWOS: 54.9

powerpc.library memoryboost
----------------------------
Mips: 457.04
Mflops: 376.35
Readb: 160.82
Readh: 145.58
Readw: 122.25
Writeb: 91.86
Writeh: 79.21
Writew: 71.75
Copyb: 43.86
Copyh: 42.91
Copyw: 42.67

QuakeWOS: 56.9

@Greg well done!

[Hedeon]

Originally Posted by grelbfarlk

It could be that yeah, the on the fly patching is running Sysspeed from Sonnet Memory. I'm getting 2.29 MIPS on the 68k MIPS test. It didn't do this with the executable patched for sonnet.library as you can see from my screenshot many pages back.

I looked at the patched SysSpeed and only the second (PPC) hunk was patched. It has a $7633 longwords sized 68K hunk and a $10A longwords sized PPC hunk. No way to distinguish between them.

There were not many programs patched this way (only selective hunk patching).

[amigoun]

powerpc238.zip works well, and my memory is Kingston KTA604/64

[grelbfarlk]

Originally Posted by amigoun

powerpc238.zip works well, and my memory is Kingston KTA604/64

That's strange. Some places list this as 4k refresh. I have KTA603/64 which is EDO. Makes me think there's probably a little more speedification that can be done.

[kev]

Originally Posted by grelbfarlk

That's strange. Some places list this as 4k refresh. I have KTA603/64 which is EDO. Makes me think there's probably a little more speedification that can be done.

always go by the data sheet for the actual IC DRAM part number not the bs stick #

Originally Posted by wXR

Really, reproducing the card? Has anyone asked Sonnet for the designs?

I actually sent one (free of charge) to Ratte for reverse engineering. I hope he can figure some stuff out