Issue 44: Jun 2004
Features
- | Foreword
- | Tip of the day
- | CT60 First Impressions
- | Bird Box
- | The Falcon Project
- | CCC
- | One Year Of CT60
- | HATZ: Party In The Middle Of Nowhere
- | CT60 Essentials
- | Developer Talk
- | SuperVidel Graphics
Review
- | Fast Falcon
| Fast Falcon Registered CT60 developer Roger Burrows tests the supersonic accelerator from France I took delivery of my CT60 in July 2003, after quite a wait - but it was worth it. Rodolphe Czuba, who developed the well-known CT2 upgrade board, has produced another fine piece of hardware that runs most existing Atari software at blinding speeds. A quick tour For those who haven't heard, the CT60 is a Falcon add-on board, which allows you to run most programs on the on-board 68060 at 66 MHz or faster. Since the 68060 can do more in a single clock cycle than the 68030 in a standard Falcon, and since the CT60 runs at four times the clock speed of a standard Falcon, the overall CPU performance improvement is huge. Combine that with on-board memory of up to 512 MB, and you have a powerful system. The CT60 uses the existing Falcon hardware (keyboard, mouse, video, floppy, IDE, SCSI...) to communicate with the outside world, which enhances compatibility, although it does mean that those functions are not accelerated in the same way. The CT60 can be installed with or without soldering, which is one of the aspects that attracted me in the first place (I'm a coward about hacking my precious Falcon). If you choose the "no solder" installation, the motherboard continues to run at 16 MHz, so most communications with the outside world, including the video display, are unaccelerated. The "solder" option requires you to connect six wires to the motherboard, as well as some other small modifications, in order to run the motherboard at 20 or 25 MHz; this provides a 25 to 50% acceleration of some motherboard functions, including video. If you would like the accelerated motherboard, but are not comfortable with doing the modifications, Rodolphe will do the job for you, at a very reasonable price. The CT60 can be booted in 68060 or 68030 mode; in 68030 mode, the 68060 and on-board memory are ignored, and the system will behave exactly as a stock Falcon. This is a nice safety feature in case you need to use any software that won't work with the 68060. A CT60-equipped Falcon can't use the standard Falcon power supply; in fact the Falcon power supply must be removed to provide space for fitting the CT60. The CT60 must be connected to a standard ATX-style power supply, and the motherboard is actually powered via the CT60. ATX power supplies are inexpensive and widely available, and a side benefit of using an ATX supply is that it's possible to power down the system from the keyboard. However, it does mean that you will probably want to recase your Falcon. It is possible (although I haven't tried it) to fit the CT60 itself into a standard Falcon case; however, that means the ATX supply would be external, which is a bit of a hack. The CT60 comes with its own configuration CPX, which has many features, including a couple of "gee-whiz" items: you can display the temperature of the 68060 chip (and a graph of the same over the past hour too if you wish), and you can set the system to shut itself down at a predetermined time. The waiting game To continue to support a computer system that has not been manufactured for close to a decade, a lot of mutual trust is required. Users trust that developers will continue to support their favourite system; and developers trust that users will actually want to use that new product they have sweated over for the last year or more. As someone who is usually on the developer side of the fence, I found it an interesting experience to be a user for a change. The worst part of the whole experience for me was the wait. I originally ordered the board in November 2001, and by May 2002, Rodolphe had received the boards (all 150 of them) from the assembly company. However, due to a number of firmware bugs, the board still had not been shipped to users by the end of 2002 and I was disappointed although not disheartened. Finally, in June 2003, Rodolphe announced that he had the board working, and I received my board in July 2003, about 20 months after my initial order. Not all smooth sailing In fact, I was one of 20 developers to receive a board in advance of the majority - kind of a hardware beta test. I decided that a "no solder" installation was a good choice to start with, since it minimised the number of changes I had to make. I installed the ATX power supply and the CT60 board in my recased Falcon, and plugged in my 512 MB(!) SDRAM memory module. I connected everything up carefully, and checked things a dozen times before powering on in 68060 mode. The bad news is that the board did not work; the good news is that I wasn't surprised. By the time I'd installed my board, Rodolphe had identified some additional firmware bugs, updated the firmware and posted the new firmware to his web site. Just one small problem - to load the new firmware required a special cable that wasn't provided with the CT60. The choices at that time were: make one from scratch (cost of parts about $30 Canadian) or order one from Xilinx (cost about $100 US) and hack it slightly. My frugal side won out and a few days later I had a working cable. After uploading the latest firmware, and making sure that my software was set up appropriately (including patched versions of XCONTROL and GENERAL.CPX on my boot partition), I booted in 68060 mode again, and saw the welcome sight of the TOS desktop. At this stage, the system was quite usable, so I started to use and test software (including ExtenDOS Gold and CD Writer Suite of course). All of the "modern" software that I tested seemed to work fine, but I ran into a couple of problems: the system crashed when trying to open a floppy from the TOS desktop, and to recover I had to power off the system because the reset button didn't work. Both problems were fixed within a couple of weeks, thanks to hard work by Rodolphe and Didier Méquignon (who developed and programmed the patches to TOS used by the CT60). Since that time, the firmware package has been very stable and has not needed updating, so that carefully constructed cable of mine has been gathering dust. Faster yet! The CT60 runs well at a clock speed of 66 MHz using a standard 68060, but even faster speeds are available if you have a special version of the 68060! During the life of the 68060, Motorola changed the way the chip was manufactured, as chip-manufacturing technology progressed; each change has a different "chip mask" designation. The last chip mask used was E41J, and chips with this designation are capable of running at up to 100 MHz with the CT60, thanks to firmware changes made by Rodolphe in November 2003. Compatibility In general, the CT60 is highly compatible with existing Atari software (Rodolphe's web site has an extensive compatibility list). Any compatibility problems seem to be cache-related, similar to those faced by anyone with an Atari system using a 68040 or 68060. In many cases, you can circumvent problems by setting the program flags so that the program is loaded into ST RAM. The only major piece of software that I had to change was the control panel. Being a traditionalist, I use XCONTROL, which needs a patch (the alternate control panel COPS works without modifications). No matter which control panel you use, you need an updated GENERAL.CPX to manage the 68060's caches. Users of MagiC, Cubase Audio, and Calamus also need patches. All the patches are distributed with the CT60 software package, available by download from Rodolphe's web site. Although I needed a special cable to load updated versions of the firmware, most users should not need one. The firmware is stable and the CT60 is shipped with the latest firmware. If you do need a cable, you now have another option: a Xilinx-compatible cable from http://www.seytronix.com, which sells for about $20 US. It does need changes to both connectors to work with the CT60, but so does the official Xilinx cable, which costs five times as much. I bought one, but haven't yet had the time to make the changes and test it. Past, present and future The original production run of 150 CT60s was pretty much sold out before any shipped, and I was very happy to get one. Earlier this year, Rodolphe arranged for a second production run, and I've ordered one from that for my second Falcon. There may still be some CT60s available from the second run - I encourage you to check with Rodolphe. In addition, some European Atari enthusiasts are currently developing an accelerated video board for the CT60, and I'm planning to get one for each of my Falcons. The bottom line The CT60 works well and provides plenty of power. Rodolphe Czuba has provided yet another major hardware advance to the Atari world, and thanks to his hardware/firmware skills and the help of Didier Méquignon's excellent software package, the CT60 is a "must have" product for Falcon owners. Five stars out of five!
Verdict
Name: | CT60
Developer: | Czuba-Tech
Requires: | Atari Falcon
Price: | 299 Euro (including 66 MHz 68060 with FPU/PMMU)
Pros: | Straightforward installation in "no solder" mode Very fast (arguably fastest) Atari system at a reasonable price 68030/68060 mode provides high compatibility
Cons: | Falcon needs re-casing to avoid "home-brew" look
Rating: |
Useful links
Anodyne Software http://www.anodynesoftware.com CT60 software tools http://perso.wanadoo.fr/didierm/ Czuba-Tech http://www.czuba-tech.com
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