RE: Q60

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simon629
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RE: Q60

Post by simon629 »

Do you Think there will be Ever a New Q60 Computer


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dilwyn
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Re: RE: Q60

Post by dilwyn »

simon629 wrote:Do you Think there will be Ever a New Q60 Computer
Q60, probably no. But Peter Graf, who designed Q40 and Q60, is working on a FPGA-based computer with 68000 equivalent processor, called the Q68 which is very close to release, just the need ot finish off the last few touches to it. It has high colour mode, extra memory, SDHC storage, and many other features - I think Peter has listed them here in the past.


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tofro
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Re: RE: Q60

Post by tofro »

Q60 - or anything with a high-end Motorola CPU - very improbable. The CPUs are no longer manufactured (haven't been for a long time and can be had only second-hand from dubious origins and probably in dubious states of function), ISA cards that would fit the slots are no longer around - I wouldn't wait for it to come back into production.

What I would wait for is the Q68, because this is really an impressive nice little box. Minimalistic, but still modern hardware. Performance-wise, however, it's probably closer to a high-end QL with SGC than a Q60.

And I guess when it's ready, it's ready.

Tobias


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Peter
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Re: RE: Q60

Post by Peter »

What I still consider to design (time permitting) is sort of an intelligent slot riser card for Q60, which allows to mount it into a compact case and add SDHC card support.
Also I would like to work on a solution for modern widescreen monitors.

If such improvents can be finished, it could make a small batch of new Q60 boards worthwhile for someone else. As long as I don't need to spend my own time, why not. With enough testing, I don't see that recovered 68060 or 68LC060 are much of a problem. But it would be the original machine, not a completely modernized design. Don't consider this an announcement, I really don't know.


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Peter
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Re: RE: Q60

Post by Peter »

tofro wrote:Minimalistic, but still modern hardware. Performance-wise, however, it's probably closer to a high-end QL with SGC than a Q60.
I might add that code execution speed of the Q68 is about 3 to 4 times higher if run from internal RAM, so this is not a CPU issue but the lack of cache when accessing SDRAM.

I would not exclude that a later generation of the Q68 comes with cache, but speed has not been the initial design goal. Today even the 68060 is vastly outperformed by PCs, so who needs speed will use emulation anyway.

The benchmarks I have tried yet show Q68 performance between first and second generation of the QXL. A little faster than SGC, but not much.


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Dave
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Re: RE: Q60

Post by Dave »

There's quite a lot of new hardware coming down the pipe.

Just wait a few weeks and see what posts appear.


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