Open source accelerator for Compact Macs?

[geoffdaddy]

Don't know if anyone over here is aware of this...

http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=58918&page=8

TL;DR... a fellow is working on an open source GPLed  68020/030/040/060 accelerator for the Amiga 500 that fits in the 68000 CPU DIP socket. Wonder if it would work on the Plus or SE?

Anywho... he's working on adding some SRAM to the design so it would probably not have much utility at the moment, but he does have the '020 one working sans RAM on the Amiga 500 and I think there was mention of the Atari ST as well.

 

[BadGoldEagle]

wow. That would be awesome. I'd love a DIY 020 accelerator for my SE! But just imagine a Mac Plus with an 040!!  8-o   8-o

 

[techknight]

it looks like hes designing his 030 and newer accelerators with RAM and stuff, which is going to be Amiga proprietary as far as the addressing so the CPLD/FPGA code would need modified to match the macs address space. 

 

[falen5]

maybey im really old and old fashioned...........but i have never got the whole accelerator thing for 68k macs

a big part of the old memories i have of these old machines, back in the day when i used them, was the waiting for stuff to load, the wait for processing.....it was all part of it

i used my mac se on stage for live gigs for years as a sequencer, i used to plug it in before anything else to boot it up, load mastertracks, and load the list of sequences.......took time but i was busy setting up the rest of the gear

what software can benifit from a faster cpu on a mac.....then again i mostly played games........but man i loved the 5 fps on gp accolade........

i suppose from a collectors point of view it is a must have

like i said ... im old fashioned

 

[TheWhiteFalcon]

You're still going to have to wait even with the baddest accelerator imaginable.

 

[EvieSigma]

I'd be happy with just a 33MHz 030 in my SE/30...but since I can't find, let alone afford even the 33MHz accelerators, perhaps I should just buy more RAM instead.

 

[geoffdaddy]

it looks like hes designing his 030 and newer accelerators with RAM and stuff, which is going to be Amiga proprietary as far as the addressing so the CPLD/FPGA code would need modified to match the macs address space. 

Yes, clearly that would need to be since the memory maps are different, but at least there's a CPLD that could be reprogrammed to do it. Basically I guess you'd want to carve out the video display RAM, sound, etc and use the onboard static RAM instead of the RAM on the system, unless there's an easy way to increase the available memory on the Plus in the Macintosh Toolbox and/or Finder internals.