@pavlor

everything you add makes design more complex and thus more expensive. It is not just sticking a chip on a plate. Everything must be connected and tested, don´t you think?

so adding the chip adds much more than the costs of the chip

@OlafS25

Board costs were so high that some small adition plays no role. Eg. Cyrus board was originally Micro-ATX, but cost difference to full ATX board with more PCI/PCIe slots was minimal.


Edit: Cyrus was Micro-ATX, not Mini-ATX design.

Last edited by pavlor on 19-Apr-2015 at 11:28 AM.

@pavlor

Define "minimal" ....

If the XMOS was really added as an afterthought then it surely has added >100€ to the cost which IMO isn't "minimal" even in a 3000€ product.

Looking at the evidence and giving Trevor some benefit of doubt on his buisness skills I still think it's far more likely that the X1000 is based on an existig P6T-design that for one reason or another allready had the XMOS onboard.

Adding those slots to the X5000 adds value for the costumer (even more if we remember how long it can take to have onboard components fully supported) and therefore can be a sensible descision.

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@Kronos

Quote:

I still think it's far more likely that the X1000 is based on an existig P6T-design

Source for such claim?

@pavlor

Source for your view please

@Kronos

Trevor is not designing boards as profession and it is obviously some kind of costly hobby to him. So the idea for those chips came propably from Varisys.

Adding it to X5000 might be adding less costs than it did for the X1000 but still I would like to see a real-world application for it that makes sense (expecially compared to a PC based solution).

@OlafS25

Was talking bout the extra PCI(e) slots on the X5000, Xorro is still just a brainfart.

@pavlor

Just giving Trevor/Varisys the benefit of the doubt here...

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Is AmigaOS still DOS based?

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The X5000 Cyrus motherboard is a completely different design to the X1000 Nemo motherboard.

The e5500 chip is a very different architecture to the PA6T chip: DDR3 vs DDR2, Gen2 PCIe vs Gen1 PCIe, No Southbridge vs SB600 etc

To put things into perspective, a five digit sum of money was paid for just the design of the X5000 motherboard (the "NRE" which is the engineering and design costs)

Last edited by amigakit on 19-Apr-2015 at 01:10 PM.

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@Hillbillylitre

Quote:

Is AmigaOS still DOS based?

If you mean AmigaDOS, yes it is still there.

@amigakit

Will OS4 support all caches on e5500 (eg. 2 MB CoreNet Platform chache as L3)?

@Kronos

If the XMOS was really added as an afterthought then it surely has added >100€ to the cost which IMO isn't "minimal" even in a 3000€ product.


stop talking like the price is 3000€, thease prices are unacceptable,dont give them any impresion that it will fly with thouse prices.. it out of porpotion... anyway this tread is soon to be a 100 pages if pepole goes on in here.

@retro

Quote:

anyway this tread is soon to be a 100 pages if pepole goes on in here.

That is our intention.

@pavlor

The Xorro was added for those who enjoy h/w hacking, seems Lyle was the only one that enjoyed doing that. I don't know of anyone who bought an x1000 for that feature anyway, but the trolls think we all did, just stupid. The slot is dual purpose, its a pcie x1/Xorro connector, so any pcie card will work there.

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@sundown

Quote:

sundown wrote: The Xorro was added for those who enjoy h/w hacking, seems Lyle was the only one that enjoyed doing that. I don't know of anyone who bought an x1000 for that feature anyway, but the trolls think we all did, just stupid. The slot is dual purpose, its a pcie x1/Xorro connector, so any pcie card will work there.

I don't think this is correct. You cannot put any PCIe card in the X1000's Xorro slot, as it is wired differently and connected to the Xena (XMOS) chip directly.

Lyle has just released (IIRC) the first publicly available Xorro card that is intended for beta testers and programmers. It is a data logger that uses the speed of the Xena chip to record (log events/data) and store that recorded information to a SD card at greater speed. Although the implementation of the Xena chip on the X1000 is limited in some ways, and they (A-Eon) have not paid to have the complete tool chain from XMOS ported to AmigaOS4.x, I still believe that talented Amiga programmers and hardware hackers will come up with some interesting uses for that connection and alternate processing power, even if it is not the most practical and efficient way of doing something, or utilizing the chip and interface.

Also, IIRC, it was the engineers, or owners of Varisys that suggested the XMOS chip be added to the Nemo board(s), not a requested item from either Hyperion developers, or Trevor. Trevor just probably asked how much extra it would cost, and gave the okay to add it on the advice and information available at the time. It is highly debatable that the advice he received then was wise, or prudent.

Personally, as an owner of an X1000, I like the fact that the Xena chip and Xorro interface are included, just because of the possibility that something interesting or cool may later be developed that uses them. If nothing ever is done with it (besides what Lyle has already released), I am okay with that too.

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@sundown

Actually us "trolls" are the one that pointed out that most X1000-costumers have 0 use and very little interest in XMOS/Xorro making it an useless expense.

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@amigadave

Quote:

I don't think this is correct. You cannot put any PCIe card in the X1000's Xorro slot, as it is wired differently and connected to the Xena (XMOS) chip directly.

The XORRO socket is inline with abut not a part of the PCIE socket. This you can put in a special pcietoxorro bridge card giveing access to the system resoucres via the pcie bus or a plain xorro card or a plain pcie card.

I've no idea what if any of the first two options exists.

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@amigadave

I am delighted to read about Xorro and find so much _correct_ information! :) :)
I can add detail, as always.

The Xorro slot is actually a oddly sized PCIE slot mounted backwards, to prevent anything but a proper Xorro card to be inserted. The pinout is all specific to the Xena chip, so using it for anything else is impossible.
It is mounted in-line with a PCIeX1 slot, which is as normal and functional as any other PCIeX1 slot on the Nemo board.

So that debate ends in a draw, you are both correct. :)

There have been a few challenges that come with developing for Xena. There have also been a few adventurous users who have successfully played around with it. I am NOT the only one.

I don't usually speak about projects that I do for others, but I'll give a bit of a teaser on one topic.. The compiler for Xena chips requires a 32 bit x86 processor, which has been a bit of a "sticking point", preventing the development of Xena/Xorro code on an AmigaOS system. Any time you add the need to copy the xecutable from the dev system to the host system AFTER EVERY COMPILE, it really becomes a lot less fun.

I have, with my very limited networking skills, hacked together a set of scripts that allow me to make Xena projects without ever leaving the AmigaOS command line. It's not particularly fast or elegant, but the ability to do it all from one place is a big step in the right direction. There is a small, slow netbook running WinXP that is slaved to this task, but it can receive, process and return XC compile jobs from anywhere on the internet.
I have not shared this with the public because the puny little netbook would be overwhelmed by any serious workload. I have however, opened discussions with others who may (or may not) decide to host this service on a more capable system.

I think I've probably spent as much time on various incarnations of the "build system" as I have on the Sentinel X-Logger project itself.. And that's not a complaint, it's just doing what is needed to move forward.

I wish I could say more, but I think I am safe on the build system stuff, as I kinda made it up and hosted it myself so far..

What would be even better than a fast host computer? If I knew enough about how to set up a compile environment on a cloud server... that might be the very best solution of all. But that is so far out of my realm of experience, I could never try it without some expert guidance.

Xena has had a slow start. It may not ever be a "killer app".. but it's hard to rule anything out in this crazy world of AmigaOS.

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@broadblues

The bare Xorro card populates both sockets, so anyone wanting to create a bridge device has a PCB ready for prototying.

Using each slot for different cards should be possible technically, but it would be a challenge mechanically.

Each of the projects (Yes, more than one!) I have wired up so far ignored the PCIe connections. I don't know enough about the bus requirements to make use of them.

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