Re: The PPC factor.

[Jo Even Skarstein <joska@nuts.edu>]

On Fri, 5 Jun 1998, Eon Man wrote:

> About the PPC cards for VMEbus, I read sometime in the past that the problem
> with Atari VME is that you can't make the main system the slave.  However, if
> the secrets to the ATW are revealed, then it should be possible.  It's
> basically a MegaST-1 which somehow switches control over to the T800 daughter
> board.  Therefore, it must be possible. Perhaps not via the VMEbus,  maybe via

It's probably not possible via the VMEbus, but this has been done several
times by connecting directly to the CPU-bus. All accelerators from the
ADSpeed 16 to the Afterburner does it this way.

I really can't see any problems in creating a PPC-accelerator with
fastmem, a fast'n wide SCSI-bus, PCI-slots etc. except that it would be
three times as expensive as a G3-Mac... IMHO it makes much more sense to
port MiNT to PPC/G3-Macs and write a native VDI and AES for that one. This
also means that the Mac must *boot* MiNT, and not just run it as an
application.

> devised that would sit on the memory expansion slot.   Before the Falcon,
> project Sparrow was supposed to be an accelerator card for regular ST/e that
> would add the DSP and the 68030 to these computers.

The Falcon is nothing more than a STE with a crippled 030 and some new
custom-chips. The basic design is the same.


/*
** Jo Even Skarstein   http://www.stud.ntnu.no/~josk/
**
**   beer - maria mckee - atari falcon - babylon 5
*/