Upgrading the WarpEngine 3040

A friend of mine wanted to upgrade his WarpEngine 3040.

As he now uses it in his A4000 instead of 3000 he wanted possability of 128MB RAM and a faster CPU.

So. First lets inspect the card

WE-Before

A nice card. but that 2 sockets is annoying and the INT2 cable. So time to start up the Desolderingstation to remove the sockets

Desolderingstation

It is not recomended to try sucker, braid or so. use a desolderingstation with pump.

Anyway. new sockets that the simms are straight up instead of an angle:

WE-SimmSockets

After removing the sockets:

WE-NoSimm

Nice and clean board. So we solder in new sockets. and then on the 040 socket there are SMALL plastic pins to make a distance for the 040 and the socket.  I removethem as the 040-060 adapter have one drawback: quite short pins. so we need every space we can:

WE-040Socketmod

So cut those small distances.

and put in the 040-060 socket with CPU:

WE-Freescale060

As we will keep the 40MHz oscillator and the 040-060 adapter actually DUBLES the MHz, a rev6 cpu is the only thing that works. In this case a nice Freescale one.  If you do NOT havethe Rev6 (71E41J at the top and -006 at the bottom) you need to change the oscillator to 25MHz (for 50MHz) or 33MHz (for 66MHz)

WE-Inserted

This is the final prodct with 128MB SIMMs, Freescale 060 CPU.  and as the CPU contains a FPU and the acceleratorcard is not 060 ready. We need to change the kickstart roms to a special patched one, with a special exec.library.  I will not link them here due to Copyrightissues.   but without this special kickstart, your machine will end in a eternal guru.  IF You use an 68LC060 this will not happen. But then you will not have a FPU.

Lets BOOT!

 

WE-80MHz

 

EUREKA!  128MB Ram, 80MHz 060.  Awesome.

What is the temp?

WE-InitTemp

After some usage, 47 degrees. not that hot. So I start Eludes demo “The machinist” and let it run for a while.

WE-HardUse

 

ok Close to 60 degrees.  So I would recomend a heatsink to this.

 

Anyway.  everything fine. machine works just great, 128MB instead of 64MB Ram and a fast 68060 at 80MHz.