Centurbo II - place in heaven ? I'm quite sure that you've already heared some rumors about the new Falcon accelerator from Centek. Some ads here in Germany wrote that the card contains a 68040 CPU, which is NOT true ! The facts are: - New CPU 68030 32-Bit at a permanent 50 MHz! - SIMM 32-Bit standard socket offers 32-Bit EDO Fast-RAM (16 or 32 MB) accessed 7 times faster than on original 16 MHz ST-Ram. Thanks to the 6.2.2.2 BURST accesses of the 030 (32 MB/s) at 50 MHz. - Socket for a 32-Bit COPROCESSOR 68882-33) at 50 MHz. - DSP of the Falcon is clocked at 50 MHz. - BUS of the Falcon is clocked at 50 MHz (the CPU accesses at 50 MHz!). - 32-Bit Direct CPU BUS Slot - On board 64 KB FLASH Eprom containing new SET UP (NVRAM)and the BOOT of DOLMEN FALCON. - DOLMEN FALCON. The new and ultra-powered MULTITASKING Operating Sytem. - Hardware switch allows you to come back to the 100% Falcon original mode. - Wonderfully designed, the CENTurbo II fits in the original Falcon case. The card is inserted in the bus slot, and only needs 14 wires to solder. (see picture) - No wires soldered on the CT2. Ribbon cable connection between the CENTurbo II and the motherboard allows easy updates without solders ! - TURBO mode usable on VGA, TV, RGB and MONO (SM) monitors. All information taken from the Centek Web site. Well, I bought the new Centurbo II accelerator card for my C-LAB Falcon at the Atari Messe in Neuss. Centek was so kind to do the installation during the show but they couldn’t do the whole installation as they had no cutting tools for my MKX case - so I had to do this part of the installation at home... Centek also modified my grey Atari VGA monitor adaptor to work correct with the CT 2 card (they told me that there is a little error inside the adaptor) Btw. if you have a MKX case there is some more work to be done than with a normal Falcon because the C-LAB Falcon has a metal case and some metal inside that carries the SPDIF-interface, the Harddisk, etc. (I had to cut off some of my metal plate inside the MKX case as the card is a little too long for that kind of case). You also have to drill a hole inside the case to put the hardware switch in. You should really eat your breakfast to get a hole inside a MKX case :- ) When I first started the computer I was a little confuesed because the GEM was all in french now ! Luckyly I’ve done the first tests during the show and Centek could help me with language update. You have to put your language TOS into the flash EPROM of the card. Yeah, a flash EPROM ! So you have the chance to update your card via software ! Don’t be afraid , updateing your software is really easy ! (see picture : "Flash") Another thing I discovered during the show was a slight flickering of some pixels. Centek told me that my ST-RAM (16 MB EDO RAM) is too slow and I should use a different Ram and the problem would be gone ... That’s true ! At home I swapped the 16 MB EDO with the one from my PC and everything looks great. So, the configuration of my card is 32 MB fast Ram + 50 Mhz FPU now. Remember that you can still use your "old" Ram; so I have a total of 48 MB Ram - really cool !!! (16 MB ST-Ram and 32 MB FAST-Ram). When your card is switched on you have three new modes to choose from: 1. Dolmen Multitasking TOS : This isn’t available yet (except your are a registered Phoenix developer). But as soon as it comes available you are able to update it in your Flash Eprom. 2. TOS 7.0x : This is a patched version of the existing Falcon TOS, that allows you to access the Fast RAM. Btw, it is necessary to possess a graphic accelerator (NVDI, MAGIC,...) to run the system. The new fast ram is only available when you choose tos 7.0x. All software that uses the enhanched TTRAM should work with it... 3. TOS 4.0x : If you select TOS 4.0x you have your normal Falcon TOS only faster. But you have no access to the new FAST Ram. You can’t reset your computer with "control+alt+del" in TOS 4.0 mode, so you have to press the reset button. You also have the chance to boot your Falcon in normal mode (CT2 switched off). In this mode your Falcon SHOULD ! be 100 % Falcon compatible. So if you boot your falcon in turbo mode (CT 2 turned on) a setup menue appears where you can choose between the following option: (see picture "Setup") F6 : for setting up the Video mode during boot up F7 : Hardware settings of CT 2. Includes DSP / IDE waitstates, etc. F8 : RAM Test on / off F9 : Disk configuration. Here you can choose between the internal (Cecile) or external harddisk driver. F10 : Cecile. This allows you to configure your Cecile harddisk driver Help : shows you some help pages. You can turn this setup menue on or off, of course. You can skip it via ESC or save your changes permanent to the NVRAM. Beside this setup menue, your CT 2 comes with a HD disk that contains some more utilities, like: - CENTBOOT, a utilty that helps you to set up your boot-configuration - CENTSCREEN, it replaces the original TOS screen setup - CENTVIDEL is to check / set frequency of the Videl - CENTVIEW is a little picture viewer - NVRAM sets the NVRAM-settings via software - PUTFLASH, allows you to update your CT2 software - VIEDIOMOD, sets the video mode resolution - Tixtax is a little ACC that displays the system time - Some patches for CUBASE - DSP_IRQ.PRG. This is a very useful patch to get some software to work that uses the DSP_IRG, as the CT 2 doesn’t support it. Here’s an explanation from the Centek documentation : "Something differentiates a Falcon from an another with a CENTurbo II: the interruption coming from the DSP isn't wired and can block a program using it. To use this kind of software you need to put a patch (DSP_IRQ.PRG) in the AUTO directory (behind your debugger if you use one!). In this mode, do not forget to remove wait-states on the DSP. - Excloff - "The TURBO mode is possible in VGA resolution, but also in RVB and MONO ST(SM12x/144) thanks to the attendance of a 32 MHz clock on the EXT entrance of VIDEL, the SETUP being in charge of commuting the VIDEL on this External clock after having detected a RVB screen or SM124. It is possible to DISABLE this External clock from the SETUP if you are in TURBO and with a small software in the AUTO directory if you are in NORMAL mode (EXCLKOFF.PRG)." I guess, your’re all waiting for some speed benchmarks ! So, here’re some benchmarks that I made (all benches are taken in TOS 7.0x / VGA 640*480 / 256 colors): 1.) Packing some folders using STZIP 2.6: I packed the Falcon game Blum which contains 9 folders / 160 files (8MB) and a demo (220 files / total size about 1.5 MB)! time with CT 2 turned off: time with Centurbo II : * Blum 16:07 min 4:25 min * Demo 3:39 min 1:06 min 2.) Displaying of a jpg picture (1100*628) with Graftool takes 2:34 min without a CT 2. With CT2 switched on it appears after 31 sec ! 3.) Another test I did is running "Reeking Ruber" ver.09. Reeking Rubber displays the frame-rate after quitting the game: without CT 2 : 9.5 fps ; with CT 2 : 26,6 fps ! I think that gives you an impression of CT 2’s potential. Another really useful thing (for all musicians) is that the card fixes the SCSI problems ! So, place in heaven ? Not really ! I discovered some problems with most demos from the Dead Hackers Society. I couldn’t get them to work, even when I switched the card off ! So I wrote Evil of D.H.S. a little e-mail and asked him about this problems. Here’s his answer to my problem : Erik Andersson : "...This is because every second Centurbo2 seems to have problem with the FatalDesign-Moduleplayer (amigadsp). And we use that in all 1997/1998 demos (except a few which uses graoumf). The experience we have so far is that half of ct2 machines can use that FD player, in orignal/tos4/tos7 modes. When the other half cannot run it at all. I am sorry about this, we had no idea that the player would fail with CT2. Future demos will use anohter soundsystem that works with all CT2..." A few days after this e-mail I could read the following statement on the D.H.S web page: "Cenek/CT2. (December 1, 1998) To finally clearify why some soundtracker replayers do not work on the CT2, not even in "Standard falcon mode". The situation is that Centek choosed not to include support for the "DSP-INT" line in the CT2. A few soundtracker replays/utils does use this feature (it is a feature after all). Centek however tells us "only bad coded software uses DSP-INT". Well they really shouldn't call the normal-mode "100% compatible" when it isn't. So, now we know the reason why "Dream Dimension" and our other demos using FatalDesign/AMIGADSP routines fail with most CT2's. It wasn't a software error, but an error on Centeks side, even if they don't see it that way themself. However, it should be safe to use the DSPMOD32, GRAOUMF and AMIGA030 players.... DHS. will patch their 98 demos" No comment ! So, here’s my resume: A nice card that gives you raw speed, a lot of memory, (hopefully a new multitasking TOS some day...), it runs fine and stabil with nearly all GEM-programs in turbo mode. Sadly there are also two negative aspekt : - You can’t run really run ALL programs with a CT 2, except you can patch the "bad coded" programs yourself. - The card isn’t that cheap (see prices) Overall: 92% Prices: Centek just released the second serie of theri CT2 card and they could reduce the price: (Available in january 1999) Price without RAM 1890 FF ! NEW ! + 16 Mo Phone + 32 Mo Phone + FPU + 250 (all prices in FF !)