Individual Computers - New accelerator cards for A600 & A1200

[alexh]

Originally Posted by Predseda

There are thousands Amiga users and tens thousands working Amigas, but only hundreds working accelerators.

Cough *BOLLOX* Cough!

You really think so? I have no figures to give but less than 1000 would mean I owned 1% of the worlds Amiga Accelerators!

[Schoenfeld]

Originally Posted by Fabie

a 020/28mhz or a 030/28mhz doubles the speed of any A1200 with fast ram
I have a TRA1200 turboboard 020/28mhz and I can affirm that AB3D and Gloom runs very smooth on that Turboboard

I'd be disappointed if my board only makes "twice the speed". I+D cache, burst and fewer waitstates should give some additional zing. Care for a race?
(picture taken during a development stage where memory was manually added, that's why system stuff is in chipmem).

Jens

[StingRay]

Originally Posted by Schoenfeld

Which software supports that kind of mod?

Mostly debuggers/monitors such as Asm-One's debugger or HRT-Mon.

[Skope]

Originally Posted by Schoenfeld

Unfortunately, I don't have the IPL-lines on the logic chip, so no support possible from that side. A few parts would still be required to get an L7 IRQ with a single button - at least three diodes, if not open-collector drivers.

Which software supports that kind of mod?

Jens

Ah ok. Well as far as I know HRTMon is supported by that mod (actually is supposed to be used with it) and on the old school and outdated side Beermon aswell (works with ks1.2/1.3 which HRT does not). HRTMon is to the best of my knowledge still being actively updated.

[Schoenfeld]

Although I don't want to encourage anyone to tinker on the boards (see discussion over at a1k.org), I can assist by marking the IPL0/IPL1/IPL2 lines on the accelerator(s). I'm not a programmer, more like an oldschool hacker and with very limited assembly knowledge. I found that my "personal survival kit" (cmon and megamon) are qute rarely used tools, probably because they're neither available on PD disk collections, nor on Aminet. They remind me of the good old S-MON on the C64 :-)

This is the first time I hear abour HRT-Mon - will take a look. I found a 1998 version on Aminet including all sources - can anyone check if it's complete, if the toolchain can still be set up after 12 years?

Jens

[Toni Wilen]

Latest HRTMon http://whdload.de/whdload/Tools/

[Skope]

Originally Posted by Schoenfeld

Although I don't want to encourage anyone to tinker on the boards (see discussion over at a1k.org), I can assist by marking the IPL0/IPL1/IPL2 lines on the accelerator(s). I'm not a programmer, more like an oldschool hacker and with very limited assembly knowledge. I found that my "personal survival kit" (cmon and megamon) are qute rarely used tools, probably because they're neither available on PD disk collections, nor on Aminet. They remind me of the good old S-MON on the C64 :-)

This is the first time I hear abour HRT-Mon - will take a look. I found a 1998 version on Aminet including all sources - can anyone check if it's complete, if the toolchain can still be set up after 12 years?

Jens

Sounds good! I was gonna post a link to the latest HRT but Toni W beat me to it. (:

Btw, do you know where I could find those monitors you mentioned? I'm curious to try them out. (:

[StingRay]

Originally Posted by Schoenfeld

can anyone check if it's complete, if the toolchain can still be set up after 12 years?

HRT-Mon can be assembled without any problems. Not much of a toolchain required either.

[Schoenfeld]

Originally Posted by Skope

Btw, do you know where I could find those monitors you mentioned? I'm curious to try them out. (:

Can't find them on this computer right now, but I've uploaded them to the A1K forum a while ago:

http://www.a1k.org/forum/showpost.ph...3&postcount=81

just remove the ".pdf" - board limitation.

Toni, thanks for the link. HRTmon seems to be a lot more powerful than these old hackertools from A1000-days.

Jens

[Skope]

Thanx Jens, snatched them from a1k.

[kamelito]

I suppose That it Will be compatible With indivision ECS for the A600...
No need for A603 I mean
Kml

[Schoenfeld]

Originally Posted by kamelito

I suppose That it Will be compatible With indivision ECS for the A600...
No need for A603 I mean
Kml

Errmm.. I can't put a socket for Indivision ECS on the accelerator - the chip bus signals are not available on the CPU. However, the accelerator will deal with the A603/Indivision ECS setup in two ways: Mechanical fit and an optional bootselector that lets you map the external drives to df0: to df2: instead of df1: to df3: - kinda like the CDTV, which also has all drives external. This way, it's not that painful to remove the internal drive.

Jens

[Schoenfeld]

Originally Posted by desiv

I'm actually a bit surprised considering how many RAM w/FPU and accelerators with FPU options there are that so little software uses them, but the more I look, the more I see that there's not much FPU software out there..

It's probably because an FPU is easy to add to a design. It takes exactly the same amount of logic and pins to tell the 68030 that there is no FPU (equation for the BERR signal is equal to the FPU_CS equation - for those who know a few details about the '030).

"If you generate that signal anyway, you might as well add the socket" is probably what designers back in the days were thinking. However, if you do the math, then...:

Originally Posted by desiv

That's exactly what I was thinking!
OK, I have no idea what you just said, but I assume it means you have a great design that allows you to use less expensive parts and make a SUPER FAST card!

Sorry - that was the technical explanation of "an FPU would jeopardize the high fastmem speed". I tend to go into detail too much...

Jens

[alexh]

A discounted bundle of the new A600 accelerator + A603 + Indivision ECS would be cool. I'd be in.

Especially if the VGA cable was long enough to reach the place where the RF modulator used to be on my A600.

[cosmicfrog]

is it fesable to put a scsi controller on these cards as well ??

[alexh]

What for?

What type? DMA capable? What target bandwidth?

[cosmicfrog]

well if we going have a fast machine a fast HDD to keep up would be nice

[alexh]

Is SCSI performance on accelerators (except Cyberstorm MKIII/PPC) any good?

I doubt you can buy the SCSI chips that were used in the old days anymore.

They don't make internal 2.5" SCSI hard drives which is what you want for an A1200/A600 desktop. I always wondered what desktop owners did with their SCSI controllers? Do we really want to be messing about & filling our cases with unnecessary SCSI->IDE->CF adapters again?

Would it not be more practical to include an improved (over Gayle's PIO 0) 2.5" IDE controller which could be part of the FPGA (if they have enough pins)?

It is probably too late in the day to add features??

[Predseda]

Jens, it means you solved that problem that prevented you from completing development of A600 turboboard 3 years ago?

[cosmicfrog]

yeps seems I had scsi on the brain for last few days should have really asked for a faster HDD interface than the one on the motherboard