Motorola 68060

[VladR]

Originally Posted by Karlos

I think if I had an 060 these days, I'd be in agreement with VladR. I'd not be overclocking. Or if I did, it would be modest. And I certainly wouldn't do it on anything other than the latest revisions that were marketed as embedded but were tolerant of higher clocks.

Although it's not available for all models yet, the PiStorm makes overclocking actual 68K silicon pointless. Keep those old chips serviceable and if you want insane performance, put your trust in emulation based solutions. We aren't talking whole system emulation here, after all, just the CPU.

Exactly. And if you had a $1,000,000 I feel it's very irresponsible to play with the last few working Rev6's. Like, OC it for 10 minutes, run 3 demos, SysInfo and that's it.

20 yrs from now, these puppies will be placed under plexiglass and security guards 24/7...

And there will always be a guy with couple 100s of them in his drawer...



This is the only case where I would advocate use of AI. Let it create an FPGA core for 060, so we don't have to depend on very few individuals with those skills and time...

[jotd]

I agree: if you want the real thing, you don't need more power. Would you do more than 88mph with a DeLorean and risk damaging it ? If you want speed, use emulation (but the magic is gone )

[Karlos]

I'm not sure the magic is gone with Emu68. Why fixate on how it is implemented rather than what it is?

Nobody ever complained that the internal architecture of the 68060 was different, we just appreciated the speed it gave us. The PiStorm has a different internal architecture again, but from the outside (at least as far as the expansion slot bus into the system goes) it's just a ludicrously fast 68040 with extremely fast local memory. As a coder, sure, you can't apply your hard earned 68040 cycle/pipeline knowledge to it for optimising because it's implemented very differently but equally, you don't need to because it's so many orders of magnitude faster you can just write the most logical code instead.

[trixster]

I’ve got six rev6 060 - four of them are and have been operating at 100mhz for months (and in some cases years) with no issues. One that isn’t at 100 is on a blizzard 1260 running at 80 simply because the logic of that board can’t manage further. The other is on a WarpEngine running at 80mhz also because I don’t want to push the boards logic further (it’s done 96 in the past as a test). The cpu that’s currently on the z3660 at 100 used to live on a TF1260 which could only do 94mhz - here again I suspect one of the cplds on the TF was causing problems at 100 so wasn’t stable, but the cpu itself was fine at this speed.

So my sample size of ‘me’ leads me to conclude that most rev6 060 are able to run at 100mhz without issue as long as the device it’s sitting on is also designed to operate at this speed.

Anecdotally I’ve read that rev6 has been pushed as high as 110mhz on a Falcon CT60, and up to 120mhz on a CSmk2.

[ancalimon]

Originally Posted by VladR

And there will always be a guy with couple 100s of them in his drawer...

And all of them will be thrown to trash after he passes away

[eXeler0]

I dont think there is an actual shortage if you have the cash.
Go to something like

https://www.digipart.com/part/MC68060RC50

And check Moto / Freescale / NXP /Rochester parts. all those are new parts based on the last revision.
Its just that they never go into circulation in a way that would be of benefit to us retro-ppl

[VladR]

Originally Posted by ancalimon

And all of them will be thrown to trash after he passes away

[alex68]

Originally Posted by trixster

I’ve got six rev6 060 - four of them are and have been operating at 100mhz for months (and in some cases years) with no issues. One that isn’t at 100 is on a blizzard 1260 running at 80 simply because the logic of that board can’t manage further. The other is on a WarpEngine running at 80mhz also because I don’t want to push the boards logic further (it’s done 96 in the past as a test). The cpu that’s currently on the z3660 at 100 used to live on a TF1260 which could only do 94mhz - here again I suspect one of the cplds on the TF was causing problems at 100 so wasn’t stable, but the cpu itself was fine at this speed.

So my sample size of ‘me’ leads me to conclude that most rev6 060 are able to run at 100mhz without issue as long as the device it’s sitting on is also designed to operate at this speed.

Anecdotally I’ve read that rev6 has been pushed as high as 110mhz on a Falcon CT60, and up to 120mhz on a CSmk2.

I saw it at 133 mhz.

[cloverskull]

Originally Posted by jotd

I agree: if you want the real thing, you don't need more power. Would you do more than 88mph with a DeLorean and risk damaging it ? If you want speed, use emulation (but the magic is gone )

I would absolutely do more than 88mph in a DeLorean! :P

Then again I have a 1968 Mustang that I drive like a rent-a-car, so I'm probably not the person to ask this question.

[klx300r]

Originally Posted by ancalimon

And all of them will be thrown to trash after he passes away

[eXeler0]

If someone organized a ”group buy/order” of say 100 brand new NXP or Freescale parts. How much would you actually wanna pay for it?

[Pyromania]

FYI, 68080 can be overclocked to 1 Terahertz.

[Rotareneg]

The '090 is a quantum processor, so it's performance isn't measured in hertz but rather how many nanoseconds the result of an instruction are available before the instruction is executed.

[qz3fwd]

Originally Posted by eXeler0

I dont think there is an actual shortage if you have the cash.
Go to something like

https://www.digipart.com/part/MC68060RC50

And check Moto / Freescale / NXP /Rochester parts. all those are new parts based on the last revision.
Its just that they never go into circulation in a way that would be of benefit to us retro-ppl

That looks like a marketplace and who knows of the honesty of the sellers advertising since there are many relabeled “fake” 060’s out there. Amazing how a little paint can drastically increase the selling price thanks to crazed Amiga (&Atari) users…..

[eXeler0]

Originally Posted by qz3fwd

That looks like a marketplace and who knows of the honesty of the sellers advertising since there are many relabeled “fake” 060’s out there. Amazing how a little paint can drastically increase the selling price thanks to crazed Amiga (&Atari) users…..

Logically, when Freescale, NXP made manufacturing runs, the didnt produce batches of 10, but 10,000. There should be plenty of legit ones out there, even some are probably mis-labled EC parts and such…
Amiga was absolutely NOT the biggest market for 060. They were used in a lot of telecom equipment and various controller cards in the late 90s.
Like this one:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/32554779622...mis&media=COPY

[pandy71]

060 was used largely in industrial automation (subways automation frequently use VME equipment and there is high chance for 060 there), they are used probably in aerospace / defence but they will be unobtainum (as they may be rad hard or other special package - usually second sourced - for example Atmel made some improved Motorola CPU's) - nowadays https://www.rocelec.com/part/01t4w00...A1-MC68060RC50 shows clearly out of stock - question is who currently own masks necessary for production - NXP may be no longer in possession of masks - they could sold masks with rights to produce to companies like Rochester. Rochester may also have bare dies so they could produce batch of 060 from original dies encapsulated an same machines as Motorola/NXP.

Or travel to places like this https://www.smithsonianmag.com/scien...ica-180957597/

[eXeler0]

Originally Posted by pandy71

060 was used largely in industrial automation (subways automation frequently use VME equipment and there is high chance for 060 there), they are used probably in aerospace / defence but they will be unobtainum (as they may be rad hard or other special package - usually second sourced - for example Atmel made some improved Motorola CPU's) - nowadays https://www.rocelec.com/part/01t4w00...A1-MC68060RC50 shows clearly out of stock - question is who currently own masks necessary for production - NXP may be no longer in possession of masks - they could sold masks with rights to produce to companies like Rochester. Rochester may also have bare dies so they could produce batch of 060 from original dies encapsulated an same machines as Motorola/NXP.

Or travel to places like this https://www.smithsonianmag.com/scien...ica-180957597/

I think Rochester was the last owner but AFAIK even they have EOL:ed the 060.

[Thomas Richter]

Rochester is specialized in manufacturing outdated chips for special markets. That is, if Rochester has the masks, they could in principle re-run a 68060 production if there is sufficient demand and if prices justify this. Not saying that this is realistic and that prices would be competative. From what I know Rochester has the license to produce the chips, but may not be the owner.

[pandy71]

Looks like 68060 slowly reaching point 1500$ and chip are unknown condition (could be fake) so if someone willing to invest like 1.5..5mln $ then Rochester can made series of reliable MC68060 - i assume naively but perhaps you can order cloning and illegal fab manufacturing (China?). Or perhaps search for opportunities like this: https://www.saulabb.com/product/cpci...kaging-module/ - not sure if this is fake or not but VME boards and modules looks like viable source for MC68060 (and with time they will be available on second market for sure).

[NovaCoder]

Originally Posted by pandy71

Looks like 68060 slowly reaching point 1500$ and chip are unknown condition (could be fake) so if someone willing to invest like 1.5..5mln $ then Rochester can made series of reliable MC68060 - i assume naively but perhaps you can order cloning and illegal fab manufacturing (China?). Or perhaps search for opportunities like this: https://www.saulabb.com/product/cpci...kaging-module/ - not sure if this is fake or not but VME boards and modules looks like viable source for MC68060 (and with time they will be available on second market for sure).

I'm currently building a new A1200 for retro gaming and I'm not really interesting in another 060 card. The TF1260 looks great but the cost of a decent 060 is way too much for me.

If I wanted to build a 'powerful' A1200 then I'd just go with a PiStorm (bare metal edition). Personally I'm thinking of just sticking a TF1230 in there, that will allow it to do everything I want with it (apart from playing 060 demos )