I wonder if a eg. Powerlogix (Dual) G4 upgrade card will work on a Pegasos, if someone would create a connector between the Upgrade card and the Pegasos CPU Slot. Is it "just" MPX Bus to MPX bus physical conversion?

Any CPU Card tinkerers here

IMO the Marvell northbridge can't handle SMP.

Is it possible to put an Athlon into the Pegasos with a connector card?

This is an AmigaWorld quality thread.
Very stupid, embarrassing.

[ Edited by Wishmaster on 2006/2/26 18:51 ]

The MPX bus which is used by the G4 should have certain standards, Protocol, Voltage... so why it is so far fetched that there could be some kind of intercompatability? Do you buy PCI and AGP cards that are manufactured only for Pegasos computer, or Dell, Medion whatever???

I know at least 2 reasons for which you will not be happy with your Athlon:
a) Athlon (at least the old ones) uses Alphas™ EV6 protocol which is not MPX
b) Even if you had this problem solved through a logic MorphOS would not run natively on x86

The G4's have the same pins on them share the same voltage and use the same protocol no matter if used in Pegasos or Mac.

If you know something about this say it, maybe explain it. If not, better shut your mouth.

[ Edited by Donar on 2006/2/26 20:02 ]

[ Edited by Donar on 2006/2/26 21:48 ]

everything is possible, so I would say, try it.

And don't whine if your peg is melting ;)

That's why i'm asking, and not hammering one into the Slot without knowing what i'm doing. I think there is demand for faster CPU cards and there are four ways. Buy one from Genesi, whenever they will be available. DL the Pegasos Spec, (CPU card should be included-right?) and go to DCE they should manufacture you a Special one. Or maybe take a fast card and only do a workaround for physical incompatability (If this is possible). Take your CPU Card and replace the 1.0 GHz against a faster one.

I wonder if someone here ever tried to make his own "Pegasos motherboard Firewire" to "Case Front Firewire adaptor", or do all people think that this is voodoo???

i don't think, it's a voodoo, i think it's useless... i'm happy with speed of my peggy. i (atleast for now) don't need more.

bye, MarK.

I think its an interesting question and even though i dont really think its possible id very much like to see a INTELLIGENT answer or at least an educated guess.

And the argument that the extra speed isnt needed is just ignorant imo.
Im sure a lot of people could use the extra cpu power.
I mean if there was a more powerful cpu card, then the question about the dreamcast emulator would probably not be so silly.

[ Edited by corpsicle on 2006/2/27 9:42 ]

I DO need faster CPU, Linux is sooo slow on Peg2. But Mac CPU upgrades are kinda pricey, i'd better get my hands on one of those 1,7ghz cpu card for Pegasos that were announced.

i think, that developers should develop and optimize their routines to be as fast as possible, to not to just write 'buy a faster cpu', like in pc world... amiga was soo slow, but gaming was like dreaming! why it's not possible with today's hardware?

bye, MarK.

I also need a faster CPU for Linux. 1 Ghz is more than enough for MorphOS allthough a faster CPU would be great for emulators like MAME and E-UAE.

~toto

Mark : of course that would be nice, but programs get more complicated with time, and in my highly uneducated view it might even be impossible today to optimise every aspect of most bigger programs like graphics/music software for instance.
There are also calculations that take a certain amount of CPU cycles no matter what, and having a faster CPU will help with those applications.
Unless we agree that morphos can never run such advanced software, then of course the need for faster CPU's might not exist.

I'm happy with my peg, but I would like some more raw power for emulators / multimedia / linux.

Just saying "we don't need faster CPUs" is very amigaone-ish (I've nothing against that machine, but their quest for ever slower CPUs dissuaded me from buying one).

@Mark: Imho, the baseline is: you can optimize as much as you want, but for some operations you just need muscle (or lots of patience). And the Amiga was very cool for games because of the custom chips that give it (for the time) a lot of muscle and also to the Motorola procs that where WAY better for floating point operations than the intel ones.

To return to the subject of the thread, I think the hardest part to using a MAC CPU card with adaptor would be finding the wiring of this MAC card (if we stay with single-CPU cards).

> IMO the Marvell northbridge can't handle SMP.

No, it can, in both MPX and 60x mode

> the Motorola procs that where WAY better for floating point operations

What Motorola CPUs are you talking about?

@Andreas_Wolf:
The only one I've tried was the 68000, which I've benchmarked against a 80386 processor (both using software floating point since they don't have a FPU).

On a per-cycle basis, the 68k beated the 386 easily during these benchmarks; when porting some code I've done on my A500 (some very simple vector 3D renderer I've done in C "spiced" with some ASM) I had to change all operations from floating point to fixed point so that my 33 MHz 80386 could (barely) keep up (on the PC I've also used C plus ASM).

I very much doubt that the games used much, if any, soft-float back in the 68000 days.

there is a card which can be plugged upside the G4 or G3 on some case.

a test can be really interesting.
even smp is not supported on mos one processor is enough but on macosx it should be great !

I don't know if this would be possible physically. But I would be
enormously extremely super-surprised if it would work without a
designated firmware upgrade.

I don't think there is a great need for faster CPU:s on the Peg, but
of course there is *some* need, even for MOS. I've repeatedly
programmed stuff for research purposes which took weeks to execute.
And that's after I spent lots of time to optimise the algorithms, even
examining the most crucial parts at assembly level.

Quote:

There is something better.

A CPU Upgrade card for Macintoshes capable to fit into a PCI slot.

Michael Schulz of AROS team found these cards in internet during navigations and wrote a post regarding it on ANN Amiga Network News.

http://www.ann.lu/detail.cgi?category=web&file=1140524694.msg

A photo of the object:

c7200.jpg

Due to the nature of PCI slot design, a CPU fitting in it, could take all the control of entire machine, including graphic and audio subsysytem.

This brings Apple users a very cheap CPU upgrade of the machintoshes hih don't have CPU slot, but only PCI bus subsystem.

Michael made some more steps by asking the firm which is manufacturing such this card if they could realize a driver for any Intel PC.

Read this into his blogspot site.

http://msaros.blogspot.com/2006/02/cheap-ppc-alternative.html

This is intended in order to transform a common PC Intel into a dual machine running either Windows/Linux for Intel X86 and also Amiga-like OSes or Macintosh OS-X thanks to the PPC on the PCI card..

The manufacturers answered him that they could release all doumentation to let this driver be realized, and also they can realize it into 6 months of work.

This could bring us very cheap dual PC systems, with standard Intel sitting on the motherboard, and a secondo CPU (PowerPC) sitting on PCI bus.

here are standard PCI cards equipped with PPC G4 at 800 MHz or 1000 MHz (1 GHz) costs range starting from 190 euro upto 290 euro.

Also I think that some upgrades similar to those I shown you, could be adapted for AmigaONE systems which could not upgrade the cpu solid fixed into motherboard.
But remember that first intention is to realize very cheap Amiga-like PPC systems starting from very very cheap Intel Motherboards (about 50 euro each)

I wonder if MorphOS could run on it.

Also hope that systems with more horsepower than early versions of these cards (those featuring a simple G3 800 G4 800 or G4 at 1 GHz), and maybe clocked more, or duble CPU based, were were on the road to be presented on the market.

These colud be adapted:

1) On old Macintoshes with PCI slots

2) On new Macintoshes with intel core duo featuring at least any PCI slots

3) On any PC with at least one PCI slot free.

4) On AmigaONE with at least one PCI slot free.

5) On Pegasos computers with at least one PCI slot free.

[ Edited by Raf_MegaByte on 2006/4/29 17:29 ]

Quote:

Quote:

i can't wait to upgrade my 1Ghz G4 pegasos2 with a 1Ghz PCI card

Quote:

I edited the message to let my thoughts intended better by the other readers.

Infact I hope that such these cards could host new processors such as G4 clocked at more speed or even Double G4 solutions.

Not a stupid thread at all. Actually, you could buy CPU slot adapters
for 7300-9600 era (Old World PCI) Power Macs which featured a ZIF
socket for a CPU from a beige or blue & white G3, and adapted that
more modern CPU connector to the slot style connector of the 7300. It
worked well and even had jumpers for setting bus speed, CPU multiplier
and so on.

Back in the PegI prototype days, there were some pics which looked to
me an awful lot like a ZIF socket CPU (single or dual G4) on such an
adapter plugged into the Pegasos I.

There's no valid technical reason why the more modern 'MegArray'
connector used on Macs from the Sawtooth (first gen AGP Powermac) up
till the advent of the G5's couldn't be put on a card. The heatsink
would be kind of scary hanging off to the side, or you 'd need a
watercooler. In any event, a tall case would be needed but who cares?
Giga Designs makes a 1.8GHz dual proc PPC accel which fits this
connector. I think they may have it up to 2.0GHz by now. You say you
don't need more CPU (than a single 1.0GHz G4) but if you had two
2.0GHz G4s you might change your mind Their USA built and 3 year
warranted 1.8GHz dual proc G4 with 7447A's is only $495.

It could be like the Amiga days when CPU cards had their own RAM and
SCSI, well nowadays you'd put a SATA chip on there. Hey, if you're
gonna dream..

> Back in the PegI prototype days, there were some pics which
> looked to me an awful lot like a ZIF socket CPU (single
> or dual G4) on such an adapter plugged into the Pegasos I.

Yes, you are completely right, these adapters exist(ed?).

Before that there was the ATX pre-PegI prototype board with 2 ZIF sockets onboard:
http://www.bplan-gmbh.de/news/pegasos2.jpg
(one socket occupied by a Sonnet Encore/ZIF G4 card)

@Tronman

Sure, you could use a Apple-like Megarray, just like MAItech did, but just like MAItech you won't be able to run Mac-CPU-modules in it.....