@olegil

1500NOK

If your going to sell it that price then I’m going to buy tow for tow kids

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Facebook::LiveForIt Software for AmigaOS

@NutsAboutAmiga

Quote:

The problem I can se whit not having the socket is that you end up whit different design of the board for low end market and the hi end market,

Are you sure it has to be that way?

I'm sure olegil can correct if I'm wrong here but if there is a REAL advantage to having a highend and lowend board with the same chipset you could always design a board with all the traces to a socket and then just leave them out.

At production time you can say I want 500 with a socket and 1000 with a SOC.

I'm sure it adds complexity to the mb and it will definitely need a heap of testing with "highend" cpu's (otherwise it's rather meaningless if you're not sure that it works with other cpu's) so in the end it still not might be worth it.

_________________
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Sapphire Radeon 9100 128mb
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Sil 680 Ultra Ata 133 E-ide
SeaGate Barracuda 120gb 8mb cache

@olegil

Oh, and btw. A 333MHz PPC with a couple of PCI slots and ethernet would cost around 60USD to manufacture. We kid you not. It's just a matter of finding a target market, guys. Welcome to the world of industrial microcontrollers

_________________
This weeks pet peeve:
Using "voltage" instead of "potential", which leads to inventing new words like "amperage" instead of "current" (I, measured in A) or possible "charge" (amperehours, Ah or Coulomb, C). Sometimes I don't even know what people mean.

@olegil

Thank you verry much for this fine explanation.


For the people who are interested, here is a link to AMCC:
http://www.amcc.com/Embedded/

And i found another fine page with some nice slide-pdf's
abouth cell, powerpc, pcie, and ... whiskers.
It's from the VITA Bus & Board 2006.
http://www.busandboard.com/bab2006pres/bbagenda-2006.html

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A1G3-SE + OS4.1 u1 iso (x2)

@olegil


Hehe, AmigaOS the micro-OS for your microcontrollers !!!

_________________
A1G3-SE + OS4.1 u1 iso (x2)

@Steff

EEEEEK. Ok, now study high-speed electronics at a university and them repeat that posting. Splitting the front side bus (hundreds of megahertz, 64 bits wide) in two, deskewing all the lines to each other and mounting either a socket or a processor is simply put going to be a assload of work. I would NOT recommend that for something that has to be made cheaply.

_________________
This weeks pet peeve:
Using "voltage" instead of "potential", which leads to inventing new words like "amperage" instead of "current" (I, measured in A) or possible "charge" (amperehours, Ah or Coulomb, C). Sometimes I don't even know what people mean.

@olegil

I know I keep replying to myself, but I just found an estimated price for the 8349E. $50 at 667MHz. That's a modified 603e, but 667MHz with two UARTs, dual GbE, dual high-speed USB, PCI and DDR mounted on a PCB for less than 150USD surely cannot be something we laugh at?

Btw, that's DUAL PCI, so you could have one 66MHz PCI for graphics and one 33MHz PCI for everything else. Not as good as AGP (technically, 66MHz PCI is about as good as 1x AGP, it's just lacking the outside-band control signals), but WAY WAY WAY WAY better than a shared PCI like the Amy'05 will provide.

Last edited by olegil on 03-Feb-2006 at 04:53 PM.
Last edited by olegil on 03-Feb-2006 at 04:49 PM.
Last edited by olegil on 03-Feb-2006 at 04:48 PM.

_________________
This weeks pet peeve:
Using "voltage" instead of "potential", which leads to inventing new words like "amperage" instead of "current" (I, measured in A) or possible "charge" (amperehours, Ah or Coulomb, C). Sometimes I don't even know what people mean.

@olegil

And here is a slide-pdf abouth those:

http://www.freescale.com/files/ftf_2005/doc/reports_presentations/MN136.pdf

_________________
A1G3-SE + OS4.1 u1 iso (x2)

@Dirk-B

Interesting read. I never took that chip seriously until I suggested it in this thread. But at that price with those features, it's actually very interesting as a solid product, even if it would be the low-end Amiga.

@thread

Sorry if I ramble on a bit here, but the 8349E has some pretty neat features. 4 UARTs program compatible with the 16450, 2 USB 480Mbps ports, 2 10/100/1G ports, 66MHz PCI (I would wire this to an AGP connector and use it as AGP 1x with in-band control, aka 66MHz PCI ) + 33MHz PCI, 3 slots, a hellish amount of GPIO (available through 74AHC16245's or similar) available for Don Cox to control as many weird 1970's style homebrew projects as he would ever need , enough FlashROM to contain both UBoot, Linux kernels and OS4 kernels (64Mbit / 16 bit wide in a TSOP 48: AT49BV6416).

Again, the chance of succeeding with a project like this is a heck of a lot better than if you need to worry about CPU board, motherboard, NB, SB, onboard sound, SATA, USB and ethernet controllers.

The worst part is that we have enough people with design experience in the community to pull it off, we just need to 1: take the chance, and 2: agree on some basic things like "what are we trying to achieve"

That latter one is typically the worst, there's no point in discussing the how if you disagree on the why.

_________________
This weeks pet peeve:
Using "voltage" instead of "potential", which leads to inventing new words like "amperage" instead of "current" (I, measured in A) or possible "charge" (amperehours, Ah or Coulomb, C). Sometimes I don't even know what people mean.

@NutsAboutAmiga

There's a difference between production cost and end user price. Engineering, marketing and distribution adds indirect costs which would need to be covered, sales and distribution also adds direct costs.

But should still be possible to make a profit below 2000NOK. Note that 100 boards would cost 200000NOK up front, I would guess I'm not the only one who would think twice before laying that kinda money on the table

Split it on 10 people and it's not a big deal, though.

_________________
This weeks pet peeve:
Using "voltage" instead of "potential", which leads to inventing new words like "amperage" instead of "current" (I, measured in A) or possible "charge" (amperehours, Ah or Coulomb, C). Sometimes I don't even know what people mean.

@olegil

Well, you have here 1 person who is willing to
participate 1/10 for your boards.

_________________
A1G3-SE + OS4.1 u1 iso (x2)

Btw. on what cpu's was OS4 already running? Any SoC's?

Last edited by Dirk-B on 03-Feb-2006 at 06:43 PM.

_________________
A1G3-SE + OS4.1 u1 iso (x2)

@Dirk-B

Well, the 440 core is tricky, and I dunno about the level of support for the 405, but OS4 is already running on (at least) the 603, 604, 750 and 74xx cores, so I wouldn't worry about the other SoCs. They aren't different in CPU core from the other PPCs, they're just different in what peripherals are mapped where.

Some SoCs have weird FPUs, but this we can deal with.


I'm having a hard time figuring out how the dual PCI interface on the 8349E works, so snuck back in for another quick google

_________________
This weeks pet peeve:
Using "voltage" instead of "potential", which leads to inventing new words like "amperage" instead of "current" (I, measured in A) or possible "charge" (amperehours, Ah or Coulomb, C). Sometimes I don't even know what people mean.

@olegil

I am not sure what you are looking for but here i found
a pdf with a litle info on page 10:

http://www.freescale.com/files/32bit/doc/prod_brief/MPC8349EPB.pdf?srch=1


Edit: Ok, this is a large pdf-file but it has lots of info abouth the pci,
look at chapter 13, it is somewhere in the middle:

http://www.freescale.com/files/32bit/doc/ref_manual/MPC8349ERM.pdf?srch=1

Last edited by Dirk-B on 04-Feb-2006 at 06:07 AM.
Last edited by Dirk-B on 04-Feb-2006 at 06:06 AM.

_________________
A1G3-SE + OS4.1 u1 iso (x2)

@Dirk-B

I was thinking more "since there are no PCI interrupt inputs, do they use generic interrupt inputs for that?"

They must do, but it would be nice to see an example. The eval board only has the PCI edge-connector for use as a PCI agent, no slots for use as PCI host. That's sitting on a separate PCB which doesn't have available schematics. I hate Freescale. I truly hate them.

_________________
This weeks pet peeve:
Using "voltage" instead of "potential", which leads to inventing new words like "amperage" instead of "current" (I, measured in A) or possible "charge" (amperehours, Ah or Coulomb, C). Sometimes I don't even know what people mean.

@olegil

Thank Allah for open source software:

void __init
mpc834x_sys_init_IRQ(void)
{
bd_t *binfo = (bd_t *) __res;

u8 senses[8] = {
0, /* EXT 0 */
IRQ_SENSE_LEVEL, /* EXT 1 */
IRQ_SENSE_LEVEL, /* EXT 2 */
0, /* EXT 3 */
#ifdef CONFIG_PCI
IRQ_SENSE_LEVEL, /* EXT 4 */
IRQ_SENSE_LEVEL, /* EXT 5 */
IRQ_SENSE_LEVEL, /* EXT 6 */
IRQ_SENSE_LEVEL, /* EXT 7 */
#else
0, /* EXT 4 */
0, /* EXT 5 */
0, /* EXT 6 */
0, /* EXT 7 */
#endif
};

ipic_init(binfo->bi_immr_base + 0x00700, 0, MPC83xx_IPIC_IRQ_OFFSET, se\
nses, 8);

/* Initialize the default interrupt mapping priorities,
* in case the boot rom changed something on us.
*/
ipic_set_default_priority();
}

So the Linux kernel expects to use external interrupt pins 4-7 for PCI interrupts. Ok, so the Linux kernel doesn't actually support the full PCI implementation, but hopefully that'll improve as time goes by.

Too bad the eval board is TRULY EXPENSIVE. $1500 just for the CPU card, to evaluate it as a motherboard you need the IO board and a few PCI to PMC converters, for a total (grand) sum of $4500. Surely there must be someone who has designed in the 8349E and would sell us a board we could leach ideas from (and write software on), but who?

_________________
This weeks pet peeve:
Using "voltage" instead of "potential", which leads to inventing new words like "amperage" instead of "current" (I, measured in A) or possible "charge" (amperehours, Ah or Coulomb, C). Sometimes I don't even know what people mean.

@olegil

Quote:

Too bad the eval board is TRULY EXPENSIVE. $1500 just for the CPU card, to evaluate it as a motherboard you need the IO board and a few PCI to PMC converters, for a total (grand) sum of $4500.

There will be people who'll pay even this price.

@olegil

Don't apologise.
Your post are refreshing and informative.

Rude!

_________________
2017 Camaro 2SS

@olegil

Again with the "answering my own questions":

8349E board

It's not released yet, but I'm sure they'll get there in the end. Only problem is, those STKs don't even have PCI slots. Grod darnit, what's wrong with this universe?

_________________
This weeks pet peeve:
Using "voltage" instead of "potential", which leads to inventing new words like "amperage" instead of "current" (I, measured in A) or possible "charge" (amperehours, Ah or Coulomb, C). Sometimes I don't even know what people mean.

@olegil

Aha! Now we're honing in on the ####:

http://www.silicontkx.com/GP2PRO.htm

Technically that's an 8343E / 8347E, but the difference is simply one PCI controller and 32 bits of DDR missing. $450 in single units, $200 in OEM quantities. KINDA makes me pat my back in admiration for my own cost estimates (if they can sell it at $200 and make a profit, the cost should be pretty close to $150, and that includes an on-board SATA controller. Notice how that is the ONLY onboard thing they added outside the SoCs feature set, and it's something I could even consider doing myself.

Or an even better idea: put in a PCI to PCI bridge, with PCI1 66MHz 1 slot (AGP connector) and PCI2 66MHz 1 slot + bridge and PCI3 from bridge to 1-2 33MHz slots. So you could have a 33MHz sound card and a 66MHz SATA controller like the SI3114 would still run at full speed. Example: PCI 6152-CC66BC from PLX Tech.

_________________
This weeks pet peeve:
Using "voltage" instead of "potential", which leads to inventing new words like "amperage" instead of "current" (I, measured in A) or possible "charge" (amperehours, Ah or Coulomb, C). Sometimes I don't even know what people mean.