WarpEngine 68060 @80mhz!

[SpeedGeek]

OK, episode #2 of A3660 overclocking is completed!

This is the upper limit for this Rev. 1 CPU... Also, SDMAC is working at it's maximum CLK speed. I made a custom oscillator and added an extra 10 uF cap to the top PCB for this project.

Higher clock speeds are still possible but will require a late Rev. CPU and a custom timing hack to keep SDMAC happy....

 

[8bitbubsy]

Sure there are some people interested in upgrading their A3640 to an A3660. Is the most common accelerator on A4000 and the productivity improvement is quite important from a 68040@25 to a 68060@50. It would be useful to know the ratio of improvement in MIPS and MFLOPS: 4 times maybe?

I kind of doubt it's 4 times faster. It has to access the RAM on the Amiga motherboard through a slower bus AFAIK. Also, doesn't the A3640 lack some glue logic for full 060 support?
But how does this work... Do you just use the CPU adapter and maybe feed a separate clock? No more hacking needed? I remember that the A3640 didn't like more than 31MHz unless you upgraded the code in some of the logic chips or did some hacking...

 

[Ed.D]

I know virtually zero about electronics, but how feasible would a dual CPU Amiga be with some kind of adaptor and controller chip to share the instructions around?

 

[SpeedGeek]

I kind of doubt it's 4 times faster. It has to access the RAM on the Amiga motherboard through a slower bus AFAIK. Also, doesn't the A3640 lack some glue logic for full 060 support?
But how does this work... Do you just use the CPU adapter and maybe feed a separate clock? No more hacking needed? I remember that the A3640 didn't like more than 31MHz unless you upgraded the code in some of the logic chips or did some hacking...

No, for significant overclocking of the A3640 you need to modify the CLK90 timing (AKA the delay line hack).

Also, the slow bus problem was fixed a long time ago:

https://www.amibay.com/showthread.php?19993-A3640-50Mhz!&p=266058&viewfull=1#post266058

 

[SpeedGeek]

Lol well I guess that's down to the individual, for me it was very cheap I.each. Just postage ;-). And it will give me something to test with until we get a yea or nay on the library.

Cosmos has released the 060 FPU disable patch in a few recent updates here:

http://cosmosunivers.free.fr/download/exec.readme
http://cosmosunivers.free.fr/download/exec_4520b(A3000).readme
http://cosmosunivers.free.fr/download/exec_4520b(A4000).readme

---

 

[8bitbubsy]

Why must the 060 FPU be disabled? That's sad. I guess it's too advanced to modify the card to support the 060 FPU or something?

 

[DutchinUSA]

I believe it only gets disabled for a moment at initialization ..

 

[dw0ntU5m3]

Does anyone know for sure whether Cosmos's new exec.library can be loaded as a Deneb or Kickflash ROM module? There was one sentence in the A1k.org thread that translated as "The quark I built sometimes. With the Kickflash you no longer need the

"

 

[dw0ntU5m3]

Some random performance benchmarks

Some random performance benchmarks

Here's a Speedometer benchmark in Shapeshifter, this with an 68LC060@50mhz, no FPU. http://imgur.com/VXbm5ek And very odd results with RSCP, I have never seen this A4091 benchmark so fast: http://imgur.com/ijyfsUJ

 

[dw0ntU5m3]

Seems to be a problem with softkicking with an A3640 with blizkick, system hangs with a white screen during the softkick reboot. A three finger salute completes the reboot, then it boots normally. Anyone else notice this? Just testing out my the new rom, and I thought it was something I did, but I tried it with just a 3.1 rom and same issue. Doesn't do this with a different custom ROM, back to playing around with Remus.

 

[dw0ntU5m3]

My bumbling was only partly at fault for the freeze on reboot. Cosmos released version 45.20B of his/Speedgeeks exec library which corrected the freeze on reboot.

 

[fitzsteve]

I have one of pghulme's kits, I just need to get an 060 and get it assembled. Do we need to burn the exec lib into a physical Rom or can we use loadmodule? Or maybe Deneb/Kick Flash?

I look forward to trying it out on my WE at some point Hopefully in time for Justin's Geek Fest!

 

[dw0ntU5m3]

I have one of pghulme's kits, I just need to get an 060 and get it assembled. Do we need to burn the exec lib into a physical Rom or can we use loadmodule? Or maybe Deneb/Kick Flash?

I look forward to trying it out on my WE at some point :-D Hopefully in time for Justin's Geek Fest!

You need to burn it into a physical rom, though Mozart himself said Kickflash would or does work. Haven't seen any Deneb reports. The system should crash before you're able to loadmodule so there wouldn't be any way to actually do that. Though you can test the new exec with loadmodule or softkicking on an LC060 just to make sure it works first, which is what I've been doing.

 

[dw0ntU5m3]

Burning a real rom worked as expected with a full 060, big thanks to Speedgeek and Cosmos for their work on exec. On the downside Shapeshifter quit working with OS8.1. The system would be really nice if I could get Speedgeek's 68030 state machine working.

 

[dw0ntU5m3]

Hit 66mhz with the CLK90 mod. Unsurprisingly at 80mhz the system doesn't do anything, power light doesn't go high.

 

[fiat1100d]

Just a question, since I am buying a 68060 adapter for use on the WarpEngine: can the original WarpEngine ROM be modified so that it disables the FPU with any Kickstart used, without the need of burning a new Kickstart EPROM with the patched exec? It would be nice to have a WarpEngine EPROM that lets you use the board with the 68060 "plug and play" without Kickstart issues.
I am not able to program, if needed I can supply a dump of the WarpEngine ROM.

 

[ColourWheel64]

I often wonder this - considering how much 060 boards for the A3000/A4000 sell for, why has nobody developed a modern one? It can't be rocket science surely, just a small PCB, CPU and a few components? The CPUs themselves can be picked up for very little, so there would be a huge mark up on each unit, and with the amount of people wanting one there must be a market to sell dozens if not hundreds. Amigakit/Vesalia - get on with it!

I think it's something to do with who owns the rights. Individual Computers I think? Although I don't know for certain.

I must admit, I'd love to see a card that's somewhere between a Warpengine 060 and a Cyberstorm PPC.

One thing though, I doubt it's an easy thing to do. If it was then surely clones absolutely would exist, along with associated Youtube tutorial videos and forums like this would be teeming with sales threads offering them in the tens and twenties, even long after the demand has gone.

 

[fiat1100d]

I think it's something to do with who owns the rights. Individual Computers I think? Although I don't know for certain.

iComp owns the right for Apollo boards, don't know about the WarpEngine.

 

[dw0ntU5m3]

http://www.macrosystem.us/ I'm guessing they're the guys that did the Warpengine, who wants to chip in to buy the IP? Chances are they don't have it the firmware for the PLDs. Burning a kickstart ROM isn't a huge deal, it's not like it breaks anything from what I've seen. Legend goes that Phase5/DCE lost all of the source for their PLDs in a hard drive crash. That leaves Quikpak and GVP. GVP is possibility since they had that limited reproduction run of 4060s back around 2009. I've emailed them a few times and never got a reply.

 

[SpeedGeek]

OK, episode #3 of A3660 overclocking is completed!

Once again, many thanks to SuperCosmos for the rev. 6 060 (and for his patience with my stupid mistake delaying this update for another 2 months)

The custom oscillator I made used a dual frequency crystal so changing the frequency was quite easy. The more complex part of this episode was the CLK D4 GAL designed as the solution to keep SDMAC happy.

The CLK D4 GAL switches the mobo to a 1/4x clock during DMA so SDMAC is supplied with clock speed it can handle and the mobo runs at the 1/2x clock speed when the CPU masters the bus. See attached images.

This also works quite well with the 040 but I was really saving it for this episode!

Higher clock speeds are still possible but I will have to source some oscillators or crystals for the next episode.