English Amiga Board - View Single Post - My eternal quest for a stable A4000 PPC Mediator Voodoo setup

spudje · 08 February 2020, 00:54

So, did more extensive testing.

Ruled out CSPPC RAM, tried the 4 RAM sticks pair wise in bank 0 only, same freezing behaviour.
Tried my 2 other Voodoo 3 cards. While the time it took to crash varied, they all freezed.
I ran GPMark_WOS around 10 times, in an RTG 640x480 full screen screenmode. This freezed once and crashed once to desktop with a guru (which is a 68k error, correct?). Most of the time this ran fine. Had it run for 5 or 6 time consecutively without crashing.

Then I thought, why not let me use the original PSU (which still smells a bit of smoke from the previous owner, therefor I replaced it with an ATX modded PSU), and then I was shocked...

All 3D stuff all of a sudden seemed to work much better. I played Wipeout, all 6 circuits, then let Gears PPC run for at least 15 minutes. Repeated these things and only encountered one freeze+reboot.

I went back to Chucky's PSU, while, for some strange reason, running fine for quite some time, more than it did before the PSU swaps, Wipeout still freezed in the end, when in my 4th race.

Then back to original PSU, and after 15 mins Wipeout, no freezes.

So, sorry Chucky, it seems your modded ATX PSU is the culprit...
I assume 3D and PPC together just draw too much power for it?

Guess I should go look for a refurbished (recapped and silent fan fitted) original A4000 PSU instead of an ATX modded one... Anyone has one on offer?

Something else I noticed is that the 15 MB from the Voodoo exposed as FastRAM is gone after running 3D stuff and coming back to Workbench. Is that normal?

08 February 2020, 00:54	#12
spudje Registered User Join Date: Dec 2014 Location: Netherlands Posts: 1,406	So, did more extensive testing. Ruled out CSPPC RAM, tried the 4 RAM sticks pair wise in bank 0 only, same freezing behaviour. Tried my 2 other Voodoo 3 cards. While the time it took to crash varied, they all freezed. I ran GPMark_WOS around 10 times, in an RTG 640x480 full screen screenmode. This freezed once and crashed once to desktop with a guru (which is a 68k error, correct?). Most of the time this ran fine. Had it run for 5 or 6 time consecutively without crashing. Then I thought, why not let me use the original PSU (which still smells a bit of smoke from the previous owner, therefor I replaced it with an ATX modded PSU), and then I was shocked... All 3D stuff all of a sudden seemed to work much better. I played Wipeout, all 6 circuits, then let Gears PPC run for at least 15 minutes. Repeated these things and only encountered one freeze+reboot. I went back to Chucky's PSU, while, for some strange reason, running fine for quite some time, more than it did before the PSU swaps, Wipeout still freezed in the end, when in my 4th race. Then back to original PSU, and after 15 mins Wipeout, no freezes. So, sorry Chucky, it seems your modded ATX PSU is the culprit... I assume 3D and PPC together just draw too much power for it? Guess I should go look for a refurbished (recapped and silent fan fitted) original A4000 PSU instead of an ATX modded one... Anyone has one on offer? Something else I noticed is that the 15 MB from the Voodoo exposed as FastRAM is gone after running 3D stuff and coming back to Workbench. Is that normal?