@jack

Quote:

Visually 2 cards are seem to be similar, but the specs differ a bit (max memory for exmaple and a theoretical option to use G4). Maybe they (Elbox) bought a license to use the design?

A week before I wrote http://msaros.blogspot.com/2006/02/cheap-ppc-alternative.html I have been talking with Sonnet principal engineer (the one who did designed this card) about possibility of Crescendo/7200's use in PC. I remember asking about Elbox but got no concrete reply (NDA? dunno.) Personally, I really doubt they've bought some special license.

PS. I really do not understand Elbox. There was absolutely no need to "borrow" the board from Sonnet. The Crescendo/7200 is an extremely easy design. It is a northbridge (MPC105, the very TSI105 northbridge owned by motorola that days, the one that was planned to be used in Amy05 by the way;)) conneced with memory and CPU. The northbridge works in the slave mode, where it access PCI bus and is able to initiate bus-master transfers only. Any interrupt communication between crescendo and the host-cpu is done through so called doorbell register in MPC105. The card does not possess any firmware. The only tricky part was AFAIR the initialization of the card: one had to put some initial code into memory of crescendo and issue a PCI bus reset.

Such skilled engineers like the ones at Elbox should have no issues with designing such card from scratch. All informations about the slave mode of MPC105/TSI105 (including a block diagram of such solution) are available in the documentation of this northbridge.

One day when I will have some more spare time, I will try to get such crescendo card ($40 is not that much money anyway) and try to make my x86_64 machine execute some PPC code with it :)

@michalsc

Heheh, sounds interesting.


Plz, do find some spare time

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@Sir_Lucas

Quote:

Plz, do find some spare time

I'm rather busy wit sam440 at the moment :)

@michalsc

Quote:

The Crescendo/7200 is an extremely easy design. It is a northbridge (MPC105, the very TSI105 northbridge owned by motorola that days, the one that was planned to be used in Amy05 by the way;)) conneced with memory and CPU.

I like the way you think, and the classic might be the way around the "legal" mess.

What's more Amy likes PCI

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@michalsc

Quote:

michalsc wrote: @jack ... One day when I will have some more spare time, I will try to get such crescendo card ($40 is not that much money anyway) and try to make my x86_64 machine execute some PPC code with it :)

Please find some more sparetime and make it work in the Mediators for the classics as well...

Last edited by Dandy on 31-Jan-2008 at 09:19 AM.

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@Dandy

wouldn't that involve writing a driver so it gets recognized?

Post removed on account of flaming.

Also, horrendous spelling and grammar, shame.

Last edited by Yo on 02-Feb-2008 at 02:44 AM.
Last edited by retro on 01-Feb-2008 at 11:28 PM.

Removed: Flaming

Last edited by Yo on 02-Feb-2008 at 02:46 AM.

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The problem with AmigaOS on PPC isn't that PPC is big-endian. The problem with AmigaOS on PPC is that PPC is dead-endian.

Removed: Flaming

Last edited by Yo on 02-Feb-2008 at 02:47 AM.
Last edited by d0c on 01-Feb-2008 at 11:46 PM.

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Removed : Flaming

Last edited by Yo on 02-Feb-2008 at 02:48 AM.

@retro, d0c and to a lesser extent DungeonDelver

This is absolutely ridiculous!

You WILL treat others with respect on this Forum, regardless of how you feel about them, or their business practices in Real Life. If you have a problem, you take it to PMs. We are adults on this forum and if you want to throw around insults like that, then take it to a more age and maturity appropriate forum, and I can suggest one, if need be.

ONE MORE DISPARAGING WORD out of any of you, and it will be vacation time comes early. Do I make myself clear?

You retro and you d0c ''should be'' ashamed of yourselves.

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(No, I didn't type that with a straight face.)

@Yo

i am sorry then...


i will see forward to see the same action from the modertators agens the blue team

@retro

If you spot an infraction please let us know by hitting the AR and we will deal with it. We can't be everywhere at all times. We depend on the help of users in this regard.

_________________
Moxee
AmigaOne X1000
AmigaOne XE G4
I'd agree with you, but then we'd both be wrong.

@retro

Quote:

retro wrote: @Yo i am sorry then... i will see forward to see the same action from the modertators agens the blue team

Apology accepted, thank you.

Now, I like to think I am colour-blind in regards to ''Team Colours'' and I always try to treat everyone with the same respect.

If WE as a group are against ''any one side'' I would hope it is the side that is attempting to take away our right to choose alternative platforms.

Regardless, please... hit the AR button instead of the submit button, you can even drop one of us a note if you believe this will help explain a problem that you have seen.

Kind regards

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(No, I didn't type that with a straight face.)

@Yo

Thanks for cleaning up the thread...

Troika might not have succeed in producing a product, but one day they might.

At lest the shown they can produce PCB

@Troika

I love design some PCB my self but I have realized that the equipment required is too expensive and you need a place to work as well, plus the cost for components and etc.

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@michalsc

sound interesting.

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@Troika

Maybe Troika should broker a Deal with Sonnet and do this?

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@Darth_X

You're free to conclude whatever you wish, but several pages seem to have changed content:
http://www.troikang.com/index.html

#6

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number6:

Yeah.. I just love this line on their site:
"SDRAM
2 x DIMM memory slots
(Regular,Unbuffered, Off the shelf PC100/133 SDRAM. Max of 1GB)"

"Off the shelf" and PC100/133 is quite the paradox
in 2008. Even back in 2005, DDR was the dominant
memory type. Today we have DDR-2 and DDR-3..

Other than that.. Well. I doubt the Sonnet is RoHS
compliant and therefore the Shark will never be
released. Not as a rebranded Sonnet anyway..

Last edited by ironfist on 02-Feb-2008 at 09:35 PM.

@ironfist

Personly I think many of the hardware projects are too advanced.

Maybe if the designed some thing really simple like RAM + CPU + simple 2 x 16 chars LCD display, just to test the basic first, before adding sound chips + pci + agp all that.

Last edited by NutsAboutAmiga on 02-Feb-2008 at 09:34 PM.

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