Kategoriarkiv: Amiga hardware

BFG9060 Amiga 060 turbo card in PCB color red fully built and tested

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BFG9060 with rev 1 68060 under testing in my A4000TX

I built a BFG9060 060 turbo card last year that I could clock at 100Mhz, this is the second BFG9060 I have built and it is in a cool red PCB color. Thanks to the Xilinx programmer I got I could finally program the CPLDs on it but did not have time testing it fully. Now that I have tested it I can finally confirm that it is working 100%.

Actually, I just ran Quake for an hour with it mounted in my primary Amiga, my A4000TX daily driver, and the card performed just fine. Once I have it permanently installed in one of my big box Amigas I will do a proper 24h POVRay fish render test. But as it is now, I am happy with how it performed!

Mystery 68060 CPU

I got this 68060 chip from Vesalia years ago (probably 12+ years ago), and for a really good price too. It was a deal too good to pass on even though I did not know what to do with it. Well I am happy that I kept it but for all these years I wondered three things:

  1. Did it work?
  2. What kind of 060 was it?
  3. Is it a fake? Why did it have these strange markings and not the typical Motorola markings?

The answer to those questions are:

  1. Yes the 68060 works fine! And it does not get that hot either (though I have a heatsink/fan on it).
  2. It is a rev 1 68060.
  3. It is not a fake 060 – It came from a Phase 5 turbo card – Phase 5 used to add this text to the 060s on the turbo cards.

While the CPU works, it is a little bit of a bummer that it is a rev 1 as that revision has bugs. But there are work arounds for that so it does not really matter. Unfortunately, as its rev 1, that means no 100Mhz overclock. But to be honest with you, I am glad just having another full (MMU/FPU) 060 on a big box Amiga turbo card.

68060 low profile 5v cooler

I was afraid that the CPU I had was going to run too hot so I went into my stash of heatsinks to look for a suitable cooler for it. I found this thin 5v laptop cooler that I must have kept in my stash for more than 15 years. I got it from an old Acer Celeron laptop I found in the trash at a job I had and I was glad I finally found a use for it.

It is a thin radial fan that sits on an aluminium bottom plate that acts as a heatsink. I have not found modern alternatives in this size for a good price so I guess they have become rare these days.

I used thermal adhesive tape (also called ”frag tape” BITD) to secure the heatsink to the CPU. Believe me, this thermal double sided adhesive tape has insane stickiness, there is no chance of the heatsink falling of the CPU if mounted vertically.

I can confirm, according to tests done with my finger, that the CPU does not run hot at all with the heatsink/fan on it. I am starting to wonder that maybe it was overkill, but if I end up using it in an A3000D case it might come in handy as that case has poor cooling performance.

Replica A4091 SCSI card

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Today I got a fully built replica A4091 Zorro 3 SCSI card delivered. The A4091 was a SCSI 2 controller for the Zorro 3 slot, it was made by Commodore. This is a reverse enginered version that you can find prebuilt on the internet or build yourself. Find out more about the original C= 4091 card here and the new replica A4091 SCSI card here.

I watched the presentation of this card on an Amiwest stream a couple of years ago so its exciting to have the real card in my hands.

Advantages of SCSI in an Amiga

The advantage of using a SCSI harddrive and a A4091 in a Zorro 3 Amiga is that it will have faster transfer speeds than IDE. SCSI is also less heavy on the system as the card has its own brain to process file transfers taking up less CPU time than IDE. This is good as Amiga is limited in CPU power (at least with a real CPU).

Zorro 3 only!

This card only works on the Zorro 3 slot. That is good news since it means better performance than a Zorro 2 card/slot. But it also means it will only work on the A4000(T) and the A3000(T). The Amiga 3000 already has SCSI on the motherboard, but if that does not work well, this card could be the solution.

Hardware setup

This card will probably end up in my A4000TX or in my A4000D. The A4000T already has SCSI2 and is basically the A4091 card implemented on the motherboard (well, the main chip is the same). As my main systems already got 060s, graphics cards and plenty of memory this is a welcome addition in squeezing out the last performance before I go into the world of PiStorms.

I will run a ZuluSCSI card on mine as I have banished mechanical harddrives from all my computers. The ZuluSCSI can emulate multiple harddrives (and CDs) stored as files on an SD card.

Purple Amiga A4091 SCSI 2 card

And I actually lied a little when I said that it was exciting to finally have the card in my hands as I already built a purple A4091 SCSI 2 card last year.

New incoming Amiga PCB projects

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Here are some new Amiga PCBs for some new projects I got this week:

  • GottaGoFaZt3r memory card (will do the 256 MB version and probably a second card).
  • PiStorm16 x 2
  • Prometheus clone
  • MpegIt for the Prelude Amiga sound card
  • Prelude sound card PCB (not in the picture)

I also have two Amiga graphics cards in my todo list:

  • GBAPII++ graphics card
  • Mini GBAPII++ graphics card

And lets not forget the ReAmiga 3000 PCB I got late this week too! I have had a broken Amiga 3000D motherboard in my stash for years so finally I will be able to shake some life into it again!

So lets just say a massive BOM will be ordered soon!

Got my ZZ9000AX Amiga sound card running

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The ZZ9000AX Amiga sound card for the ZZ9000 graphics card

There is a sound card for the ZZ9000 Amiga graphics card called the ZZ9000AX. It is a small soundcard that is attached directly to the graphics card.

I had some problems with the ZZ9000AX

Keep in mind that I am running the card on an unofficial Amiga motherboard so that might be the case (A4000TX) and not the fault of the soundcard.

I got one of the soundcards last year but had massive problems getting it running well. The ZZ9000AX seemed to be picking up noise off the buss and many times had a disturbingly loud background buzz that never stopped. Paula sound is passed through the ZZ9000AX and when Paula output was passed through the ZZ9000AX it just sounded horrible. Sometimes distorted, sometimes just totally wrong, so far from the regular crystal clear Amiga sound output I was used to.

I was sent a replacement card from MNT but it did not fix the problems, just introduced different sounding problems. I am not blaming MNT for these problems – as I was running it in my A4000TX which is a non standard Amiga model (with no public schematics), there might be some kind of difference between an A4000D CR and an A4000TX that introduces these problems into the audio output. Without schematics it is not possible to go further investigating the problem. I am going to test my card on my other Zorro machines in the future to find out if it is the fault of the A4000TX or not (will update this text). But the card was sadly unusable for me in my A4000TX.

Finding a solution

ZZ9000AX with external to internal cable

Playing around with the card I noticed that if I removed the three wire cable that connected Paula audio output into the ZZ9000AX (you can see it attached to the card above) the card was beautifully silent, no bus noise, no irritating static and no weird noises. Playing MP3s worked fine. So I got an idea to remove the three cable wire and route the output from the ZZ9000AX into the Paula input header so the output of the soundcard was mixed into the sound jack of the A4000TX.

Cable in detail, it is just a simple cable, nothing special to be honest

I created this little cable just to prove if it could work. I will make a nicer looking cable in the future. The A4000D and the A4000TX (that is based on the A4000D CR) has a audio in input on the motherboard, likely for CD-ROM input or for AV purposes.

It is connected to line in on the A4000TX motherboard so it gets mixed into the output for the sound socket.

You can see the cable connected to the audio input header on the image above. It is a messy setup, but the system is in a state of work in progress at the moment.

The cable is just a nasty quick hack, I will do something better here in the future

Here is the backside of the A4000TX and how I route the cables to the internal audio input. No doubt I will create a more neat solution in the future, but for now this will do.

Does the fix work?

Yes it does, I have configured AmigaAMP to use the MHI drivers for MP3 playback. Both MHI and AHI works fine. There is no bus noise and no ringing noises in the background. The sound output is dead silent when Paula is not creating sound or an MP3 is not playing, just as I expect it to be. And best of all, playing modules in an module player sounds crystal clear. Playing MP3s on my Amiga sounds just as they do on my PC now!