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1. Overview / Background report: Amiga PCI Boards (by Dirk Wenk)

In other words: Which one is for me?

Here they are, PCI boards, but should you cry with joy or with distress? Four boards offering PCI slots have already been announced: Mediator, Predator, G-Rex and AmigaOne 1200/4000.

What should people use? Do they need one at all and what will be best in the future?

I believe there are three quite distinct groups of users:

One group simply wishes to extend their hardware with a powerful board, e.g. a Voodoo 3D graphics board. The next group wants to enjoy faster CPUs as well, and the third group mostly would prefer to be 100% compatible with the new AmigaOne while getting more mileage out of their old hardware.

Let's start with some technical data on the different PCI solutions:

Predator-SE (Plus) from Eyetech; to be expected early 2001
- Für A1200 (presupposed is a BPPC/BNG): 3 X PCI 1 X AGP (only Plus version) 1 X ZIF (only Plus version) 1 X SD-RAM (only Plus version)
- Für A4000 (presupposed is a CSPPC/CSMK3): 2 X PCI 1 X AGP and a shared PCI (only Plus version) 1 X Video-Toaster compatible Video/ZorroIII-Slot 1 X ZIF (only Plus version) 1 X SD-RAM (only Plus version)

Both SE versions may be upgraded to Plus versions!

G-Rex from DCE
- For A4000: G-Rex PCI 4000D (will replace the existing daughterboard; a CSPPC/CSMK3 is presupposed): 4 X PCI Slot 1 X Video-Slot 4 X Zorro-II/III (video in line with ZorroII/III)
- For A3000(T)/4000(T): G-Rex PCI Light (will be plugged into a CSPPC/MKIII): 1 X PCI
- Für A1200: G-Rex PCI 1200 (needs a BPPC/NG): 4 X PCI

Mediator PCI from Elbox
- For A1200 and ZorroIV; available now (A1200 version) and probably soon ZorroIV version; continued use of existing turboboards is possible. 4 X PCI
- Mediator-PCI 3000/4000 (will replace existing daughterboard): 5 X PCI 6 X ZorroII/III 1 X Video
  With these extensions you can keep using existing turboboards because the CVPPC slot is not required.
- AddOn: SharkPPC G3/G4; to be expected early 2001 A turboboard for a PCI slot of the Mediator-PCI: 1 X AGP (SharkPPC+) 2 X SD-RAM (Up to 1 GB) USB (SharkPPC+) FastEthernet (SharkPPC+) UDMA/EIDE/ATAPI-Controller (SharkPPC+) 68K/PPC and SharkPPC operate simultaneously! The Plus version converts the "Classic" Amiga to the AmigaOne. The G3/G4 processor is not inserted in a ZIF socket!
AmigaOne A1200/4000 from Eyetech; to be expected 1. quarter of 2001: 6 X PCI-Slot (on 2 buses?) 1 X AGP-Slot 1 X ZIF-Socket (for insertion of G3/G4-CPU boards as used in Mac) 2 X SO-Dimm for up to 512 MB RAM 1 X USB-1.0 board Harddisk controller 10/100MBPS Ethernet board A1200/4000 Interface logic Special features: Dualboot (one for the normal "Classic" Amiga, another one for the AmigaOne)
As far as I can work out, the board is connected to the 200-pin CPU slot in the A4000 or the expansion slot of the A1200, where other turboboards are plugged in. The CPU installed on the board will emulate a 68k processor. This means the existing CPU boards will not be necessary any more. The 68k emulation will be developed by Haage & Partner.

A short survey for A1200:

SLOTS	PredatorSE	PredatorPlus	AmigaOne 1200	Mediator-PCI	G-Rex 1200
PCI	3	3	6	4	4
AGP	0	1	1	0	0
ZorroII/III	0	0	0	0	0
Video	0	0	0	0	0
ZIF	0	1	1	0	0
RAM	0	1 X SD-RAM	2 X SO-DIMM	0	0
Drivers	n/s	n/s	n/s	CGX&Picasso	CGX
BPPC/NG?	Yes	Yes	No	No	Yes

And for the A4000:

SLOTS	Pred.SE	Pred.Plus	AmigaOne4k	Med.3k/4k	G-Rex4000D	G-RexLight
PCI	2	2	6	5	4	1
AGP	0	1	1	0	0	0
ZorroII/III	1	1	0	6	4	0
Video	1	1	0	1	1	0
ZIF	0	1	1	0	0	0
RAM	0	1 X SD-RAM	2 X SO-DIMM	0	0	0
Drivers	n/s	n/s	n/s	CGX&Picasso	CGX	CGX
CSPPC/MK3?	Yes	Yes	No	No	Yes	Yes

"n/s" means "no statement" because the manufacturer did not make any. But it is possible that CGX and/or Picasso96 will be used. In the line with "BPPC/NG?" or "CSPPC/MK3?" "Yes" means, that the PCI interface will be connected there.

Concerning the Predator Plus it is important to realise that on this board a ZIF socket is present, where a G3/G4 board with L2 cache, as in Mac, may be inserted. As well multi CPU boards (if supported by the OS), and in addition fast memory in SD-RAM slots will be no problem.

Both the Predator and G-Rexx versions use the PCI connections on the BlizzardPPC/NG and CyberstormPPC/MK3, which normally are used for optionally available graphics boards. The advantage of this is that the PCI boards may directly be addressed and that a higher transmission rate to the 603e/604e CPU is possible. The disadvantage is that as a standard this bus runs with 50 MHz and even with overclocking is usable only to approx. 60 MHz, because otherwise the SCSI chip on the board will not work correctly (apart from the BlizzardPPC/NG without SCSI).

And as well the timing of the installed 70/60ns-PS/2-RAM becomes critical.

At the WoA in Cologne at Hyperion a G-Rex board was shown running with a Voodoo3 board. It ran "Heretic II" with a CyberstormPPC/180MHz in 640x480 easily making 41 FPS. The graphics driver was CGX. Because the driver was not optimized, some speed improvements are quite possible!

The Mediator type uses another approach. Instead of connecting to the PCI connector, this board is connected directly to the Zorro expansion slot (A4000/3000) or to the extension slot of the A1200, where other turboboards are fitted.

The turboboard itself is just plugged into the Mediator 1200, whereas on an A4000/3000 it replaces the complete daughterboard, so that there is no problem which CPU board is plugged into the 200-pin connection.

It works independently from the PCI clock of the PCI connectors of the Phase5 board and the speed may be increased up to 66 MHz.

Presently these solutions suffer in performance because the data has to go through the narrow A1200 bottleneck or the Buster (in A4000 approx. 18 MB/s). As soon as the SharkPPC hits the market everything looks better: the PPC processor on this board can access PCI boards with the maximum PCI speed.

The access to existing ZorroII/III boards might be faster too.

According to a statement by Elbox, the SharkPPC will have no drivers directly for the "Classic" Amiga. Other manufacturers are asked to supply drivers (e.g. WarpUp). The SharkPPC is intended for updating the "Classic" Amiga to AmigaOne.

It is quite interesting to understand how this Zorro-PCI-bridge is accomplished on the A3000/A4000. There is a board installed which sits in both a Zorro and a PCI slot. To make this possible, an additional Zorro slot and an extended PCI slot exist to plug the board into.

This PCI slot has besides the normal PCI signals additional signalling lines for access to the "Classic" Amiga. This board's logic meets the PCI2.1 standard.

If no PCI-Zorro-bridge is used, the now free ZorroII/III slot can be fitted as normal with a board. Users already owning a PCI daughterboard, e.g. from Eagle, unfortunately cannot use the PCI-Zorro-board, because the additional signal lines do not exist on the Eagle board. Not long ago Elbox published a little benchmark test using among others an Apollo1260.

It was interesting to observe that this board, which has A3000 and 4000 versions, showed clearly better performance compared to a BlizzardPPC/NG, flowing from good hardware design. (Unfortunately I had replaced my Apollo 4060 with a CSPPC, only to realise that the 68k performance in spite of 64Bit design was clearly inferior!)

If you already have a Mediator, and run a Voodoo3 board with Picasso96 you will notice that the Voodoo is extremely slow. The reason is that the Voodoo3 driver is presently only optimized for version 1.43b. Therefore this may lead to speed breakdowns on version 2.0 (see statistics).

P96Speed 1.2 - (c)`97-99 by Jens Langner
.-----------------------------------------.
| Computer......: Amiga 1200/AGA
| CPU...........: 68040/33 MHz
| OS / WB.......: V40.68/V44.2
| SetPatch......: V44.6
| Chip/Fast.....: ~2.0MB/127.5MB
| Graphics card.: Voodoo3
| GFX system....: Picasso96 v2.0
| Resolution....: 640 x 480 x 8
| Depth/Colors..: 256 colors
| Testlength....: 13

.============= SPEEDRESULTS ==============.
| RectFill()................     25 op/s
| RectFill() Pattern........     29 op/s
| WritePixel()..............  75851 op/s
| WriteChunkyPixels().......    415 op/s
| WritePixelArray8()........    408 op/s
| WritePixelLine8().........  11768 op/s
| DrawEllipse().............   6016 op/s
| DrawCircle()..............   6627 op/s
| Draw()....................  11928 op/s
| Draw() Hor/Ver............  12608 op/s
| ScrollRaster() X..........   1536 op/s
| ScrollRaster() Y..........   1669 op/s
| PutText().................   3738 op/s
| BlitBitMap()..............   8203 op/s
| BlitBitMapRastPort()......   4028 op/s
| BitMapScale().............     66 op/s
|--------------- Intuition ---------------
| OpenWindow()..............     10 op/s
| MoveWindow()..............    143 op/s
| SizeWindow()..............     16 op/s
| CON-Output................    222 op/s
| ScreenToFront()...........     60 op/s
`========================================='

P96Speed 1.2 - (c)`97-99 by Jens Langner
.-----------------------------------------.
| Computer......: Amiga 1200/AGA
| CPU...........: 68040/33 MHz
| OS / WB.......: V40.68/V45.1
| SetPatch......: V44.13
| Chip/Fast.....: ~2.0MB/127.5MB
| Graphics card.: Voodoo3
| GFX system....: Picasso96 1.43b
| Resolution....: 640 x 480 x 8
| Depth/Colors..: 256 colors
| Testlength....: 13

.============= SPEEDRESULTS ==============.
| RectFill()................  13429 op/s
| RectFill() Pattern........  11611 op/s
| WritePixel()..............  76123 op/s
| WriteChunkyPixels().......    442 op/s
| WritePixelArray8()........    433 op/s
| WritePixelLine8().........  13778 op/s
| DrawEllipse().............   6486 op/s
| DrawCircle()..............   7581 op/s
| Draw()....................  15077 op/s
| Draw() Hor/Ver............  14711 op/s
| ScrollRaster() X..........   2100 op/s
| ScrollRaster() Y..........   2190 op/s
| PutText().................   5517 op/s
| BlitBitMap()..............   9265 op/s
| BlitBitMapRastPort()......   6606 op/s
| BitMapScale().............     66 op/s
|--------------- Intuition ---------------|
| OpenWindow()..............     78 op/s
| MoveWindow()..............    296 op/s
| SizeWindow()..............     75 op/s
| CON-Output................    812 op/s
| ScreenToFront()...........     60 op/s
`========================================='

There already seems to be a solution for this problem. Just enable the option "FAKENATIVEMODES" in Picasso96. By doing this not only is the speed drop said to be cured, but it should even be faster than version 1.43. They are already at work on this problem, and in the next version it should be fixed.

At the WoA in Cologne we were able to admire the A1200 version of the Mediator with TV/Voodoo and Network boards plugged in. The screen displayed a TV-program, which, it was stated, was directly written into the memory of the Voodoo board.

Furthermore it was explained that with the SharkPPC module a transmission rate to PCI boards of 264 MB/s was possible, whereas to 68k or 68k/PPC turboboards only 7 MB/s to 25 MB/s could be achieved. A version of the Mediator for the A3000 is planned.

The AmigaOne solution for 1200/4000 is quite interesting, too. This is not your usual board, as you might expect, but a complete computer, which handles the Amiga "ONLY" as an extension board! This means it can run even without a "Classic" Amiga! It is said that the board has everything that is needed for an AmigaOne. And furthermore those items may be used from a "Classic" Amiga (as soon as drivers are available). In this setup you may see the A1200/4000 motherboard as an I/O board with AGA chipset. And the Zorro slots as board add-ons ...

It is strange to consider a set-up this way around! And indeed this will cause an upheaval, because the old CPU board in the CPU slot becomes unusable, because the "Classic" Amiga will operate via this connector on the AmigaOne board.

At the WoA in Cologne a road map was also presented, as follows:

Developer System	12/2000
ClassicOS Driver	01/2001
680X0 Emulator	01/2001 (developed by Haage & Partner)
Betatester System	02/2001
Production of A1200 Version	1. Quarter 2001

And also a schedule for the new AmigaDE was shown. Here it is:

AmigaDE for End Users	07/2001
AmigaDE Driver	07/2001
AmigaDE-Port for any AmigaOne	08/2001
Native AmigaDE Applications available	1. Quarter 2002

As you can see, every solution has its pros and cons. Now each user will have to make up his own mind about what he will need!

Only a simple PCI board, for instance for a fast 3D-Voodoo board (G-Rex Light)? Or one with the possibility to use a G3/G4-CPU? Or maybe a new AmigaOne, which uses the "Classic" Amiga only as extension?�

Finally it will be important, if you already have a CSPPC or BPPC and want to use the appropriate CVPPC or BVPPC in future.

Even worse it could be that not all drivers support exactly the preferred PCI board in all PCI features! If those responsible don't finally come to some agreement, will we could end up with two, three or more solutions and everyone with something different ... (we remember PowerUp/WarpUp).

I for myself have the pleasure of a Zorro3 daughterboard, which offers a rich eight slots, but in the tower it covers up the bus of the CSPPC! Because of this the CybervisionPPC and of course all the PCI-Phase5 solutions, which do not have alternative ZorroII/III slots, are unusable.

And what else is to be said about PCI? Worst nightmare: As soon as Amiga users have spent small fortunes installing PCI slots, the Win-PeeCee will switch to the new 64Bit PCI bus and we will be up to date but behind the eight-ball once again... oh well.

All particulars based on press releases or statements of staff members of the relevant manufacturers. The benchmark test originates from H. Kanning. These statements may be subject to errors.

Dirk Wenk <dirk@wax7.de>