AGA or RTG

[YouKnowWho]

Originally Posted by Daedalus

Why do you think that, like PCI, hard drives also went to serial instead of staying parallel?

Look, I'm not going to go back and forth because clearly you see it one way and I see it another. So we'll agree to disagree.

I'll just answer you last question here because it is obvious. The reason why drives didn't go parallel is bandwidth. But it didn't stop them from trying, there were plenty of very slow parallel port storage devices done.

Actually, one more thing...Blizzard RTG solution is PPC. I'm not interested in the expense of it for one, second not interested in PPC at all, and thus getting it as an RTG solution is significant overkill cost wise.

[YouKnowWho]

Originally Posted by grelbfarlk

I swear I've seen bus expanders on ribbon cables, from that recent thread and a little browsing I found these:
Ramiga Z7 Busboard



Ateo Bus (Spoiler: It's cheating because it's ISA)



Shuttleboard 2000

NAILED IT! Plenty of this out there. What's important to keep in mind also is that there is no high voltage inside the A1200, nothing that these cards normally don't see, and the ribbon wouldn't be travelling over long distance. Nothing more than 8-12 inches at most is needed for flexibility of placement internally. That Picasso II++ could also be redesigned for purpose to be half height for easy fit in the case with the floppy drive retained. Would be lovely to stack flicker fixer capability on that solution for completeness.

The solution would find plenty of users, without doubt.

[YouKnowWho]

Originally Posted by Chucky

shut down? aprox 500 delivered so far and more going out...


you can get TF1230 today. with 64 or 128MB of ram. and if not buy it. why not build it yourself. data is out there free to use. Builders can build it with 64MB of ram for like 130-140ish euros with a small profit for their work. if you do it yourseld you could maybe stretch it to aprox 100eur per board..
this including a 50MHz 030..

I hear you Chucky. And yet I can't click anywhere, pay and just buy one when I was considering it a year ago. I'd have to "not be a dick" give someone a secret handshake...all to get slightly better than a PiStorm (with RTG capability it appears!) for the very few demos that benefit from it? Someone suggested the Blizzard PPC/RTG solution - and the PiStorm spanks it on MIPS based on some SysInfos I saw.

But it was all for the best Chucky. It gave me time to read things about this 68060 and found that my want of it was misguided in the first place. Just silliness of wanting to relive the desires of yesteryears.

I read that the 68060 is really not going to give me anything significant to my use case of enjoying some original games, workbench, productivity tools for graphics and image capture and some 8bit sound sampling fun, printing out to my dot matrix. In essence, absolutely not necessary for my 1994 time-travel experience.

I'm actually reading plenty of things about incompatibility with 68040/68060 issues on various code out there, where 68030 does it flawlessly. Or the heat issues on the bigger CPUs or overclocked CPUs that impact stability - yet another reason for 68020/68030 to be the way.

As for building a 1230...hey, I hear you about that too. There is reward in doing that and I honestly respect those who can, have the skill and tools to do it. I think I could, but I could potentially make a mess of it. Plus I don't want to experiment and potentially mess up a 1200. Those are precious and no need to have an amateur mess one up trying to make it slightly faster with a 68030 than ease of click and get 1221lc. I have plenty of other awesome projects to work on that are lined up for this winter. Two titanium bike frames to be built out. Two carbon bikes as well. Amazing turntable customization project I have to finish - really that one needs so little and the result will blow fans of McIntosh audio away. Along with two cassette decks I have to build and a reel to reel deck that I believe in my mind will amaze, if I can only bring my vision to reality.

Actually, I have two amazing Amiga projects as well lined up. Already nearly there. Incredibly, NO ONE has done what I'm about to do with these two plans. I'm quite certain it will impress the community. Coming in the very near future. I have a feeling that many Amiga fans are going to look at these and be impressed. Maybe even try to do it themselves.

[Daedalus]

Originally Posted by stefcep2

Nope. That's for the business owner to answer.

I think you missed the bit about the Warp being a hobby project. There's no business currently selling these boards.

Anyway this is a business transaction. He's not emailing them to make friends. Its a simply business query that wold happen countless times everyday and everywhere in the world: "How much and when?"

See above. You're asking people spending some very precious spare time on their hobby to instead spend it answering questions that have already been answered or aren't answerable. If they wish to spend that time, that's great, but it cannot be expected of them.

Bit rude there

I apologise if I've hurt your feelings, but repeating myself for the benefit of this guy when he doesn't understand posts is precisely the sort of thing that might result in curt responses.

Irrelevant.

How?

Who gave him the reasons? Forum posters. Not Good Enough. People selling should give him the reason. In a two sentence email, automated even would be adequate.

See above. Also, they gave responses in various interviews they've given in the community, so it's not coming from forum posters, who are simply relaying the information. I'm also not sure how automating responses would solve the issue.

I think yours a too low tbh. Its not too much to expect a reply email to a sales enquiry from the people selling the damned thing.

Are they selling it? Cool, where can I buy one?

That's the Linux excuse:" Hey this broken or is shit". "Ahh well its not for you them." At least Linux is free

Comparison fail. He's already trying to say why he doesn't want it, all I'm saying is that he doesn't want it.

AN '060 is nice as is RTG. I have them both, But given the price/performance its really an emotional rather than rational decision to buy. And he was emotionally invested, but he's not anymore and that's because his experience with the lack of communication.

Absolutely, that's all pretty obvious stuff.

If its starts with shit service and communication its probably going to end that way.

Indeed, but it's a very different situation when you've bought something (which sounds like it was cobbled together badly from a diagram copied from somewhere) than when you haven't bought something and aren't owed anything.

There's this idea that because we're a niche market, we almost have to BEG to give some sellers our money. Its just not good enough.

This is bizarre - what difference will begging make when there isn't a product to sell? And no due date for the product to be on sale? Begging just makes you look a bit nuts.

Originally Posted by grelbfarlk

I was all set to pay the guy who taped up boxes for Phase 5 for a GREX-4000 when he was all ready to remanufacture them and all I got was a bunch of hentai and some dick pics in response. This was unacceptable service.

Haha, you mean phake 5? That was never a service, and he was never ready to manufacture any products; that was a blatant scam.

Also, I'm detecting a significant amount of ribbon cablephobia from Daedalus and Chucky which is pretty shameful in TYOOLS 2021.

I'm not sure what difference they year makes - do cables under the same conditions radiate less these days? There might be a valuable thesis in that for someone... But I don't have a phobia - I've successfully relocated accelerators on ribbon cables before. I just understand why extending a bus like that is asking for trouble.

Originally Posted by YouKnowWho

I'll just answer you last question here because it is obvious. The reason why drives didn't go parallel is bandwidth.

That's correct, but a very simplistic view of it. Ask yourself *why* parallel bandwidth was limited? Crosstalk, noise and synchronicity are key points, all of which are solved by using a serial link, as PCIe does. The only way they could even get parallel ATA devices to work as quickly as they could was to use specially designed drivers and carefully balanced and buffered buses.

But it didn't stop them from trying, there were plenty of very slow parallel port storage devices done.

Parallel ports are plenty slow enough to not worry about the issues of parallel buses at speed, and the limiting factor was never the parallel transfers but the fact the parallel port was only designed to run at a certain speed. SCSI is probably a better example you should use, though even that went serial.

Actually, one more thing...Blizzard RTG solution is PPC. I'm not interested in the expense of it for one, second not interested in PPC at all, and thus getting it as an RTG solution is significant overkill cost wise.

Indeed, it's a PPC accelerator, but the bus isn't PPC, and neither is the RTG - it's essentially a modified PCI bus. And I'm already well aware you're not interested in PPC, but it's the only example of what we were talking about that was actually released to the market in relatively significant numbers.

Originally Posted by YouKnowWho

NAILED IT! Plenty of this out there.

Where? Why haven't you bought one if there are plenty out there?

What's important to keep in mind also is that there is no high voltage inside the A1200, nothing that these cards normally don't see,

What sort of spike voltages do you get over such a long bus? In terms of noise, reflections and so on, 5V is quite high in itself. And the spikes above 5V might not be the only issue to contend with - there's also undershooting, where the lines actually dip below the ground potential and can cause serious issues, and there's crosstalk, where signals in one wire induce a small voltage in an adjacent wire. The longer the wires are parallel, the more pronounced the effect, and it can creep up enough to push a logical 0 above the lower logic threshold. And there be dragons (and crashes).

and the ribbon wouldn't be travelling over long distance. Nothing more than 8-12 inches at most is needed for flexibility of placement internally.

8-12 inches is very long for extending a bus like that. Consider the clockport, for example. That's a direct attachment to the CPU bus, and you'll struggle to get reliable transfers over an 8 inch cable, even at the slow speeds of the clockport transfers. It could be done of course with very careful design, lots of buffering and termination etc., but it comes back to whether anyone would see it as worthwhile enough to spend the time on it, and a far more sensible and reliable option would be a direct connection to the accelerator as mentioned before.

That Picasso II++ could also be redesigned for purpose to be half height for easy fit in the case with the floppy drive retained. Would be lovely to stack flicker fixer capability on that solution for completeness.

Indeed, along with designing a new accelerator that allows attachment of such a bus. Plenty of stuff to keep you busy on these darkening evenings But, while you're at it, why not do as I suggested and simply add a PCI bus onto your accelerator, like the BlizzardPPC? That way you won't be hobbled by the limitations of Zorro-II, and could use a dramatically more powerful graphics card than the Picasso II++.

The solution would find plenty of users, without doubt.

And how many of those solutions were ever made in large quantities? Were they reliable? Did they work consistently with heavy transfers, like graphics cards? Were they sensitive to interference from other cables nearby? Why aren't the second-hand markets showing plenty of them? Turns out there mightn't be as much demand as you might think. But, as I've said before, stump up the cash and make it back by selling your product to the masses. I'd be happy to be proven wrong here.

[YouKnowWho]

Originally Posted by grelbfarlk

Also, I'm detecting a significant amount of ribbon cablephobia from Daedalus and Chucky which is pretty shameful in TYOOLS 2021.

gralbfarlk, I looked it up and the two words need to be connected with a hyphen (ribbon of sorts) like this:

Ribbon-cablephobia.

My auto-correct offers other hyphen options.

Ribbon-cable phobia
Ribbon-cable-phobia

I believe higher powers have spoken on the issue of ribbon-cables.

They win.

[YouKnowWho]

Originally Posted by stefcep2

Look a while I bought a GBS flicker fixer/scan doubler in a nice box with various fixes, proper amiga cable from a one man show. It took him literally over 4 months after paying and multiple unanswered polite and gentle emails to get it. And when it arrived, it didn't and still doesn't output video. So now what: more waiting, If I send it in, will I get get back, will I hear form him again. So I gave up and forgot about it. Until I got back in to Amiga again recntly. And then decided to follow it up. "Send me pics he says". So I do. Months ago. No reply yet.

If its starts with shit service and communication its probably going to end that way.

There's this idea that because we're a niche market, we almost have to BEG to give some sellers our money. Its just not good enough.

I'm glad at least one person understands! For a second there I was starting to think like I'm the nutty one because I expected a reply within a week or two to an email offering 1000 Euro to someone.

In all fairness, they probably (rightly) figured I was crazy for offering it, and spared me the regret.

[YouKnowWho]

[

Originally Posted by Daedalus

Are they selling it? Cool, where can I buy one?

Apparently on their website, where it says:

Warp1260 price is 499EUR if you have your own MC68060 CPU.

and

If you don't have CPU, board will be priced individually.

and there is a CONTACT tab and email provided.

Seems like a lot of trouble to go through to NOT sell it.

If they aren't selling it, why not say on the page - CURRENTLY NOT AVAILABLE FOR PURCHASE to save the huge wave of emails coming their very-busy-unable-to-reply way?

Originally Posted by Daedalus

This is bizarre - what difference will begging make when there isn't a product to sell? And no due date for the product to be on sale? Begging just makes you look a bit nuts.

This "begging" part is the requirement apparently for the TF1260. As a fan on Seinfeld, these TF guys certainly are fond of the "Soup Nazi" approach to Amiga community. NO TF-SOUP FOR YOU!

Well you know how that one ends, right? I found the recipe and it turns out the 68060 is COMPLETELY unnecessary to make the delicious Amiga Split-pea soup.

Now all that's left is to give away the soup!

[YouKnowWho]

Originally Posted by Daedalus

Haha, you mean phake 5? That was never a service, and he was never ready to manufacture any products; that was a blatant scam.

Lovely! Glad I wasn't part of the 1260 scam! :-)

Originally Posted by Daedalus

Parallel ports are plenty slow enough to not worry about the issues of parallel buses at speed, and the limiting factor was never the parallel transfers but the fact the parallel port was only designed to run at a certain speed. SCSI is probably a better example you should use, though even that went serial.

Am I the only one who remembers 320MB/s Ultra-SCSI LVD? Granted I don't know the nuts and bolts but I don't believe that was serial and it is plenty fast enough even by today's standards with room to spare for the fastest hard drives we have shipping today...well, exclude that dual actuator MACH2 Seagate drive.

Originally Posted by Daedalus

Where? Why haven't you bought one if there are plenty out there?

I mean plenty of ribbons used to bridge distance or allow flexibility of placement.

Originally Posted by Daedalus

What sort of spike voltages do you get over such a long bus? In terms of noise, reflections and so on, 5V is quite high in itself. And the spikes above 5V might not be the only issue to contend with - there's also undershooting, where the lines actually dip below the ground potential and can cause serious issues, and there's crosstalk, where signals in one wire induce a small voltage in an adjacent wire. The longer the wires are parallel, the more pronounced the effect, and it can creep up enough to push a logical 0 above the lower logic threshold. And there be dragons (and crashes).

Shielding around cable a solution?

Originally Posted by Daedalus

Indeed, along with designing a new accelerator that allows attachment of such a bus. Plenty of stuff to keep you busy on these darkening evenings But, while you're at it, why not do as I suggested and simply add a PCI bus onto your accelerator, like the BlizzardPPC? That way you won't be hobbled by the limitations of Zorro-II, and could use a dramatically more powerful graphics card than the Picasso II++.

Hey, experts who know the details can ponder and look at a viable solution. Clearly there are a lot of 1200s in the wild, and if they can sell these people barely needed 1260s, I'm quite certain there would be at least 3x that many people buying a decent RTG solution for the 1200.

If there is anything I've learned, it's is not first, but best. And I'd put my money on iComp to deliver best 1240/1260 solutions soon with working prototypes shown - even if I won't be one buying it. Also iComp on delivering a 1200 RTG/FlickerFixer solution in the A1200 Reloaded, and probably soon after MK4 indivision that also delivers the RTG function. But at that point the RTG solution may be available for all maybe - 1200, 4000, even ECS/OCS machines maybe! Who knows. It would help him sell the P96 software - so there is extra motivation in it perhaps.

Seems he has all the pieces in place, and plenty of knowledge. AND replied to emails, allowed orders, processes them quickly, efficiently - imagine that!

[trixster]

Originally Posted by YouKnowWho

I'm actually reading plenty of things about incompatibility with 68040/68060 issues on various code out there, where 68030 does it flawlessly. Or the heat issues on the bigger CPUs or overclocked CPUs that impact stability - yet another reason for 68020/68030 to be

This is hardly correct. WHDLoad slaves make the 060 thing disappear, it is a non-issue. 040 at 25mhz doesn’t require cooling, all 40mhz accelerators incorporate cooling, 060 at 50mhz does not require cooling and only modest cooling is necessary up to or above 80mhz. They are not unstable.

[trixster]

Originally Posted by YouKnowWho

[
This "begging" part is the requirement apparently for the TF1260. As a fan on Seinfeld, these TF guys certainly are fond of the "Soup Nazi" approach to Amiga community. NO TF-SOUP FOR YOU!

This is nonsense. Three people are producing TF1260 boards, they are all on here, at least one is selling on amibay and the other two are on several of the popular Facebook Amiga groups. There is no begging, you simply contact one of them and ask to buy a completed board. One of them will even supply a suitable cpu if needed.

[YouKnowWho]

Originally Posted by trixster

This is nonsense. Three people are producing TF1260 boards, they are all on here, at least one is selling on amibay and the other two are on several of the popular Facebook Amiga groups. There is no begging, you simply contact one of them and ask to buy a completed board. One of them will even supply a suitable cpu if needed.

trimester (autocorrect!)

trixster, I get it. I'm weird. I'm the only one who's had this experience.

Facebook? Socializing in a SPAM folder? NO THANKS.

I saw social media for what it was from day 1. Their business plan is the 7 Deadly Sins. For some reason humanity has a hard time figuring this out. You don't have to be faithful to see that no good can come of it.

Amibay? Someone gave me a link and there was nothing there.

Just too many hoops man. I've moved on. I enjoy the three 1221lc. Everything works great. Oh sure, ego says I'd like my red bar to be longest, but it's not the size of the red bar that matters. It's how you use it.

[trixster]

You can be as social or antisocial as you please, the point is your assertion that begging is required to get a TF card is wrong.

https://www.amibay.com/showthread.ph...l-sales-thread

[YouKnowWho]

Originally Posted by trixster

You can be as social or antisocial as you please, the point is your assertion that begging is required to get a TF card is wrong.

https://www.amibay.com/showthread.ph...l-sales-thread

I won't lie to you, Amibay, (bless it for existing and for all who enjoy it), just seems so tedious to me. All these noisy messages about the process....what is that about?

I've looked at a few links to forsale adds back in the day, including...interestingly enough an Onboard 1200 single Zorro II thing, and it just seem so frustrating. As if an ad simply can't be placed and replies taken to transact purchases? Too high-tech? Too outside the box?

Just seeing these "Declaring interest" messages makes my brain always say "Declaring Tab Closed!" I know...I'm speaking without knowing, but...

And also, this thread you link started end of July. I was over the 68060 back in March, when my attitude of wanting one was undeserving of being granted the pleasure of having one.

[YouKnowWho]

Originally Posted by trixster

You can be as social or antisocial as you please, the point is your assertion that begging is required to get a TF card is wrong.

https://www.amibay.com/showthread.ph...l-sales-thread

trixster, I will say this to you.

Thanks for pointing a link to something that appears at least current, on behalf of all those who will click it and find what they were looking for. I certainly couldn't locate such a thing 6 months ago.

Perhaps some people reading this thread will appreciate the pointer to where to find this device so that their red bar can now be longer while keeping it real 68K.

[YouKnowWho]

NOW, BACK to getting an RTG solution working on Amiga 1200 in original wedge....

[stevelord]

As I understand it a smart guy called Rob once made a thing called the Z-500. This went onto the expansion port on the side of the A500 and lets you hook up a ZZ9000 to an A500 (whether or not this is a good idea is a separate issue). Obviously that expansion port isn't there on an A1200.

There should be an equivalently accessible set of pins via the trapdoor slot on the A1200, is that right? I'm not fussed whether it's Z-II or not, I'm looking at whether or not there's sufficient access for RTG to work.

If so, it should be possible to have something in the trapdoor, but obviously you have issues around what you do with RAM, CPUs etc. that would follow.

If you can fit a GFX card and some fast RAM (a la ZZ9k) you wouldn't need a ribbon cable, you should be able to feed a VGA/DVI/HDMI extender round to the expansion plate at the back.

This all seems doable albeit highly theoretical vs the more practical approach of towering up a 1200. If that's what someone wanted. Or not.

[dreadnought]

Originally Posted by YouKnowWho

I've moved on.

Your method of "moving on" - by continuing to bring this thing up over and over again - is certainly unusual.

[YouKnowWho]

Originally Posted by trixster

You can be as social or antisocial as you please, the point is your assertion that begging is required to get a TF card is wrong.

https://www.amibay.com/showthread.ph...l-sales-thread

HA HA HA HA...oh trixster...you're living up to your nick.

I thought...hey YouKnowWho, you're being harsh on this Amibay thing perhaps today. Register, learn about it before you trash it.

And so, after locating the register option really in an obtuse place, not next to the log in window like every other website on the planet...I click register. I got....

Sorry, registration has been disabled by the administrator.:

So much for someone being able to use that site.

HEY, maybe...this is what I have to do?

Declaring interest to register for Amibay.

...what's that? Only 2 more posts before I can PM you for my declaration of interest to register to come through?

Didn't I say I understood why it was called Terrible?

[YouKnowWho]

Originally Posted by dreadnought

Your method of "moving on" - by continuing to bring this thing up over and over again - is certainly unusual.

Scorched earth on that 1260 nonsense baby!

[YouKnowWho]

Originally Posted by stevelord

As I understand it a smart guy called Rob once made a thing called the Z-500. This went onto the expansion port on the side of the A500 and lets you hook up a ZZ9000 to an A500 (whether or not this is a good idea is a separate issue). Obviously that expansion port isn't there on an A1200.

There should be an equivalently accessible set of pins via the trapdoor slot on the A1200, is that right? I'm not fussed whether it's Z-II or not, I'm looking at whether or not there's sufficient access for RTG to work.

If so, it should be possible to have something in the trapdoor, but obviously you have issues around what you do with RAM, CPUs etc. that would follow.

If you can fit a GFX card and some fast RAM (a la ZZ9k) you wouldn't need a ribbon cable, you should be able to feed a VGA/DVI/HDMI extender round to the expansion plate at the back.

This all seems doable albeit highly theoretical vs the more practical approach of towering up a 1200. If that's what someone wanted. Or not.

Thought crossed my mind if iComp is sitting on something like this already in prototype to be honest.

I read the A1200 Reloaded page in detail, and he claims he can deliver P96 RTG on that motherboard revision. If that is the case, he already has figured out the means to do this. Perhaps that could be self-contained in the next Indivision without needing a pass-through loop connection even, just clip on the thing on a chip or two, then VGA out or HDMI out. Perhaps it is cleaner to do it on a brand new complete motherboard - hence A1200 Reloaded. To be honest, at 350 Euro, that in itself would justify getting that new Amiga motherboard. Never mind that it would be the first all-original chipset authentic Amiga since the lights went out. It would be THE ONLY ONE with RTG on-board. Fingers crossed this somehow happens for 30th anniversary of the 1200 - which is 1-year away.

This ZZ9000 sure is interesting. It has more on it than required in this case, not sure you can cram all that into a wedge 1200 case - would definitely be tight and likely require floppy drive to be gone. Also, cost gets to the level of the A1200 Reloaded complete motherboard.

However....what is the deal with the RIBBON CABLE on that ZZ9000? :-)