Amiga Tools 4/Amiga Tools 4.iso/text+faqs/reviews/cyberstorm060.txt

Text File | 1995-12-17 | 13.5 KB | 393 lines

Article 286 of comp.sys.amiga.reviews:
Path: rcfnews.cs.umass.edu!barrett
From: [e-mail] (Chris Coulson)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.reviews
Subject: REVIEW: Cyberstorm 060 accelerator
Followup-To: comp.sys.amiga.hardware
Date: 11 Dec 1995 04:07:38 GMT
Organization: The Amiga Online Review Column - ed. Daniel Barrett
Lines: 376
Sender: [e-mail] (comp.sys.amiga.reviews moderator)
Message-ID: <4agaqa$[e-mail]>
Reply-To: [e-mail] (Chris Coulson)
NNTP-Posting-Host: maya.cs.umass.edu
Keywords: hardware, 68060, accelerator, commercial
Originator: barrett@maya


PRODUCT NAME

    Cyberstorm 060


BRIEF DESCRIPTION

    A replacement CPU module for the A4000, providing a 50MHz
68060 and a four slot memory board to take 4MB, 8MB, 16MB and 32MB
SIMMs, in any combination.


AUTHOR/COMPANY INFORMATION

    Name:        Phase 5 Digital Products
    Address:    In der Au 27
            61440 Oberursel
            Germany

    Telephone:    [phone]
    FAX:        [phone]

    BBS:        (06171) 58 37 90


LIST PRICE

    849.00 UK Pounds


SPECIAL HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE REQUIREMENTS

    HARDWARE

        Officially this module is for the desktop A4000 only,
        but there have been reports that it can be made to fit
        in the A3000 and A4000T.  I personally can't vouch for
        this.

    SOFTWARE

        [MODERATOR'S NOTE: None mentioned by reviewer.]


MACHINE USED FOR TESTING

    A4000 - originally fitted with a 25MHz 68ec030/68882 module
    2MB Chip RAM, 16MB Expansion RAM
    Kickstart 3.0, Workbench 3.0
    124MB Seagate IDE Hard Drive
    410MB Samsung IDE Hard Drive


INSTALLATION

    Ouch!

    This is NOT, repeat NOT, an easy piece of hardware to fit.  I'm not
going to give a step-by-step walk-through of how to fit it, because

    a) the documentation provided with the module does it rather
    well, and

    b) if you really need a step-by-step guide, then you'd be
    better off getting your dealer to fit the thing for you.  I'm
    warning you, this is a right pain in the backside to fit.

    Assuming you want to do it yourself, I'll just point out
firstly what the overall installation is like, and also where I think
the documentation could be improved a little.

    Fitting a CPU module to the A4000 is about the hardest upgrade
you can do to the machine, short of replacing the motherboard.  What
makes it harder is that the Cyberstorm is not a single daughterboard,
but consists of a carrier board, roughly the same size as the original
CPU board, a memory board and the all important CPU board.  Fitting
the carrier board is quite easy, as is the memory board.  However, the
CPU board is the most frightening piece of the installation, since in
order to get it sitting correctly on its mounting clips, you have to
apply quite a bit of pressure to the board, and since in doing so you
are also applying pressure to the carrier board, this flexes
alarmingly.  Also complicating the issue is that you are made
painfully (literally) aware of the sharp edges/points on the rear of
the Zorro backplane.  One small slip of the fingers and you may end up
with a shredded hand...

    So, how can you make it easier on yourself?

    1. The manual recommends removing the rear drive bay, but says
    nothing about the front bay.  Indeed, all the photos in the
    manual show the front bay in place.  I'd recommend removing
    it, since it gives you more space to manoeuvre.

    2. The problem described above with the carrier board flexing
    is due to the stiffness of the clips on the spacer legs used
    to hold the CPU card in place on the carrier board.  A way to
    ease the problem is to file the edges of the clips slightly,
    to reduce the width ever so slightly, making it easier to get
    the clips in place.  Don't overdo it though, otherwise
    there'll be no point in having the clips at all!

    Aside from those two points, just follow the manual and you
should be fine.


REVIEW

    I'll start by saying that the pain of the installation was
easily worth it, because having the fastest CPU in the 68000 family
sitting inside my Amiga makes me VERY happy.

    If you are in any way interested in processor intensive work,
like image processing, 3D rendering, document processing or 3D games
(!), you should really consider the 68060 as a serious upgrade option.
This is especially true if, like me, your A4000 is currently powered
by a 68030.  For 4000/040 owners the choice may not be quite so clear,
since they have the option of buying a bare Cyberstorm 040 and using
their existing 68040 on that.  Although a 25MHz 68040 is roughly half
as fast as a 50MHz 68060, the extra cost of the 060 card over the 040
version may be more important.  For 68030 owners though, the small
extra cost between a 68040 card and the Cyberstorm 060 is easily
offset by the extra speed gain.

    The hardware itself looks very well made, and all fits
together firmly.  I guess the only thing I could complain about is the
decidedly cheap method of isolating the RAM module from the Zorro
backplane.  You might think that Phase 5 would have fitted the module
with an insulated cover but no, they instead provide a sheet of
cardboard for you to bend into shape and position between the memory
module and backplane. Whilst this is effective, it seems so amateurish
when you consider the quality (and cost) of the hardware.

    As for the software, what you get is as follows:

    68040.library
    68060.library   - some more additions to your LIBS: directory...
    CPU060          - a replacement for the Shell CPU command
    CyberPatcher    - patches some programs that use floating point
              operations not handled by the onboard FPU, to speed
              things up
    CyberSnooper    - reports any use of a floating point instruction
              that has to be emulated by the CPU.  Useful for
              software developers
    CyberGuard      - an Enforcer clone, specifically for the 68060.
              You'll still need Enforcer for its documentation
    BarFly          - Shareware version of the BarFly assembler/debugger
              utility.  Would have been nice to have got the
              registered version, but we can't have everything.

    So, the big question is, just how much faster is everything???

    This is not an easy question to answer, simply because any
speed increase is highly dependent on the rest of the system.  What
I've done is time a few operations carried out using popular
utilities, both with the 25MHz 68030/882 combination and with the
50MHz 68060.  The 68030 time/rating is shown first.  Here goes!

    [MODERATOR'S NOTE:  The notation "XmYs" means "X minutes,
    Y seconds.  So "6m10s" means "6 minutes 10 seconds." - Dan]

    Final Writer 4:

      Printing a large EPS image at 360*360dpi to a Preferences printer:
      6m10s / 1m49s


    Post 1.86enh:

      Printing the same image as above, at 360*360dpi to the same
      printer:
      1m57s / 0m19s


    AMOS 3D:

      A starfield plotting program
      4.2 frames per second / 24.5 frames per second


    AMOS Professional:

      A map generator - time to create one map
      1m07s / 0m09s


    ImageFX 1.52.1346 (CUAmiga coverdisk version):

      All tests carried out on a 640*512 24 bit buffer

      5*5 convolve
      1m16s / 0m06s

      90 degree rotate
      16s / 2s

      Save as Q85 JPEG to RAM:
      18s / 2s

      Load resultant JPEG from RAM:
      10s / 2s


    Brilliance 2 - Registered version

      To load a 640*512 HAM-8 image and convert to 256 colours
      2m42s / 0m27s

      To perform a full screen negative on the resultant image
      17s / 7s


    Imagine 2

      To render a particular scene at 80*64, 24 bit Trace mode
      4m47s / 0m30s


    LhA 1.38

      Compress entire Sys: partition to RAM:
      6m50s / 1m45s

      Test resultant archive
      1m21s / 0m32s



    A bit of simple maths shows a range of speed increases from
the 2.4 mark (Brilliance 2 negative) up to 12.6 (ImageFX convolve).
It can be concluded then that, from the raw processor speed point of
view, an A4000/060 is 12 times faster than a standard A4000/030.
However, the rest of the A4000 has not been accelerated by this
factor, leading to the apparently disappointing results from, say,
Brilliance.  Given that Brilliance relies heavily on the graphics
hardware, and was designed to be as fast as possible on a low-end
Amiga, it is no surprise that the bottleneck here is the AGA hardware
rather than the processor.  Similarly, the various loading/saving
tests show that the 060 can be kept waiting for the slow IDE hard
drives.  Maybe my next upgrade will be the CyberSCSI module and a nice
fast SCSI drive to go with it...

    As far as compatibility goes, in the short time I've been
using the 060 I've yet to find a program that cannot be persuaded to
work.  Certainly all the serious utils I use regularly work just fine,
as do my current set of regularly played games.  Aside from one case
where I'm required to boot without running SetPatch, the worst
degrading that's been found necessary is to turn off the 060 data
cache, which is easily done using the provided CPU060 utility.

    Put it this way, if a program works on a standard A4000 it's a
miracle, so getting it to work on an A4000/060 is a relatively simple
task.  (Nothing against the A4000, just the programmers who assume
that the A1200 is the only AGA machine there is, forgetting that the
A4000 does some things ever so slightly differently).


DOCUMENTATION

    A 32 page bilingual (German/English) A4 manual, with lots of
clear pictures of the installation process, and diagrams showing the
location and settings for all the jumpers.  I like the photos showing
each step of the installation, just to make things absolutely clear,
and the clear instructions on jumper settings.  However, I've read the
section on fitting SIMMs to the memory module a few times, and I am
sure that the description of the SIMM orientation is wrong, although
the accompanying photo is correct.

    On-disk documentation is provided for most of the software,
though as I mentioned earlier, you'll need to get hold of the original
Enforcer documentation if you want to use CyberGuard, since the
supplied docs only cover the (minimal) differences between the two.
Unfortunately no documentation is provided for CPU060, which is a
shame since I`m not 100% sure what all the different CPU options
mean/do - sure, I know what a data cache is, and I can have a good
guess as to the function of the branch prediction cache, but what the
heck is AllocateOperand mode???  Some information on the 68060 would
therefore have been appreciated.


LIKES

    It's the fastest accelerator for the Amiga, it's nicely made
and it comes in a rather mean and sinister looking black box :-)


DISLIKES AND SUGGESTIONS

    The cardboard insulator for the Zorro backplane is out of
place in such a high profile product, and really should be replaced
with a properly applied insulation layer on the memory module.

    Perhaps we should have been given the registered version of
BarFly, or a reduced registration fee.

    The manual section detailing the fitting of SIMMs to the
memory module could de with being re-written (or perhaps
re-translating, it may be that something was lost/altered from the
original German version).

    There needs to be some documentation about the 68060 itself,
detailing what all the caches etc. do, and possibly some examples of
when you should turn options on and off to maintain backward
compatibility.


COMPARISON TO OTHER SIMILAR PRODUCTS

    Compared to the 68030/882, the 68060 screams along.  You want
raw CPU muscle, you got it!


BUGS

    Just the bugs in the manual.


VENDOR SUPPORT

    Unknown.


WARRANTY

    "Phase 5 Digital Products provides the REGISTERED USER of this
Cyberstorm Accelerator with a 12 month parts and labour guarantee,
commencing on the date of purchase.  During the period of the
guarantee we will remedy all defects either by exchange or repair, at
our discretion, which are due to material or manufacturers defects.
Execution of the rights under this guarantee in no way affects the
period of the guarantee."


CONCLUSIONS

    Because of the few minor quibbles I have, I can't give the
Cyberstorm 060 a 5/5, but I will give it a 4.99999/5

    If you need the fastest 68000 based Amiga, you need the
Cyberstorm, it's as simple as that.

    Finally, given the quality of Phase 5 products, I'm more than
happy to see them working so closely with Amiga Technologies on new
Amiga hardware.  It can only be good for the Amigas future.


COPYRIGHT NOTICE

    This is/was/will be a production of some small furry animals
from the South American region, although they were helped a bit by
Chris Coulson.

    Review text Copyright 1995 Chris Coulson

    Permission is granted for anyone (even Microsoft) to use this
review as they wish, and if you do get some use out of it, why not
mail me and let me know.  That way you'll be encouraging me to keep
writing reviews for as long as c.s.a.r keeps going (and a BIG thanks
to Dan Barrett for doing what he does so well).

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Chris Coulson                           | A4000/060 - 18MB RAM/530MB HD
Robotics Postgraduate                   | P60 - 16MB RAM/1.4GB HD/CDROM
University of Newcastle upon Tyne       | A500 - 1MB RAM
                    | Sinclair Spectrum - 48KB RAM
E-Mail:                                 | Sinclair ZX81 - 1KB RAM
[e-mail]                   | "The times are a'changing..."
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