The Sinclair QL Forum

Peter wrote:

Dave wrote:Of course, a 68EC030FN40 with caches will be a bit faster than an FLX68000 at 66MHz that only has a few bytes of instruction cache.

Not just the caches, but the 68EC030 has 2.6 times faster bus throughput per clock. So even with zero-wait RAM, the FLX68000 has no chance.

If EVERYTHING on the die except the FLX68000 core is disabled, they run with clean bus signals up to around 90 MHz. At 66MHz, the total memory bandwidth is only about the same as a 68EC020 @ 24MHz due to the limited bus width.

The FLX68000 is an interesting chip for a future "improved Gold Card" but would only come close to SGC speeds. The SGC with a 68EC030/40 would be about 60% faster.

Now, the Coldfire V2 that Nasta intended to use for the Goldfire boards.... That's something else!

Dave wrote:The FLX68000 is an interesting chip for a future "improved Gold Card" but would only come close to SGC speeds. The SGC with a 68EC030/40 would be about 60% faster.

To give some real figures, my MiSTer core employs a cycle-exact 68000 core with up to 42MHz. At that speed Test909 says Loops and Maths are almost identical to the SGC (3.26s vs 3.14s and 3.12s vs 3.26s). All screen stuff is MUCH faster, but that's because the MiSTer doesn't need to send it through the 8-bit bus, so not good for this comparison (due to this MiSTer is 17 times as fast as a QL in Test909 while SGC is only 7.5 times).

But I think a 60Mz 68000 could definitely beat the SGC in raw processor power if it's already a tie at 42Mhz.

So for the Mister core - what bus width is the video, and does the design make the processor wait whilst video data is being accessed?

It would be interesting to see what changes would be needed to optimize a (super) gold card design around the 68(EC)030.

32 bit memory access - possibly using burst mode for dram in conjunction with cache
16 or 32 bit video access with no bus contention
16 or 32 bit storage access (SD / IDE / FLASH memory mode)

for a given system like this using 40MHz 68(EC)030 - I wonder what figures it would turn in ?

Pr0f wrote:So for the Mister core - what bus width is the video, and does the design make the processor wait whilst video data is being accessed?

Video is currently served out of FPGA block RAM configured as dual port, so there is no contention. Only in QL speed mode video contention is explicitly simulated.

New toy in the house!


Can you spot it?


Gesendet von iPhone mit Tapatalk

The black mouse with red buttons?

vanpeebles wrote:The black mouse with red buttons?

Yes, a Giga-Mouse

You may remember a few months ago I mentioned ordering a mobile phone from Motorola's UK agent and got caught out by not knowing it was being shipped from The Netherlands, and it got caught up in the usual post-Brexit customs problems of 2021.

The tracking data for the phone stopped mid-January and they have now accepted it was lost and sent me another one.

Well, it's finally arrived and up and running. One issue I hadn't foreseen was that it requires a nano-SIM and the old SIM is a micro-SIM with no cutout. So I had to wait a few days for the new SIM (thanks Asda, great customer service over the SIM and quick number transfer). Moved everything of any importance, including photos, over to the new phone, which worked first time (unusual for me!) apart from a few unimportant text and Whatsapp messages from over the last few days since the last Google backup.

I used Google backup/restore for the transfer, since the old phone didn't have NFC etc for direct transfer. Worked very well, far smoother than I expected. Helps that both phones are same manufacturer I guess. Will still have to set up a few things manually such as tethering and a few phone-specific bits, but given how clumsy these things used to be years ago, it was almost an enjoyable experience.

Now, to make it perfect, it needs a QL emulator...

RalfR wrote:

vanpeebles wrote:The black mouse with red buttons?

Yes, a Giga-Mouse

Looks a bit like the Atari-style mouse on the QIMI on one of my QLs. Wonder if related?

dilwyn wrote:One issue I hadn't foreseen was that it requires a nano-SIM and the old SIM is a micro-SIM with no cutout.

Once, too impatient to wait for a new nano-SIM, I cut and filed up my micro-SIM to fit. It's possible, It worked, and it still working years later.