Path: kernighan.cs.umass.edu!barrett
From: dejong@stm.tudelft.nl (Maarten D. de Jong)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.reviews
Subject: REVIEW: Cyberstorm Mk II 040/40 ERC
Followup-To: comp.sys.amiga.hardware
Date: 27 Jul 1997 22:29:24 GMT
Organization: The Amiga Online Review Column - ed. Daniel Barrett
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Sender: amiga-reviews@math.uh.edu (comp.sys.amiga.reviews moderator)
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Message-ID: <5rgi44$cni@kernighan.cs.umass.edu>
Reply-To: dejong@stm.tudelft.nl (Maarten D. de Jong)
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Keywords: hardware, accelerator, 68040, A3000, A4000, commercial
X-Review-Number: Volume 1997 Number 10
Originator: barrett@knots.cs.umass.edu
PRODUCT NAME
Cyberstorm Mk II 040/40 ERC
BRIEF DESCRIPTION
The Cyberstorm is a replacement for the CPU board found in any
A3000, A3000T, A4000 and A4000T. It features a 40 MHz 68040 (full version),
4 SIMM slots which can be populated with 4, 8, 16 or 32 Mb SIMMs in any
combination and a connector for a separately available FastSCSI-2
controller.
AUTHOR/COMPANY INFORMATION
Name: phase 5 Digital Products
Address: In der Au 27
61440 Oberursel
Germany
Telephone: +49-6171-583787
Support: +49-6171-583788
FAX: +49-6171-583789
WWW: http://www.phase5.de/
FTP: ftp://ftp.phase5.de/
LIST PRICE
DM 719,-- (approximately US$ 420) in April 1997. Prices of up
to US$ 520 have been spotted, so shop wisely!
SPECIAL HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE REQUIREMENTS
HARDWARE
Memory (SIMMs, 32 or 36 bits, 70 ns or faster, 4 MB or
larger) to populate the board recommended but not
required.
SOFTWARE
68040.library, which you have to supply, is required.
MACHINE USED FOR TESTING
A4000/030 with 68EC030 and 68882 (both at 25 MHz)
2 MB Chip, 12 MB Fast memory
Kickstart 3.0, Workbench 3.0
Harddisks: Quantum LPS270A (270 MB), Maxtor 7060 AT (60 MB)
(both are IDE)
Cybervision 64 (4 MB video memory, CyberGFX v40.64)
GVP I/O Extender (v1.8)
INSTALLATION
Installing a new CPU module in a 4000 is tricky, because
you'll have to remove quite a bit of hardware in order to have easy
access to the CPU slot. I have no clue as to how the situation is with
the other computers, but have your dealer or a qualified engineer
install the board for you in case you're not comfortable about opening
up the Amiga by yourself.
The Mk II module differs substantially from its
predecessor. The Mk I was made up of at least three PCBs: a carrier
board, a CPU board and a memory board. The fourth board, containing
the SCSI option, could be added separately. The carrier board featured
a second-level cache of 512 KB. All of this made for a rather
difficult install: all of the reviews I read mention the author
rasping his knuckles or transfixing his fingers.
The Mk II design is far simpler. In its basic configuration,
the module consists of just one PCB, which houses both CPU and memory
slots. The second level cache has vanished, since it was hardly ever
used anyway. Only the separate SCSI module has remained, which will
be dealt with in a separate review.
Before you open up your Amiga, check if you have a
68040.library installed in your LIBS: directory. You can find one on
any original 2.04 or higher Workbench disk set. (Since Kickstart 1.3-
do not support the 68040, anything might happen if you try to use
these versions of the OS. Be careful.)
The installation process indeed looks simple too: only three
pages of text and photographs are devoted to installing your new
gadget in your computer. The process is only described for a 4000, so
you are on your own when it comes to the 3000(T). However, as an
addtional step I would recommend removing the front drive bay, since
it facilitates access to the CPU-slot considerably, especially if you
have big hands.
There are a few things worth mentioning. According to the
manual, a ventilator is included with the card; this is not the case
anymore. The 68040 now only bears a cooling fin. This fin gets quite
hot during operation; take care that no plastic cables touch it!
Second, a leaflet has been provided stating that reliable operation of
Zorro III DMA-devices in all 3000 models is not possible due to a flaw
of the mainboard, and that DMA-capable additions to the Cyberstorm (in
other words, the CyberSCSI Mk II module) will be affected by this
problem as well. However, I have heard that you can solve this by
upgrading the custom chips Buster and Gayle (or Gary?), but please
check this out with your dealer or someone who knows the hardware of a
3000.
In any case, I strongly recommend you read the manual
thouroughly before opening up the Amiga.
REVIEW
The Hardware
~~~~~~~~~~~~
Let me start off by answering a few questions which have surely
risen by now.
The 'ERC' means 'Eco Recycling' -- basically this means the
processor on the board has been used before. Not only does this help the
environment by keeping an otherwise prefectly functional 68040 from going
to the garbage dump, it also keeps the price of the chip down (and thus
the price of the entire module). Of course, every chip is thoroughly tested
by phase 5 before it is sold. It should be born in mind that 'ERC' has
nothing to do with the familiar 'EC' and 'LC' abbreviations often found
with Motorola CPUs.
While on the subject, the CPU found on the Mk II module is a full
68040. That means that both the floating point unit (FPU) and the memory
management unit (MMU) are present and functional. (The LC version omits the
FPU, the EC version both FPU and MMU.) This means you can run programs like
Enforcer and GigaMem or even the Unix clones NetBSD and Linux/m68k, which all
require an MMU.
With everyone turning to the 68060, you may wonder why I decided on
a 68040. Simply put, I do not run the software which requires a 68060, like
rendering or image processing programs. I program a lot, but I found that I
spend far more time editing (and crashing) than compiling. And no 68060
will aid in speeding _me_ up. I can make quite an extensive list of what I
do with my Amiga, but the bottom line remains that I was happy with the
speed which the 68EC030 offered, 20% of the time it being too slow. In my
opinion, buying a 68060 in this case is expensive overkill.
Plus it helps the environment a little bit, but that of course does
not take the power consumption of the 68040 into account... :-).
After installation, I switched on the computer and waited. I could
establish some speedup while the Amiga booted, but it was not a `WOW'
experience. Various system information programs (SysInfo, AIBB 6.5,
ShowConfig) showed the presence of a full 68040. Since the presence of an FPU
could be established, I had to have a full MMU as well; this was confirmed by
Lawbreaker. (Lawbreaker is a utilility to see if your Amiga is capable
of running Enforcer. If you have an MMU, Lawbreaker generates 4 Enforcer
hits, if not, less.)
Memory Upgrades
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I will deal with the software side of memory in the next section, but
you should be aware of the fact that the SIMM slots might not be able to take
any kind of double-sided SIMM. I was rather unpleasantly surprised when I
found out the double-sided 8 MB SIMMs I borrowed from my mothers PC would not
fit: the memory chips met the rim of the slot before the `click mechanism'
could get a grip on the module. I did not have other SIMMs to see whether this
problem would always occur, but I recommend to use 4 or 16 MB sizes when
in doubt: they are populated at one side of the PCB only.
Another point you should be aware of is that memory slot 4 is located
under the front drive bay, and is completely inaccessible. In other words: if
you want to populate this slot, you'll have to remove the drive bay (or the
Cyberstorm). In my opinion, this is totally unnecessary, since there is plenty
of space to move the four slots so that they take the room of three.
AIBB Speed Tests
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Because I had forgotten to test the speed of my machine before
I installed the Cyberstorm, I have no hard data relating to the old
situation to present here. I dislike moving hardware around more than
strictly necessary, and considering the rather tight fit of the card
(it really snaps into place) I decided to leave it where it was. I did
have a few AIBB modules of the A3000 (68030 at 25 MHz) and a
Cyberstorm Mk I (68040 at 40 MHz) available, so I decided to use
these. The A3000 is equivalent to the 4000/030, but tends to be a bit
(usually about 5%) faster when access to memory is concerned. And it
is of course slower in the graphics tests.
TEST A3000 Cyberstorm Cyberstorm
Mk I Mk II
won
Kickstart 3.1 3.0 3.0 by
FPU mode 68882 68040 68040
EmuTest 1 5.79 5.68 I
WritePixel 1 7.64 7.64
Sieve 1 3.50 2.87 I
Dhrystone 1 5.37 5.37
Sort 1 4.73 4.63 I
Ellipse 1 2.12 2.19 II
Matrix 1 3.48 3.21 I
IMath 1 3.73 3.73
MemTest 1 2.35 1.57 I
TGTest 1 1.27 1.41 II
LineTest 1 0.57(!) 0.68(!) II
Savage 1 1.91 1.91
FMath 1 14.56 14.56
Beachball 1 6.51 6.67 II
InstTest 1 4.29 3.90 I
Flops 1 9.28 9.38 II
TranTest 1 3.69 3.49 I
FTrace 1 3.04 3.05
CplxTest 1 6.37 6.37
Memory Latency Indices
Mainboard FastRAM 6.1 10.1 11.3 (smaller is
Localbus FastRAM --- 7.1 8.1 better)
Ok, let's discuss these (inherently questionable) values. The
differences between the Mk I and II are in most cases completely
irrelevant. I doubt that you will notice them in practice. That is
not the case for memory-intensive jobs, however. According to these
data, the speed at which the Mk II accesses its memory is decidedly
lower than that of the Mk I. Since a lot of the work I do is
memory-intensive I found these results to be rather
disappointing. (The 'low' speed was confirmed by another program
called Bustest, which measures the transfer speed to all types of
memory, using byte, word and longword accesses. I have used both
Bustest and AIBB on various systems, and their results are always
close to eachother.)
The ensuing discussion on Usenet showed that phase 5 always
operate the SIMMs at 70 ns, regardless of the type installed. So I
could in fact be measuring the difference between 60 and 70 ns memory
here. However, since most SIMMs are 60 ns these days, I find it hard
to accept that a company like phase 5 does not make use of this fact.
A second reason the speeds differ so much could be due to the
Mk I module using its second-level cache; AIBB does not store this
information in its files. Whatever the reason, the Mk II definitely
has a slower design, which is a shame.
Despite this flaw, the other results are impressive. Of
course, the increased clock speed and the CopyBack cache help to boost
performance as well, but it's the result that counts. The integer
speed has on average increased by a factor four. One can clearly
notice this: the response of the Amiga is snappier and during
CPU-intensive tasks a lot of the usual jerkiness (unfortunately still
present on a 68030) has vanished.
Another interesting fact is the floating point speed. A 68882
is not exactly slow, yet it is beaten time and time again by the
68040's internal FPU and the software emulation of unimplemented
instructions. I therefore expect a `noticeable' speedup in floating
point intensive programs.
Real World Impressions
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The first application I tried is notorious for its demand for
speed: Metafont. Metafont is a program which transforms a program-like
description of a glyph (any character you see in print or on-screen)
into a bitmap, so it can be printed. On average, a font (i.e., a
complete set of glyphs) took about 90 seconds on my 68030. My new
system requires about 30 seconds for the same font. Additionally, I
expect the situation to improve a little when I switch to a SCSI-2
based filing system; Metafont requires a lot of file access and IDE
can slow things down considerably.
TeX was of course next. TeX is a typesetting program: it
transforms plain ASCII text containing control sequences into typeset
text. It's like a WYSIWIG word processor, but then with you _writing_
what the text should look like. I ran my Masters thesis (90 pages)
through this program. Pages were generated at a `chee, this goes fast'
rate. I got the feeling the computer was actually doing something; the
68030 definitely required more time to build a page. Pages containing
lots of formulas still have a small pause, but this is hardly
noticeable.
The next program I tried was Ghostscript. Ghostscript is a
screen-based PostScript-interpreter, meaning it shows your PostScript
file on screen instead of on paper. Ghostscript requires a lot of
calculations to build the display. The speed at which this now occurs
was cause for the first `WOW'. Text-based PostScript files are built
up faster than the eye can follow; graphics appear with a slight pause
(the famous Tiger takes about 4 seconds on my Cybervision), but
nevertheless at a very workable rate.
At this point I decided to switch from OS-friendly to not-so
OS-friendly programs. I unleashed my (small) collection of demos and
games onto the Cyberstorm. As I expected, some of the demos crashed in
record time; these included Origins Motion and Complex, Kefrens Desert
Dream and Silents Demon Download (oldies, I know :)). Others kind-of
worked (Faculty's Lethal Dose 2, Silents Ice, Andromeda's Nexus
7). And the few that did work did not contain many of my favourites. I
was a bit disappointed at the modern stuff; are there really that
little 68040's in Demoland?
My games collection was already diminished to almost nothing
after I bought my A4000/030; therefore I expected little
problems. Populous 2, Rock`n'Roll, Civilization and Frontier (to name
a few) worked ok. At this point I would like to point out that not all
_old_ stuff fails to run: games like Defender of the Crown, Power
Drift and Impact ran without even touching the caches. The rule here
seems to be that if it can run on a 68030 (if necessary without
caches) it will probably run on a 68040 as well. However, be prepared
to reduce your (illegal??!) collection even further. (I wish to
mention one strange exception here: Power Drift. On my 68030, I needed
to Kickback into 1.3 to get this game working, with the 68040, it
functions flawlessly under 3.0 -- it even has become much harder to
play!)
I already mentioned that Kickstart 1.3- and the 68040 do not
like each other. I never got round to testing this, because none of
the available softkickers and degrading tools succeeded in starting up
the Amiga with 1.3. In other words: if the startup control screen
fails, you can kiss the program goodbye.
Next were the C-compilers I normally use: SAS/C 6.50 and gcc
2.7.2.1. (Compiling C is a process which is highly dependent on the
speed of your hard disk as well, so the times presented are not solely
the effect of the Cyberstorm.) SAS/C is a speedy compiler, but with a
68040 under the hood it really screams through sources. 130 KB of
complex C-code (interpret.c from the MudOS v22b24 sources,
ftp://ftp.imaginary.com/pub/LPC/driver/beta) was compiled in just
under 20 seconds. It required 90 seconds on my 68030. With the
relatively small programs (<50 KB of source) I normally write, the
compile time is therefore reduced to almost nothing.
gcc of course requires more time. The aforementioned MudOS
sources compiled in 75 minutes on my 68030; the Cyberstorm system
requires 35 minutes. When optimization is turned off, the required
amount of time is reduced to 28 minutes. A lot of time is wasted
because the compiler and the appropriate include files need to be
reloaded time and time again. The compiler is also much slower than
SAS/C: the interpret.c file requires 45 seconds without and 2 minutes
and 15 seconds with optimisation to compile!
At this time I decided it was time to test the GVP I/O
Extender. The first connections with my provider (Term 4.7a 020+ and
AmiTCP 4.0 demo) worked ok. There were a few errors during a ZModem
download, but I contributed those to wrong buffersizes. However, I
quickly changed my opinion when I found out that a direct 115k2
connection with my mothers PC lead to complete serial garbage and huge
amounts of transfer errors when I tried to get something _to_ the
Amiga. I spent hours trying to discover the cause of the problem, and
eventually managed to track down the culprit: the good ole' CopyBack
cache of the 68040. (This on-chip cache buffers writes to memory, as
to speed up the processor. However, if a program requires that data
and looks at the memory to find it, it will use _old_ data and thus go
completely wrong.) When I turned off the cache, the problem
vanished. This is not mentioned by either phase 5 or the manual of
Term. After the cache problem had been solved, I could use the I/O
Extender without further problems.
Then it was time for some old-fashioned image processing using
Photogenics Lite. This presented an unexpected problem. I never used
the program because my 68030/68882 combination was far too slow for
this type of work. (Hence the fact that I can't present data on other
programs -- I don't have them :-)). The speed of the Cyberstorm proved
to be adequate, but during the session I found out that image
processing can be very fun. The hitherto impressive speed of the 68040
became a kind-of annoying pain, and for the first time I wished I had
bought a 68060 or a (yet to be released) PowerPC. Serious image
processing requires huge amounts of raw computing power, and in my
opinion, the more the better. If your main application is image
processing, the Cyberstorm 040 is _not_ your ideal purchase.
I could go on and on about the various programs I tried, but I
think I have written enough for now. The main conclusions which can be
drawn from these tests is that the Cyberstorm gives your Amiga a solid
and very noticeable performance boost. Software compatibility is very
good if you stick to OS-legal stuff, and not so good if you don't. In
some cases, other hardware may become the bottleneck, and it would be
wise if you spent your money to remove these before buying more CPU
power.
DOCUMENTATION
The documentation is good, if a bit short. There are several
errors in the English text which are a little annoying considering the
total amount of documentation. The documentation was written with the
68060 in mind and therefore some of the steps can be skipped: phase 5
indicate this on a separate leaflet which could have contained more
information on the 68040 as well.
The disk which is distributed with the 68060-version is not
present. This is a bit annoying, since it contains a number of
interesting utilities. phase 5 will give you a copy if you upgrade to
a 68060, though.
LIKES
Speed, transparent presence, reliability, recycling of a 68040,
simplicity of the module in comparison with its predecessor, price.
DISLIKES AND SUGGESTIONS
Slow memory interface, trouble with double-sided SIMMs,
position of the fourth SIMM slot, lack of a CPU-cooler, short
documentation, lack of disk.
I didn't notice the `slow' memory interface in practice,
because the speed of the card is still far above what I was used
to. However, it is simply a shame to waste computing cycles in order
to save a few bucks.
I have one suggestion: get rid of these flaws!
COMPARISON TO OTHER SIMILAR PRODUCTS
I have never used other 68040-based cards, so a comparison
based on experience is not possible. However, if I compare the
literature with what I have seen and experienced so far, and neglect
the SCSI-2 options found on all cards, the Mk II does not make it to
the top three. Alas! This is simply because other cards (for example
the Warp Engine, the Cyberstorm Mk I and the Apollo) have faster
memory interfaces, which basically determine the maximum speed at
which the CPU can process instructions.
Only when used in combination with the accompanying SCSI-2
module does the Cyberstorm Mk II start to shine. Also, please note
that the Mk I and the Warp Engine are not available any more.
BUGS
None found. Or perhaps one, but I cannot be sure. After a
_real_ long day of hard work, my Amiga all of a sudden locked up when
I wanted to redo an image in Photogenics Lite. I attribute this to a
heat problem, though: it had been awfully warm in my room and my
computer had been working at huge loads for the entire day.
VENDOR SUPPORT
Well, as we all know, phase 5 are not famous for their
responsiveness concerning e-mail. During the test, I have sent the
company several messages, all of which remained unanswered after two
weeks. My advice would be to phone or fax them, but I have not tried
this.
WARRANTY
phase 5 have devoted quite a lot of text to the issue of
warranty. I will summarize the text in this document, but please refer
to the original in case this becomes a necessity. I accept no
responsibility when this summary and the original text differ!
You get a 6 month guarantee, during which phase 5 will replace
or repair your module free of cost if the card was broken due to
material or production faults. Excluded are faults caused by `outside
interference': improper usage, unauthorized repair or modifications
and addition of new hardware and software. This includes upgrades of
the _system_ hard- and software!
phase 5 takes no warranty what so ever about the applicability
of the Cyberstorm Mk II; the company also does not hold itself
responsible in case of data loss, even when it has been warned about
the possibility in advance.
In case of problems you are instructed to turn to your dealer
for assistance first. phase 5 will only accept returns when they have
been assigned a so-called RMA-number; this number is given to you when
the support department sees justifiable cause for you to return the
module to phase 5.
CONCLUSIONS
The moment you've all been waiting for: the note. After a bit
of thought I settled on 4 out of 5. The card itself is well-made and
works as it should (and quite fast at that), but in my opinion there
are too many small flaws in this design which could easily have been
avoided. The card is not the ideal purchase for image processing
freaks, but if you are looking for reliability and reasonable power at
an affordable (even cheap-ish) price, this card is the one for you.
COPYRIGHT NOTICE
This review copyright 1997 by Maarten D. de Jong.
Permission to distribute this text in any form is granted, as
long as no modifications are made. The moderator of the
comp.sys.amiga.reviews newsgroup is exempted from this requirement,
but I trust him not to abuse this fact :-). If you distribute the
text, I'd appreciate it if you dropped me a line informing me about
the where and how.
Reactions, comments and questions are welcome at my email
address: M.D.deJong@stm.tudelft.nl.
---
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