CTPCI

It is a small card that plugs on the CT60/63 expand slot and uses a LOCAL-PCI bridge, the PLX 9054.
This last generation PCI bridge is the successor of the well known PLX9080 that is used on the Milan motherboard.
It is register backward compatible...

 

Because some of you have ATX tower case, they will want to use the rear brackets of the tower or at least use a rear place. 

So the other part of the CTPCI is a board connected with two 80 wires ribbon cables with 4 PCI slots (one for graphical card and 3 others for what people will be able to do & develop). The 80 wires ribbon cables are simply some IDE cables you will cut to remove the third female connector. You can see a photo of the (big - 62 cms high) tower of Didier Mequignon with the Sapphire baord and an USB board, both waiting for the CTCPI... 3 PCI brackets are availables here... You can imagine the PCI slots card will be fixed with screws on some holes that have to be drilled...

 

Several developers will design some PCI drivers for PCI cards (IDE, USB2, Ethernet, TV, ...).

 

Features :

- PCI BIOS & ATI RADEON driver incorporated in the CT60/63 Flash : the boot screen is directed on the Radeon graphical card !

- 4 PCI slots 3.3V/5V & 33 MHz.

- The adaptor allows slave and master PCI to local transfers : this means that the PCI cards will be able to initiate a PCI master transaction to local bus and so SDRAM of the CT60 without CPU (the eclipse board is just slave, no PCI mastering and the CPU does all transfers in the 2 senses !). Two DMA channels are available to ensure CPU free transfers.

- Compatible with CT60/63 from 66 to 105 MHz (to be tested and confirmed).

- EtherNAT board compatible (to be tested and confirmed for highest frequencies). 

- Falcon case compatible (PLX board, not PCI board although all is possible...)

- PCI slots PCB is cuttable between the first and second PCI slot (to have a single PCI slot card) to allow some of you to try to integrate a small graphical card into their falcon case...(why not).

       

The Graphical cards :

The Radeon 7000/7500 cards seem the better choice :
- Open source with Linux.
- Good speed with 2D and 3D.
- Video decoding.
- Price.
- Easy to find.

There are 2 models of RADEON 7xxx chips (7000 & 7500) and several manufacturers with several models, some with nice features like DVI output, Dual Monitor Display Output, TV Tuner with Audio & S/P DIF outputs, Audio/Video inputs... Some models can be PCI or AGP (be carefull when ordering !).

First of all, according to the author of the driver, all 7000/7500 cards should run but only their common standard features (do not expect now to use your TV Tuner in a GEM window...). Some features may be later supported by the driver... I'd like to see the support of the Audio/Video inputs into a good video software...

If you are a developer and want to add some supported feature in the actual driver, please contact Didier Mequignon.

Let's try to clear your selection...

First a table with the ATI models...

 

Product Name	RADEON 7500	ALL-IN-WONDER VE	RADEON 7000 (RADEON VE)	SAPPHIRE RADEON 9250
ASIC	RADEON 7500	RADEON 7500	RADEON 7000	RADEON 9250

Specifications

Bus Type	PCI	PCI	PCI	PCI
Memoire (Mo)	64	64	64 ou 32	128
Interface Mémoire	128-bit	64-bit	64-bit	64-bit
Horloge Mémoire (MHz)	332	366	366	400
Horloge GPU (MHz)	250	183	183	240
Pixel Fillrate	500 Mpixel/sec	500 Mpixel/sec	366 Mpixel/sec	366 Mpixel/sec
Geometry Rate*	62.5 Mtriangles/sec	62.5 MTriangles	21 MTriangles	21 MTriangles

Type de sortie Video

VGA	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
DVI	Yes	No	No	Yes
Double affichage	Yes	N/A	N/A	N/A
S-Video Out	No	Yes	No	Yes
Composite Out	Yes	Yes	No	No

Support Multimedia

Entrée S-Video	No	Yes	No	No
Entrée Composite	No	Yes	No	No
Tuner TV (Analogique)	No	Yes	No	No
Sortie Audio Stéréo	No	Yes	No	No
Sortie Audio Num. (S/PDIF)	No	Yes	No	No

Resolutions Moniteur (TV = 1024*768 max)

640x480 (VGA)	200 Hz	200 Hz	200 Hz	200 Hz
800x600 (SVGA)	200 Hz	200 Hz	200 Hz	200 Hz
1024x768 (XGA)	200 Hz	200 Hz	200 Hz	200 Hz
1280x1024 (SXGA)	160 Hz	160 Hz	120 Hz	120 Hz
1600x1200 (UXGA)	120 Hz	120 Hz	100 Hz	100 Hz
1920x1080 (TVHD : 16/9)	100 Hz	100 Hz	90 Hz	90 Hz
1920x1440 (UXGA+)	85 Hz	85 Hz	75 Hz	75 Hz
2048x1536 (QXGA)	75 Hz	75 Hz	60 Hz	60 Hz
Maxi 3D (16.7 Mcouleurs)	2048x1536	2048x1536	1920x1200	1920x1200

Several models are proposed by companies. Sometimes exactly same as ATI (OEM), sometimes with better IO.

 

We recommend these models (but you choose what you want with 7000 or 7500 chip (please take 64 MB of RAM, not 32 !) :

- 'noname/generic' RADEON 7000 : 64MB, VGA - Cheapest model ! 

- HIS Excalibur RADEON 7000 : 64MB, VGA + DVI + TV (Composite +S-Video) outputs, Dual Display - Cheap and complete !

- Sapphire All-In-Wonder VE : Same as ATI model - see features above.

 

Where to buy :

Germany : http://www.pearl.de/p/PE6386-HIS-Excalibur-ATI-Radeon-7000-64MB-TV-Out-PCI.html