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      /  Apparently the A1XE/SE USB needs a HW fix too!
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PosterThread
DrBombcrater 
Re: Apparently the A1XE/SE USB needs a HW fix too!
Posted on 13-Jan-2005 0:14:06
#241 ]
Super Member
Joined: 6-Feb-2004
Posts: 1382
From: UK

@kgrach

The difference between the results of the slowest tested config (750/600, reg mem) and the fastest (74xx/1066, unreg) is only 28%. Considering that the G4 card's level-3 cache and the unregistered memory are responsible for some of the extra speed, I think the memory bus is clearly hitting a hard throughput limit.

Of course it's important to point out that while this is interesting from a technical point of view, it is not really a huge deal in the real world. For most applications raw memory speed isn't all that much of an issue.

One of the few bits of software on OS4 that seems to be sensitive to memory speed is our old friend Quake. Timedemo results are affected quite significantly by ram speed and latency. It's quite amusing to see what lowering the memory clock to 100MHz does to Quake's fps rate, even with the CPU clock is kept the same. I'm very glad my A1 is stable at 133MHz

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tonyw 
Re: Apparently the A1XE/SE USB needs a HW fix too!
Posted on 13-Jan-2005 1:23:40
#242 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 8-Mar-2003
Posts: 3240
From: Sydney (of course)

@DrBombcrater

AFAIK, there is no L3 cache fitted to any of the G4 modules (certainly none on mine). When I asked about it a year or so ago, I was told "it only makes about 5-10% difference, it's not worth the expense".

tony

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tony

Hyperion Support Forum: http://forum.hyperion-entertainment.biz/index.php

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sibbi 
Re: Apparently the A1XE/SE USB needs a HW fix too!
Posted on 13-Jan-2005 1:47:39
#243 ]
Team Member
Joined: 18-Mar-2003
Posts: 664
From: Iceland

@Thread

Aren't we getting just a little bit here

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Sibbi

Disclaimer:
The opinions stated do not neccesarily represent those of my employer.

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kgrach 
Re: Apparently the A1XE/SE USB needs a HW fix too!
Posted on 13-Jan-2005 3:19:45
#244 ]
Cult Member
Joined: 1-Aug-2003
Posts: 678
From: Farmingdale NY

@DrBombcrater

CPU scaling is a sure sign that YOU ARE NOT HITTING A HARDWARE LIMIT.

Flat topping is a sign of a hardware limit.

If you have no scaling or limited increase that is a hardware limit.

prove it to yourself decrease the clock speed of your CPU if ramspeed does not slow down then you are right. if it trackes with the CPU speed that is a horse of a different color.

You are right about the slow Uboot speed settings. In the begining Uboot read the SPD chip and set the timing that way. Some where that seems to have gone byebye.

I think they did that becuase allot of SDRAM manufacturers Lie like hell in SPD chip and things can fail if the timing is set too aggressive.

In early Uboot Versions allot of SDRAM failed. In later updates that same SDRAM worked now I know why.

Not happy about it but I think a liitle clocking utility is in order now

kgrach

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Dandy 
Re: Apparently the A1XE/SE USB needs a HW fix too!
Posted on 13-Jan-2005 6:50:04
#245 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 24-Mar-2003
Posts: 3049
From: Cologne * Germany

@olegil

Quote:

olegil wrote:
...
AND b: the bugs are fixed in the next shipments, so new customers can expect to have a working product.

Can you please tell me how new *POTENTIAL CUSTOMERS* can be sure to have a working product by that?

I would be too afraid that the next bugs will become obvious just when I bought mine.

And as we have a 24 month warranty prescribed in the customer protection law here in Germany, I certainly would feel frauded if then the next bugs became obvious and I had to pay for the fixes (as it seems to turn out now with the USB bug).

Then it would be a clear case for court, IMO.
Quote:

olegil wrote:
...
Therefore a customer should NOT worry about that, his board will work just fine.

This is meant as an official guarantee on behalf of Eyetech, isn't it?
Quote:

olegil wrote:
Those who have the problem already will have to either wait, pay for fix or use the PCI slots.

Don't forget the third option:
They are fed up with the way the Amiga "business" is run and sadly walk away...
Quote:

olegil wrote:
Like Dennis Leary said it, "Life sucks, get a ####ing helmet"

Who the f**k is Dennis Leary?

Quote:

olegil wrote:
The way people are whining for Eyetech to replace their boards I for one wouldn't even CONSIDER buying an AmigaOne if I didn't know those people are severly missing the point.

This is one reason besides others (which I don't want to repeat all the time)
why I did not buy until now.

And be assured - I don't care abou T-Shirts, but I won't buy any *NEW* Amiga stuff until I got my 50-Euro-Rebate-Coupon!

As BillMcEwan himself said: "Watch the coupon deal - if we fail to deliver the coupons and the T-Shirts we are not worth to be dealt with!"
Quote:

olegil wrote:
A newcomer would be instantly scared away.

My advvise to him would be:
Don't go away instantly - carefully watch the scene for a while or two and then decide wheather to go or to stay.

I for one am doing so since the coupon action.

I was nearly 100 % sure to buy next gen Amiga then - so I bought the coupon.
But the occasions since then and the way I have been treated by the "community" for my critical questions/comments made the likelihood of me buying anything next gen Amiga drop to less than 1 %.

But who knows - things might change again (although my hope for that to happen is very weak by now)...
Quote:

olegil wrote:
YAY, we got Eyetech to replace our board. OOPS, Eyetech went out of business and Hyperion no longer have a target for OS4 so they stop developing.
...

I'm afraid that this is really exactly the direction the whole thingie is moving towards...

_________________
Ciao

Dandy
__________________________________________
If someone enjoys marching to military music, then I already despise him.
He got his brain accidently - the bone marrow in his back would have been sufficient for him!
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Dandy 
Re: Apparently the A1XE/SE USB needs a HW fix too!
Posted on 13-Jan-2005 7:16:04
#246 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 24-Mar-2003
Posts: 3049
From: Cologne * Germany

@FuZion

Quote:

FuZion wrote:
...
To all those that made the AmigaOne a reality, to all those that believed in it, went out & paid their money. Thank you.

Don't mention it - I wished the next gen amiga platform already was a viable system!
Quote:

FuZion wrote:
...
These are after all, developer boards. The early stages. The ones that are used to determine whether or not fixes & changes need to be made.

And why have they been sold to end users then?

Is it the *END USERS* job to *BUY* an *DEVELOPER BOARD*, do the alpha and beta testing *AND* pay for it (as well as for the whole development)?

(This would require me as an *END USER* to be mentally completely ill - but if you are an developer, have a similar amount of money available as Bill Gates and an unshaken trust in the current Amiga owners (whoever they are and whatever they do) and in the future of the Amiga platform, then this might just be fine for *YOU*)

Could it be you are mixing up the roles of companies, developers and customers?

_________________
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Dandy
__________________________________________
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He got his brain accidently - the bone marrow in his back would have been sufficient for him!
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Dandy 
Re: Apparently the A1XE/SE USB needs a HW fix too!
Posted on 13-Jan-2005 7:30:36
#247 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 24-Mar-2003
Posts: 3049
From: Cologne * Germany

@mlehto

Quote:

mlehto wrote:
...people, who bring problems up without owning device, bringing up rumours about problems w/o any facts etc...

Hmmmm - take me for example:
I don't own an A1 up to now and I won't until (read my posting above).

But I'm watching the A1/OS 4 thingie very carefully in order to get an as clear as possible picture of the whole situation and *THEN* I will make up my mind.

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Dandy
__________________________________________
If someone enjoys marching to military music, then I already despise him.
He got his brain accidently - the bone marrow in his back would have been sufficient for him!
(Albert Einstein)

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Dandy 
Re: Apparently the A1XE/SE USB needs a HW fix too!
Posted on 13-Jan-2005 8:22:34
#248 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 24-Mar-2003
Posts: 3049
From: Cologne * Germany

@olegil

Quote:

olegil wrote:
...
I also think it would be a BAD call from Eyetechs side to withdraw all SE/XE boards, fix them and reship them now, because who knows how many OTHER small itty-bitty bugs there are that means extra rounds...
...
I just KNOW you would groan a bit if you got your board back from your dealer after being without it for 2 months, only to find that last weekend someone discovered another major bug that needs patching, leaving you without a board for another 2 months
...

Have the boards been alpha and beta tested before beeing sold to the end users or have they not?

All I read here on this implies that these boards have never been tested properly before beeing sold to the public - I can't think of a reason other than the boards not having been tested properly.

Who can guarantee that your "only to find that last weekend someone discovered another major bug" will not apply to the micro A1 as well?

_________________
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Dandy
__________________________________________
If someone enjoys marching to military music, then I already despise him.
He got his brain accidently - the bone marrow in his back would have been sufficient for him!
(Albert Einstein)

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Geri 
Re: Apparently the A1XE/SE USB needs a HW fix too!
Posted on 13-Jan-2005 8:45:09
#249 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 7-Oct-2003
Posts: 2038
From: ST/AT

@tonyw

Quote:
AFAIK, there is no L3 cache fitted to any of the G4 modules (certainly none on mine). When I asked about it a year or so ago, I was told "it only makes about 5-10% difference, it's not worth the expense".


IMHO there are L3 DDR cache burst rams fitted on the G4 cpu modules (atleast the 7455+ chips have a L3 cache interface, the 744x series not), but IIRC the L3 cache is not used. Two cache rams should be mounted on the bottom side of the CPU modules, but correct me if I'm wrong!

@DrBombcrater
Quote:
Me neither. The gap probably depends very much on the application being used to measure it. Code that does non-linear accesses will suffer much more than an application that is doing block accesses.


I agree with that.

_________________
A1SE: G3@600MHz, 2GB, 1GBit network card
A1XE: G4@933MHz, 2GB, refitted AC'97 codec
microA1: G3@800MHz, 1GB

- A1 Linux support -

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Tomppeli 
Re: Apparently the A1XE/SE USB needs a HW fix too!
Posted on 13-Jan-2005 9:01:57
#250 ]
Super Member
Joined: 18-Jun-2004
Posts: 1652
From: Home land of Santa, sauna, sisu and salmiakki

@Dandy

2 quotes: >These are after all, developer boards. The early stages. The ones that are used to determine whether or not fixes & changes need to be made.

>And why have they been sold to end users then?

Because some people wanted them so badly ?!

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AmiDog 
Re: Apparently the A1XE/SE USB needs a HW fix too!
Posted on 13-Jan-2005 9:48:42
#251 ]
Cult Member
Joined: 1-Jun-2004
Posts: 917
From: Kumla, Sweden

@Dandy

Quote:
Have the boards been alpha and beta tested before beeing sold to the end users or have they not?


Ofcourse they have been tested. I'm pretty sure they did what they could.

You are also saying that it more or less should be forbidden to sell developer boards to customers, a restriction which doesn't make sense to me. Rather, everyone who actually buy a developer board should be treated like a developer.

Just about all hardware and software ever released have had a bug or two, let's take the wonderful Commodore 64 as example:

CPU 6502: Various bugs, like with the JMP instruction, also has lots of undocumented "features" (aka illegal opcodes).
Sound SID: Sample playback on the 6581 SID is achieved "thanks" to a hardware bug. There are also lots of other bugs, some which were fixed in later revisions of the SID.
Video VIC-II: All those cool "features" people have discovered are actual bugs. Some of which could be used to an advantage though, but they are still bugs which could have all kinds of nasty effects if you accidently trigger them at the wrong time.
Then there's the buggy chips which forced Commodore to the the diskdrive dead slow...

And what about the A1200? The PCMCIA-port requires a reset fix, certain revisions have rather serious timing bugs. And what about the A4000 and the buster chip?

And don't get me started on all buggy PC motherboards with DMA issues, graphiccards locking up, soundcards producing nasty audio or locking the computer entirely, incompabilities in various hardware due to non-standard compliance, etc. (I've experienced all of these myself.) Most of these bugs didn't show when I first got the hardware as no software would atempt to use all features. But once the software got available, the hardware bugs became very apparent, much the same as with the A1.

And these examples above are non-developer boards...

Sure, in a perfect world everything would always work as intended, sadly such a world hasn't been invented yet... Just my 2 cents...

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Anonymous 
Re: Apparently the A1XE/SE USB needs a HW fix too!
Posted on 13-Jan-2005 9:56:50
# ]

0
0

@Dandy

Quote:

Who can guarantee that your "only to find that last weekend someone discovered another major bug" will not apply to the micro A1 as well?

No one can guarantee anything, testing is done to a certain level in any industry and that level is more often determined by economics. Also, not all bugs found in testing are ever fixed, again an economic decision is made.

Thats why we have a whole insurance industry set up around the product-defect-in-the-field issue - aka warranties. In fact industry players put more emphasis on the cost of their warranty provider premiums than consumer discomfort and irritation.

Then on top of that we have consumer civil law which provides recourse even if the manufacturer/vendor has not invested in some level of product insurance.

This is true for everything from a car to an umberalla.

If you want to know what justification and experience I have for saying the above PM me.

No one can talk you into doing something you don't want to do, if you don't want to buy a uA1 because you think on past evidence the A1 range has not been sufficiently bug free or sufficiently well handled and managed by those that sell it then just don't.

Dave.

 
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xeron 
Re: Apparently the A1XE/SE USB needs a HW fix too!
Posted on 13-Jan-2005 9:59:46
#253 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 22-Jun-2003
Posts: 2440
From: Weston-Super-Mare, Somerset, England, UK, Europe, Earth, The Milky Way, The Universe

@AmiDog

Quote:

Then there's the buggy chips which forced Commodore to the the diskdrive dead slow...


Actually, the 1540 & 1541 disk drives are more than 8 times slower than they should be on the C64, because of bugs in the VIC-20! They just wanted to ensure backward compatibility for people upgrading from a VIC-20 to a C64.

Interesting info about it here.

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Toaks 
Re: Apparently the A1XE/SE USB needs a HW fix too!
Posted on 13-Jan-2005 10:12:13
#254 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 10-Mar-2003
Posts: 8042
From: amigaguru.com


i suggest that we now force The AmigaTWO production to start and all buyers who wants one can pick it up at the end of the line at the MAI factory and by this way they will know for sure that they actually bought a developer board wich will have bugs most likely..

hehe nah im just pulling everyone's leg here, why?? well im abit fed up of all the complaints...

I have a set of 1200's here , everyone was bought out of the second stock and guys.. 1 of them doesnt work with a BPPC card as its the wrong revision , another one i have has timer bugs which prevents me from using div sw and hardware and last but not least the last one everything works and i havent done diddly squat to it but it just works and guess what it was the 3rd production line, both 2nd and 4th doesnt work 100%.

Not to mention all the other problems with the A1200 like speed differences between machine 1 and 2 , or things like the PCMCIA port or like apollo turbocard problems or like the clockport mysteries...soo many things and yet it became a one helluva popular machine.


You guys should be lucky (i am anyway) that there is a FIX to theese problems (a1) as on the 1200 there is not a fix to all the problems.

so lay back in the chair and think alot on this topic...IS IT REALLY THAT UNIQUE ????

have fun and i hope that this gave u guys a little to think about.




















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Agafaster 
Re: Apparently the A1XE/SE USB needs a HW fix too!
Posted on 13-Jan-2005 12:05:49
#255 ]
Super Member
Joined: 10-Mar-2003
Posts: 1413
From: West Midlands, England - sector ZZ9 plural Z alpha

@Toaks

hear hear, well spoken Bruce !

_________________
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ok, its actually XL426 in the picture but you know what I mean.

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Benji 
Re: Apparently the A1XE/SE USB needs a HW fix too!
Posted on 13-Jan-2005 12:07:45
#256 ]
Cult Member
Joined: 1-Nov-2003
Posts: 573
From: Cheltenham or London, UK

@Toaks

Quote:
so lay back in the chair and think alot on this topic...


Unfortunately thats all some of us have been able to do (apart from forking out $50 to join a club with missing t-shirts...) who want to wait for OS4 to be released (in the real sense of the word) and then go shopping for hardware. We were told that things were for developers/early-birds but I thought we are well passed that stage? So it seems suprising that its taken *so long* to get this far and still trip up on what seems like poor planning and bad mistakes (by someone) - its not as if anyone has been in any hurry... Not pointing the finger or trolling - just thinking about the last few years out loud on this topic...

Also the lack of any official responses/announcements/updates (other than from Hyperion) just makes you Quote:
...lay back in the chair and think alot on this topic..

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DrBombcrater 
Re: Apparently the A1XE/SE USB needs a HW fix too!
Posted on 13-Jan-2005 12:23:26
#257 ]
Super Member
Joined: 6-Feb-2004
Posts: 1382
From: UK

@kgrach

Quote:
CPU scaling is a sure sign that YOU ARE NOT HITTING A HARDWARE LIMIT.

Not necessarily. Remember, even when doing block read/write operations on memory, as ramspeed does, the processor's caches are still going to have an affect. Some of the data that is being handled is going to be present in the caches. Not much, but enough to have an impact on the final score.

Another factor is that ramspeed is just a block of PPC code, like any other application. It is not spending 100% of its time doing block memory accesses. The CPU will be executing code out of its caches in between those block memory operations, which opens a small window for a faster processor to turn in higher scores.

A hard limit of any kind in a computer (be it memory speed, drive transfer rate, graphics card, etc) rarely results in benchmark figures that are ruler-straight, because there are to many other variables involved. The usual pattern is for scores to shoot up until the hard limit is hit, and then tail off very dramatically.

It's a bit like catching a train to work. You can get in to the office a little earlier of you run all the way from the train station rather than walking. But only a little, because the time you are sitting on the train makes up the bulk of the journey time and it is a hard limit. The only way to save significant time is to make the train go faster, but you can't do that, so you're stuck saving little amounts of time by speeding up the bit you do control.

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DrBombcrater 
Re: Apparently the A1XE/SE USB needs a HW fix too!
Posted on 13-Jan-2005 12:49:07
#258 ]
Super Member
Joined: 6-Feb-2004
Posts: 1382
From: UK

@Toaks

Quote:
I have a set of 1200's here , everyone was bought out of the second stock and guys.. 1 of them doesnt work with a BPPC card as its the wrong revision

You're missing the point. Commodore never claimed you could plug an accelerator into the A1200, only a memory card, so the computer you bought still matched the published specifications.

And if you found something on the machine that really was broken (like the faulty modulators on the first batch of rev 1A A1200s) then you could take it back and ask for a working unit.

Quote:
You guys should be lucky (i am anyway) that there is a FIX to theese problems (a1)

Currently there is a fix for one of the two affected A1 models, available only from dealers in the US and Canada. So if you have an A1-XE and live in North America or live overseas and are prepared to pay potentially huge shipping and insurance charges, then you might get your board fixed.

That's not good enough. It's not even on the same planet as 'good enough'...

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Restore2003 
Re: Apparently the A1XE/SE USB needs a HW fix too!
Posted on 13-Jan-2005 13:58:11
#259 ]
Regular Member
Joined: 18-Jan-2004
Posts: 438
From: Norway: The land of fjords and red trolls

@DrBombcrater

itsnt it possible to get the details of the fix/surgery from them? and get a local technician to look at it?



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olegil 
Re: Apparently the A1XE/SE USB needs a HW fix too!
Posted on 13-Jan-2005 14:54:05
#260 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 22-Aug-2003
Posts: 5895
From: Work

@Dandy

Quote:
Who the f**k is Dennis Leary?


Sorry, I meant "Denis Leary"

My bad

_________________
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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