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- Path: sparky!uunet!olivea!spool.mu.edu!decwrl!concert!rutgers!cbmvax!mks
- From: mks@cbmvax.commodore.com (Michael Sinz)
- Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.hardware
- Subject: Re: 14.xx & 7.xx Mhz, why?
- Keywords: 68000
- Message-ID: <36755@cbmvax.commodore.com>
- Date: 6 Nov 92 13:19:09 GMT
- References: <1992Nov5.224246.25432@ifi.uio.no>
- Reply-To: mks@cbmvax.commodore.com (Michael Sinz)
- Organization: Commodore, West Chester, PA
- Lines: 27
-
- stigo@ifi.uio.no (Stig Arne Olsen) writes:
- >
- >Can some guru :-) here tell me why C= are clocking the processors below what
- >they were made for? They do not seem to do it with the faster processors,
- >but why are the Mc68000 just 7 and Mc68020 in the A1200 14Mhz? Has it something
- >to do with dma-cycle timing? And why are the 68030 in the A3000 running at the
- >full 25Mhz, if this is a problem?
-
- It is an issue of cost for the low-end machines. The Amiga graphics/hardware
- section is very tightly tied to the clock of NTSC/PAL video. This is 7.14
- (or so) MHz. Doing a nice multiple of that number makes the hardware
- easier to design and cheaper to make. (Less parts). In fact, if the
- async hardware is not designed very well, going at 16MHz could actually
- be slower than doing sync at 14MHz. (Most hardware developers would not
- fall into this, however, as the technology available today makes it easy to
- design it right)
-
- Anyway, the cost is much less by running off of the standard video clocks.
- And these video clock are what made the Amiga so good at doing video output.
-
- /----------------------------------------------------------------------\
- | /// Michael Sinz - Senior Amiga Systems Engineer |
- | /// Operating System Development Group |
- | /// BIX: msinz UUNET: mks@cbmvax.commodore.com |
- |\\\/// Programming is like sex: |
- | \XX/ One mistake and you have to support it for life. |
- \----------------------------------------------------------------------/
-