Sam460LE 1.10 Ghz Pre-Order!

@amiganuts

I used a white Zalman case when I built my X5000, and I don't recommend it as it as turned yellow thanks to New Zealand's harsh UV.

If I could I would rebuild it with black case.

... noch cheap but in line with our roots ;)

https://www.checkmate1500plus.com/Products.aspx?searchkey=7

My white Thermaltake case is several years old because I had my AmigaoneXE in it first then when I got my X5040 board, I moved it into there retiring the XE MB. It is still pearly white!

Just got my tracking number this morning! Looks like things are moving along at ACUBE. I’ll see about posting some pictures somewhere when everything comes in, as well as when it’s all put together.

Just got my tracking number this morning. Exciting stuff! I think I found my case Thermaltake Versa N24 Black and going to add red LED fans. Amazon has it on sale for $69.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01F ... ?smid=ATVPDKIKX0DER&psc=1

So the question is: who will be the first to test the sam460 with these kind of adapters

@geennaam


Nice.
The Previous Sam460ex models and u-boot did not seem to cards other than Ethernet and Audio cards in the pciex1 slot though .

@geennaam
Super!
Immediatelly after I have Sam, I will try for sure.

I did not purchase RAM with it. Does anybody have a link to compatible RAM? I only know it is 200pin DDR2 and 1 or 2 gig. Buffered or unbufferd? ECC or not? Also, voltage is a concern of 1.5 or 1.8v.

I was thinking Kingston KVR667D2KSO 2GB DDR2 PC2-5300 200pin SO-Dimm

I'm somewhat behind on purchasing components for it. I don' think I will win any testing races. :(

@amiganuts

Here's the Sam460cr manual (can't find a LE manual online): https://www.acube-systems.biz/download ... cr_EndUserManual_v1.0.pdf

But surely you got a paper manual included with the board?

Mainstream ones that should work

https://www.amazon.com/OWC-PC2-6400-80 ... pgrade/dp/B00KHK3G5Y?th=1

@arfcarl

I have printed off that book and manual but it doesn't say anything about compatible memory.

I'm going to equip mine with the following:

Thermaltake N24 Case - Need to buy
450 Watt EVGA PS - have
500GB - PNY SSD - have
SATA CD/DVD writer - need to buy
2-Gig RAM - TBD
Biostar RX550 4Gig Radeon Video Card. - Have
SiiG Sata3114 4-port SATA card - Have
Creative Sound Blaster Audigy FX SB1570 PCIe 5.1 Sound Card SBX Pro - Need to buy

All ordered. Board set to arrive Wednesday if no problems with customs.

@amiganuts

Any sodimm ddr2 667 or 800 mhz, 200 pin, pc 5300/6400 will be fine.

@sailor

I am not saying that it will work. Just curious. Also with Tabor in mind because it has only one PCIe slot.

The same manufacturer also has a quad x16 slots version. With the same pcie switch. Just one lane per slot but you can fit larger cards in there. You'll never know when you can use a x4 card for example

@geennaam
I know. It shouldn't work.

PCIe x1 to 3x x1 have a good chance to work. Becouse system is the same as on any PC, an there it is somehow works. In any case there is one PCIe root hub. And probably all three devices share the bus from one root hub.

But in Tabor case, I an not sure.
Normally splitters with more PCIe lines ( for example PCIe x4 -> 4x PCIe x1 for Tabor ) need free root hubs on motherboard, and you need made setup change in Bios/UEFI/firmware.

I have to read CPU manual, if it is possible on CPU level, and than second question is, if firmware allows it.

In any case, if works first example, can work also PCIe x4 to ANYx x4, sharing bus from one root hub. But in the case of Tabor it is far from ideal, as on the bus is graphics card.

@geennaam

according to my P1022 QorIQ Integrated Processor Hardware Specifications, Rev. 2, 9/2013 ( I am not know right version )

CPU P1022 in Tabor have three PCIe controlles and four SERDES (PCIe) lanes.

It means, PCIe lanes shoud be splitted this way:

1x PCIe x4 ... Tabor default
2x PCIe x2
1x PCIe x2, 2x PCIe x1
all PCIe connectors have dedicated PCIe root hub / controller.

BUT - it must have support in firmware to proper setup CPU during boot. And I am a little skeptical about it.
In PC world, minority of motherboards support this feature.

@sailor

Unfortunately our PowerPC processors are very constrained in how they handle PCIe. No matter if it's the P1022, P5020 or even P2080. They all have predefined configurations how to assign lanes to PCIe controllers and other serial controllers (SATA, XAUI, Ethernet, etc) You cannot assign multiple controllers to the same lanes and dynamically reconfigure depending on what you connect to those lanes.

But there's no split needed anyways unless you want to operate multiple PCIe endpoints in a single PCIe slot. Like for example multiple NVMe SSDs on a single PCIe card.

Unless there's a limitation in the software/firmware, you can connect a PCIe switch behind a single PCIe controller to get more physical PCIe slots. You can see the upstream link between the PCIe controller inside the PPC460x and the PCIe switch as a backbone connection running multiple virtual links to the individual slots behind the switch. You can compare this with an ethernet router/switch.
This is especially important for Tabor. But also nice to have for the sam460.

The X5000 works in the same way with the on board Renesas 89H12NT12G2 switch. The Renesas 89H12NT12G2 PCIe switch is used to create multiple x1 ports and a x4 port (with 4 lanes) from a single x4 link behind a single PCIe controller inside the P5020.

The board that I have pointed to contains a five port PCIe switch. One 5Gbps x1 upstream port and four 5Gbps x1 (1 lane) downstream ports.
Three of four downstream ports are connected to a PCIe x1 connector. This limits the options to PCIe cards with x1 connectors unless you mechanically modify the PCIe slots.

There is also a similar PCIe expander board available from the same manufacturer. It uses the same ASMedia PCIe switch but instead of routing the downstream x1 ports to x1 connectors, it routes the x1 ports to four x16 connectors. Bandwidth wise this makes no difference. But it allows you to use PCIe cards with x1, x4,x8 and x16 connectors. The cards will simply operate at x1 speed.

Here's why bandwidth doesn't really matter much for these slots:
Both sam460x and the ASmedia switch support PCIe generation 2. This means 5 gigabit per seconds link speed. 8/10bit encoding results in a theoretical maximum bandwidth of 500MegaBytes per seconds. The difference between PCI and PCIe is that PCIe can send and receive in parallel. So 500MByte/s in both directions at the same time.

Imagine that you have a Gigabit ethernet card connected to one slot and an NVMe ssd connected to the other slot. If you want to save a file over ethernet with 100MByte/s to the NVMe ssd than this is not limited by the hardware. The ethernet stream is causing 100MByte/s over the RX (receive) lane of the upstream link for processing with the ethernet stack. The resulting data send in opposite direction to the NVMe SSD and causing a 100MBYte/s strean in parallel on the TX (transmit) lane of the upstream link.

That still leaves enough headroom for a PCIe soundcards or USB cards.

The limiting factor in bandwidth is AmigaOS4, the PPC460ex and lack of cache coherency.

Even a modern graphics card connected to the 4 lanes x16 slot only manages up to 600MByte/s according to GFXBench2D.

For Tabor, you would like a solution with a generation 2 x4 upstream link between Tabor and PCIe switch. And at least one x4 dowstream link in a x16 slot. The other slots can have only a single lane a link. It is highly unlikely that you can max out the upstream link anyways. So you will most likely not notice that all card share the same uplink bandwidth.

@geennaam

I can confirm the ASMedia ASM1184e PCI express switch works on the Sam460, U-boot correctly detect it and the attached devices:




In this case I used 2 sound cards: VIA VT1723 (Envy24HT) and CMI8828 (HD Audio)

@m3x

Great news!

There are loads of cheap PCIe expanders available from various sources. Most are either ASmedia or Pericom based. This opens up the door to much more PCIe hardware in our litle machines.
I guess we have to thank the miners for this.

Afterall, you'll never know which new PCIe driver might pop up in the near future

Edit:
I see the Asmedia switch: 1B21 1184

But I don't see the CMI8828 in that screenshot: 13F6 5011

Wow! This is shipping fast. It is already in PA, USA. It will be at my door tomorrow!