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[News] Eyetech post AmigaOne design layoutANN.lu
Posted on 28-Feb-2001 20:18 GMT by Christian Kemp21 comments
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Darrin noticed that there are two GIF images of the AmigaOne on Eyetech's AmigaOne website. The first is labeled to show exactly what each connector is for.
Eyetech post AmigaOne design layout : Comment 1 of 21ANN.lu
Posted by Anonymous on 27-Feb-2001 23:00 GMT
My god, it comes to something when we are supposed to get excited over pcb plots! :(
Give me product or shut up, to put it bluntly.
Let's face it, the AmigaOne is already a good couple of months behind schedule (it was due to be shipped March [ still IS according to the website!], but now won't ship until at least May)...
When it exists and I can buy it, THEN I'll consider getting excited, but until then, spare us!!!
Eyetech post AmigaOne design layout : Comment 2 of 21ANN.lu
Posted by Darrin on 27-Feb-2001 23:00 GMT
In reply to Comment 1 (Anonymous):
Speak for yourself - I've had three wanks over it already!!!
Eyetech post AmigaOne design layout : Comment 3 of 21ANN.lu
Posted by Kenshiro on 28-Feb-2001 23:00 GMT
In reply to Comment 2 (Darrin):
What?! is your name Bender or something? well at least you're not a robosexual..
Eyetech post AmigaOne design layout : Comment 4 of 21ANN.lu
Posted by Darrin on 28-Feb-2001 23:00 GMT
In reply to Comment 3 (Kenshiro):
I kind of figure that if Kryten can get a tripple polaroid looking through an appliance catalog then I can get the same over an AmigaOne PCB, besides the Knave website was down.
Eyetech post AmigaOne design layout : Comment 5 of 21ANN.lu
Posted by the man in the shadows on 28-Feb-2001 23:00 GMT
In reply to Comment 1 (Anonymous):
> Let's face it, the AmigaOne is already a good couple of months behind
> schedule (it was due to be shipped March [ still IS according to the
> website!], but now won't ship until at least May)...
little behind on the news aren't ya? They are still intending to release all of the dev/beta boards in march. The problem is due to being under NDA and having to abide by some contracting, the boards cannot be released until a public announcement is made by some of the partners, otherwise the cat would be out of the bag. Alls speaking, the boards should be shipped either last day of march or the beginning of april, either way it is on schedule in my book. Besides, BillM stated that he was going to push for XMas (2000) and if that didn't happen, Q1. They've done a pretty damn good job so far. I'm sure that there will not only be hardware but also _working_ hardware to be announced at the show in St Louis. I've already prepaid for my tickets to the show... should be the best one yet.
Eyetech post AmigaOne design layout : Comment 6 of 21ANN.lu
Posted by leki on 28-Feb-2001 23:00 GMT
In reply to Comment 2 (Darrin):
LOL :)
Eyetech post AmigaOne design layout : Comment 7 of 21ANN.lu
Posted by Kay Are Ulvestad on 28-Feb-2001 23:00 GMT
In reply to Comment 4 (Darrin):
Aye, a very valid point indeed...as far as I can remember, that was vacuum cleaner attachments he was looking at, and the AmigaONE sure is a lot hotter than that...
Kay
Eyetech post AmigaOne design layout : Comment 8 of 21ANN.lu
Posted by Graham on 28-Feb-2001 23:00 GMT
Nice pictures. They could have labelled the chips as well. The AGP slot, PCI slots and A1200 interface appear to be coming off of the same chip near the AGP slot (this appears to be a chip incorporating a PCI-PCI bridge, AGP controller, LPC interface and A1200 interface, so a custom ASIC of some sort?).
There are 4 USB ports looking at the headers, and they are coming out of the chip near the bottom - a NEC USB2 chip?
The chip in the middle appears to be the IDE controller. This is a PCI device like the USB chip mentioned above, and lies between the northbridge and the aforementioned A1200/PCI-PCI/AGP chip. It is a simple chip (around 200 pins - 120 PCI, 80 IDE). I wonder if it is a Promise or Highpoint IDE chip, maybe with IDE RAID functionality?
The northbridge has a PCI interface - you can see the red lines coming out and connecting to the blue PCI bus. This blue PCI bus connects together the PCI-PCI bridge, IDE controller, Northbridge, USB(2) controller and the bottom 2 PCI slots for a total of 6 devices. The PCI-PCI bridge controls the top 4 PCI slots, most likely at 33MHz.
You can quite clearly see the northbridge also connects to the SDRAM slots and the processor slot. It appears to be a PGA (pin grid array) chip, probably an IBM or Motorola PPC northbridge. With a little work they could easily incorporate a dual PPC northbridge instead, with 2 CPU slots.
The Southbridge is also a PGA chip. The IDE and USB(2) chips are QPFP chips (pins on all 4 sides). Audio must be incorporated somewhere, surely? Maybe it will come as a PCI card - a soundblaster live perhaps?
They only seem to have shown two of the motherboard layers - I think that there is a third for power distribution and clock signals that isn't shown on that diagram - there are some chips that are isolated in a sea of black, and they look like clock controller chips. There are probably more PCI lines somewhere as well.
Thinking about it, the A1200 connector could just be another strangely shaped PCI device, with lines for serial and parallel as well. A custom adapter board will plug in to these two slots and connect to the A1200 expansion port, and this adapter board will include a PCI-A1200 custom logic board. No, I am wrong - it must be an ISA bus from the southbridge to the A1200 connector - this would make it a standard southbridge part. With an AGP controller? PCI bandwidth would be 133MB/s. ISA bandwidth is 16MB/s. AGP bandwidth is 1GB/s. Hence you would need a link between the northbridge and southbridge that can transmit well over 1GB/s of data in order to make the AGP worth having. There must therefore be another link between the northbridge and southbridge, similar to VIA's vLink, but faster. A new NDA motorola or IBM system, or even HyperTransport from AMD?
Very interesting I think.
Eyetech post AmigaOne design layout : Comment 9 of 21ANN.lu
Posted by Amifan on 28-Feb-2001 23:00 GMT
Very nice indeed. It's gaining my interest.
But on the other hand, what's the difference between this sollution and the Elbox one.
The A1200 becomes an ISA (?) expansion of the Eyetech Amigaone. With the SharkPPC you boot the amiga1200. Then reboot the Amiga1200 so the Shark can take over.
Shark vs. Eyetech Amiga1200
Pros.
USB 2 for sure
66Mhz PCI instead of 33Mhz
100MBit Ethernet on board
133Mhz fsb instead of 66Mhz
cons.
only 3 PCI slots left, but one AGP 4x in exchange
CPU is not upgradable (surface mounted)
no announced "classic" sollution yet. But will be "powered by AmigaDE".
Erm..well i'll just wait how much it will cost....
Eyetech post AmigaOne design layout : Comment 10 of 21ANN.lu
Posted by Martin Baute on 28-Feb-2001 23:00 GMT
In reply to Comment 8 (Graham):
> AGP bandwidth is 1GB/s.
Assuming AGP 4x, I guess. Did they say so?
> There must therefore be another link between the northbridge and southbridge,
> similar to VIA's vLink, but faster.
Yes, sure. Hey, no offense intended, but this is Eyetech, not ASUS or AMD. They will use 100% off-the-shelf components, and you are really believing they come up with some hyper-technology?
> A new NDA motorola or IBM system
Doubtly.
> or even HyperTransport from AMD?
I´d rather guess they settle for AGP 1x or 2x, hey, that´s still more than any "Classic" system can offer, by orders of magnitude. And I would still be satisfied to see it becoming reality.
Eyetech post AmigaOne design layout : Comment 11 of 21ANN.lu
Posted by Bill Toner on 28-Feb-2001 23:00 GMT
In reply to Comment 8 (Graham):
> Nice pictures. They could have labelled the chips as well. The AGP slot, PCI slots and A1200 interface appear to be
> coming off of the same chip near the AGP slot (this appears to be a chip incorporating a PCI-PCI bridge, AGP
> controller, LPC interface and A1200 interface, so a custom ASIC of some sort?).
More likely an FPGA. An ASIC costs in the hundreds of thousands of dollars to develop at the
absolute cheapest, and I doubt they'd make that money back with sales of an Amiga computer product.
They also need to pay for the developer's salary, PCB, production costs, etc. ASIC would
in theory allow more performance speed, but I think it's highly unlikely, especially with
the diferent A1200/A4000 interfaces involved, FPGAs make more sense here at the number
of sales they can realistically hope for. While the northbridge might possibly be an
off-the-shelf standard part from the likes of IBM or Motorola, any chip connected to the A1200/4000
will most likely be an FPGA.
For those who don't know, an FPGA is a programmable logic chip, you tell it what logic
is inside of it, vaguely comparable to how you tell a blank audio/video tape what
music/movie it will play by recording that music/movie onto the blank tape.
Eyetech post AmigaOne design layout : Comment 12 of 21ANN.lu
Posted by Twice-A-Day on 28-Feb-2001 23:00 GMT
In reply to Comment 1 (Anonymous):
The problem with shipping the boards earlier than May may be also a software issue. I guess that the AmigaDE supposed to make this boards run it's not ready yet, but will be on time for May.
Eyetech post AmigaOne design layout : Comment 13 of 21ANN.lu
Posted by the man in the shadows on 28-Feb-2001 23:00 GMT
In reply to Comment 8 (Graham):
> Audio must be incorporated somewhere, surely? Maybe it will come as a PCI
> card - a soundblaster live perhaps?
On the FAQ pages it states that audio will be via the EMU10K line of sound cards, so a SoundBlaster Live is very possible.
Eyetech post AmigaOne design layout : Comment 14 of 21ANN.lu
Posted by Anonymous on 28-Feb-2001 23:00 GMT
In reply to Comment 5 (the man in the shadows):
Nope, not behind the times at all (unlike the AmigaOne, which is decidedly behind schedule).
The dev boards were due out DECEMBER last year, and now they are planned for March.
The product was supposed to be on general sale in March this year - you telling me that is not a slip in timescales?
Either that AmigaOne development has slipped by 2 - 3 months, or the software to run on it (AmigaDE) has slipped 2 - 3 months.
Either way, there is a slip.
And I don't buy that "can't announce because of a partner" bullshit either - care to explain why it was safe in November for them to talk about dev boards in Dec and product in March, but now suddenly a "partner" has changed their minds?
Eyetech post AmigaOne design layout : Comment 15 of 21ANN.lu
Posted by the man in the shadows on 28-Feb-2001 23:00 GMT
In reply to Comment 14 (Anonymous):
> Nope, not behind the times at all (unlike the AmigaOne, which is decidedly
> behind schedule). The dev boards were due out DECEMBER last year, and now
> they are planned for March.
That's not true. They were pushing for November but couldn't make any promises whether or not they would be able to make it. If you don't recall that information, there are mpegs of BillM on the Aminet that go over this in plenty of detail. Also stated is that if they could not get the dev boards out by that time they would do everything they could do to get it out by 1Q 2001, yet at the same time they still made no promises. Now, if they promised to release the dev boards in December and product available by March 2001 I could understand that they were behind schedule, but they didn't promise anything. Even the interview on ScreenSavers where BillM brought with him a Moto phone he stated that desktop dev boards were being pushed for 4Q 2000 but potentially released 1Q 2001.
> The product was supposed to be on general sale in March this year - you
> telling me that is not a slip in timescales?
Read above, yes it was supposed to be on sale if the dev boards made it, but they didn't. So the whole timeframe was pushed by to 1Q of 2001 without promissing anything. I never stated that it was a slip in "timescales", since nothing was promissed, everyone got what they said would be released so far. They haven't been wrong on schedules yet. Good example of that, 3.5 and 3.9 both delivered and shipped on schedule. BB1 for 3.5 came at a surprise to most, heck, even 3.9 was a shock to most when it was announced to be ready.
> Either that AmigaOne development has slipped by 2 - 3 months, or the software
> to run on it (AmigaDE) has slipped 2 - 3 months. Either way, there is a slip.
it's still on schedule whether you believe what they said mid 2000 or not. Download and listen to the mpeg videos with BillM on the Aminet, there's nothing new but you might actually understand that nothing was ever promissed.
> And I don't buy that "can't announce because of a partner" bullshit either -
> care to explain why it was safe in November for them to talk about dev boards
> in Dec and product in March, but now suddenly a "partner" has changed their
> minds?
You aren't expected to understand/buy it. If you've ever done any kind of public relations or handled human resources, you would understand the legalities behind why nothing can be said or shipped. Like it or lump it nothing can be changed because you don't buy that "can't announce because of a partner" bs.
If you have a statement by Bill, Fleecy, Alan, Gary, or any of the other crew at Amiga giving promisses of dev board delivery dates, I would be surprised. If you don't have anything to back that up, do some research on it, I'm sure that there is nothing out there.
Eyetech post AmigaOne design layout : Comment 16 of 21ANN.lu
Posted by Graham on 01-Mar-2001 23:00 GMT
In reply to Comment 10 (Martin Baute):
>> AGP bandwidth is 1GB/s.
> Assuming AGP 4x, I guess. Did they say so?
I personally think that AGP 4x is the minimum these days. Sure, AGP 2x would be fine for the AmigaOne 1200, but that is still 533MBps, how will that fit into a 33MHz 32 bit bus allowing 133MBps between the northbridge and all other devices. Maybe the PCI bus connecting the NB to the PCI-PCI bridge chip is a 64 bit 66MHz bus providing 533MBps? I don't know everything about PCI, but I am sure that you can put 32 bit devices on a 64 bit bus fine.
> Yes, sure. Hey, no offense intended, but this is Eyetech, not ASUS or AMD.
> They will use 100% off-the-shelf components, and you are really believing
> they come up with some hyper-technology?
No, they will use another parties system. AMD have licenced HyperTransport - a low end 1GBps implementation would be plausible, although unlikely to be honest.
> I´d rather guess they settle for AGP 1x or 2x, hey, that´s still more than
> any "Classic" system can offer, by orders of magnitude. And I would still be
> satisfied to see it becoming reality.
I suppose that as a bridge between the classic Amiga and the AmigaNG standalone hardware this would be fine. It gives Eyetech and Amiga valuable development information so that they can get the next system right. It isn't meant to compete with PC motherboards, although it will probably only give performance similar to the lowest of the lowest in PC motherboards these days. It will come with a network card and a sound card, as it has to meet the AmigaNG specification, and it will cost around 400 pounds if we are lucky.
Eyetech post AmigaOne design layout : Comment 17 of 21ANN.lu
Posted by Graham on 01-Mar-2001 23:00 GMT
In reply to Comment 11 (Bill Toner):
> More likely an FPGA. An ASIC costs in the hundreds of thousands of dollars to
> develop at the absolute cheapest, and I doubt they'd make that money back
> with sales of an Amiga computer product.
I think that it is a standard southbridge now, well, as standard as an AGP enabled southbridge is... The A1200 connector is most likely an ISA bus with some other signals going with it. I am hoping that there will be more information provided by St Louis, so that we can all know how the system works. Well, the interested people at least ... :-)
Eyetech post AmigaOne design layout : Comment 18 of 21ANN.lu
Posted by Mark on 01-Mar-2001 23:00 GMT
One thing that worries me, is that I'll buy the AmigaOne
from Eyetech, only to find that the bplan standalone system
is much better. Are the Eyetech AmigaOne and the bplan system
going to be the same spec? I seem to remember reading that the
current bplan boards have firewire etc, which AFAIK the AmigaOne
does'nt.
Eyetech post AmigaOne design layout : Comment 19 of 21ANN.lu
Posted by Darrin on 01-Mar-2001 23:00 GMT
In reply to Comment 18 (Mark):
Since PCI Firewire cards can be bought in any good retail outlet then adding Firewire to the Amiga One is simply a matter of writing the drivers... just like BPlan.
Eyetech post AmigaOne design layout : Comment 20 of 21ANN.lu
Posted by Anonymous on 02-Mar-2001 23:00 GMT
In reply to Comment 19 (Darrin):
OTOH, this *requires* that sxomeone write drivers for each FW card for the AmigaOne, whereas the bPlan already HAS the card (and driver) built-in...
Not saying it won't happen, of course, just that it is nowhere near guaranteed to happen, that's all!
I mean, with the Mediator, all you need to do to get a GeForce card running is buy the card and write the drivers, after all...
Eyetech post AmigaOne design layout : Comment 21 of 21ANN.lu
Posted by Darrin on 02-Mar-2001 23:00 GMT
In reply to Comment 20 (Anonymous):
Does it have the "driver" built in? It may have the hardware on the motherboard, but that doesn't mean the drivers for any hardware are available. Remember the last BoXeR specs where Mick was thinking of leaving the USB prorts on the final design but leave it for someone else to write the actual port and device drivers Another winning idea from the people who brought us.... nothing!!! :)
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