Mac '030 PDS Accelerators for NeXT?

[korneluk]

I have a Daystar Digital 68030/50MHz accelerator card which I think can be used to hot rod my '030 cube. DOes anyone know if this will work?

However, I need a 68030 cpu socket to PDS adapter. Daystar used to make these for the Mac IIcx to use their accelerator boards - it was called a "Adapter IIcx".

Alternatively, I could also use a 68030 or 68040 accelerator card that plugs directly into the 68030 socket, or even a 68030 clock doubler type device.

Ideas welcome,

[Nitro]

A through-the-socket solution would be very cool. I've wanted to try that on my 030 cube. IIRC, the 030 processor uses a separate floating point unit so I don't think an 040 accelerator card would work.  I'm guessing that you could adapt the card you have now, possibly with some modifications.  Another option would be to modify the mainboard and install a 50Mhz processor.  Freescale Semiconductor (a spin-off of Motorola) still manufactures and sells a 50Mhz 68030 processor.  Most hot rod modifications will probably require the mainboard to be moved one slot to the right with the backplane trick (for additional clearance).  Good luck with this project, it should be quite a speed improvement.

[korneluk]

Is there any software for NeXT  that will allow me to make a before and after benchmark comparison?

thanks,

[da9000]

Are all 030 motherboards carrying socketed  CPUs?  If so, it might be easy...

@Nitro: you're right about the separate FPU, but I believe there are boards the give you a PDS slot for an 030, which I believe would allow the use of an 040 PDS upgrade card. Not 100% if this would work, but it seems highly likely, else how would all these 030 Macs get upgraded to 040?

[da9000]

OK, here are some useful links:

http://www.applefritter.com/node/20312 and more specifically, this image to be found in that page: http://home.nc.rr.com/pmjett/daystar%20adapter%20pictures.JPG

It shows all the possible types of PDS converter boards one can use! I believe the best one for the NeXT might be the one that is second FROM THE BOTTOM, when looking at the far BOTTOM-RIGHT corner (the one with the 30 or so degree angle).

One more discussion on the subject:
http://www.applefritter.com/node/10092

Generally very useful Mac sites:
http://home.earthlink.net/~gamba2/
http://www.fenestrated.net/~macman/mac/hardware.html#Hard

BTW, I have 2 uber rare Turbo 601 accelerators (this one: http://picasaweb.google.com/adonisoamigas/Turbo601100Mhz/photo#s5039102845140903362 info: http://www.brinnoven.co.uk/turbo601/index.html) for 030 Macs (ex: Mac IIci)!! Imagine getting one of those babies running in a NeXT box!!! (that's assuming it works with the PDS converter boards, which I'm not 100% sure it does) 100Mhz of RiSC PowerPC 601 power!!! (again, assuming the appropriate drivers/software/glue-code is written)

[helf]

heh, isn't a 100mhz 060 *faster* than a 601?

I know the early PPC chips sucked hard. A guy I know had a dual 603 133mhz BeBox and it wouldn't even play mp3s of a decent bitrate without choppiness. Of course that could have been something else causing that...


anyways, a plug in accelerator would be so awesome.

*edit*

Did a little bit of google-research and it looks like the fast 060s and the 601 are more or less comparable speed wise.

still, with a 060 based upgrade, all you would need is a small rom with the emulator that takes care of the small incompatibilities between the 040 and the 060 instruction set (motorola provides the emulator I think).

Make that with a 060 clocking around 80-110mhz (you could make it a jumper affair) with a memory controller letting you use standard pc100/133 and it'd pay 1k usd for that ;P

What I just described is similar to the CT62 the Atari falcon world has. Speaking of which, I wonder if one of those could be modified to work with a NeXT...? I just remembered those accelerators.

[pergamon]

heh, isn't a 100mhz 060 *faster* than a 601?

I know the early PPC chips sucked hard. A guy I know had a dual 603 133mhz BeBox and it wouldn't even play mp3s of a decent bitrate without choppiness. Of course that could have been something else causing that...

Yes, must have been something else.  There was a problem with later versions of BeOS not working well with some video cards, the common symptom being audio problems (IIRC).

My BeBox 133 can play (again, IIRC) a dozen MP3s at various speeds and directions (the first MP3 player to play backwards was on BeOS).

[da9000]

Helf is mostly right (although I agree about the hardware not being the problem on the mp3 playback problems), but I just threw the PPC 601 idea out there since there *are* PPC PDS accelerators, while there are no 060 PDS accelerators for Macs

But like that last hi-jacked (by me and Helf) thread where we discussed the 060 accelerators, I also would like a "universal" 060 accelerator that would plug into the 040 socket of a NeXT box, an Amiga, an Atari, a Mac, or other 040 machine/device

Cheers to pushing the speed limit!!

[Jenne]

I might be wrong with it but I remember some sort of special software needed to get those accelerators working, some sort of caching software. As I wrote, I'm not sure of it.... But if such software was mandatory it would mean the software has to be ported.

Or was it software for that 040 processors? Man, quite some time ago I had such Macs in front of me...

J

[niteshooter]

Hi sorry for the late comment...

Speaking of Daystar accelerators, has anyone tried the 040 to PPC socket adaptor that Apple/Daystar sold? It replaced the 040 cpu with a PPC cpu on a daughtercard.

I suspect the problem will be clearance as it doesn't look like there will be enough room in the slot for the added height of this card.

K

[helf]

Also a late reply... I found out one of the reasons his bebox would do that is because the ppc603 Be used wasn't meant for SMP. Their setup was a dirty hack. They had to keep cache coherency between the two CPUs via software. That slowed things down a LOT.

[pergamon]

Also a late reply... I found out one of the reasons his bebox would do that is because the ppc603 Be used wasn't meant for SMP. Their setup was a dirty hack. They had to keep cache coherency between the two CPUs via software. That slowed things down a LOT.

Interesting.  I can play a dozen MP3s forwards and backwords at once on my BeBox 133 (603e).

One thing to note, which would be my guess for your friend's problem, is that in some versions of BeOS on BeBoxes, there is a problem with the video driver that can cause some awful sound stuttering and other problems.  That was made worse by the fact that it even affected some of the video cards that actually shipped with BeBoxes originally (IIRC).

[helf]

that is probably it. Some day I'll get a bebox and find out for myself

[Rob Blessin Black Hole]

Hi sorry for the late comment...

Speaking of Daystar accelerators, has anyone tried the 040 to PPC socket adaptor that Apple/Daystar sold? It replaced the 040 cpu with a PPC cpu on a daughtercard.

I suspect the problem will be clearance as it doesn't look like there will be enough room in the slot for the added height of this card.

K

Hello: Kind of late to the party but here is some good info on accelerators: Now if I can track some down I'll give it a go and see what happens.
http://lowendmac.com/quadra/power-mac-upgrade-card.html , I wonder if NeXT ever had a PPC box going .... Best regards Rob Blessin

[M Paquette]

I wonder if NeXT ever had a PPC box going .... Best regards Rob Blessin

One of the NeXT hardware engineers, Ali A., had designed a daughtercard for the NeXT RISC Workstation that plugged in to replace the 88110 with a PPC 601.  This was pretty easy, as the 60X bus architecture was lifted from the 88110.  If I recall correctly, the prototype was running at 50 MHz.

It wasn't quite fully operational when hardware engineering was shut down.