Sonnet 7200 PCI programming

[jack-3d]

OMG

[nexus]

just think thats just a 7410 at 450mhz

[jack-3d]

@Hedeon: New builds of Sonnet library on Jenkins are still for Sonnets, or it is primarily for Rapture? I mean can I use it instead of #294?

[grelbfarlk]

Originally Posted by jack-3d

@Hedeon: New builds of Sonnet library on Jenkins are still for Sonnets, or it is primarily for Rapture? I mean can I use it instead of #294?

It should still work on both. I tried 299 on Sonnet and it worked.

[strim]

Note that Jenkins lied about "no changes" for builds between 296-301 (there were changes). That is fixed now and (new) builds should have correct information about CVS commits.

My account had been deleted. Not sure if my earlier posts in this thread have gone too as the search function shows no results for "Bifford". Not that my earlier posts are important - they were just me saying "Well done" and "I'll be interested in this when it's decent and doable!"


So anyway.
Should it be of any help, I am in the UK.
I have an Amiga 4000D which is in a Power Tower, with an Elbox Mediator and the usual extra gfx and sound cards.

If any of you have Total Amiga by the UK Essex User Group mine is the A4k featured in there numerous times. Yes, I'm that Bifford. Pictures of it should still be available on Google with a quick search for "Bifford the Youngest".

I would love to have a PPC card added into my machine so I have this thread open in my numerous tabs. I was amazed to see three pages of new posts since I last checked it just before christmas!!

Well done guys on getting other cards to work.

Best regards,
Sam / Bifford

[grelbfarlk]

I'm still waiting on other PMC adapters, I received some but have to convert them to 3.3V and I'm out of the right kind of VRM-unless I amputate an 040-060 adapter. Otherwise I'd send one of these out to somebody-for reasons.

Also A4000 Power Tower, if it's the kind that has the extra AT connector for power would probably be ideal, my A4000d-T is very reliable with this board.

Originally Posted by grelbfarlk

Also A4000 Power Tower, if it's the kind that has the extra AT connector for power would probably be ideal, my A4000d-T is very reliable with this board.

The ELBOX Power Tower: http://www.bigbookofamigahardware.co...t.aspx?id=1326

IIRC (it's been a while since I had her working, let alone open!) It has the P9 power lead to plug into the Daughter Board and the normal plug for the Motherboard and that is it. But I could be wrong.


http://www.bigbookofamigahardware.co...24ea84d110.jpg

Hmm. Just been looking at ELBOX's website.

they brought out the Mediator PCI 4000D 3V MK-III which allows for cards that need a 3.3v line.

Presumably then, having the original Mediator (I think. It might be a mkII I have no clue) means I don't have the 3.3v that I have seen written in this thread as being needed.


EDIT:
Having just read this on Amiga.org it might not be such an issue:

"its easy to make the old mediators 3.3v compatible, if u run a atx psu just run a 3.3v wire to the pci slots.you can prob. google for the picture of it.
i did this to mine many years ago and can use 5v or 3.3v cards with no problem."

[nexus]

mediator is under powered they only provide 3.3v at 3a the rapture can easily use 4.5a so you will need more power on the pci or aux power from another source you can also change that vrm to a higher amp ver

[grelbfarlk]

There's a few options here. I don't have a 3.3V mediator. The card is a PMC card which goes onto a PCI->PMC adapter, some of those have a 3.3V regulator. I added one to one of my adapters and it works ok.

The problem I was referencing is that even if that were not a concern your 5V load might be. With my Elbox tower that has that P9 connector, it works great. In the A4000 desktop that just has that one single cheesy pin to the motherboard for the whole of the 5V load, it's sometimes a problem.

On the other hand 3.3V mediators have a 3A VRM which on a good day should provide about 10 watts. That's really not likely to be enough. Though if you had that and a PMC card that did 3.3V conversion as well... maybe it would be? I don't know I don't have a 3.3V mediator to test with.

The crashes we're seeing are with the Mediator itself... sometimes. Sometimes the PPC keeps on running but the mediator bugged out. Thankfully there are not all that many different PCI->PMC adapters around and making up a bit of doc and pictures on how to modify them shouldn't be too big of a deal. I have three different versions right now one of which I haven't been able to test (or modify) yet.

[DarrenHD]

Originally Posted by strim

Note that Jenkins lied about "no changes" for builds between 296-301 (there were changes). That is fixed now and (new) builds should have correct information about CVS commits.

I am using the latest build (or maybe 1 behind) on my A4000/Mediator 3.3V, Sonnet G3 500MHz and Cyberstorm MK2 060 and it is working fine, at least I tried the Encore Sulaco demo, music playback with AmigaAMP 2.2x using WarpUP plugin, and gears_ppc demos and they all worked fine.

The 060 speeds as measured in SysSpeed 2.6 and Scout are now reported properly (60MHz) in my case and there isn't a delay when starting scout anymore. Seeing a 500MHz PPC reported is just NICE ! I got 89-90 FPS in the gears_ppc_small demo - I'm using a Voodoo 4 graphics card.

Thanks to everyone's efforts !

[jack-3d]

@Darren glad to hear good news from you ;o)

So how does it all work anyway? Does the software auto-switch from the 0#0 to the PPC depending on what is running and what it can use? Or does everything go to the ppc regardless?

[grelbfarlk]

It's just like WarpOS on a CSPPC or a BlizzardPPC. Programs compiled for WarpOS use powerpc.library in libs. It doesn't actually accelerate 0x0 code. I guess if we ever get a new version of UAE built it might. There's a benchmark many many pages back of running the current UAE on Sonnet.

Here's a list of stuff that's been tested that hasn't been updated in a while:
https://github.com/Sakura-IT/SonnetA...ary-version%29

[klx300r]

Originally Posted by DarrenHD

I am using the latest build (or maybe 1 behind) on my A4000/Mediator 3.3V, Sonnet G3 500MHz and Cyberstorm MK2 060 and it is working fine, at least I tried the Encore Sulaco demo, music playback with AmigaAMP 2.2x using WarpUP plugin, and gears_ppc demos and they all worked fine.

The 060 speeds as measured in SysSpeed 2.6 and Scout are now reported properly (60MHz) in my case and there isn't a delay when starting scout anymore. Seeing a 500MHz PPC reported is just NICE ! I got 89-90 FPS in the gears_ppc_small demo - I'm using a Voodoo 4 graphics card.

Thanks to everyone's efforts !

that's awesome news ..so I'm assuming G4 7455 @1.4GHz 'might' work in a mediator board too

[grelbfarlk]

Originally Posted by klx300r

that's awesome news ..so I'm assuming G4 7455 @1.4GHz 'might' work in a mediator board too

Eh... yeah with some work... maybe. 7455@1GHz seems it's about 30W max... that's a lot and just for the CPU.

[nexus]

Originally Posted by klx300r

that's awesome news ..so I'm assuming G4 7455 @1.4GHz 'might' work in a mediator board too

psu upgrades will be required for higher spec cpus such as those though if 1 wanted to they could run a separate supply with the required amps and voltage needed and not have to mess with the original and really those with full blown decked out amigas should really upgrade as running a psu full power or within 10%+ range is never good for efficiency and will shorten life of it also can cause instability with voltage drops and heavy ripple

any psu rating you see is also based around a certain psu temp and ambient around it so if you have a already hot running amiga that psu usually sucks that hot air in and if you live in a hotter climate issues you never had before can start happening leaving you puzzled why

i myself have lots of animals and live in hot area so i always have air duster etc to keep my stuff clean and running cool also prolongs the life of fans as that dust gets in the grease and messes bearings/brushless etc up killing them

[grelbfarlk]

So since Cowcat didn't want his Rapture, I'm offering one up for free for someone who wants to do some development. Basically make a working executable and supply source for one of the following:
1) Sheepshaver (with sound and otherwise working+some way to transfer data), doesn't have to boot OSX, just Classic MacOS 8.6-9.1. Has to run native PPC version, not "emulating" the PPC as in running at 1/10th speed of a comparable PPC.
2) FPSE with sound+JIT+Joystick support and hopefully GL support (though that may be not reasonable to ask). Closed source and someone claimed this project.
3) Maybe other stuff

We'll supply our SDL libs and source and all of the backend stuff we have to help. Recommended you use Hedeon's MorphOS cross compiler as it's the most feature complete platform, but if you want to use classic WarpOS C++ or VBCC in UAE, hey that's up to you. Doesn't have to be 100% Altivec optimized, though that would be nice, but we'd really like it to still run on the Sonnet and maybe at least launch on the CSPPC even it doesn't run so great.

Anyway do one of the above and we'll ship a Rapture G4 with PMC adapter at no cost, other than possibly a large amount of your time.

This is limited to a quantity of just one for now, but another (or more) will probably be available, depending if anyone at all is interested.

Can't guarantee it will work in your system, because of the power requirements, but I'll test it for many hours beforehand.

If all this sounds totally unreasonable and stupid, yeah maybe it is, you don't have to participate.

Oh and since I forgot to say it, whatever software is produced is released for free to the community.

[Magic]

I think this sounds great and is generous of you. Too bad I don't have the skills or I might go for it