landay@cory.Berkeley.EDU (James A. Landay) (05/04/88)
It has already been discussed what a problem it would be to get a
68020 working in the ST. Now that Motorola has announced a 16MHz version
of the 68000 (for less than $40 in quantity of ~400) I was wondering
what it would take to get one of these working in place of the 68000.
(Alan?)
thanks
James A. Landay
ARPA: landay@cory.berkeley.edu
ucbvax!cory!landayapratt@atari.UUCP (Allan Pratt) (05/05/88)
From article <3002@pasteur.Berkeley.Edu>, by landay@cory.Berkeley.EDU (James A. Landay): > It has already been discussed what a problem it would be to get a > 68020 working in the ST. Now that Motorola has announced a 16MHz version > of the 68000 (for less than $40 in quantity of ~400) I was wondering > what it would take to get one of these working in place of the 68000. > (Alan?) It's not easy. The ST runs with a synchronous 8MHz bus, even though the 68000 doesn't have to. This is because we interleave video RAM fetches with the processor instruction/data fetches. Since 16MHz is (obviously) exactly twice 8MHz, it might be pretty straightforward, but then it might not, and in any case it is debatable if this will yield substantial speed improvements. ============================================ Opinions expressed above do not necessarily -- Allan Pratt, Atari Corp. reflect those of Atari Corp. or anyone else. ...ames!atari!apratt
mikep@lakesys.UUCP (Mike Pluta) (05/06/88)
On the note of replacing the 68000 with a faster chip, would it be possible
to pop in a 68020 or 68030?
--
Michael J Pluta (mikep@lakesys.UUCP) c/o | {ihnp4,uwvax}!
Tri-Sys Computer Corp., Inc. | uwmcsd1!lakesys!
207 East Buffalo Street, Suite 600 | mikep
Milwaukee, WI 53202 |Ritzert@DMZRZU71.BITNET (03/01/90)
Brett Maraldo asks: > What can you tell me about 16Mhz 68k retrofits for the ST? >What is the best board in your opinion and what will it cost? What >are the pros and cons of buying and installing a 16Mhz board? We are running the Hypercache board by the German company pro_VME on 3 machines for more than a year. Initially we had severe problems when the Atari 68881 board was installed; there were also a few bugs in the cache logic. The company has continously improved their product and, luckily, even the most problematic machine of the three now runs very stable when the cache is switched on. The present Hypercache boards seem to be very reliable products; the only program i know which *sometimes* gives rise to problems is ICD's ratehd (only in connection with a seagate st296n, so this seems to be more a timing problem of this problematic drive). The board is not cheap (600 DM) but this price is in good ratio to quality and company support. Speed improvement: roughly 40 % on output intensitive operation, such as compilations; 70-85 % in average. '881 library functions run typically 40-50 % faster, which is a remarkable result since in these applications the 68000 is used merely as a "controller" of the 68881, which does the real work. I'm not affiliated with pro_VME. Michael Ritzert mjr@dmzrzu71.bitnet