A stupid idea just came up to me. Knowing that it is difficult for various reasons to make a 680X0 board as fast or faster than the GoldCard, would it be possible to... make an accelerator board for the GoldCard itself ? (Or SGC for that matter).
Some kind of daughter board that would fit in the 68000 socket. All the QL address decoding and shadowing of memory would still be taken care by the GC but maybe a daughter board could run at a faster speed, especially if it has its own fast memory. Imagine a SGC fitted with a 68030 or a 68040 daughter board :-) I have no knowledge of electronic board design so don't laugh to loud. Otherwise it is always nice to see someone working on original hardware ad-ons F. On 2013-03-08, at 17:20, Dave Park wrote: > Hi all, > > Mostly copied over from qlforum.co.uk, so if you read it there, sorry for > the redundancy! > > Today I ran a loop on an unexpanded QL in monitor mode (US model, has weird > interrupts) and then with a 68EC020, a GC and a SGC. > > 100 PRINT DATE$ > 110 FOR loop = 0 to 100000 : NEXT loop > 120 PRINT DATE$ > > It's a good timewaster. It just moves things around, takes a certain amount > of time. > > Machine Time > Bare QL 2m17s > My 14MHz EC020 1m01s > My 020+RAM 0m39s > Gold Card 0m29s > Super Gold Card 0m12s > > > My first line is an MC68EC020 running just pure QL hardware. I can't get it > reliable above 14MHz so that was the speed for the test. > > My second, faster line is with 512MB of 16-bit SRAM added, and a simple PAL > address decoder that allows the 020 to access the memory in its native > width. > > Rounding off, with QL = 1, basic 020@14MHz = 2.3, 020+RAM = 3.5, GC = 4.8, > SGC = 12.5 > > So I have a little way to go, I think. However, 2.3x achieved by around £40 > of components is... nifty. > > If this gets people wildly excited, I'll write up a how-to and a schematic > > Dave > _______________________________________________ > QL-Users Mailing List > http://www.q-v-d.demon.co.uk/smsqe.htm > _______________________________________________ QL-Users Mailing List http://www.q-v-d.demon.co.uk/smsqe.htm
