Terrible Fire Accelerators

[plasmab]

I've been doing some research on the TF520 interaction with the Kipper2k A508 board today. I think i've found an equiv of the source code for the CPLD on that board.... Can anyone confirm?

http://pastebin.com/bamEdYk8

[spock-79]

Looks like the same that is found on the site from the A608 author. The A508 from kipper is based on the A608 (2007 Version).

http://lvd.nedopc.com/Projects/a600_8mb/

[plasmab]

Excellent. Armed with that I'll devise some measurements and simulations to figure out what's happening


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[Zetr0]

@plasmab

I am unsure if this helps, but when I spoke with LVD and later with Kipps - discussing the A508 / A608 memory and if it could take a faster clocked CPU (at the time I was looking at a cheap HCMOS68k @14/21MHz ) the bottle neck was the 68k timing with the DRAM.

This could be the issue with the tf020 board.

[plasmab]

Sounds about right. I think the CPU is running the cycle too fast for the RAM. I need to get measurements to see how far out I am


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[plasmab]

Originally Posted by Stedy

Hi,

How do you handle the fact the 68000 has nLDS and nUDS and the 68020 only has a nDS signal?
The A608/A508 uses the nLDS/nUDS signals but does not use DTACK!

The IDE68K design also has the same issue with nLDS/nUDS but that does use nDTACK. The A1200 has a different GAYLE chip to that in the A600, which as described in the document Keith linked to.

I think you are onto something here... The A508 CPLD doesnt have a RW/n pin and it detects a read vs write by checking that neither LDS or UDS are asserted in S0/S1 (mental, but of course perfectly legitimate). I think I just assert those immediately irrespective of whether its a read or write cycle.

Thanks Stedy!

[Stedy]

Originally Posted by plasmab

I think you are onto something here... The A508 CPLD doesnt have a RW/n pin and it detects a read vs write by checking that neither LDS or UDS are asserted in S0/S1 (mental, but of course perfectly legitimate). I think I just assert those immediately irrespective of whether its a read or write cycle.

Thanks Stedy!

A few things to add to the testbench then or do you measure the real hardware with a logic analyser?

[plasmab]

Originally Posted by Stedy

A few things to add to the testbench then or do you measure the real hardware with a logic analyser?

All of the above. And add regressions to DiagROM

[plasmab]

Interesting thing (for me anyways) looking at the code for the A608 is that it doesnt actually do Autoconfig for real. Unsure if Kipper2k's version does a better job of this but the RAM cannot be placed at a location other than 0x200000.

A little miffed at that as i spent ages getting that working on mine... didnt know that was allowed lol.

[Jope]

It is not allowed, you did a good thing when you made yours autoconfigure for real. Lots of Amiga hardware these days does not do things the Amiga way. :-(

[jediknight]

plasmab can you add a PowerPC 604e to an 060 board so i can run amiga os4 if you do you can have my wife free lol lol.

this one be nice http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/PROCESOR-I...QAAOSwnNBXT9Hg

[NovaCoder]

This looks like a nice bit of kit, any plans for an A1200 card?

Well done for getting this far and actually producing something

[Locutus]

Originally Posted by jediknight

plasmab can you add a PowerPC 604e to an 060 board so i can run amiga os4 if you do you can have my wife free lol lol.

this one be nice http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/PROCESOR-I...QAAOSwnNBXT9Hg

Complete and utter facepalm.

[jediknight]

lol well come on an 060 board with ppc would be nice and that one runs at 375 mhz well fast , still i can keep dreaming and hope my wife buggers off lol lol .

[plasmab]

Originally Posted by jediknight

plasmab can you add a PowerPC 604e to an 060 board so i can run amiga os4 if you do you can have my wife free lol lol.

this one be nice http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/PROCESOR-I...QAAOSwnNBXT9Hg

Already have a wife :P

In all honesty OS4 doesnt interest me really. If I were going to do a PPC board i'd go down the FPGA route.. probably one with an embedded PPC like the Virtex 5 chips. Actually I have a Virtex 5 board (borrowed) sitting here ... the ML507 but bringing it up is an arse.

[plasmab]

Originally Posted by NovaCoder

This looks like a nice bit of kit, any plans for an A1200 card?

Well done for getting this far and actually producing something

In time. I'd like to give the CD32 some love next. That could be translated to the A1200 relatively easily.

[jediknight]

i think i got you thinking of ppc now lol , i think you can doit ,youve proved your a clever amazing person already , i dont think its that much of a challenge to you really ,but heres hoping for the future.

damn i cant give my wife away lol.

[Pat the Cat]

Originally Posted by jediknight

...youve proved your a clever amazing person already , i dont think its that much of a challenge to you really ,but heres hoping for the future..

A big problem with adding a PowerPC chip to an A500 - power consumption. They are much greedier than the 030 for this particular project.

plasmab does have awesome build skills, but he can't get more power from an A500 PSU than it was designed to supply. "The engines 'll no take it Captain." Sorry.

As for autoconfig, this is very important on shared expansions, but much less so with accelerators. Reason is, you usually can only plug in one accelerator at a time, so conflict between accelerators is rare - but conflict between A500 accelerators and Zorro kludges for a card slot are not. So he's done things the right way, for a more compatible unit. This is a good thing.

[Daedalus]

Originally Posted by Pat the Cat

A big problem with adding a PowerPC chip to an A500 - power consumption. They are much greedier than the 030 for this particular project.

plasmab does have awesome build skills, but he can't get more power from an A500 PSU than it was designed to supply. "The engines 'll no take it Captain." Sorry.

No different from the situation with the A1200 then, for which PowerPC accelerators exist. You don't need soldering skills, just a beefier power supply.

Someone has already done it.

There are many reasons why it mightn't happen on this board; power isn't one.

[Pat the Cat]

Can't really comment as I cannot fully access the link. I'll just go and tinker the schematic and routing for a week or more. See if I can add promised mods for PLCC and whatever.

Just so people have a choice, in terms of what Motorola based chips they can add. The V2 that PlamsaB has released has the BEST on paper combination for maximum overclock, but they are others that use same manufacturing tech, so should be comparable, the Motorola Japan models. I think PLCC is good up to 40MHz, second rate to both, but cheaper too.