keithr@vice.TEK.COM (Keith Rast) (03/05/88)
Here is some more info on the 16Mhz board for the ST. It is a board the that mounts inside the ST. The installation is said to be more difficult than a memory upgrade. The replace the cpu with a 68016(?) and place a switch on the back of the ST to allow you to switch from 8Mhz to 16Mhz. They are expecting their new (lastest) board next week. After they do some more testing they expect to go into production in about a month. They hope to keep it in the $200 range not including installation. They're looking into setting up dealers for installing the board, but are looking into other options as well. I asked if there is a problem with 150ns memory chips he said no, but going to 120ns chips would increase the speed, then only slightly. PC Ditto is running on it. They haven't found any software that doesn't run, but who knows how much they've tried. The person I talked to was named Kevin. He was very helpfully in answering any questions I had. He said if people send in a self-stamped addressed envelope they would send back literature on this and other products, hardware upgrades such as blitter upgrades, for the ST. The address is: MEGABYTE Computers 109 W Bay Area Blvd. Webster, TX 77593 713-338-2231 (I am no way connected with MC, I don't own any of their stock, and I am not married to any of their sisters.)
lharris@gpu.utcs.toronto.edu (Leonard Harris) (03/08/88)
What kind of REAL speed increase is there? You can't drive any of the other chips in the atari at 16MHz so is this just the 68000 being speeded up - like sticking a v20 in an ibm? Is performance increase gained=$200 ? /Leonard
rosenkra@Alliant.COM (Bill Rosenkranz) (03/09/88)
In article <1988Mar7.163720.22573@gpu.utcs.toronto.edu> lharris@gpu.utcs.UUCP (Leonard Harris) writes: > >What kind of REAL speed increase is there? You can't drive any of the >other chips in the atari at 16MHz so is this just the 68000 being >speeded up - like sticking a v20 in an ibm? >Is performance increase gained=$200 ? >/Leonard MegaByte Computers (Webster TX) just told me yesterday that in general, you can expect 30 to 85% speedup. if the inner loop of a process is primarily calculations and not hits to the OS (like I/O, etc.) you get the higher numbers. they also say you can switch on-the-fly between 8 Mhz (normal) and 16 Mhz, even during a program execution! no reboot needed. they are planning a board for the mega as well, though expected dates were not known. they plan to also have additional sockets for memory on that board, and perhaps a floating point coprocessor. if all this happens, the mega will turn into a rather formidable machine ($200 delta on the mega is probably worth the performance increase for all megas. you be the judge for ST). -bill
rjung@castor.usc.edu (Robert Jung) (03/11/88)
Just an idea on MegaByte's proposed 16MHz chip/board/whatever:
How about Atari signing the product up, and making it part of the
Mega's/ST's? Sure would make it a little easier to sell ST's to "real" users
("Look, if you think it's too slow, you can toggle the speed switch on the
back and double your speed")
But then again, I'm a crazy dreamer B-)
--R.J.
B-)
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Just because it's 8-bits doesn't make it obsolete. ==== == ==== Thomas_E_Zerucha@cup.portal.com (03/11/88)
Does the fast board handle Spectrum 512 and the Magic Sac?
pes@ux63.bath.ac.uk (Smee) (03/16/88)
It appears from Motorola's info that the 68000 can't hit memory more often than every 4th clock cycle, so the memory stuff should still go OK with a faster CPU. The video and DMA run independently anyway, so shouldn't care -- assuming that they up the clock to the processor only, and leave it as it is for everybody else.