Individual Computers - New accelerator cards for A600 & A1200

[DDNI]

@ Cosmos, Jens

With this overclock, apart from the replaceable CPU, what else could break beyond repair?

[Schoenfeld]

DDNI,

I won't answer any overclocking questions. There is only one answer: Don't do it.

Over the years, I've had an enormous amount of support eMails where I was trying to help customers who had instable Amigas. It turned out that almost all of them had Apollo accelerators, and that none of my products was the cause for the instability.

One day I decided to put an end to this and bought the rights to the Apollo accelerators. Further, I changed my policy about Apollos: No guarantee to work with them in any config. I will not give any support for Amigas with Apollos.

This is purely a stability policy. I've been verbally attacked a number of times for buying out and shelving the Apollos, but I think I did a good thing for the community. If someone has flaky Amiga, he will lose the interest sooner or later, because a randomly crashing Amiga is not fun to use. It's more like a reason to quit the hobby, and that's what I wanted to avoid.

After years and years of Apollo-bashing from my side, the only way for me to bring out an accelerator is to make it rock-solid. To do that, you need to operate all components within spec, and memory is a critical component. The CPU can easily take 20% overclocking, but memory can't.

Cosmos, you claim it's stable, but you cannot know that. "Proof by example" is not a scientific method. You operate the components out of spec, that's the only scientific data we have here.

Jens

[FOL]

Originally Posted by Schoenfeld

The CPU might take the overclocking (it's well-cooled), but you're likely to get memory problems.

Jens

Think you mis-understood.
Yes it is good enough for 25 to 30MHz, but could be a problem with the extra heat generated by running it at higher speeds.

[balrogsoft]

I received my ACA 630 today, but instructions are only in german (i bought it on a german shop), are available somewhere instructions in english?

[FOL]

Originally Posted by balrogsoft

I received my ACA 630 today, but instructions are only in german (i bought it on a german shop), are available somewhere instructions in english?

Not sure they have been pulished yet.

Heres a link to the product page though.
http://www.jschoenfeld.com/products/ACA630_e.htm

[DDNI]

@Jens, thats a good enough answer for me

I know first hand about your love of Apollos

[balrogsoft]

Originally Posted by FOL

Not sure they have been pulished yet.

Heres a link to the product page though.
http://www.jschoenfeld.com/products/ACA630_e.htm

I have read the product page, it's enough to install the board, but any extra information is welcome, i don't want to damage the board.

[Damion]

Originally Posted by FOL

Think you mis-understood.
Yes it is good enough for 25 to 30MHz, but could be a problem with the extra heat generated by running it at higher speeds.

I wouldn't be worried about the heat, I'd be worried about frying the card's logic. That's the biggest risk overclocking an Amiga accelerator IMHO.

[Oliver_A]

Originally Posted by gibs

Oliver,

Cosmos said the Amiga is stable at 40Mhz.

And we say: the components on the card are not specified for this kind of speed. Neither the CPU nor the Rams nor the CPLD. If it runs stable, then it's pure luck. The ACA630-30Mhz for example has faster Winbond SDRAM's which support the 8ns increase in speed from RAS to CAS compared to the ACA630-25Mhz, which has slower Micron SDRAM's. 80 Mhz here are WAY out of line.

IC should have made some faster boards

Faster boards, or boards with components being driven way out of spec? If we would have made a 50Mhz ACA630, Cosmo would now have it clocked at 80Mhz. It's one thing to decide for yourself to throw warranty away and pushing your luck by completely overdriving your hardware way out of spec. But you can't expect us to sell something like this, because we can't and won't guarantee proper operation.

As I said, there are 68030 CPUs which can take abuse, there are others, which won't make it past the 5 minute mark without crash. Memory corruption is another very subtle thing, which is a very hard issue to detect. We had seemingly perfectly running Workbench setups with a completely faulty memory controller during development of the card. That's the reason why debugging did take so long, because we wanted to be 100% sure to have a stable, rock solid hardware.

This here is nothing clever or cool. Everybody can replace oscillators and build hardware which might work, let's say, 50-80% and not 100% of the time correct.

Originally Posted by Cosmos

All guys said exactly the same words when the 68060 was released in 1995-1996... Don't push more than 50...

I have a Blizzard 1260@80 who works fine since many years now ! Ok, it's a rev6... But written 50 on it...
And without any problems...

Your totally missing the point, Jens is trying to emplain to you that it's not the 030 CPU thats the issue, it's keeping everything runing on the same wavelength (the RAM and CPU timings). Simple fact of the matter, if you could run this at 40+ Mhz as easly as you have done, Jens would have probably have done that at the first place. The fact you have ignored his personal advice on the hardware and forum is your risk but there's a reason why it has been capped at the speed it is, I don't doubt his skills for a second and i'm shocked you have and have the audacity to do such a thing.

[Paul_s]

Originally Posted by Cosmos

Anyways, everyone can think and say what they want...

I keep my lovely 40 Mhz on my beloved ACA630

Liar - I bet it's running at 90.4Mhz . I know, just know you are sitting back on your leather chair smoking a cigar saying in French "je l'aime quand un plan vient ensemble!"

@Tokyo, Cosmos is a crazy speedfreak ...probably disables the delimiters in French BMW's...

Originally Posted by Paul_s

@Tokyo, Cosmos is a crazy speedfreak ...probably disables the delimiters in French BMW's...

No skin of my nose if it gets ruined, I just find it insulting the way Jens is being dismissed by Cosmos.

[gibs]

@Oliver

As I said before, when I hear "We don't need to follow"...Yes of course we don't, but we are in 2011 now and there are lot of things we can't do with our Amiga...
And I think that people in this forum want the maximum speed for the Amiga.
I will never hear someone saying : "Well... I'm happy with 25Mhz"...
I think that if you produce faster boards in the futur, people will be even more happy.

Remember ? some guys (in this threads) had some nice ideas like "playing mp3, installing linux"...or maybe someone will port a better web browser ?

We need something even more powerfull than a 060.
Maybe an ARM ? I don't know...

Today you are doing a good job with the indy ECS but it's never enough...As you said for aDoom, the faster is the CPU the more you'll get FPS".

We want the MORE ! :-)

BTW I don't think there is a danger (except loosing the warranty) for the board, if it is unstable, you need to put back the original quartz.

@Tokyoracer : don't invent a story, Cosmos is a polite guy. He has purchased a board, he can do what he wants with it, he's not the kind of guy that will come back crying for taking the board under warranty if something wrong happen. You know what he is going to do in this case ? no ? He is going to unsolder everything and put everything new on the board. ahahah
Have a look at his blog (http://cosmosamiga.blogspot.com/) look at all the mods in 2010. I don't know anybody here that has done much more mods than him.
No he is not out of respect. definitely.

[mfilos]

Cosmos can do whatever he wants with his board since it's his money paid
No-one's need to judge him since I haven't saw anywhere Cosmos advertising on doing the Overclock to other people's boards.
If for some reason his board will fry, it's his risk and his responsibility. Btw I'm a huge Cosmos's fan and keep reading his blog every once and a while! \o/

Speaking for myself, I'm quite happy with my ACA630@30 cause it's a lot faster than my Apollo 630 (even @ 50MHz which I tried overclocking him. Yeah he's unstable as fok @50MHz).
I admire Jen's and Oliver's work in designing/producing such a rock stable accelerator! Definitely worth every penny.

Btw, Jens never said he was going to make an Super Accelerator to be able to play mp3, linux or future browsers. Just understand that the power of the 030 is limited and if you want such stuff either buy MASPlayer or 060 Accelerators via eBay or other Amiga Forum adds.

Building 060 accelerator today is something really not easy, first because 060 CPUs can't be hoarded easily and the whole design wouldn't worth the production run nor the tremendous amount of time and effort. I guess it's easy to come to conclusions if you're outside of hardware production and making money of it!!!

[FOL]

Jens clearly outlined, these cards were all ment as a nice accellerator aimed at WHDLoad systems.

Lets face it, thats what 90% of us use our amiga's for.

Im happy with the speed of the 25MHz ACA630.
I dont get the speed importance.

[Oliver_A]

Originally Posted by gibs

@Oliver

And I think that people in this forum want the maximum speed for the Amiga.

Yes, but not by driving the components completely out of spec. We spent most of the development time on getting the hardware completely stable. When it was possible to go up in speed (as done on the ACA630-30Mhz due to the faster SDRAM), we did so.

I will never hear someone saying : "Well... I'm happy with 25Mhz"...
I think that if you produce faster boards in the futur, people will be even more happy.

This is not the issue here. Again, if we had produced a 50Mhz ACA630, Cosmos would have overcranked it to 80Mhz.

Today you are doing a good job with the indy ECS but it's never enough...As you said for aDoom, the faster is the CPU the more you'll get FPS".

There is a difference between gaining speed through clever and efficient hardware design and gaining speed by pushing the components out of spec.

No he is not out of respect. definitely.

Well, if your answer to Jens detailed explanation WHY the SDRAM is clocked too fast is "All guys said exactly the same words...", then it shows some lack of respect, like as if Jens is inventing excuses and him being the clever guy who is exposing Jens. Just because his experiment works by accident and we don't even know how well it works. Again: memory corruption is very hard to detect.

We did develop the hardware. Not by an accident, but by carefully planning it out. We draw diagrams, we study datasheets, we take measurements, we optimize the logic code until the logic compiler reports that all timing specifications are met, we bust our behinds in hours of testing the design out with all kind of hard- and software combinations.

And if we say: 80Mhz is way out of spec, and even point to the specific parts of the memory design where this might fail badly (the Micron SDRAM datasheet is very easy to find on the net), I think we have a little bit more credibility than someone who is relying on proof by example ("but it works!").

I mean, everybody can do what he wants with his hardware. But we will respond to this here, because it's implying that we are cheating the people here by deliberately making hardware slower.

[gibs]

I'm not sure it was designed specifically to run whdload
The Amiga 600 isn't only a game console (I hope).

My best Amiga experience for gaming is the CD32 at this time :

[ Show youtube player ]

I would not need this board if it was only for doing the same thing I'm doing with the CD32 (gaming purpose).

@Oliver We never said you were liers or cheating. We appreciate your work. You have delivered a stable board and we appreciate it. After, everybody is doing what he wants with his stuff. I just wanted to say that Cosmos didn't manage English langage very well (So am I) and his message wasn't out of respect.

[mfilos]

If listening to mp3, trying linux or running better browsers than AWeb and iBrowse is what you want from an limited Amiga (ECS with 16 colors, No Zorro support, no extra expansion), as the A600 is... then you should better head to A1200 with an 060 or BPPC in Tower with PCI or Zorro busboard and buffed with cards or to an A4000 with 060 or CSPPC buffed again!
You can't expect to have everything from a machine that was designed most of all as a gaming machine. Ofc it can do other stuff as well... but don't ask too much! ACA630 was a dream come true for most peepz in the community. Just try to be glad about it instead of asking for miracles

Apart from that, comparing CD32 with A600 is like comparing apples with oranges!

[gibs]

@mfilos I was talking about the experience, not the hardware
But from what I understood, with the Indivision ECS and the upcoming aDoom I think the A600 can compete with the CD32 (even with the Indivision AGA on it...(mine owns it))

[Paul_s]

Originally Posted by Oliver_A

I mean, everybody can do what he wants with his hardware. But we will respond to this here, because it's implying that we are cheating the people here by deliberately making hardware slower.

I doubt his intention was to imply you are cheating anyone.... You have laid down a set of parameters which have been deemed safe (i.e. long term reliability etc etc) for the product in question - which (i thought) is natural when developing a product? He was just offering an idea and maybe a theory about things... to me 68030 on most Amiga's is ample these days but some people always want more...

I for one would find it interesting if he can improve performance - be it at his own risk of course

edit: he did! http://cosmosamiga.blogspot.com/2011...rclocking.html