@vox

Remember blizzard PPC can take 256MB of ram. That is double what a Cyberstorm PPC can take and gives much more breathing room.

ZorRAM cannot be used on an A1200 because the ZorRAM requires Zorro 3.

However with hard disk paging you will have additional cushion.

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@HammerD

Quote:

ZorRAM cannot be used on an A1200 because the ZorRAM requires Zorro 3. However with hard disk paging you will have additional cushion.

Hmm, I wonder which will be the faster of the two on the A4000.

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CD32/Elsat ProModule, TF360
CD32/ Edu's CD32 <> A1200 Adapter, Vampire V2
CD32/ FMV Module

@HammerD

Well with best out there, fast 604, CGX driver and some Virge or Voodo and even 256MB how do you think OS 4.1 will work compared to e.g. SAM 533Mhz experiences?

The PPC tests I have seen at some polish websites indicate that G3 and G4 (and even the EP440) CPU`s are far advanced and that 603/604 is closer to 68060 then to their speeds (altough is improvement over 68k CPU`s)

If the CPU Upgrade card comes, it will have only PPC CPU this time, so 68k`s will be officially dead, unless someone rebutes to OS 3.9 If the new card CPU is fast enough to run UAE smoothly, no need for reboot.

So in 2010 Amiga goes PowerPC

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Future Acube and MOS supporter, fi di good, nothing fi di unprofessionals. Learn it harder way!

@vox

O tome im i pričam totalna migracija, ali ne gledaju svi tako :)
Thats what I talking about total migation, but not all users see OS4.1 for classics in that way :)

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@thread

Everyone reading the former poll and considering how best to phrase the new poll, this is what HammerD is considering:

Quote:

"If a new PPC accelerator were to be developed for the A1200/A4000, capable of running OS4.1, would you buy it, assuming reasonable price? A) Yes! B) No! C) Yes, but only if it also had a 68K to run OS 3.x D) pancakes

We'll wait a little while for any more ideas, else this will get posted later as it stands. I have no vote in whether "pancakes" remains a polling response. heh.

#6

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This posting, in its entirety, represents solely the perspective of the author.
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@Akiko

We already know the speeds from previously published tests.

Amiga 4000 IDE gets you about 2.5MB/second maximum. That is scsi.device.

ZorRAM will give you, give or take, 10MB/second.

Cyberstorm PPC SCSI will give you 12-14MB/second, and with DMA. (I am talking about under OS 4.0, not OS 3.9 where the direct native driver can give you much more speed).

So, the ZorRAM becomes a better solution for speed vs. A4000 IDE. The difference is the size and cost.

The paging device, as is publically known with OS 4.x on AmigaONE/SAM, etc, can be set to a maximum of 2GB.

You can't really put 2GB of ZorRAM in your computer, (although, address space limitations aside, you theoretically can add more than one ZorRAM). So it's cheaper, yet slower, to add hard disk IDE paging.

A good solution may be to add one ZorRAM card (128MB or 256MB) then also have a SWAP partition to use as a secondary paging device, should the ZorRAM get filled up.

I do not talk about paging to the Cyberstorm PPC SCSI because it has not been announced if this is a feature or not.

Last edited by HammerD on 28-Oct-2010 at 07:59 PM.
Last edited by HammerD on 28-Oct-2010 at 07:59 PM.
Last edited by HammerD on 28-Oct-2010 at 07:58 PM.

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@vox

I think it would approach SAM 533MHz speeds but the SAM would still be faster.

I personally would support a project to bring a new PPC card to the A1200/A4000. However, it should be coming with a CPU that makes it worth it. (ie. faster than Cyberstorm PPC by a large enough margin that it makes it interesting).

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AmigaOS 4.x Beta Tester - Classic Amiga enthusiast - http://www.hd-zone.com is my Amiga Blog, check it out!

@HammerD

Quote:

ZorRAM will give you, give or take, 10MB/second.

AFAIK this is achieved only if ZorRAM is mapped as non-cacheable. Or did I miss something?

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Amiga 500, Efika, Mac Mini and PowerBook

@itix

Using write-thru cache to "write" to the device (for paging) is where the 10MB/sec comes from. This was discovered during testing already ;)

So yes, you are correct.

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@HammerD

Okay so it is just copyback mode is turned off but otherwise memory is cached? Without L1 cache it would be dead slow...

Any PPC benchmarks to see how fast it is from the PPC side (WUP/PUP) ?

Last edited by itix on 28-Oct-2010 at 08:32 PM.

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Amiga Developer
Amiga 500, Efika, Mac Mini and PowerBook

@itix

Experiences with OS 4
http://www.intuitionbase.com/static.php?section=en_OS4_Classics
http://www.osnews.com/story/18991/Amiga_OS4_0_Classic_Released
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7y-RKfLfO4Y
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sTeFCvri-Ew&feature=related

Test in Croatian
http://tinyurl.com/2wrgeuc
Google Translated to English
http://tinyurl.com/38ko662


Shortened the urls which were messing up the layout ./tomazkid

Last edited by tomazkid on 28-Oct-2010 at 10:04 PM.
Last edited by tomazkid on 28-Oct-2010 at 10:03 PM.

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Future Acube and MOS supporter, fi di good, nothing fi di unprofessionals. Learn it harder way!

@HammerD

Quote:

If a new PPC accelerator were to be developed for the A1200/A4000, capable of running OS4.1, would you buy it, assuming reasonable price? A) Yes! B) No! C) Yes, but only if it also had a 68K to run OS 3.x D) pancakes

The only thing I'd say there is, what do you mean by a reasonable price? The old thread specified £280, but exchange rates have changed a bit since 2008, for some reason.

As for feasibility, I'm very confident that if the manufacturer didn't worry too much about the 68k (using a low-cost FPGA or something, if a 68k is included at all), and if they picked the right Power chip, it could be done. For example we have AppliedMicro's new embedded SoC, APM801xx, which offers 800MHz performance, about equal to the Sam440 range, but at 1-watt power consumption and $10 per chip in volume.

It would comprehensively beat the existing PowerPC accelerators performance-wise, and I really can't see how anyone could possibly make a new one cost *more* than the ones currently knocking about on the second hand market.

And of course it must be remembered that the accelerator plan and the NG Amiga plan are not mutually exclusive. A board that works standalone as well as plugged into a classic system isn't beyond the realms of possibility. The most recent APM announcements have a lot of potential for ACube in the future.


As a side-note on cost, it appears that Jens Schönfeld can put a 33MHz 68030 accelerator card on the market for ¤99. It seems therefore that it is possible to design a decent product without having it cost a fortune.

@itix

It works normally (as normal ZorRAM speed is, about 10MB/sec), so yes. Yes, the ZorRAM card is slower than (for example, CS PPC memory), but it's okay.

I believe I have posted bustest results that show about 10MB/sec somewhere...

How do you test from PowerUP/WUP? You mean under OS 3.9? I think I did the bustest under OS 3.9.

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AmigaOS 4.x Beta Tester - Classic Amiga enthusiast - http://www.hd-zone.com is my Amiga Blog, check it out!

@HammerD

Quote:

I believe I have posted bustest results that show about 10MB/sec somewhere...

I found it via google :)
http://www.amiga.org/forums/showthread.php?t=54411

Quote:

How do you test from PowerUP/WUP? You mean under OS 3.9? I think I did the bustest under OS 3.9.

Using PPC native memspeed or something. SysSpeed has PPC test but I dont know how reliable it was. In theory results should be same but necessary it isnt always so.

Edit: ah of course with SysSpeed you can not test specific region (ZorRAM area) easily.

Last edited by itix on 28-Oct-2010 at 09:53 PM.

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Amiga Developer
Amiga 500, Efika, Mac Mini and PowerBook

@itix

Yes that's it. My ZorRAM results posted there are not using write-thru. When you use write-thru you get the 10MB/sec.

EDIT: my later posts have the 10MB/sec numbers I see from that Amiga.org thread :)

My memory is bad! :)

Last edited by HammerD on 28-Oct-2010 at 10:24 PM.

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AmigaOS 4.x Beta Tester - Classic Amiga enthusiast - http://www.hd-zone.com is my Amiga Blog, check it out!

@HammerD

A lucky guess is that AmigaMap revealed many more Classic users, and
sudenly OS 4.1 Classic become a viable project. Problem now is how to
make it usable on Classic, that I assume is last but interesting breath
of live: Classics go PPC

_________________
Future Acube and MOS supporter, fi di good, nothing fi di unprofessionals. Learn it harder way!

@vox

I dont think so. No matter how many users there are using old Amigas there is only limited number of PPC boards left.

As I see AmigaKit wanted to add ZorRAM support into OS4/PowerUP and invested some money into new PowerUP release ("Once we break-even on ZorRAM and our investment into forthcoming AmigaOS 4.1 Classic"). (And nothing wrong with that.)

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Amiga 500, Efika, Mac Mini and PowerBook

@Dandy

Quote:

Dandy wrote: @Deniil715 Quote: Deniil715 wrote: My view on this: ... About hardware upgrades for Classic: NOO!! The Classic is just that, classic. There really is no reason to do this. If you like to smoothly run the latest OS4 you get new hardware designed for it. ... And what if I'd like to have the A1X1k AND my trusty old A4kPPC with a faster PPC? It's my hobby after all... If you don't want to have a new, faster PPC expansion board for classics - fine - just don't buy one. But please do not dictate others what they want to have and what not!

I'm hardly in a position to dictate anyone The thing is just that I much rather have some hardware manufacturer, and Hyperion, to spend their time in the future developing an Amiga Laptop or something, rather than the past creating yet another hack for old machines.

And out of curiosity, what will that new PPC in the A4k run that you can't run on the X1000? I mean, having two machine doing practically the same thing, only one is slower, doesn't make much sense to me.

I kind of like to have a Classic running again, but not that hack-patch monster of a A1200 I have somewhere in the basement. The AmigaOne is the successor of that. No point in looking back, unless I look far enough back to when I could run ProTracker and Pinball Fantasies etc.

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> Amiga Classic and OS4 developer for OnyxSoft.

@Deniil715

The NG Amiga project and the classic accelerator idea aren't mutually exclusive. I'd rather Hyperion and their partners do whatever brings the cash in to fund the development of the AmigaOS. If at the moment there are more customers looking to stick a Power Architecture machine inside their old A4000s, I say go for it. The accelerator board could even be dual-purpose. Either literally as a board that you can either use standalone or as an add-on, or as two separate products with slightly modified designs based on the same basic layout.

For reflection, it was pointed out by @number6 near the beginning of the thread that Hi-Toro started out selling joysticks for Atari machines.

So no one from Amigaworld team can't ask couple questions classic hardware developers (Elbox, Invidual computers, GVP) about plans for future and potencial PPC accelerator card, cooperation with Hyperion...?

Such a pity..

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