Sonnet 7200 PCI programming

[Wrangler]

Man , I hope you're right Stedy cos this instability thing is driving me nuts . I think the Rapture uses SDRAM right unlike the Sonnet?

[nexus]

rapture is sdram only sonnet used dram so the ram in the mac 7200 could be used on it

now with rapture you have to remember that it uses that whole 3.3v 3a regulator
the 7410 uses 5watts by itself then add the xpc107 and sdram you are at the max of that regulator which itself could be a tad unstable on volts when hot
and like any cpu some dont use as much power as the other so its a lotto draw some will use less than that 5w some use more this can also be a issue when we are dealing with a thin line with that elbox 3a regulator
same goes for the sdram and xpc107/tsi107

linear regulator waste power fyi this is why on the final rapture we cant use them it has to be switching
also the power draw goes up soon as altivec is used

dont take those 100% but gives a idea

[Wrangler]

Thanks nexus, that's good info. So a 450MHz 7410 could pull up to 11W on its own plus the support chips etc. Say 18W total. If that's all coming from the 3.3v line (is it?) that's about 6A worst case.

Thing is, I'm not relying on the voltage regulator on the Mediator but the Ramix's own voltage converter which is one of these: http://cds.linear.com/docs/en/datasheet/1530fa.pdf. That supports up to about 20A so ought to be way more than is needed - and is spitting out 3.34v solidly.

Does the Rapture card also use the 5v line itself? On the Ramix bridge card that seems to be at 4.91v (ie ~0.1v drop off from the Zorro slot). Could that be an issue?

And finally v326 of the lib with the 200us delay in it still gives me the same instability issues (Interestingly, on the occasions it throws a PPC exception rather than hanging or rebooting, it is due to an illegal instruction as predicted by Stedy.)

[Hedeon]

Originally Posted by Wrangler

And finally v326 of the lib with the 200us delay in it still gives me the same instability issues (Interestingly, on the occasions it throws a PPC exception rather than hanging or rebooting, it is due to an illegal instruction as predicted by Stedy.)

Predicted when there was no delay....so...

Here it was working correct without that delay (A3000/A1200) and with Greg too. I still say hardware, not software.

[nexus]

Originally Posted by Wrangler

Thanks nexus, that's good info. So a 450MHz 7410 could pull up to 11W on its own plus the support chips etc. Say 18W total. If that's all coming from the 3.3v line (is it?) that's about 6A worst case.

Thing is, I'm not relying on the voltage regulator on the Mediator but the Ramix's own voltage converter which is one of these: http://cds.linear.com/docs/en/datasheet/1530fa.pdf. That supports up to about 20A so ought to be way more than is needed - and is spitting out 3.34v solidly.

Does the Rapture card also use the 5v line itself? On the Ramix bridge card that seems to be at 4.91v (ie ~0.1v drop off from the Zorro slot). Could that be an issue?

And finally v326 of the lib with the 200us delay in it still gives me the same instability issues (Interestingly, on the occasions it throws a PPC exception rather than hanging or rebooting, it is due to an illegal instruction as predicted by Stedy.)

rapture uses only 3.3v which ramix carrier are you using?

[Stedy]

Originally Posted by nexus

rapture is sdram only sonnet used dram so the ram in the mac 7200 could be used on it

now with rapture you have to remember that it uses that whole 3.3v 3a regulator
the 7410 uses 5watts by itself then add the xpc107 and sdram you are at the max of that regulator which itself could be a tad unstable on volts when hot
and like any cpu some dont use as much power as the other so its a lotto draw some will use less than that 5w some use more this can also be a issue when we are dealing with a thin line with that elbox 3a regulator
same goes for the sdram and xpc107/tsi107

linear regulator waste power fyi this is why on the final rapture we cant use them it has to be switching
also the power draw goes up soon as altivec is used

How do you know the whole 3.3V supply capacity is used, have you measured the input current to the regulator?
For a linear regulator, input current = output current.

On the Sonnet, the 3.3V current should be low, 0.34A max for the TSI107 and maybe 0.2A for the PPC750 I/O. What regulator supplies the 2.5V core of the TSI107?
A low dropout regulator, when supplying the 2.2A for the PPC750 @ 2.6V would drop 1.5V, this precludes the use of a 3.3V to 2.6V low dropout
linear regulator for the PPC750. Look at the LM1085 datasheet, page 5, http://www.ti.com/lit/ds/symlink/lm1085.pdffor an example.

Also

Originally Posted by wrangler

Because of the design of the case I am using, I can't easily get to the 3.3v output by the Ramix. I'll have to try harder... It's rated for 14A @ 3.3V.

Edit: OK, the Ramix is putting out a solid 3.34V at power on, once the PPC initialises and under load. Doesn't even wobble when there is a crash/hang.

This is enough in my experience to preclude the 3.3V supply from the enquiries. If a system fails with a 14A 3.3V supply, it's not down to a limitation of this rail, I suspect 1-2A MAX.

[QUOTE=Wrangler]
Man , I hope you're right Stedy cos this instability thing is driving me nuts . I think the Rapture uses SDRAM right unlike the Sonnet?
[/quote}

Yes the Rapture does use SDRAM. A MPC7410 max core current is 6A @ 1.8V (running a smoke test) this again precludes the use of a linear regulator due to the increased voltage drop at high current and the very nice neater it would create. 3.3V to 1.8V switchmode converters are more common now but it's preferable to use a higher input voltage as the current drops. At 5V in to 1.8V out, the current is 2.36A, for 3.3V in to 1.8V out, the current is 3.6A, no account has been made for converter losses here.

I noticed the Rapture PMC260 card has 72 bit SDRAM (64 bit data + 8 bits ECC). I guess we've not enabled that as I saw no code to clear all of RAM to a known value before enabling ECC. When using SDRAM with the TSI107 you must apply a DLL adjustment and 200us delay as well as the 200us delay after initialising the SDRAM.

You also have to disable back to back PCI transfers on the TSI107 and the host otherwise you can get a PCI bus deadlock due to a silicon bug. I'll check through the code and make some recommendations.

[nexus]

we have no idea why his is crashing for 1 it could be many other reasons that arent software
second people are using many types of mediators some with a 3.3v reg some without
also your tsi107 spec dont account for 66mhz/100 or 133mhz operation the sonnet runs at 66mhz the rapture is 100mhz same goes for ram etc etc etc
everything the rapture uses comes from 3.3v rail so that regulator is the issue and so are old power supplies that are running the 5v rail high when you add in everything else in the system
also the errata bug is not all 107chips

checking the raptures they use both xpc and tsi bridges they are both same mask 30K21S which makes them REV C 1.3



https://www.nxp.com/docs/en/application-note/AN2455.pdf

also my power draws are from testing and stated in datasheet
and that changes depending on ram installed on it etc etc
typical draw is ~8watts at 450mhz ppc with sdram at 100mhz and this is without altivec on
now add in any card 1 might be using on that pci bus that could also hit up that 3.3v on 3v mediators

also people need to add in the extra watts from all the fans they are using if they arent 12v
some are using 2-3 fans just to keep voodoo/ppc etc cool
we are basically running 2 computers on a old low watt psu

hedeon just had a issue with his psu on a A3000D till i modded the psu and stuffed a 350w seasonic inside
so before everyone starts blaming the rapture/sonnet etc they need to make sure the psu can handle the loads again they are old and the capacitors in all are within that needing to be replaced time

every problem is a case by case issue as many have all kinds of setups

[Wrangler]

Just to be clear, I'm not blaming anything or anyone for the instability problems I'm having (I mean: my A4000 is having ). I agree that the cause is much more likely to be hardware than software. But I'm open to all suggestions.

The consensus seems to be that it's not power related so I'm going to move on and try some alternative motherboards and 060 cards when I get some time just to try to eliminate them. Of course, it could just be a dodgy Force PMC card, which would be irritating...

[Hedeon]

There's an obvious error there in the manual. Both enabling and disabling snooping is told as being NO_SNOOP_EN=1. I guess to enable snooping it must be 0.

[nexus]

yep whoops lol and that was revised doc also for those replacing bridges https://www.nxp.com/docs/en/product-...ce/PCN8598.htm
https://www.nxp.com/docs/en/product-...ce/PCN7980.htm

[nexus]

just fyi the final rapture uses REV D 1.4 133mhz bridges and thats the max for the 107 series bridges

[Wrangler]

Right, I think I've finally fixed the instability issues . Turns out there were three independent issues:

1. Poor distribution of 5v to the mediator
2. Not enough cooling
3. This set up hates my USB card

Number 3 was a weird one. With the PCI USB card in, I would get a crash under Quake in a few minutes. This is with no USB devices connected and whether or not poseidon.library was present in libs:. I don't know if the problem was caused by some kind of interrupt from the USB card or power draw or something else. Anyway, the card is out now and the Rapture just completed 90 mins of Quake without losing a beat!

Thanks to all for the help, with a special mention for grelbfarlk and trixtster. Cheers guys

[grelbfarlk]

Great! In my A4000D-Tower I have a Spider USB card and it seems to work with the Rapture. At least I think it does, I don't use it much. Probably was sharing the IRQ with the Rapture, or could be power I guess.

Originally Posted by Wrangler

Right, I think I've finally fixed the instability issues . Turns out there were three independent issues:

1. Poor distribution of 5v to the mediator
2. Not enough cooling
3. This set up hates my USB card

Number 3 was a weird one. With the PCI USB card in, I would get a crash under Quake in a few minutes. This is with no USB devices connected and whether or not poseidon.library was present in libs:. I don't know if the problem was caused by some kind of interrupt from the USB card or power draw or something else. Anyway, the card is out now and the Rapture just completed 90 mins of Quake without losing a beat!

Thanks to all for the help, with a special mention for grelbfarlk and trixtster. Cheers guys

[nexus]

bunch of people in here with G4's now yet i only see 1 A1200 G4 vid where are these a4k's at

[Cego]

unfortunately my system is not really stable. sooner or later the system crashes. another strange thing is that i can’t go beyond 640x480 for Warp3D games. Graphics and textures are corrupt and missing and the screen is flickering. Now i thought that this could be due to only 13MB Voodoo Ram, but maybe the ram chips are defect? is there a way to test them?

[grelbfarlk]

Originally Posted by Cego

unfortunately my system is not really stable. sooner or later the system crashes. another strange thing is that i can’t go beyond 640x480 for Warp3D games. Graphics and textures are corrupt and missing and the screen is flickering. Now i thought that this could be due to only 13MB Voodoo Ram, but maybe the ram chips are defect? is there a way to test them?

The crashiness after 640x480 is actually "normal". Depends on the game but 800x480 tends to work, 960x540 tends to work. Quake1GL I run at 800x480 but depending on the game usually not more than that. Behavior usually starts with a couple missing textures then polygons start flickering or rendering improperly then usually a crash follows after a few seconds. I would say it's something to do with Warp3D but I don't really know, there are other posts on the topic not-Sonnet related. GLMatrix screensaver I can run at 960x540, and if I recall correctly 800x600.

[trixster]

Great work Wrangler! I still might send that card via you!

[spudje]

Originally Posted by Wrangler

Right, I think I've finally fixed the instability issues . Turns out there were three independent issues:

1. Poor distribution of 5v to the mediator

How did you fix this?

[Wrangler]

Originally Posted by spudje

How did you fix this?

I took a small offcut of Vero strip I had lying around and soldered a SATA power socket to it (just convenient to use SATA from the PSU rather than a Molex) and then I plugged the Vero strip into a spare Zorro socket.


I do NOT recommend doing exactly what I did because it's real easy to plug it into the wrong part of the Zorro slot = lots of smoke and the end of an Amiga. It would be better to make a full length insert and also have 5v coming into a number of different connectors, not just one.

Originally Posted by trixster

Great work Wrangler! I still might send that card via you!

No worries mate! Happy to do that.

[nexus]

Originally Posted by Wrangler

I took a small offcut of Vero strip I had lying around and soldered a SATA power socket to it (just convenient to use SATA from the PSU rather than a Molex) and then I plugged the Vero strip into a spare Zorro socket.


I do NOT recommend doing exactly what I did because it's real easy to plug it into the wrong part of the Zorro slot = lots of smoke and the end of an Amiga. It would be better to make a full length insert and also have 5v coming into a number of different connectors, not just one.




No worries mate! Happy to do that.

just remember a sata adapter has lower amps than a molex connector by about half also if you use a powered pci riser cable any volts from that will help power everything on the pci bus
we do this all the time in crypto mining with pcie power

Molex is rated for 132 watts/11 amps@12v 55 watts @5v

SATA is rated for 54 watts/4.5 amps
To reduce impedance and increase current capability, each voltage is supplied by three pins in parallel, though one pin in each group is intended for precharging (see below). Each pin should be able to carry 1.5 A
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_ATA
remember sata was made to supply 3 voltages 3.3/5/12v so each pin is smaller also on either connector that is the rating for the connector some cheap adapters use too small gauge wire so watch out for that

just fyi if you draw too much those wires will melt the insulation and possible fire
^safety precaution