exxos's Atari, Amiga & retro forum

Allo Allo,

I got a lovely little device from the Thunderstorm team (@czietz, tuxie, matthias) this weekend. Installation was a breeze. I have just managed to install and do a quick test. Gembench shows 150% faster in CPU speed with lots of other improvements too. I ran the demo 'elegant machinery' to test for stability and everything ran fine. I'll do more tests that I will post here later.

FYI I haven't tried the FPU 48mhz mode yet which is why my FPU is showing slower at the moment (I previously ran at 40mhz, default is 32mhz at the moment) Can't wait to see how fast MiNT runs.

I am yet to update to the newer Storm ram expansion, but once I do the Speedy will also accelerate the RAM access which will be even faster! Awesome stuff :D

Nice one ...

Nice!

I had no idea they had actually finished this.

I don't suppose it will work on the daughterboard version TT?

mrbombermillzy wrote: 18 Mar 2022 21:55 Nice!

I had no idea they had actually finished this.

I don't suppose it will work on the daughterboard version TT?

Yes they have versions for all types:
https://wiki.newtosworld.de/index.php?t ... sh_Version

Oh wow, I knew they were working on this, but didn't realise it ever got finished. Must send an email... ;)

*sigh*... I have three TT and can't remember which versions I got. Or rather which version I got thunder/storm in. But... hmm, I guess they can be moved very easily to another TT.

First world problem :D

Steve wrote: 18 Mar 2022 20:39 Allo Allo,

I got a lovely little device from the Thunderstorm team (@czietz, tuxie, matthias) this weekend. Installation was a breeze. I have just managed to install and do a quick test. Gembench shows 150% faster in CPU speed with lots of other improvements too. I ran the demo 'elegant machinery' to test for stability and everything ran fine. I'll do more tests that I will post here later.

Very nice. They do some excellently professional products and should market them harder, IMO :)

BW

Oh, so it is a finished product after all, nice! Frankly, I'm a bit divided on this one -- not only it requires quite some desoldering but since it's using the original components (I mean the CPU and FPU), I'm a bit worried that I'm deliberately shortening its lifetime this way. Even if I find a 030 CPU at 50 MHz (I know there are PGA variants with such designation), it would be even more painful to replace as it is the SMD variant in my case. Dilemmas, dilemmas...

EDIT: The poorer thermal characteristics of the QFP package limited that variant to 33 MHz; the PGA 68030s included 40 MHz and 50 MHz versions. (wikipedia) I see that Steve's TT has the 33 MHz variant so there's nothing better to replace it with. Hmm.

mikro wrote: 19 Mar 2022 18:59 but since it's using the original components (I mean the CPU and FPU), I'm a bit worried that I'm deliberately shortening its lifetime this way.

For the PGA CPU (I only have that), I can say that - even after hours of stress-testing the Speedy in a loop - the CPU is cool enough to touch. I once measured the case temperature and iirc it was roughly 40 - 45°C. Even if we take into account the thermal resistance between junction and case, the CPU gets nowhere near any alarming temperatures. There are chips in a stock TT that run hotter than my overclocked CPU. Thus, I don't worry about damaging my TT's CPU (or FPU).

Really cool project.
I just don't see for me.. 16mhz making the difference of disassembling my TT030 after Lightning thunder and storm, and a 10mb ST ram upgrade. I have it all back together, with my nova inside and mach32 attached.

If TTs were STs and that common I might do it..

Love looking at the project page though. Looks small enough to fit all the goodies in on top.

James