Tag Archives: PPC

UMAX tuning

Apple Performa and PowerMac models 5400/6400 used a mainboard code-named “Alchemy“. The same board, sometimes with some changes, was used in different Mac clones like the UMAX Apus 2000 & 3000 series (SuperMac C500 & C600 in the US) and PowerComputing PowerBase.

One fine day I got an UMAX Apus 2k, which uses a derivate of this board, re-cristened to “Typhoon” which you can see here in it’s full beauty:

Processor
  • Apple: PowerPC 603e
  • Power Computing: PowerPC 603e, 750
  • Umax: PowerPC 603e, 750
Only Power Computing and Umax can be upgraded
Systembus 40 MHz fixed
L2-Cache Slot for 256k or 512k L2-Cache
RAM 5V DIMM 168 Pin 60 ns (EDO)

  • Apple: 2 DIMM-Slots, 8MB on-board (136MB max.)
  • Power Computing: 3 DIMM-Slots (160MB max, Bank 1 only 32MB, Bank 2&3  64MB)
  • Umax: 2 DIMM-Slots, 16MB on-board (144MB max.)

To the limit!

So being the way I am… I had to optimize it. Jus can’t help it 😉
Here are the steps I’ve taken – in the order of making sense the most and being less difficult:

RAM

Simple rule: The more, the better.
This will get you the maximum performance – not in speed, but you can run memory-hungry applications without swapping (virtual memory) which is a major PITA and drags down everything.
That said, finding the correct RAM is also a pain because this board uses now very obsolete 5V buffered 168-pin DIMMs. 5 Volt is already hard to find – but the buffered version is even worse.
You can check that by looking at the coding keys (“groves”) at the DIMMs bottom:

The UMAX/SuperMac board can handle two 64MB DIMMs… if you can find & afford them.

L2 Cache

A “Level 2” cache is a must-have on all PPC machines. AFAIK UMAX/SuperMac did not sell their clones without one – Apple certainly did.
If your machine doesn’t have one, get one ASAP!
If you can get a bigger one than the one you have, do so!

  • None to 256K – increases CPU performance about 30 %
    The overall responsiveness is dramatically increased
  • 256K to 512K – adds about 20% performance.
  • 512K to 1MB – need this SIMM! Mail me 😉

Umax offered an optional CacheDoubler PCB plugging between the  socket and the CPU. It features an 1MB L2-Cache and upped the bus-clock to 80 MHz. AFAIK it came as standard in the UMAX C500x/C600x models.
Of course these are unicorns now and rare as chicken teeth.

NB: There are some caveats about the L2 cache discussed further down…

Faster CPU

Yes, this board has a ZIF socket like the Pentiums did back then. And as such, you might be able to find a faster one. But unlike the Intel CPUs, these come on a small board covered by a big, green heat-sink.
Underneath is the CPU (in BGA package) a bit of logic, caps, lots of resistors and an oscillator.

So even if you were unable to find a faster CPU you can still ‘motivate’ yours – read: Overclocking!

As usual with overclocking, every CPU has its limits. The experiences with the 603e(v) used by UMAX are:

  • 160Mhz to max. 225
  • 200Mhz to max. 240
  • 240Mhz to max. 270

How’s that done? Quite simple (if you’re ok with soldering 0603 SMD parts) by relocating some of 8 resistors which are on the top and bottom of the CPU card… marked red on the pictures below:

Use this table to change the CPU multiplier relative to the standard 40MHz bus-clock. There are also settings for 80-140MHz, but this is about overclocking so these make no sense whatsoever, right?

CPU Speed
160MHz
180MHz
200MHz
220MHz
240MHz
Busclock x
Multiplier
40 x 4
40 x 4.5
40 x 5
40 x 5.5
40 x 6
R1 [1.0k]
R2 [1.0k]
R3 [1.0k]
R9 [1.0k]
R6 [1.0k]
R7 [1.0k]
R8 [1.0k]
R13[1.0k]

Resistor color: Green = Bottom, Red = TOP
✔ = set, ❌ = not set

If the multiplier is not enough, you can also increase the bus-clock, too.
That way you can go up to a theoretical maximum of 300MHz 🔥

Oszillator 40.0MHz 45.0MHz 48.0MHz 50.0MHz
x4.0 160MHz 180MHz 192MHz 200MHz
x4.5 180MHz 202.5MHz 216MHz 225MHz
x5.0 200MHz 225MHz 240MHz 250MHz
x5.5 220MHz 247.5MHz 264MHz 275MHz
x6.0 240MHz 270MHz 288MHz 300MHz
As with the resistors, you’ll need some (de)soldering skills… but it’s a simple procedure: Old oscillator out, new one in. They were even kind enough to plan for a bigger oscillator case.
Before…
…and after.

For maximum bus-performance don’t use odd divisors like “x4.5”

☝ If you plan to overclock your bus to 50MHz or more you have to get a faster L2 cache…

Most 256K cache SIMMs seem to have an IDT7MP6071 controller using an IDT71216 TAG-RRAM which has a match-time of 12 ns (You can derive that from the marking “S12PF”” on the chip). That`s far too slow for 50MHz bus-clock. If you would be able to change the TAG-RAM to a 8 ns Part, it would probably work.
Bigger cache SIMMs seem to feature faster TAG RAMs. Here’s a nice thread on 68kmla.org on those SIMMs.

Finally, here’s a comment from an Motorola engineer referring to the Tanzania board (but same issue) I found in a corner of the web:
One final problem is the main memory (DRAM) timing. If the firmware still thinks the bus clock is 40 MHz (25 ns), it won’t program enough access time (measured in clocks) at 50 MHz (20 ns). There are resistors to tell the firmware what the bus speed is, so that it can program the correct number of clocks into the PSX/PSX+ to get the required 60 ns access time. For the StarMax, this means removing R29 and installing it in the R28 location for 50 MHz operation.”

I have no clue (yet) if and where those resistors are on a Typhoon board.

Conclusion

So, what have I done in total?

I added as much RAM I was able to find (16MB on-board, one 16MB and one 32MB DIMM) to get a total of 64MB which is just OKish for a PPC Mac

I wasn’t able to (yet) find any bigger or faster L2 cache than the 256KB I already had installed. So that one stayed as-is.

I replaced my stock 200MHz 603e CPU with a module containing a 275MHz 603ev (Even the label says 280). It has its multiplier set to 6 already… so running on a 40MHz bus is runs at just 240MHz.
My wild guess is that it was meant for the CacheDoubler mentioned above and switched to a multiplier of 3.5…
So I upped the bus-clock oscillator to 45MHz resulting in a 270MHz clock – 5Mhz below the CPUs spec but the bus is not stressed too much… the system runs stable and I measured a comfortable 45°C/113°F on the heat-sink.

Here’s a Speedometer 4.02 comparison of before and after:

This shows that every CPU benchmark ran more or less those 35% faster, which are the difference of 200 vs 270MHz – even the Disk and Grafics performance increased between 7% and 10% which is also due to the increased bus-speed.

How does that fit into a greater perspective? Let’s compare to the Macbench numbers provided by user Fizzbinn in the 68kmla forum:

My system sorts itself 29% above the 240MHz machine concerning CPU performance… but FPU is less?!? No idea why that is.
Disk is probably a faster model than mine (WD Caviar 21600).

The PPC Parsytecs

Well, because I’ve been asked every now and then… I’ll briefly touch the “Post-Transputer era” of Parsytec and thier PPC products in this Post.
No, I don’t own any of those, and they only run/ran Parsytecs very own PARIX OS, so I’m not of much help when it comes to revive your system.  As often said, I don’t like to see Transputers being degraded to communication processors. So this is just for completeness and might help to identify your brand new dumpster-dive finding:

The missing link: PowerTRAM 601

These are the only Parsytec products which truly and directly bridge ‘old-world tech’ (i.e. INMOS) with ‘new-world tech’.
The PowerTRAM – available from 1994 to ca. 1996 – was a size-4 TRAM featuring an 80MHz 601 PowerPC which is memory-mapped into a 25Mhz T425 memory.

The Front has all the glamour. In the lower left corner you can spot the T425 in a QFP package, above it is a MACH FPGA most likely containing the glue logic.
The remaining space is used by the mighty PPC601 hidden under a huge heat-sink and a fan (the 80MHz version was the fastest 601 fabricated using a 0.6 µm CMOS process and ran quite hot) as well as two PS/2 SIMM slots for its RAM.


[Pictures courtesy by J. Snowdon]

The rightmost third of backside is populated with 1MB of RAM for the Transputer and the classic logic to connect it (mainly latches).
The left two thirds are used up by quite some transceivers. Namely six ABT1852 18-bit bus transceivers (the square ones) which most likely connect the Transputer and PPC busses as well as covert the latter 3.6V level to the the T425 5 volts.

The “other x’plorer”

Well, yes, there was another x’plorer in existence. As with the GC-system, Parsytec later offered the “PowerXplorer”- you may guessed it already: It used the cluster from the PPC601 powered GC systems.
Interestingly enough there seem to be 2 versions in existence. At least the German computer magazine c’t reported in May 1994 that there’s a 2 CPU and a 4 CPU PowerXplorer… and featured the two below images as a proof.
Maybe the 2-CPU model was a beta-model or even using early PPC604’s? At least it features SIMM sockets vs. the soldered RAM used in the 4 CPU version.

   p_xplorer4cpup_xplorer2cpu

If you’re really-really interested in that model, here’s a big (Click to zoom) picture of the PPC cluster board. I’ve marked the important parts for easier finding.

powerXplorerBoard

TPM-MPC

The TPM-MPC  (Transputer Processing Module – Multi Processing Card) is basically a single CPU version of the PowerXplorer. So one T425 is handling the link communications and, depending on the revision, a 100, 133 or 200MHz 604e PPC is doing the number-crunching.

This is a Revision 1 TMP, far left in red frame you can spot a T800 Transputer with its RAM – in the green frame is the PPC604 and soldered 16MB of EDO RAM:

TPM_rev1

A somewhat different version (can’t spot a Rev making) providing 32MB RAM to a 100MHz PPC604 and having the glue-logic between the 2 CPUs shuffled around a bit compared to the previous version:

TPM_rev1_5

The Rev.2 model features SIMM sockets for the EDO RAM and has a slightly different layout.

TPM-MPC_total

The Transputer part on this one is a T425 (who needs a FPU for just doing data-shifting?!) with 1MB RAM, framed in red between the 2 SIMM sockets, marked with blue arrows:

TPM-MPC_right

The PPC side (heatsink removed) including some drivers and the 3.3V supply.

TPM-MPC_left

Independent of the revision, TPMs went into a TPM-Box. A simple, steel box with a power-supply, two fans and a backplane for 4 TPMs. This is it from the front (grille removed):

TPM_box_front

…and the even less impressive back.

TPM_box_back

As some ePay auctions mention “taken from RVSI 5700 SYSTEM” I assume the main usage for TPMs were optical analysis/inspection systems which Parsytec built when turning their backs to super-computing.