Sonnet 7200 PCI programming

[grelbfarlk]

Originally Posted by esc

Hey guys, was just askin' about the AOS 4 stuff. Figured it couldn't hurt to at least ask. :P

Nice job you got him thinking about running AOS4, and now he's going to do it, on much much much faster hardware. This is all your fault Esc.

[DarrenHD]

Originally Posted by grelbfarlk

Nice job you got him thinking about running AOS4, and now he's going to do it, on much much much faster hardware. This is all your fault Esc.

I really hope Hedeon was joking

[grelbfarlk]

Anyway to continue the RAM talk. Trixster, this appears to have the same chips that are on your 64MB module:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/64MB-168-Pin...-/142410981700

These appear to be 2k, but this seller has done some shenanigans with me before, as in the pic didn't match what he shipped, those were 128MB DIMMs though (no they didn't work since they were 8k).

http://www.ebay.com/itm/64MB-Apple-P...-/391702662602

As stated before you really need to contact the sellers and get a picture of the actual DIMMs being shipped and check the datasheet yourself.

[trixster]

This is the stuff I received today, a previous buyer said he'd asked the seller who claimed it was all 2k refresh, so I took a punt on 3x64mb

Quake2 now loads all levels fine, no crashing between levels. Hexen 2 now loads ok too! Exciting.

I've had a very quick search for Hynix HY5117400a j-70 put have so far failed to find a data sheet for it. Anyone better at this than me happy to take a look?

[strim]

Hynix HY5117400A

These are 2K refresh - I have the datasheet somewhere and I'm pretty sure google can find one too.

[trixster]

Thank you!

Could some kind soul upload the patched Sysspeed executable to the zone please?

[spudje]

So you now have working 3x 64 MB DIMMs? Which of the ebay links you posted earlier are these?

[trixster]

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/1825278623...%3AMEBIDX%3AIT

But as grelbfarlk says, it is recommended you check with the seller first to ensure he sends you the correct stuff.

[spudje]

Great thx, I will!

[spudje]

Grr sold out, so now I contacted the seller of this http://www.ebay.com/itm/64MB-Apple-P...-/391702662602

Sorry spudje. Got those last three sticks.

Hey guys, can someone explain the full benefit of upgrading from 512kb L2 cache to 1mb? And are there any other presumed 'safe' upgrades one can do to one of these cards?

[grelbfarlk]

Originally Posted by esc

Hey guys, can someone explain the full benefit of upgrading from 512kb L2 cache to 1mb? And are there any other presumed 'safe' upgrades one can do to one of these cards?

Some applications run smoother with 1MB of L2 cache. I first noticed this on the 512kb card that Amigenerator had some hiccups in the sound and video at 640x480. With 1MB it runs smooth. I would imagine this would apply to MAME as well and Quake and such. It was slightly funny because I'd keep telling Hedeon hey you broke X and Y application with this new library since it's not running smooth anymore-I was actually running it on the 512kb card and not the 1MB.

Also the 512KB cards run the L2 cache at 133MHz and the 400MHz cards run it at 200MHz.

Other than that, the faster memory version of the library apparently runs fine on 60ns DIMMs, I think Hedeon had 70ns DIMMs or they just didn't like it but that gives you a tiny little performance bump, hardly noticeable really.

The other thing you can do is overclock your Voodoo, which gives fairly linear increases to FPS in 3D games-not really recommended but most V3-2000s will run at V3-3000 speeds (167MHz) if you can deal with the heat generated.

Otherwise you can replace your CPU with a faster one, again that takes a fair amount of cash and someone who can do the swap, people like Stachu and Hese.

Unless Ratte comes out with a 667Mhz-1GHz card I think it's not worth monkeying around much with the Sonnet trying to go faster. OTOH if you break something it's conceivable that it's fixable since we don't have to worry about some missing CPLD-assuming you could find replacement chips (PPC, MPC-107, L2 Cache, power conversion).

[Hedeon]

Originally Posted by trixster

Thank you!

Could some kind soul upload the patched Sysspeed executable to the zone please?

There is no need for a patched sysspeed with the latest build if your system is 100% compatible with the library.

[trixster]

Hmm, it's disappointing to see I still have some incompatibilities.

[Hedeon]

Originally Posted by trixster

Hmm, it's disappointing to see I still have some incompatibilities.

It could help to reset the protection bits using DOpus.

I also noticed that gearsppc can crash if it cannot open a library properly. So I guess the program misses error checking here and there.

So maybe look with snoopdos if something fails. Not sure if it was you with the problems with gearsppc.

[trixster]

No issues with gearsppc or pretty much anything else anymore. I still can't get blitzquakeppc to run in a window (I get a data storage Exception) but I'm not sure if my command line for that is correct, I'm just tying the same one that works ok for windowed 68k blitzquake

[Cowcat]

I still can't get blitzquakeppc to run in a window

I use something like that for original quake:

glquakeWOS_vbcc -particles 256 -windowmode -width 512 -height 384 -nocdaudio -nojoy -nopsx -texturemode gl_nearest -quadtex

Maybe you're using a different screen bit mode with fullscreen vs window, I mean, doesn't VooDoo needs 16bit screen mode for proper working with warp3d? ....

There're multiple options with all quakes: Try to force 16bit mode with -bpp option.
Q2 / Hexen2 works ok with windowmode?

[trixster]

https://sonnet.uguu.waw.pl/jenkins/job/sonnetamiga/
seems to be down. Error 503.

Could someone pop build 266 into the zone?

[Hedeon]

Originally Posted by trixster

https://sonnet.uguu.waw.pl/jenkins/job/sonnetamiga/
seems to be down. Error 503.

All part of the big plan, muhaha!