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                        AMIGA (tm) TECHNICAL NOTE                  29-Mar-86

          Upgrading an AMIGA A1000 with a Motorola MC68010L8

                            by Thad Floryan


For quite awhile now, I've been experimenting using an MC68010L8 in place of
the MC68000 in my Amiga.  The benefits of the MC68010 are great, but several
"problems" with the MC68010 upgrade have held me back from recommending this
simple enhancement to everyone.  Now, the final quirk has been solved, and I
am recommending the upgrade to everyone!

This document has several parts, ALL of which must be read and understood by
anyone wishing to perform the upgrade or contract for someone to perform the
upgrade for you.  Additionally, there are several files which accompany this
technical note:

                       DeciGEL
                       DeciGEL.asm
                       DeciGEL.make

The several parts of this document are:

         I.  The MC68010 hardware upgrade

        II.  The MC68010 software upgrade

       III.  Copy of Motorola's MC68000 Micro Minutes MM-444-02, entitled
             "Advantages of Upgrading an MC68000 to an MC68010".

        IV.  Side notes

         V.  Trademark notices

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                           ** DISCLAIMER **

The modification and details described in this technical note are provided
"as is", without warranty of any kind, either expressed or implied, inclu-
ding, but not limited to, the implied warranties of fitness for a particu-
lar purpose.  The entire risk as to the results and performance of the mo-
dification is assumed by you.  In no event will I, Thaddeus P. Floryan Jr,
be liable for direct, indirect, incidental or consequential damages resul-
ting from the use or application of this information.

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I. The MC68010 hardware upgrade

The MC68010 is pin-for-pin compatible with the MC68000 installed in all
Amiga Model A1000 PCs.  The hardware upgrade consists of replacing the
MC68000 with the MC68010.


                            ** CAUTION **

         The internals of the Amiga are sensitive to static
         and are fragile; working on a computer is not like
         working on your car.  Also, opening the Amiga will
         void your warranty.  It may be worth your peace of
         mind to contract an experienced technician for the
         hardware part of this upgrade.  Common sense and a
         good mechanical aptitude are essential.  Take your
         time and do not rush; restrain your excitement for
         later, after the MC68010 is installed.

To open the Amiga, the five screws on the underside of the case must be
removed.  Releasing the cover can be tricky; examine the left side of the
case near the power switch (front side corner) and also 10 inches further
back along the seam and note the tabs: push in until they separate, then
lift the cover up toward the right side of the case and release the tabs
there.  The metal RFI shield covers the entire PC board and must be removed
to gain access to the MC68000.  Remove all the screws along its edge, and
also straighten out the tabs which protrude upwards through the shield, then
lift and remove the shield; be sure to note where each screw is supposed to
be located as there are several types of screws.  The disk drive must also
be removed since it sits over one edge of the MC68000.  First unplug the
two cables (power and signal) after noting the orientation so that they can
be replaced correctly later.  Now remove all screws fastening the disk
drive and lift it up and out: NOTE that the wires to the LED are still
fastened; these do not need to be removed if you turn the drive upside down
and lay it on a thick book alongside the right side of the Amiga case.  Pry
the MC68000 out and replace it with a MC68010L8.  Reverse all the previous
steps to reassemble the Amiga; the tabs which protrude through the RFI
shield need not be twisted back into place.

Reconnect all the cables to the Amiga.  Powerup the Amiga and boot with your
usual Kickstart and Workbench disks.  Verify that the system appears to be
working as normal.  Now, either from the Workbench or CLI, startup the
CALCULATOR tool, and perform the operation:  " 9 * 3 = ".  There should be
a software failure; this indicates the MC68010 is running correctly because
the CALCULATOR supplied with V1.1 uses a "MOVE SR,ea" instruction which is
invalid in user-mode with a MC68010.  Reboot the Workbench and proceed now
to section II, software upgrade.

If you do not experience the symptoms as described above, there may be
several reasons:

      1.  you re-installed the MC68000 instead of the MC68010,

      2.  the MC68010 is "dead", or

      3.  something else inside the Amiga has been damaged.

At this point, you are on your own.  My advice is to re-install the MC68000
and verify that your system works again; if it does, then your MC68010 chip
may be bad.  If your system still does not operate with the MC68000 back in,
then you gotta heap of trouble.  Re-read the DISCLAIMER above, and seek
competent technical service.

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II. The MC68010 software upgrade


Beginning with V1.1 of Kickstart and Workbench, Commodore-Amiga "officially"
supports operation of the MC68000, MC68010 and MC68020 CPU chips in the
Amiga Model A1000 per:

       "With the exception of the Calculator, software in the 1.1 release
        is compatible with the 68010 and 68020 processors.  Application
        programmers wishing to take advantage of such products should be
        sure to use the Exec GetCC() function to get the processor condi-
        tion codes.  (GetCC() handles the differences between the proces-
        sors such as the fact that "MOVE SR," is an invalid user mode
        operation in the 68010 and 68020.)  In addition, programmers
        should be sure to NOT use the upper 8 bits of a pointer for
        storing unrelated information, since the 68020 uses all 32 bits
        for addressing.

        = For those doing systems work, Exec maintains flags in the
          AttnFlags field of ExecBase which describe the type of processor
          in your machine.  Exec's coldstart procedure will update certain
          library entry vectors as neccessry to maintain compatibility.
          If you write code that uses the Supervisor() function, keep in
          mind that your stack frame is processor dependent.  Use the
          SuperState() function for processor independent supervisor mode
          entry.

        = V1.1 ROMWack will correctly display information for 68010/68020
          address and bus errors.
        "

OK, as you can see, simply by having installed the MC68010, you will be able
to use most Amiga system software without any problems.  But, the CALCULATOR
and other programs loaded with libraries using "MOVE SR,ea" will cause your
system to go to lunch with the Guru.  This is the reason I haven't
encouraged people to upgrade their Amigas until now; only a knowledgeable
person would have been able to either live with the occasional problem, or
rebuild the software to not use the "MOVE SR,ea" instructions.

So what happened all of a sudden to change my mind?  Simply that one clever
person has developed a short and elegant software solution that prevents
the "MOVE SR,ea" instructions from crashing your system.  "How," you may
ask, "is this done?".  It's done by inserting a "wedge" that intercepts
instruction privilege violations, examining the offending instruction for
the presence of "MOVE SR,ea" and, if found, replacing that instruction in
memory with a "MOVE CCR,ea" and resuming at the point of failure.  Since the
only valid use of the system status register (SR) in a user-mode program
would be to get the condition codes, the assumption made by the "wedge" is
a reasonable one.  And, it works!  I've been testing ALL the cases that
failed previously with the MC68010 in the Amiga and they ALL perform
correctly now.

I have included 3 programs with this technical note:

                DeciGEL         public domain, author: Scott Turner
                DeciGEL.asm     public domain, author: Scott Turner
                DeciGEL.make    public domain, author: Scott Turner

DeciGEL is the "wedge" program that needs to be placed in the "c" directory
of your workbench disk; DeciGEL.asm is the Assembler source file, and the
DeciGEL.make is an EXECUTE file that will recreate DeciGEL from DeciGEL.asm.
It is best to include a line in "s/startup-sequence" on your Workbench disk
that will call DeciGEL.  For example:

               echo "Workbench disk.  Release 1.1"
               echo " "
               echo "Use Preferences tool to set date"
               echo " "
               DeciGEL
                 .
                 .

The DeciGEL program resides in the 'progs' subdirectory of this AMICUS_#9
disk, simply use the CLI to copy it to the 'c' directory on the disk you
wish to boot from.

With the MC68010 installed and DeciGEL "wedged", your Amiga should operate
anywheres from 8% to 50% faster depending on what you're doing.  Note that
the "Boing!" demo will not be faster since its timing is synchronized to
the vertical framing of the monitor's clocking which is FIXED per NTSC TV
standards!  The biggest benefits of the MC68010 upgrade will occur with
heavy number-crunching applications, such as spread sheets and Mandelbrot
picture generations.   Enjoy!

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III. M68000 MICRO MINUTES         (c) Motorola                   MM-444-02

           Advantages of Upgrading an MC68000 to an MC68010


There are several ways a system's performance can be upgraded.  Some are
software related, such as lowering operating system overhead, obtaining
better quality language compilers, wisely designing application programs,
and coding applications more efficiently.  Others are hardware related,
such as adding memory, improving I/O channel data rates, increasing mass
storage speed and capacity, reducing memory access times, and upgrading
the system processor's clock frequency.

When considering an MC68000 system upgrade to higher performance, the
obvious thought is to redesign for a higher frequency MC68000.  For example,
a current MC68000 system running at 10 MHz could be redesigned to run at
12.5 MHz, thereby increasing system throughput by 25%.  The "obvious solu-
tion", however, is not necessarily the most appropriate or cost-effective
once several factors are taken into consideration and alternative solutions
examined.

The speed-up of a system clock will not be effective unless the system's
memory access time is also improved.  The performance of the MC68000 is
strictly limited by the bus speed, and if no improvement in memory speeds
are available, then an increase in system clock speed will lead to
negligible improvement in the overall result.  A 10 MHz processor running
with no "wait states" utilizes a 400 nS bus cycle (4 clocks x 100 nS/clock).
This same bus cycle timing, however, leads to a wait cycle on a 12.5 MHz
processor (4 clocks x 80 nS/clock + 80 nS of idle time).  Thus, the bus
performance is exactly the same, but the faster processor is idled for one
complete clock cycle.  Since a decrease in the bus cycle time provides a
directly proportional increase in processor throughput (until, of course,
the memory cycle becomes faster than the fastest processor bus cycle), the
12.5 MHz processor has no relative performance advantage over the 10 MHz
system.  The bottom line, then, is that in order to be effective, a higher
speed processor must run with fewer or the same number of "wait states".
This normally requires a redesign of the memory subsystem to improve the
memory access time.

Referring to the MC68000 Data Manual (ADI-814-R4), the memory access re-
quirements for the various speed processors can be examined.  The effective
memory access time (Taccs) of the MC68000 to a memory array (from assertion
of Address Strobe [-AS] to data valid) is:

        Taccs = Tch + 2Tcyc - Tchs1 - Tdic1 + (n * Tcyc)

where:
        Tch     is the clock high time (system dependent)
        Tcyc    is the clock period of the processor clock
        Tchs1   is the delay time from the rising edge of the clock to the
                assertion of address strobe
        Tdic1   is the data input set-up time prior to the falling edge of
                the clock
        n       is the number of wait cycles in the system

Assuming a symmetric clock (50% duty cycle), the memory speed required for
a no "wait-state" bus cycle for a 19 Mhz MC68000 processor is 185 nS (50 +
200 - 55 -10 + 0).  This bus speed can be easily realized with readily
available 150 nS dynamic RAMs and careful system design.  However, with the
same assumptions, the memory speed required for a no "wait-state" bus cycle
on a 12.5 Mhz processor is reduced to 135 nS (40 + 160 - 55 - 10 + 0) which
presents an obvious problem to the cost-conscious system designer -- lack of
cost-effective, large capacity 100 nS RAMs!

Memory access times are not the only difficulty encountered with the faster
clock speeds.  In a similar vein, the design of an efficient 12.5 MHz system
is more difficult than that of a 10 MHz system, since more careful attention
must be paid to the physical design of the board in order to account for the
higher frequency signals present, and the increased sensitivity to transient
phenomena.

A "painless" alternative means to EFFECTIVELY increase system performance
is to upgrade to the MC68010 processor.  The MC68010 at equal clock fre-
quencies will run from 8% to 50% faster than an MC68000 without any user
code changes.  The speed-ups are due to several microcode enhancements:
many 32-bit operations, conditional branches, multiply, divide and other
miscellaneous instructions run faster.  Systems which use memory management
can have dramatic improvements with slight operating system changes
utilizing a few new MC68010 instructions such as "Move to/from Address
Space" (MOVES).

Systems may see a significant improvement if they heavily utilize multiply,
divide and looping operations.  Loops run from 23% to 80% faster once the
microcode sets up the automatic "loop mode".  Such loops benefit particular
functions such as block moves, character matching and general string
manipulation operations, and multiple-precision binary and packed BCD
arithmetic.  The new MC68010 multiply is 14 clocks faster, and the divide
is 32 clocks faster than the MC68000.  Programs utilizing (or with the
potential of utilizing) such operations can obtain an increase in perfor-
mance easily exceeding 10%.

An additional "plus" of the MC68010 is the provision of a clear path for
the upgrade of current operating systems to full virtual operating systems
utilizing the sophisticated virtual memory processing capabilities of the
MC68010 (which is the same virtual environment offered by the 32-bit
MC68020).

Since the MC68010 is pin-for-pin compatible with the MC68000, *NO* hardware
redesign is necessary.  Only very minor software changes may have to be
made depending on operating system conventions.  The MC68010 differs from
the MC68000 in that: 1) a generic "vector word" has been added to the
MC68010 stack frame; and 2) the MC68000's "MOVE SR,ea" has been made a
privileged operation.

Easy software solutions for these two minor differences are: 1) any routines
which build exception stacks (e.g. those which dispatch a routine via an
RTE instruction) are modified to account for the four word stack frame (the
MC68000 uses a three word stack frame); and 2) an exception handler is added
to provide for privilege violations generated by the execution of the
"MOVE SR,ea" instructions in the USER state (local Motorola representatives
can supply a debugged handler to suit the requirements of any OS).  Major
operating systems have been ported from the MC68000 to the MC68010 in less
than a single day, reflecting the trivial changes required in the super-
visory level code.

The bottom line is, by upgrading an MC68000 system to an MC68010 system, an
increase in system performance is obtained which is equal to that which a
system redesign from 10 MHz to 12.5 MHz would provide, but with signifi-
cantly less design cost and effort.  The "speed-only" upgrade could only
achieve, at best, a 25% system improvement, and only if the system memory
access time is significantly improved.  The MC68010 upgrade offers from
8% to 50% improvement.  Note that the speed gained by changing to the
MC68010 is achieved with NO change in memory speeds, NO board redesign,
and NO higher speed parts installed in the system as would be required to
upgrade a system to a 12.5 MHz part.

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SIDE NOTES:

(1)  Commodore-Amiga has provided for the four word stack frame in Exec.

(2)  the DeciGEL program is the privilege violation exception handler.

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Amiga is a registered trademark of Commodore Business Machines, Inc.