Re: MACH chip question

From: Magnus Kollberg <Magnus.Kollberg_at_emw.ericsson.se>
Date: Tue, 23 Jun 1998 13:41:59 +0200

Hi,

> > The CT2 boost the falcon bus speed to 25 Mhz so the bus transfert speed
> > grow exponentialy.
>
> What about the blitter (won't work above 20 MHz) and what about using
> experiences from other accelerators, whose also overclocked the bus to
> 25 MHz, and the results are: unstabilities, damaged blitters, damaged
> whole motherboards, generally shortened Falcon's lifetime?
>
> The first 50/25 MHz accelerator (50 MHz CPU, 25 MHz bus) was developed
> here years back (about 1994-1995). Looking at what happened later to most
> of accelerated Falcons, I am glad I didn't get it. 25 MHz is too high rate
> for Falcon custom chips, that's the resulting experience.

Yup, that is a real problem. I have seen quite a few messages saying "My
falcon just died" and as it was only designed to run at 16MHz 25MHz is
to REALY push the limit and even 20MHz is 25 increase which is much more
than most chips usually can handle. Maybe Atari had a huge margin but I
realy doubt it. Atari are knowned to push their parts to the limit to
save a few cents. That is mainly why I havn't bothered to install another
speeded in my Box as it usually creates more troubles than it solves. I
guess the Cent2 could very well handle it, but who knows? They are going
to get alot of pissed off customers if it cant handle what they promiss.

Regarding the blitter I would guess that they just half clock it to get
around one problem and possibly create another.

//Magnus Kollberg
Received on ti. juni 23 1998 - 20:41:00 CEST