BARRETT@forest.ecil.iastate.edu (Marc Barrett) (05/04/90)
There have been questions here about upgrading the A3000/16 to the
full performance of the 25Mhz A3000/25. Since the clock, 68030, and
68881 chips are surface mounted, upgrading the system directly (by
replacing the chips) seems next to impossible.
But I have a question about performing the upgrade a different way.
The CPU slot is ideal for putting a faster cpu and cache memory into
the system; a 40Mhz 68030/68882 with cache memory would be an ideal
upgrade, as would a 33Mhz '040 w/cache.
My question is: would it be possible to design such accelerator
boards to achieve the same performance when they are plugged into
the A3000/16 as when they are plugged into the A3000/25?
My idea would be to design the accelerator such that, if they
were plugged into the A3000/16, they would boost the speed of the
custom chips to the speeds that they run at on the A3000/25.
This would be nice, if it were possible. This would allow you
to purchase a 3000/16 with the intention of purchasing a 40Mhz
accelerator, without sacrificing any system speed outside of the
added cache memory. If this is possible, I urge all developers
that are working on such accelerator boards to put these features
into their boards. If it isn't possible, then forget I said
anything. ;-)
-MB-gilgalad@dip.eecs.umich.edu (Ralph Seguin) (05/04/90)
In article <18447@snow-white.udel.EDU> BARRETT@forest.ecil.iastate.edu (Marc Barrett) writes: > > But I have a question about performing the upgrade a different way. >The CPU slot is ideal for putting a faster cpu and cache memory into >the system; a 40Mhz 68030/68882 with cache memory would be an ideal >upgrade, as would a 33Mhz '040 w/cache. A 25 MHz 040 would also be incredible. The 040 has incredible processing power. I wonder how long until C= releases their 040 boards ... The C= crew is probably already done, and probably just waiting for the 040 to get up to production. > My question is: would it be possible to design such accelerator >boards to achieve the same performance when they are plugged into >the A3000/16 as when they are plugged into the A3000/25? Sure. It runs async to the rest of the system. It is just like the 2630 card for the 2000 (or GVPs boards, or ...). I think that it would be hard to design them otherwise. > My idea would be to design the accelerator such that, if they >were plugged into the A3000/16, they would boost the speed of the >custom chips to the speeds that they run at on the A3000/25. The custom chips still run at normal Amiga clock rates. This is to retain backwards compatability. > > -MB- See ya, Ralph gilgalad@caen.engin.umich.edu gilgalad@dip.eecs.umich.edu gilgalad@goliath.eecs.umich.edu Ralph_Seguin@ub.cc.umich.edu gilgalad@sparky.eecs.umich.edu USER6TUN@UMICHUB.BITNET Ralph Seguin | In order to get infinitely many monkeys to type 11010 Lighthouse Dr. #234 | something that actually makes sense, you need to Belleville, MI 48111 | have infinitely many monkey editors as well. (313) 697-1048