Individual Computers - New accelerator cards for A600 & A1200

[Toni Wilen]

WHDload version? 17.0 had 68020-only cache setting bug (68020 default cache setting was enabled, default for all other CPUs was disabled).

[fitzsteve]

Just to rule out a bad KS3.1 Rom (from maprom) change ACATune settings from the Startup Sequence.

Edit the fist line I put to:

C:ACATune -Maprom * -maxmem >NIL:

This will Map your own 3.1 rom and will rule out the Kickstart image I used being corrupt (by the way maxmem and Maprom were the only options I put in your ACATune setup for the ACA620)

Originally Posted by Toni Wilen

WHDload version? 17.0 had 68020-only cache setting bug (68020 default cache setting was enabled, default for all other CPUs was disabled).

I used whatever the lastest CWB packs use, I will have to double check which one that is!

[DonAmiga]

Originally Posted by fitzsteve

Just to rule out a bad KS3.1 Rom (from maprom) change ACATune settings from the Startup Sequence.

Edit the fist line I put to:

C:ACATune -Maprom * -maxmem >NIL:

I've done this and still the same!

Just to update the crash messages I get

Terminator 2:
Exception "illegal instruction" ($10) at $8 occurred.

Starwars: intro starts, music starts for 2 seconds then:
Exception "illegal instruction" ($10) at $c27612ca occurred.

Or sometimes starwars just won't boot!

Thanks

[demolition]

Originally Posted by DonAmiga

Terminator 2:
Exception "illegal instruction" ($10) at $8 occurred.
Starwars: intro starts, music starts for 2 seconds then:
Exception "illegal instruction" ($10) at $c27612ca occurred.

Try to do some chipmem tests using memtest software. If you can loop this for more than one hour without problems, then it could be a software issue, otherwise it might be similar to my ACA620 problems. It could also run for a long time in WB, but WHDLoad would crash very quickly, as I think it is more sensitive to hardware problems.

I am using MBRTEST-2 from a Microbotics MX1230A disk, but others could be good as well.

[fitzsteve]

It's WHDLoad 17.0 on the pack I used (latest from CWB site)

There is 17.1 on the WHDLoad page:

http://www.whdload.de/

Try updating and see if that helps, I'd have done it if I'd have known there could be an issue

[Amiga1992]

Originally Posted by DonAmiga

You can see the graphic glitches in the photo then a few more mins the game will crash sometimes with illegal error message!

Those glitches usually come with memory corruption. I had similar issues on my 030 accelerator because my 32MB SIMM was faulty.

[scu98rkr]

Originally Posted by DonAmiga

Terminator 2:
Exception "illegal instruction" ($10) at $8 occurred.

Starwars: intro starts, music starts for 2 seconds then:
Exception "illegal instruction" ($10) at $c27612ca occurred.
Thanks

This sounds very similar to the problems Im having on my ACA 620.

If I just mess around in the workbench, which I did for about 4 hrs last night, there's no sign of anything wrong

again same for me.

[DonAmiga]

Just thought I would try some other type of test:

Deluxe pain iv, What I did was simple animation with ball bouncing then explode into fire work display (25 frames) set it to play ping pong! back and forth 10 seconds system froze soft reset!

[alenppc]

I received the ACA620 from Amigakit. Installed it in my 1.3 mobo previously recapped and fixed for me by kipper2k.

I have the exact same issues as the rest of you. All WHDLoad games crash after a few seconds, graphics corruption also happens intermittently, although something else may be at fault here.

Workbench is rock-stable. I can load up AWeb, browse the internet, use ATC normally. I am impressed at how much power the tiny little 16Mhz 68020 can push out. It makes the A600 fly...

As usual, the card design is very clever. The ACATune maxmem option is perfect, because it adds the extra RAM after the initial initialization, so the kickstart does NOT disable the PCMCIA slot. Well done, Jens!

Here is a curious side effect. My A604+Indivision ECS would not work before on this mobo (although they worked fine on a 1.5 mobo). The extra chip mem was not recognized. Since I installed the ACA620, the expansion and the scandoubler work just fine. Now this is mind boggling. I have no clue why.

However, whenever the floppy drive is accessed (even the simple kickstart floppy click), causes lines and picture distortion to appear on screen.

When reading a floppy, the picture gets really messed up, with colours flickering wildly and even temp losses of sync. Everything returns to normal once the floppy activity ceases. Disconnecting the floppy drive from the mobo causes all of these symptoms to disappear (except for WHDload crash, which seems unrelated).

I have no clue what causes this.

[fitzsteve]

I've been using my A600 with ACA620 / Indi ECS & Subway/etc for about the last 45 mins. Played a number of WHDLoad Games without issues although I think I was using a beta version of WHDload.

One game crashes (Silkworm) with an 'illegal instruction' error. I updated WHDLoad to 17.1 and now Silkworm is working fine.

@Don try installing WHDLoad 17.1

I'm sure some software will be glitchy with this new hardware, so I expect some stuff just will never work. And that could even be a combination of other issues like Workbench/Kickstart versions.

Anyway, mine seems ok at the moment, let me know how you get on DonAmiga

i also use whdload 17.1 and the problems are still the same.

[DonAmiga]

I've updated to whdload 17.1 and just before that I had the boing ball bouncing in the background for an hour even when I was extracting/installing whdload the ball was bouncing away, no crashes or glitches in the graphics of the ball which I thought good! But I'm still getting the same errors in whdload and I re-did the deluxe paint test with the animation which still crashes after running it on the ping-pong loop. All this has been done after me striping down re-cleaning and checking the cpu legs. I have even tried deleting the acatune from the startup-sequence so it was running at the 4mb but this did not help.

[lukassid]

Where to get ACATune from? I got older version and ACA620 is not supported.
Is that really that difficult to provide clear download links on icomp website for new products?

[FOL]

Originally Posted by lukassid

Where to get ACATune from? I got older version and ACA620 is not supported.
Is that really that difficult to provide clear download links on icomp website for new products?

Its in this thread somewhere.
FitzSteve posted link a while back.

[prowler]

Originally Posted by lukassid

Where to get ACATune from? I got older version and ACA620 is not supported.
Is that really that difficult to provide clear download links on icomp website for new products?

http://eab.abime.net/showpost.php?p=...postcount=2316

This link is also in the first post in this thread.

[Retrofan]

DonAmiga are you using CWB? I think you should use the same configuration (changing WHDload also) that Fitzsteve uses, just to be sure it isn't a software problem.

[DonAmiga]

Originally Posted by Retrofan

DonAmiga are you using CWB? I think you should use the same configuration (changing WHDload also) that Fitzsteve uses, just to be sure it isn't a software problem.

I'll need to check that with Fitzsteve, I did move the hard-drive over to my ACA630 and everything worked great I have just finished testing the setup on 3 motherboards and got the same results apart from one where I got a bit further in actually playing starwars before crash with "illegal instruction" The only thing was all 3 boards are Rev1.5

I have every confidence that this will be a simple work around solution

Cheers

[drohan]

I have received my ACA 1232 from amigakit.

It works like a charm.

After a copule of hours of testing (WHDLoad, demos, WB usage , etc), no issues so far and no need of timing fixes...

Great product!!

I got my ACA620 a couple of weeks ago, and my first impressions were very good (it is really fast, and I really love the maprom feature), but I'm also experiencing the same issues described here:

• The workbench is very stable and works well, but after a while some graphic glitches start to appear after a while in interlaced modes only (small colored lines appear randomly on windows) - I don't know if this problem is related to the ACA620 or the Indivision ECS or anything else.
• I was unable to get any WHDLoad game to work - which were working well without the ACA620 - (I tried with versions 17 and 17.1): some did some "Illegal instruction" crashes, some other freezed the Amiga totally.

So I started to mess around with ACATune options and WHDLoad options. Most options had absolutely no effect, by things went a little better with the NoMemReverse flag set in WHDLoad. As I understand it, this option forces WHDLoad to allocate memory in lower addresses instead of higher addresses.
I did some tests with Dynablasters: Without the NonMemReverse, the game froze the Amiga on the title screen. With the option activated, I was able to play but it crashed with an "Illegal Instruction" after about 5~10 minutes.

I'll try to clean the CPU pins as someone suggested here and do some more memory tests.

[demolition]

Just been 'playing' a bit with my A1200+ACA1232 with ClassicWB ADVSP. It runs rather well and is very usable as long as I use Maprom. Without Maprom it becomes very sluggish, almost too slow. It almost feels like Maprom more than doubles the CPU clock, so it's a very nice feature I must say.