Article 286 of comp.sys.amiga.reviews: Path: rcfnews.cs.umass.edu!barrett From: c.j.coulson@newcastle.ac.uk (Chris Coulson) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.reviews Subject: REVIEW: Cyberstorm 060 accelerator Followup-To: comp.sys.amiga.hardware Date: 11 Dec 1995 04:07:38 GMT Organization: The Amiga Online Review Column - ed. Daniel Barrett Lines: 376 Sender: amiga-reviews@math.uh.edu (comp.sys.amiga.reviews moderator) Message-ID: <4agaqa$ljn@kernighan.cs.umass.edu> Reply-To: c.j.coulson@newcastle.ac.uk (Chris Coulson) NNTP-Posting-Host: maya.cs.umass.edu Keywords: hardware, 68060, accelerator, commercial Originator: barrett@maya PRODUCT NAME Cyberstorm 060 [MODERATOR'S NOTE: This review was updated on 19 December 1995. Search for the text "[UPDATE:" to find updated information. -Dan] BRIEF DESCRIPTION A replacement CPU module for the A4000, providing a 50MHz 68060 and a four slot memory board to take 4MB, 8MB, 16MB and 32MB SIMMs, in any combination. AUTHOR/COMPANY INFORMATION Name: Phase 5 Digital Products Address: In der Au 27 61440 Oberursel Germany Telephone: (06171) 58 37 87 FAX: (06171) 58 37 89 BBS: (06171) 58 37 90 LIST PRICE 849.00 UK Pounds SPECIAL HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE REQUIREMENTS HARDWARE Officially this module is for the desktop A4000 only, but there have been reports that it can be made to fit in the A3000 and A4000T. I personally can't vouch for this. SOFTWARE [MODERATOR'S NOTE: None mentioned by reviewer.] MACHINE USED FOR TESTING A4000 - originally fitted with a 25MHz 68ec030/68882 module 2MB Chip RAM, 16MB Expansion RAM Kickstart 3.0, Workbench 3.0 124MB Seagate IDE Hard Drive 410MB Samsung IDE Hard Drive INSTALLATION Ouch! This is NOT, repeat NOT, an easy piece of hardware to fit. I'm not going to give a step-by-step walk-through of how to fit it, because a) the documentation provided with the module does it rather well, and b) if you really need a step-by-step guide, then you'd be better off getting your dealer to fit the thing for you. I'm warning you, this is a right pain in the backside to fit. Assuming you want to do it yourself, I'll just point out firstly what the overall installation is like, and also where I think the documentation could be improved a little. Fitting a CPU module to the A4000 is about the hardest upgrade you can do to the machine, short of replacing the motherboard. What makes it harder is that the Cyberstorm is not a single daughterboard, but consists of a carrier board, roughly the same size as the original CPU board, a memory board and the all important CPU board. Fitting the carrier board is quite easy, as is the memory board. However, the CPU board is the most frightening piece of the installation, since in order to get it sitting correctly on its mounting clips, you have to apply quite a bit of pressure to the board, and since in doing so you are also applying pressure to the carrier board, this flexes alarmingly. Also complicating the issue is that you are made painfully (literally) aware of the sharp edges/points on the rear of the Zorro backplane. One small slip of the fingers and you may end up with a shredded hand... So, how can you make it easier on yourself? 1. The manual recommends removing the rear drive bay, but says nothing about the front bay. Indeed, all the photos in the manual show the front bay in place. I'd recommend removing it, since it gives you more space to manoeuvre. 2. The problem described above with the carrier board flexing is due to the stiffness of the clips on the spacer legs used to hold the CPU card in place on the carrier board. A way to ease the problem is to file the edges of the clips slightly, to reduce the width ever so slightly, making it easier to get the clips in place. Don't overdo it though, otherwise there'll be no point in having the clips at all! Aside from those two points, just follow the manual and you should be fine. REVIEW I'll start by saying that the pain of the installation was easily worth it, because having the fastest CPU in the 68000 family sitting inside my Amiga makes me VERY happy. If you are in any way interested in processor intensive work, like image processing, 3D rendering, document processing or 3D games (!), you should really consider the 68060 as a serious upgrade option. This is especially true if, like me, your A4000 is currently powered by a 68030. For 4000/040 owners the choice may not be quite so clear, since they have the option of buying a bare Cyberstorm 040 and using their existing 68040 on that. Although a 25MHz 68040 is roughly half as fast as a 50MHz 68060, the extra cost of the 060 card over the 040 version may be more important. For 68030 owners though, the small extra cost between a 68040 card and the Cyberstorm 060 is easily offset by the extra speed gain. The hardware itself looks very well made, and all fits together firmly. I guess the only thing I could complain about is the decidedly cheap method of isolating the RAM module from the Zorro backplane. You might think that Phase 5 would have fitted the module with an insulated cover but no, they instead provide a sheet of cardboard for you to bend into shape and position between the memory module and backplane. Whilst this is effective, it seems so amateurish when you consider the quality (and cost) of the hardware. As for the software, what you get is as follows: 68040.library 68060.library - some more additions to your LIBS: directory... CPU060 - a replacement for the Shell CPU command CyberPatcher - patches some programs that use floating point operations not handled by the onboard FPU, to speed things up CyberSnooper - reports any use of a floating point instruction that has to be emulated by the CPU. Useful for software developers CyberGuard - an Enforcer clone, specifically for the 68060. You'll still need Enforcer for its documentation BarFly - Shareware version of the BarFly assembler/debugger utility. Would have been nice to have got the registered version, but we can't have everything. So, the big question is, just how much faster is everything??? This is not an easy question to answer, simply because any speed increase is highly dependent on the rest of the system. What I've done is time a few operations carried out using popular utilities, both with the 25MHz 68030/882 combination and with the 50MHz 68060. The 68030 time/rating is shown first. Here goes! [MODERATOR'S NOTE: The notation "XmYs" means "X minutes, Y seconds. So "6m10s" means "6 minutes 10 seconds." - Dan] Final Writer 4: Printing a large EPS image at 360*360dpi to a Preferences printer: 6m10s / 1m49s Post 1.86enh: Printing the same image as above, at 360*360dpi to the same printer: 1m57s / 0m19s AMOS 3D: A starfield plotting program 4.2 frames per second / 24.5 frames per second AMOS Professional: A map generator - time to create one map 1m07s / 0m09s ImageFX 1.52.1346 (CUAmiga coverdisk version): All tests carried out on a 640*512 24 bit buffer 5*5 convolve 1m16s / 0m06s 90 degree rotate 16s / 2s Save as Q85 JPEG to RAM: 18s / 2s Load resultant JPEG from RAM: 10s / 2s Brilliance 2 - Register version [MODERATOR'S NOTE: The above used to say "Registered version." This is not a shareware product -- "Register version" means that you can paint in up to 256 colors. This is distinguished from the "HAM version." The error was mine. - Dan] To load a 640*512 HAM-8 image and convert to 256 colours 2m42s / 0m27s To perform a full screen negative on the resultant image 17s / 7s Imagine 2 To render a particular scene at 80*64, 24 bit Trace mode 4m47s / 0m30s LhA 1.38 Compress entire Sys: partition to RAM: 6m50s / 1m45s Test resultant archive 1m21s / 0m32s A bit of simple maths shows a range of speed increases from the 2.4 mark (Brilliance 2 negative) up to 12.6 (ImageFX convolve). It can be concluded then that, from the raw processor speed point of view, an A4000/060 is 12 times faster than a standard A4000/030. However, the rest of the A4000 has not been accelerated by this factor, leading to the apparently disappointing results from, say, Brilliance. Given that Brilliance relies heavily on the graphics hardware, and was designed to be as fast as possible on a low-end Amiga, it is no surprise that the bottleneck here is the AGA hardware rather than the processor. Similarly, the various loading/saving tests show that the 060 can be kept waiting for the slow IDE hard drives. Maybe my next upgrade will be the CyberSCSI module and a nice fast SCSI drive to go with it... As far as compatibility goes, in the short time I've been using the 060 I've yet to find a program that cannot be persuaded to work. Certainly all the serious utils I use regularly work just fine, as do my current set of regularly played games. Aside from one case where I'm required to boot without running SetPatch, the worst degrading that's been found necessary is to turn off the 060 data cache, which is easily done using the provided CPU060 utility. Put it this way, if a program works on a standard A4000 it's a miracle, so getting it to work on an A4000/060 is a relatively simple task. (Nothing against the A4000, just the programmers who assume that the A1200 is the only AGA machine there is, forgetting that the A4000 does some things ever so slightly differently). DOCUMENTATION A 32 page bilingual (German/English) A4 manual, with lots of clear pictures of the installation process, and diagrams showing the location and settings for all the jumpers. I like the photos showing each step of the installation, just to make things absolutely clear, and the clear instructions on jumper settings. However, I've read the section on fitting SIMMs to the memory module a few times, and I am sure that the description of the SIMM orientation is wrong, although the accompanying photo is correct. On-disk documentation is provided for most of the software, though as I mentioned earlier, you'll need to get hold of the original Enforcer documentation if you want to use CyberGuard, since the supplied docs only cover the (minimal) differences between the two. Unfortunately no documentation is provided for CPU060, which is a shame since I`m not 100% sure what all the different CPU options mean/do - sure, I know what a data cache is, and I can have a good guess as to the function of the branch prediction cache, but what the heck is AllocateOperand mode??? Some information on the 68060 would therefore have been appreciated. LIKES It's the fastest accelerator for the Amiga, it's nicely made and it comes in a rather mean and sinister looking black box :-) DISLIKES AND SUGGESTIONS The cardboard insulator for the Zorro backplane is out of place in such a high profile product, and really should be replaced with a properly applied insulation layer on the memory module. Perhaps we should have been given the registered version of BarFly, or a reduced registration fee. The manual section detailing the fitting of SIMMs to the memory module could de with being re-written (or perhaps re-translating, it may be that something was lost/altered from the original German version). There needs to be some documentation about the 68060 itself, detailing what all the caches etc. do, and possibly some examples of when you should turn options on and off to maintain backward compatibility. COMPARISON TO OTHER SIMILAR PRODUCTS Compared to the 68030/882, the 68060 screams along. You want raw CPU muscle, you got it! BUGS Just the bugs in the manual. VENDOR SUPPORT Unknown. WARRANTY "Phase 5 Digital Products provides the REGISTERED USER of this Cyberstorm Accelerator with a 12 month parts and labour guarantee, commencing on the date of purchase. During the period of the guarantee we will remedy all defects either by exchange or repair, at our discretion, which are due to material or manufacturers defects. Execution of the rights under this guarantee in no way affects the period of the guarantee." CONCLUSIONS Because of the few minor quibbles I have, I can't give the Cyberstorm 060 a 5/5, but I will give it a 4.99999/5 If you need the fastest 68000 based Amiga, you need the Cyberstorm, it's as simple as that. Finally, given the quality of Phase 5 products, I'm more than happy to see them working so closely with Amiga Technologies on new Amiga hardware. It can only be good for the Amigas future. COPYRIGHT NOTICE This is/was/will be a production of some small furry animals from the South American region, although they were helped a bit by Chris Coulson. Review text Copyright 1995 Chris Coulson Permission is granted for anyone (even Microsoft) to use this review as they wish, and if you do get some use out of it, why not mail me and let me know. That way you'll be encouraging me to keep writing reviews for as long as c.s.a.r keeps going (and a BIG thanks to Dan Barrett for doing what he does so well). ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Chris Coulson | A4000/060 - 18MB RAM/530MB HD Robotics Postgraduate | P60 - 16MB RAM/1.4GB HD/CDROM University of Newcastle upon Tyne | A500 - 1MB RAM | Sinclair Spectrum - 48KB RAM E-Mail: | Sinclair ZX81 - 1KB RAM c.j.coulson@ncl.ac.uk | "The times are a'changing..." ----------------------------------------------------------------------- --- Accepted and posted by Daniel Barrett, comp.sys.amiga.reviews moderator Send reviews to: amiga-reviews-submissions@math.uh.edu Request information: amiga-reviews-requests@math.uh.edu Moderator mail: amiga-reviews@math.uh.edu Anonymous ftp site: math.uh.edu, in /pub/Amiga/comp.sys.amiga.reviews