WarpSE: 25 MHz 68HC000-based accelerator for Mac SE

[Zane Kaminski]

Got the WarpSEs reworked and the big connector put on. The first four I tried have been successfully programmed in the programmer fixture!



Great! I will try them out in the Mac in the next few days. There have only been small changes to the board and CPLD firmware since the last prototypes, so any issues oughta just be like, typos. If these work well then it'll be time for beta testing and the first early production batch.

Oh, also it only took 6 minutes and 46 seconds to flash the firmware. Not super fast but not as bad as I thought it'd be.

 

[mg.man]

If these work well then it'll be time for beta testing and the first early production batch.

Woo hoo! Watching with bated breath!

 

[Zane Kaminski]

Works! Here’s a screenshot of the latest WarpSE prototype booted to desktop.

Now we will begin beta testing!

 

[Zane Kaminski]

Just secured 265 more 2Mx8 DRAM chips which makes for about 520 total we own. I'm expanding the production run to around 280 boards. Currently I am working on a deal for some MC68HC000s from the well-reputed Eric Woo. Unlike most of the Shenzhen-based chip sellers I've worked with, he is always super honest about the quality of his chips. I'm hoping to acquire about 250 socket pull CPUs made in Motorola's 0.8 micron (800 nm) process. I think the MC68HC000 originally shipped with 1.5 micron or 2 micron lithography, so these will have pretty low power consumption and will definitely run at 25 MHz or even faster no matter what the marked speed grade is.

 

[retr01]

AMAZING!

I'd love to help with the beta testing, but I am busy with school this Fall semester. @Zane Kaminski, I realize I am back here after a period of absence and have not caught up yet. I am wondering what pricing would look like.

 

[chriskuta]

I just found this project, was actually searching to see if anyone had got a PiStorm working on an SE. This might be a better approach to be honest, since us SE owners just want an SE/30

 

[Zane Kaminski]

So far I've sent the board to three beta testers: James Wages (@JDW), Petar Puskarich (@ppuskari), and Jeff "JT737". Too bad Jeff isn't on TinkerDifferent. Maybe I can get him on here then we can all discuss our test results. A few more testers might be required in the future but first let's make sure everything is working for the current beta testers. Petar and Jeff's WarpSEs should be arriving tomorrow but James's card will take another week or two to get to Japan.

I'm excited to hear the test results!

 

[chriskuta]

@Zane Kaminski - what will be the process to order one when the time comes...

 

[Zane Kaminski]

@Zane Kaminski - what will be the process to order one when the time comes...

The WarpSE will be available on our eBay and Tindie stores:
https://www.ebay.com/str/garrettsworkshop
https://www.tindie.com/stores/garrettswrkshp/

 

[Zane Kaminski]

Small update on testing—Petar and Jeff have received their WarpSEs and @techknight has joined as a beta tester too. Hoping to get @Crutch as a tester as well since he did a fantastic job testing our ROM SIMM a few years ago and his utility apps are super useful.

 

[JDW]

Hoping to get @Crutch... his utility apps are super useful.

Wow. I've been oblivious to the fact that @Crutch was Steve Crutchfield all this time. Fabulous apps indeed!

Glad to hear @techknight has also joined the testing team. Great!

Zane, the package which you very graciously shipped to me will likely arrive tomorrow, since today is a national holiday here in Japan. I'm bursting at the seams to test it.

 

[Crutch]

Why thank you sir @JDW

 

[Zane Kaminski]

Just got the CPUs today! As we all know, these MC68HC000 chips are considered legacy and were discontinued by Motorola/Freescale/NXP years ago. Fortunately Eric Woo was able to come through with 253 chips with good provenance:

My main criteria was that the chips should have original markings, not "remanufactured" chips with fake new date codes. That way the printed mask code is accurate. To increase the number of chips we could buy, my instructions were to ignore the printed speed grade and instead check for a mask code indicating 800 nm (0.8 micron) geometry or finer. Like I said before, 68HC000 originally debuted at 20 MHz with 1.5 micron lithography or maybe even larger. So all 800 nm parts should run at 25 MHz with no issues, no matter the printed speed grade. Some of the chips have white paint markings and some have the modern marking style—dark colored, laser etched markings. I find the white paint kinda ugly so we will be covering the CPU up with a big sticker:

Hmm I don't think I put that sticker on quite straight. Hopefully I can get better at that before we go into production haha

 

[JDW]

Zane, just a quick update to say I've not done any testing yet because the package is still stuck in Chicago, according to the tracking info. Japan Post tracking says the same. Hopefully, nobody in Chicago nabs it!

 

[Zane Kaminski]

Zane, just a quick update to say I've not done any testing yet because the package is still stuck in Chicago, according to the tracking info. Japan Post tracking says the same. Hopefully, nobody in Chicago nabs it!

According to GlobalPost, it can take up to 10 business days for delivery, so apparently you should get it by next Tuesday. I guess it just arrived at the shipment consolidation facility in Chicago so it should be on its way to Japan Post soon. Excited to hear what you think!

 

[techknight]

Small update on testing—Petar and Jeff have received their WarpSEs and @techknight has joined as a beta tester too. Hoping to get @Crutch as a tester as well since he did a fantastic job testing our ROM SIMM a few years ago and his utility apps are super useful.

I did a quick betatest and benchmarks on my SE.

My results are impressive so far, with a few caveats:

As far as raw computing power/benchmarks, its impressive. Speedometer shows results that even beat out the 68020 Radius 16 that I have. (Except the floating point but thats expected).

Radius16 VS WarpSE:

WarpSE vs Stock:

As you can see, compared to stock, there is no comparison!

However, there are a few caveats.. For example, sound is still buggy and crashes the system hardcore:

Also, the floppy drive. HD disks read/format and work just fine. However, 800K GCR disks do not work:

All in all, it is a good accelerator. It just has a few bugs that need worked out and once that is taken care of, i think it is a strong contender!

The Radius16 does not have floppy drive bugs and works fine. HOWEVER, the sound also has issues on the Radius. it sounds mechanical but at least it does not crash the system.

 

[Zane Kaminski]

Thanks for your help testing!! Looks like we will need to do a firmware update soon to rectify these issues.

The sound crash wasn't occurring with four-voice sound in my testing. Interesting. Probably this is because the sound slowdown is sorta hamfisted. I'm gonna have to implement "cycle-accurate slowdown" as I mentioned earlier. Applying this to the IWM/SWIM address range should also fix 800k floppies.

For starters, I'm just gonna remove sound slowdown altogether and then we will see if the single voice sampled sound problem is fixed. If so then we know that the crash is due to the WarpSE slowing down too much after a write to the sound buffer. Cycle-accurate slowdown, where the fast CPU clock is usually stopped and only pulses once per 7.8336 MHz clock pulse, should fix this problem but I need to rework the accelerator logic a bit to accommodate it.

 

[JDW]

...sound is still buggy and crashes the system hardcore:

The card shipped to me hasn't arrived yet, hence this question. Is the crash triggered when you try to produce "any sound"? Or does it occur only when you open the Sound control panel and play System Beeps, and nothing else? Or is it a specific game or all games that causes the crash? And does the sound partially play and then you get a crash, or do you get a crash before any sound comes out at all?

Thanks!

 

[techknight]

The card shipped to me hasn't arrived yet, hence this question. Is the crash triggered when you try to produce "any sound"? Or does it occur only when you open the Sound control panel and play System Beeps, and nothing else? Or is it a specific game or all games that causes the crash? And does the sound partially play and then you get a crash, or do you get a crash before any sound comes out at all?

Thanks!

Too many questions bombed at me at one time so my brain.exe process died. Sorry...

What I can say though is, I only tested the sound control panel as I have no other software handy to test (Im not a gamer so i dont have anything like that handy). I have a MOD player somewhere but i think that only works on 030s.

 

[techknight]

The card shipped to me hasn't arrived yet, hence this question. Is the crash triggered when you try to produce "any sound"? Or does it occur only when you open the Sound control panel and play System Beeps, and nothing else? Or is it a specific game or all games that causes the crash? And does the sound partially play and then you get a crash, or do you get a crash before any sound comes out at all?

Thanks!

I will have a video out tomorrow on my channel, within that video demonstrates the fault, the video would better explain whats going on than I can in text.

To make a better video, i decided to test the WarpSE against the Radius Accelerator 16 and the WarpSE actually stands right up to it, and blows past it in some areas.