[net.micro.amiga] CSA Turbo Amiga

zork@mtuxo.UUCP (s.polis) (10/06/86)

I am an early purchaser of a CSA Turbo Amiga; a most pleasant power cube.
It reminds me of my Carver power amps...

The addmem command was all it needed for configuration, altho it comes
with 1.2 beta 4 Kickstart & a diagnostics 1.2b4 Workbench diskette.

I loaded the (Lattice) C compiler & linker into ram w/include files, and
I'm *very* happy with this ultra-fast development environment.
[ 14.28 Mz 68020,68881 w/32 bit wide access to it's own memory ]

I'd be glad to answer any questions I can on it...

Stephen Guy Polis   --- soon to be an independent (unfortunately?)
                    --- UUCP ...mtuxo!left!zork
                    --- PHONE 201-870-3366 home, 201-576-3629 work

aburto@marlin.UUCP (Alfred A. Aburto) (10/07/86)

Distribution:net.micro.amiga


I bought a CSA Piggy-Back MC68020/MC68881 bare board in May for $575.  It runs
at 7.16 MHz which is far below the MC68020/MC68881 capability but this
hardware also provides outstanding performance.  Total cost was about $900.
It does a version of the SAVAGE Benchmark (coded in Fortran 77) in about
1.3 seconds while a VAX 8600 takes about 1.1 seconds.  The Turbo-Amiga
should clock in at approximately 0.6 seconds.  While the Turbo-Amiga is
by no means equivalent to a VAX it can certainly perform mathematical
floating-point operations as fast or faster than a VAX.  Its a good candidate
to consider for an engineering workstation to offload the larger mainframe
systems.  Absofts Fortran 77 compiler with options for the 68020 and 68881
works very well with CSA's hardware.  Manx and Lattice C will also, it is
rumored, support the CSA 68020/68881 hardware.  Quelo provides a 68020
Assembler and they are Beta-testing a version that supports the 68881 for
the Amiga/Turbo-Amiga.  TDI also claims to be working on a version of 
their MODULA-2 which will support the 68020/68881 Amigas.  All-in-all things
are looking pretty good for the Amigas which have been up-graded with CSA's
68020/68881 hardware.  

Not all software works correctly with the CSA Turbo-Amiga or the Piggy-Back
adaptor boards.  True BASIC for example crashes my system probably because
it uses MOVE <ea>,SR instructions which are ok with the 68000 but cause
an exception fault on the 68020.  Also Microsoft AmigaBASIC will not run
with the Turbo-Amiga's extended 32-bit memory boards. It gets completely
lost because (I quess) it assumes that an address beyond the 68000 24-bit
range (up to $00FFFFFF) is an error.  But the 68020 can handle memory addresses
well beyond this range and the Turbo-Amiga memory boards are located at
$7F000000 and above. 

higgin@cbmvax.cbm.UUCP (Paul Higginbottom) (10/08/86)

In article <2102@mtuxo.UUCP> zork@mtuxo.UUCP (s.polis) writes:
>I am an early purchaser of a CSA Turbo Amiga; a most pleasant power cube.
>...
>I loaded the (Lattice) C compiler & linker into ram w/include files, and
>I'm *very* happy with this ultra-fast development environment.
>[ 14.28 Mz 68020,68881 w/32 bit wide access to it's own memory ]
>
>I'd be glad to answer any questions I can on it...
>
>Stephen Guy Polis   --- soon to be an independent (unfortunately?)
>                    --- UUCP ...mtuxo!left!zork
>                    --- PHONE 201-870-3366 home, 201-576-3629 work

Glad you'll answer questions!  I'm somewhat confused about how the CSA
board works.  I assume the 68020 doesn't plug in where the 68000 does,
so does the Amiga's own 68K just act as the graphics engine, and Exec
runs through the 68020?!?  I guess I mean, how does the 68020 "take
over" the machine, and yet everything still works, and is, I presume
still compatible?

	Confused,
		Paul.

Disclaimer: I do not work for Commodore and my opinions are my own.

daveh@cbmvax.cbm.UUCP (Dave Haynie) (10/08/86)

> 
> Glad you'll answer questions!  I'm somewhat confused about how the CSA
> board works.  I assume the 68020 doesn't plug in where the 68000 does,
> so does the Amiga's own 68K just act as the graphics engine, and Exec
> runs through the 68020?!?  I guess I mean, how does the 68020 "take
> over" the machine, and yet everything still works, and is, I presume
> still compatible?
> 
> 	Confused,
> 		Paul.
> 
> Disclaimer: I do not work for Commodore and my opinions are my own.
> 
Hi Higgy, long time no see...

	As for the CSA board, you might well ask WHICH CSA board.  The
original Amiga "Turbo" board was descended from CSA's original 68020
board, which was a plug-in replacement for the 68000.  It was designed
as a quick upgrade for 68000 systems, and to let you develop '020 code
on an '000 based machine.  The 68020 board has a 14.2MHz clock and the
option of a 68881 math cruncher and about a meg (as I recall) of memory
that the '020 can read/write at full speed, i.e. 14.2MHz with a 32 bit
bus, or a hardware speedup alone of 4 times.  The '020's bus is of 
course sized to 16 bits for talking to the normal Amiga busses, and it
has to talk to this memory at normal Amiga speeds.

	After their (I assume) success with this (I'd kill for one), they
built an external expansion box sporting not only the standard Amiga 100pin 
slots, but an extra connector (ala PC-AT) for the rest of the 68020's
address and data lines.  And they now (last I heard from them) sell a
68020 card for that box, fast 32 bit memory for that box, etc., and have
phased out the internal Amiga-specific plug-in.  I've heard that they
keep the Amiga's normal 68000 turned off most if not all the of time, 
though I like the idea of using both of them (care to hack the Amiga OS
into supporting this, though?).

-- 
============================================================================
Dave Haynie	{caip,ihnp4,allegra,seismo}!cbmvax!daveh
		"Techno-Hippie, heathen, designing evil computers"

	These opinions are my own, though if you try them out, and decide
	that you really like them, a small donation would be appreciated.

kim@amdahl.UUCP (Kim DeVaughn) (10/09/86)

In article <2102@mtuxo.UUCP>, zork@mtuxo.UUCP (s.polis) writes:
> I am an early purchaser of a CSA Turbo Amiga; a most pleasant power cube.
> It reminds me of my Carver power amps...
> 
> The addmem command was all it needed for configuration, altho it comes
> with 1.2 beta 4 Kickstart & a diagnostics 1.2b4 Workbench diskette.
> 
> I loaded the (Lattice) C compiler & linker into ram w/include files, and
> I'm *very* happy with this ultra-fast development environment.
> [ 14.28 Mz 68020,68881 w/32 bit wide access to it's own memory ]
> 
> I'd be glad to answer any questions I can on it...


OK, Stephen, here are a couple ...

What's your configuration (How much 32-bit memory?  SCSI/Hard Disk?)

Does their box "pass the buss"?  If not, could their boards be installed
in an expansion box which does?

How is their 32-bit "private buss" implemented?

Is the CSA 020 processor treated as a "peripherial device", or does it
replace the 68000 entirely (logically, or physically)?

I've noticed "68020 versions" of various compilers (Absoft, Manx, etc.),
and other s/w (like MetaScope) in CSA's literature.  Do you know if
these are any different from the standard versions of the products?

How about some Benchmarks (Dhrystones, Mandelbrots, etc)?

Can you still utilize the 68000 for anything (i.e., do we have a true
multiprocessor product now)?


Thats all I can think of ... for the moment :-)!


Thanks,
/kim


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