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      /  What should "entry level hardware" be like?
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wolfe 
Re: What should "entry level hardware" be like?
Posted on 5-Feb-2006 16:29:28
#141 ]
Super Member
Joined: 18-Aug-2003
Posts: 1283
From: Under The Moon - Howling in the Blue Grass

@olegil

Sounds interesting . . . .

As per the thread title, we need hardware, not entry or high end but hardware. In this community whatever we get will be entry and high end because getting 2 different setups going at the same time just will not happen.

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Dirk-B 
Re: What should "entry level hardware" be like?
Posted on 5-Feb-2006 16:34:35
#142 ]
Super Member
Joined: 8-Mar-2003
Posts: 1185
From: Belgium

@wolfe

So, you think that the Amy05 and the PowerVixxen
can not happen at the same time.

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

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wolfe 
Re: What should "entry level hardware" be like?
Posted on 5-Feb-2006 18:19:07
#143 ]
Super Member
Joined: 18-Aug-2003
Posts: 1283
From: Under The Moon - Howling in the Blue Grass

@Dirk-B

I will believe it when I see it.

What news on PowerVixxen? No news is vaporware dreams until it becomes a reality. . .

In this market, well, when its out its real but until then NO ! (It's a pipe dream)

Smoke Up !

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Flexinoodle 
Re: What should "entry level hardware" be like?
Posted on 6-Feb-2006 1:15:57
#144 ]
Member
Joined: 10-Jan-2006
Posts: 24
From: Unknown

@Olegil
PM me if you are serious about this, If we can actually get hold of Amiga Inc and get some concrete info i am more than willing to go out and try and get the funding.

I have read what you said about not being interested in that side of it and that is fine but we definatly need to get in contact with AI and start out properly.

The board would have to be Linux capable for an entirely different market (Something else i am involved in that could use this)


Edit* Just thinking of this with Dennis's Minimig onboard via a PCI, Oh and just for the record i would prefer a board that comes with nothing that costs extra, Like Olegil says if you can buy it cheaper and stick it in a PCI slot then do that.


Last edited by Flexinoodle on 06-Feb-2006 at 01:18 AM.

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billt 
Re: What should "entry level hardware" be like?
Posted on 6-Feb-2006 1:59:48
#145 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 24-Oct-2003
Posts: 3205
From: Maryland, USA

@olegil
Quote:
Note that the AmigaOne has a fairly expensive connector
...
If you have a $299 motherboard, adding a $150 connector will need quite a bit of justification (yes, the MegArray costs something like that in small quantities.


http://www.mouser.com/catalog/625/1052.pdf

They ain't dirt cheap, but they ain't no $150 either.

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Legion 
Re: What should "entry level hardware" be like?
Posted on 6-Feb-2006 2:03:03
#146 ]
Cult Member
Joined: 21-Apr-2003
Posts: 820
From: Fargo, ND, USA

@billt

That's interesting. I thought they would be way more than that in small quantities.

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...wait... what?

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Dirk-B 
Re: What should "entry level hardware" be like?
Posted on 6-Feb-2006 7:30:13
#147 ]
Super Member
Joined: 8-Mar-2003
Posts: 1185
From: Belgium

Hmm, i have been thinking abouth the amount of pci-slots
that would be needed for the low-end board.

What i would place on such a board is :
1 ram
1 graphics-card
1 ide/scsi/sata-card
1 network-card

other people would need:
1 sound-card
1 usb-card
1 ram (X2)
...

Now, we could make a board with 1, 3, 5 or more pci-slots.
But i have a question here:

Is there some sort of pci-splitter wich can be used?

And if there is, how many times can we split the pci-slot?

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olegil 
Re: What should "entry level hardware" be like?
Posted on 6-Feb-2006 7:33:19
#148 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 22-Aug-2003
Posts: 5895
From: Work

@Flexinoodle

Linux and UBoot already supports a board based on the 8349E, unfortunately only one PCI bus is supported. I figure the smartest way to go about this is to use the excact same configuration they do for the PCI bus, and have the 1x AGP as extra. That way it should be a minimal effort to get Linux and UBoot up and running with PCI graphics, sound and IDE. I'm unfortunately not the right guy to ask for UBoot or Linux coding, but services like that can be bought.

I would still rather make a PCI Express system, but I figure that might be more long-term. DDR2 and PCIe is slightly trickier than DDR and 66MHz PCI. Not a lot, but enough to make me a bit nervous

Write me an email (@samfundet.no), we'll continue the discussion there.


@billt
That's a heck of a lot better than I thought. So around 50 USD more for a system with a MegArray than one with a soldered CPU. That includes the extra PCB needed.

_________________
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.

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olegil 
Re: What should "entry level hardware" be like?
Posted on 6-Feb-2006 15:18:08
#149 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 22-Aug-2003
Posts: 5895
From: Work

@Dirk-B

I'm not sure I can explain this, but I'll try.

In PCI, there's a set of interrupts, and a set of busmastering (DMA) pins. The busmastering works more or less like the Zorro port, and the interrupts aren't that different from Zorro either. Zorro has 1 interrupt, PCI has 4. Zorro has a 3-wire DMA protocol, PCI has a 2-wire protocol. But PCI has one busmaster pinpair per device, Zorro has one for all devices. PCI busmastering pins are called REQ/GNT, short for REQuest / GraNT. Zorro busmastering pins are named BR, BG and BGACK, for Bus Request, Bus Grant and Bus Grant Acknowledge.

The 4 interrupt pins are wired to all slots, but they are rotated, so the first slot gets INTA, INTB, INTC, INTD, while the second slot gets INTB, INTC, INTD, INTA and so on.

There's also an IDSEL for each PCI device which you wire to one of the AD11-31 address/data pins
If a device answers on idsel 20, the BIOS expects the device to use a certain interrupt. If it answers to idsel 21, the BIOS expects it to use a different interrupt. A device can use 0-4 interrupts, which means in a system with 6 cards, some interrupts are likely to be shared.

Now, if you have a PCI bus with a bridge on it, you just keep wiring things as you would normally. You give the bridge chip a REQuest/GraNT pair, and you wire one REQ/GNT pair to each slot / device on the other side. Then you wire the IDSEL pins for each slot / device, and you rotate the interrupt pins so that the IDSEL numbers match what the BIOS expects from the interrupt configuration.

That should be it, really. The problem with riser cards is not the interrupts, but the REQ/GNT pins, there needs to be one pair of pins per device in the system, and there's only one pair available in each PCI slot. A passive riser needs to collect the REQ/GNT pins from somewhere else, (passive 3-slot riser needs to connect to 3 PCI slots on the motherboard) while an active one can generate it's own. The PEX6150 asynchronous PCI bridge ($12) can handle 8 busmasters on the secondary bus, in essence increasing the possible number of PCI slots by 7 (turns 8 busmasters into 1).

I don't think you can have more than 21 PCI devices on a controller, no matter how many bridges you put in there. The number 21 comes from the number of available IDSEL bits, address 11 to 31 (inclusive). A PCI device can have more than one "function", there's 8 functions available per IDSEL (bits 8-10). And each function has up to 64 configuration registers (bits 2-7).

_________________
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.

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Dirk-B 
Re: What should "entry level hardware" be like?
Posted on 6-Feb-2006 16:33:33
#150 ]
Super Member
Joined: 8-Mar-2003
Posts: 1185
From: Belgium

@olegil

Woooow, that sounds realy complicated.

Thanks for your time to explain this.

I supose this is the info-sheet then:
http://www.plxtech.com/.../PCI6150_ProductBrief_v1.0.pdf

And the other docs:
http://www.plxtech.com/products/fastlane_bridges/PCI6150/default.asp

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TMTisFree 
Re: What should "entry level hardware" be like?
Posted on 6-Feb-2006 17:34:12
#151 ]
Super Member
Joined: 6-Nov-2003
Posts: 1487
From: Nice, so nice

@olegil

Rest assured I read carefully your posts so I know that
blah-blah is not your cup of tea :)

I'm not sure that financing and distribution is a major problem
for/to Amiga Inc., except, of course, that you have to secure some funds
for the license itself. As discussing with A. Inc. will potentialy last a long time,
it's probably a good idea to begin work on the design.

So ,yes, you certainly need a rather well qualified person for that deal.
I wish you good luck finding him/her. Please inform us on that matter.

Bye,
TMTisFree

_________________
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The scientific approach to our non-problems: "find a new energy source".
The environmentalist approach to our non-problems: "stop washing your shirts".

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olegil 
Re: What should "entry level hardware" be like?
Posted on 6-Feb-2006 21:32:37
#152 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 22-Aug-2003
Posts: 5895
From: Work

@Dirk-B

That's the sucker. Of course, I'm registered in their premium service thingie, but I don't think there's anything more than registering involved to see the rest of the documents. I learned quite a bit about both PCI Express and PCI just from reading pdfs from PLX Tech

And I learned a great deal about DDR / DDR2 from Freescale App notes.

Oh, and I just found this little bugger:
http://www.plxtech.com/products/NET2000/NET2272/default.asp

USB2.0 in an SRAM-style interface.

I wouldn't be surprised if that would fit quite nicely beside the bootflash and the GPIOs on the local bus interface of the 8349E, giving Samwel the extra USB connectors he wanted


Ok, so it's only one port per $12, but since this adds virtually no complexity it's hard to say no to one or two front ports

(edit: come to think of it, this plus a 4 port hub will very likely go into both my ongoing design ideas).

Last edited by olegil on 06-Feb-2006 at 09:35 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.

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Troika 
Re: What should "entry level hardware" be like?
Posted on 6-Feb-2006 23:16:12
#153 ]
Regular Member
Joined: 30-Jul-2005
Posts: 114
From: Unknown

@olegil

Quote:
I don't want to do this as a hobby project, I wanna do it as a professional product.


Your more then welcome to join Troika.

@billt

We will need good FPGA design as well in the near future.

@ engineers
I'm planning on recruiting some engineers for our next project.

Quote:
With funding from Amy sales we can start our next Troika design project code named “Zeus”

FAQ Link
hope to hear from you @ admin@troikang.com

_________________
Troika NG progress reports & news releases will be released as such, from my office.
ttp://www.troikang.com/ Amy, A NEW HOPE
============================================
Opinions I might express are mine alone,and do not represent those of Troika

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hatschi 
Re: What should "entry level hardware" be like?
Posted on 6-Feb-2006 23:21:02
#154 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 1-Dec-2005
Posts: 2328
From: Good old Europe.

@Troika

Quote:
Your more then welcome to join Troika.


I hope you know what this would require? A complete redesign of your website and re-naming to

www.Quadriga_ng.com

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fisk 
Re: What should "entry level hardware" be like?
Posted on 7-Feb-2006 10:26:54
#155 ]
Member
Joined: 24-Jan-2005
Posts: 61
From: Unknown

@olegil

cool to see you have changed your mind on PCI and now consider also that as a way to go

@Troika:

Teaming up with Olegil and BillT would be cool thing

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ironfist 
Re: What should "entry level hardware" be like?
Posted on 7-Feb-2006 11:11:06
#156 ]
Cult Member
Joined: 26-Dec-2004
Posts: 770
From: Pegasos.org

hatschi
"A complete redesign of your website and re-naming to.."

Not necessarily.. He/She/It might be alone today.. :)

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hatschi 
Re: What should "entry level hardware" be like?
Posted on 7-Feb-2006 19:18:43
#157 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 1-Dec-2005
Posts: 2328
From: Good old Europe.

@ironfist

Quote:
Not necessarily.. He/She/It might be alone today.. :)


Yep, but that would still require a renaming to www.duo_ng.com or www.twin_ng.com then

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billt 
Re: What should "entry level hardware" be like?
Posted on 7-Feb-2006 21:36:50
#158 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 24-Oct-2003
Posts: 3205
From: Maryland, USA

@Troika
Quote:
We will need good FPGA design as well in the near future.


I don't know a great deal about using an FPGA in a design. My experience is doing silicon layout of FPGA chips themselves. I've managed to avoid VHDL pretty successfully (I found it's pretty gross), and my verilog experience is limited to silicon-level place&route and verification of someone else's post-synthesis logic design, but I do want to learn verilog design myself if I ever find time for it.


@fisk
Quote:
Teaming up with Olegil and BillT would be cool thing


I don't know how much teaming up I can offer. I've already got more things to do than I have time, and have had to learn how to say "no" to things I'm interested in, for the purpose of sanity and so I can actually get anything at all done. I do have a couple ideas, but someone else already has dibs on the nitty gritty details so I can't share them here. But I am happy to take part in discussions on general things that won't be in conflict with anything that a few other people already claim ownership to.

I appreciate people thinking I'm worthy of participation, and I'm happy to do what I can, but I'm not likely to seriously get into anything to the extent of doing any real design work. Such projects currently have a better chance of meeting deadlines without relying on me for any really important stuff. :) I already don't too often post here at home, I mostly do when I need a distraction or have a slow week at work.

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Samwel 
Re: What should "entry level hardware" be like?
Posted on 8-Feb-2006 2:39:11
#159 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 7-Apr-2004
Posts: 3404
From: Sweden

@olegil

Hi again!

So how would this board look like? If everything is to be added with PCI cards?!
I suppose you want it small? Not with 5 PCI slots I mean..

A desktop user wants graphics, sound, usb (more than two ports), harddrive
and CD/DVD atleast for the most basic needs. If you're thinking other markets
then I suppose all these features aren't needed.

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[SOLD] µA1-C - 750GX 800MHz - 512MB - Antec Aria case

Avatar by HNL_DK!

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olegil 
Re: What should "entry level hardware" be like?
Posted on 8-Feb-2006 8:17:15
#160 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 22-Aug-2003
Posts: 5895
From: Work

@Samwel

Size: 4 PCI slots, normal microATX size (less than 25x25cm).
I'm putting in an extra USB controller and a 4 port hub, giving a total of 6 USB2.0 channels, 2 independent and 4 on a hub

_________________
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.

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