Sonnet 7200 PCI programming

[DarrenHD]

Originally Posted by grelbfarlk

It turns out that for just 33MHz increase, some (maybe a lot) of active cooling is required.

Got my system back up and running, I am going to try and get my Sonnet working. It's a G3/500Mhz.

[grelbfarlk]

Good time to try, the 200 version of sonnet.library is quite stable.

[grelbfarlk]

News for owners of the 400/512 boards, it appears the board is upgradeable to 1MB L2 cache with no other modifications needed. Once I verify it's totally stable I'll update the wiki. It is terribly expensive however at about 14USD.

Haha yes, terribly expensive! The high cost is comparable to the overwhelming abundance of these cards out in the wild

[grelbfarlk]

Well stated esc. You know the design isn't very complicated, actually we have found there is no custom logic on the card other than a 1k serial ROM. I think anyone who had the skills could sit down and reproduce this card (or something quite a bit better) with just a bit of effort. The MPC107 and compatible CPUs are in decent supply if someone wanted to make a hundred of these. Making thousands might be a problem but a few hundred would not be a problem based on supply logistics alone.

Man, that's pretty interesting. I'm by no means qualified to do this work, but is there someone we may be able to dragoon into working on this (for an appropriate fee of course!).

Imagine an A1200 with a Vampire accelerator for 68k and a Sonnet PPC card. :drool:

[grelbfarlk]

I'm sure you could throw a pebble at a1k.org and hit someone capable of doing it.

Do they speak English there?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

Also, has anyone tried working with a different sonnet crescendo card? Seems the ones designed for the 7300 (PCI) are more common.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk Pro

[grelbfarlk]

There is an international section of a1k.org for English speakers.

The Sonnet Crescendo 7300 is a Processor direct slot for those later Power Macs not a PCI card so it won't work.

Ah, gotcha. I assumed it was used in a PCI slot due to the label on the box

Off to a1k!

[DarrenHD]

Originally Posted by grelbfarlk

Good time to try, the 200 version of sonnet.library is quite stable.

Do you know if Idle_WOS works now?

Will it always be the case that the WarpOS software will have to be re-compiled/patched to work properly with the Sonnet?

@DarrenHD I seem to recall discussion about a resident lib that would live patch WOS software so applications would be click-ready OOTB...but I reserve the right to be wrong. :P

[grelbfarlk]

Originally Posted by DarrenHD

Do you know if Idle_WOS works now?

Will it always be the case that the WarpOS software will have to be re-compiled/patched to work properly with the Sonnet?

Esc is right the plan was to patch the executables as they were run, but Hedeon/Strim are too busy with more important stuff. For 95% of applications the "patching" is something anyone can do with FileX, it's very simple and takes no coding skills. If people need help with that I can give some directions. There are the few "odd" applications that don't follow the same pattern but they are rare.

And yes IdleWOS works now as does Warpstat and those type of apps.

[DarrenHD]

Originally Posted by grelbfarlk

Esc is right the plan was to patch the executables as they were run, but Hedeon/Strim are too busy with more important stuff. For 95% of applications the "patching" is something anyone can do with FileX, it's very simple and takes no coding skills. If people need help with that I can give some directions. There are the few "odd" applications that don't follow the same pattern but they are rare.

And yes IdleWOS works now as does Warpstat and those type of apps.

Excellent news, I shall try out the new version ;-)

[grelbfarlk]

The latest library is really quite nice how optimized it is. Amidog's version of MAME plays a lot of games with frameskip 1 as in 60fps, not sure though since the frame counter doesn't work. The few Neogeo games I've tried play perfectly. WES version of MAME runs the later games at a very nice speed as well.

We've also been playing around with FPSE, Amidog's Playstation emulator, and Syndicate Wars seems to run fine at around 60% CPU load (measured with idlewos) no sound emulation though.

Quake 2 is a bit faster as well, I hit 52fps at 640x480 on demo1.

There might be new, cool, convoluted stuff coming soon, but I'd hate to raise expectations for things that might not work out.

[Hedeon]

I had to look up convoluted.... but now you make me wonder what this stuff will be! Already having high expectations now.

[grelbfarlk]

It could be anything! It could be nothing! It could be things that would be neat but just don't work!

[DarrenHD]

Originally Posted by grelbfarlk

It could be anything! It could be nothing! It could be things that would be neat but just don't work!

I tried getting the latest version of the sonnet.library working on my A4000/CS PPC 060 66Mhz / PPC 366MHz with an Elbox Black Mediator 3V 4000, Voodoo 4, RTL8139 NIC, and Sonnet Crescendo 500Mhz...The Crescendo shows up in PCIINFO properly but if I run initsonnet my machine reboots.

Anyway, I have a CS MK3 out for repair, this one not overclocked. When it comes back I will put that in and do a clean OS 3.9BB2 install, then install the Mediator stuff and then the Sonnet.lha.

Hopefully that will help

[grelbfarlk]

Originally Posted by DarrenHD

I tried getting the latest version of the sonnet.library working on my A4000/CS PPC 060 66Mhz / PPC 366MHz with an Elbox Black Mediator 3V 4000, Voodoo 4, RTL8139 NIC, and Sonnet Crescendo 500Mhz...The Crescendo shows up in PCIINFO properly but if I run initsonnet my machine reboots.

Anyway, I have a CS MK3 out for repair, this one not overclocked. When it comes back I will put that in and do a clean OS 3.9BB2 install, then install the Mediator stuff and then the Sonnet.lha.

Hopefully that will help

Is this after Workbench is started? I'd try booting with no startup-sequence with something like:

Setpatch NOROMUPDATE
makedir RAM:ENV
assign ENV: RAM:ENV
copy ENVARC:#? to ENV: ALL
c:loadmondrvs

save it to S:starfish
then start with no Startup-sequence and execute s:starfish
Then initsonnet, see what happens.

Also make sure Winsize and Master Jumpers are ON and swap config is OFF