ACA500 tested

[Photon]

That's a good way to never reach your CF card again :P

[Joe Maroni]

is it possible to flash the ACA 500 with an AR rom and use it then as action replay? it has already an option menu at startup....

if not does anyone ever thought about this option?

I've heard that the Zeus card would be possible to do this, but who knows if it ever would be released....

[Photon]

Here is AR in software

Space is tight in the ACA500 firmware, even with two kickstarts+menu+devices+utilities compressed to 512K! There is certainly not 136K of space available...

If you really want it in ROM and not as software, your best chance is to make a large custom Kickstart ROM for your machine. Some have added scsi.device and utilities to kick 3.1, for example. Then you set ACA500 to boot from On-Board ROM, and it will work and boot from your custom Kickstart ROM.

[Joe Maroni]

are there any tutorials about creating a custom KickROM?

[fitzsteve]

Originally Posted by Joe Maroni

are there any tutorials about creating a custom KickROM?

Mfilos has a guide on his blog:

http://www.mfilos.com/p/guides.html

You can only use a Custom Kickstart with an ACA500 if you an ACA12xx using ACAMaprom command or of course if you burn your own actual KS Chip.

[Solo761]

Is there any info about scsi.device that comes with ACA500? I see that it's version 52.500 and when I used CWB setup from A600 that loads patched scsi 44.20 (CF is 8GB) i got boot error, conflict with this version from ACA500.

In the end I had to modify startup-sequence to skip loadmodule scsi.device if scsi.device version is 52. But now I'm wondering if ACA's version is safe for bigger HDDs/CFs.

[FOL]

Originally Posted by Solo761

Is there any info about scsi.device that comes with ACA500? I see that it's version 52.500 and when I used CWB setup from A600 that loads patched scsi 44.20 (CF is 8GB) i got boot error, conflict with this version from ACA500.

In the end I had to modify startup-sequence to skip loadmodule scsi.device if scsi.device version is 52. But now I'm wondering if ACA's version is safe for bigger HDDs/CFs.

Aca version is an updated version of the original kickstart 3.1 scsi.device.

[Photon]

You can't attach harddisks to ACA500. It supports two CF cards, and an educated guess is that you will have to use SFS or PFS to go beyond the WB 3.1 size limit of 4GB (per card), and that PC-formatted cards may support up to 128GB each, above that the OS is the limit and you must use WB 3.9. If you don't want to change your setup, you can partition your current card to use only 4GB of 8GB, and add a second 4GB card to get 8GB total.

[kolla]

What does "an updated version of the original kickstart 3.1 scsi.decive" even mean?
Is FastFileSystem updated too?

[fitzsteve]

It means that the device driver does not have the old limitations of KS3.1 so you can use easily CF cards over 4gb.

Its also faster, up to 3.2mb/sec with an ACA12xx attached.

You still need an updated file system to overcome some of the limitations of OS3.1 there is a long thread on the subject if you feel like reading it. Search for CF and Large Disk FAQ.

[Schoenfeld]

Originally Posted by kolla

What does "an updated version of the original kickstart 3.1 scsi.decive" even mean?

It means that three major patches have been applied:

- NSD commands supported
- TD64 commands supported
- LBA48 limit doesn't apply any more

This will make the device compatible with pretty much any size CF card that we'll see in the next few decades. The version number has been chosen to be over 50 in order to keep any patch-routine from touching it. Seems like the patch(er) used by Solo761 is violating that spec: It patched *back* to a lower version, which is a bad idea by default.

Originally Posted by kolla

Is FastFileSystem updated too?

Nope, FFS is used "as-is". If you want a patched version of your favourite filesystem, you can write it to the RDB of your CF card, which will make it usable from a cold-boot. Note that this is a function of Kickstart 2.0 and higher: Filesystems can be loaded from RDB. Not sure if this was also the case on Kick1.3 - someone else may be able to answer this.
Note that this is a function of the Amiga OS. I'd like to claim it for the ACA500, but that would be false marketing. The Amiga is just a good computer ;-)

Jens

[Jope]

Filesystems are also loaded off the RDB under 1.3. It's a function of the hard disk driver.

[Solo761]

Originally Posted by FOL

Aca version is an updated version of the original kickstart 3.1 scsi.device.

As kolla said, what does it actually means? I figured it's updated, original being 40.12 and this one 52.500. Problem is that I haven't found any info on it so I'm not sure if it supports large drives the way patched ones do.

Originally Posted by Photon

You can't attach harddisks to ACA500. It supports two CF cards, and an educated guess is that you will have to use SFS or PFS to go beyond the WB 3.1 size limit of 4GB (per card), and that PC-formatted cards may support up to 128GB each, above that the OS is the limit and you must use WB 3.9. If you don't want to change your setup, you can partition your current card to use only 4GB of 8GB, and add a second 4GB card to get 8GB total.

Yes, I know, although I doubt this scsi.device is only for CFs, that's why I wrote HDDs/CFs. I use PFS3 with all my Amigas so that shouldn't be the problem. My usual setup is around 400MB for system partition and rest is for file storage and WHDLoad games. Worked without a glitch in my A600, A1200 and A500 with kipper2k's 8MB CF board, but on them I used loadmodule to load patched scsi.device 44.20 which I can't do with ACA500 because it errors out on when it tries loadmodule v44.20. To get around that I had to modify startup-sequence to check if version of scsi.device starts with 52 and if it does it skips loadmodule, and if it doesn't (like if I connect it to WinUAE via USB to copy new files) it loads patched scsi.device so I can still use full size.

Originally Posted by fitzsteve

It means that the device driver does not have the old limitations of KS3.1 so you can use easily CF cards over 4gb.

Its also faster, up to 3.2mb/sec with an ACA12xx attached.

You still need an updated file system to overcome some of the limitations of OS3.1 there is a long thread on the subject if you feel like reading it. Search for CF and Large Disk FAQ.

Originally Posted by Schoenfeld

It means that three major patches have been applied:

- NSD commands supported
- TD64 commands supported
- LBA48 limit doesn't apply any more

This will make the device compatible with pretty much any size CF card that we'll see in the next few decades. The version number has been chosen to be over 50 in order to keep any patch-routine from touching it. Seems like the patch(er) used by Solo761 is violating that spec: It patched *back* to a lower version, which is a bad idea by default.

Thanks, that's what I wanted to know . It won't have problems with bigger CF cards.

I'm using CWB and it uses loadmodule to load scsi.device that's inside devs folder. I have to use it when I prep CF cards with WinUAE. It didn't manage to load 44.20 it errors out when it tries but I guess it also aborts startup-sequence if that happens. So except aborted WorkBench load nothing harmfull was done .

I worked around that by editing startup sequence from

IF EXISTS DEVS:scsi.device
  C:LoadModule DEVS:scsi.device
EndIF

to

version >nil: scsi.device 52
IF warn
  IF EXISTS DEVS:scsi.device
    C:LoadModule DEVS:scsi.device
  EndIF
EndIf

So now when I connect it to WinUAE it loads v44.20, and when it's connected to ACA500 it skips loading it. I just hope there aren't going to be side effects from occasionally using different version scsi.device :/.

[Photon]

Solo761, this is better than your first post. The two sentences sounded like you couldn't boot your 8GB card! Startup-sequence is quite a few steps after boot

[Pavel]

Just got my ACA500 yesterday and I can't get It to work with my ACA1230 from 2010, or rather everything looks ok, but when I'm in workbench the additional 64mb ram is not there, only 1,5mb so I can't run any whdload games. Does anyone recognize this issue?

[Schoenfeld]

Originally Posted by Pavel

Just got my ACA500 yesterday and I can't get It to work with my ACA1230 from 2010, or rather everything looks ok, but when I'm in workbench the additional 64mb ram is not there, only 1,5mb so I can't run any whdload games. Does anyone recognize this issue?

Any test setup that I've tried with one of the three ACA1230 versions was unstable. I therefore stopped testing, as this instability will also occur at the customer's site.

The ACA1230 can't be fully supported (stability-wise), because it's a syncronous design. Maybe Toni will take a look at adding the memory, but to be honest, I think it's good the way it is right now, because it clearly says "unsupported". If a new software release adds the memory, people may think that this is a guaranteed-to-work setup, which it can never be.

If you want to run it anyway, you do so at your own risk, and you have been warned that it may crash at any time. Try closing the Kick3.0 jumper to have $00c0.0000 memory from the start, and try addmem from $0800.0000 to $0bdf.ffff - this should add 62M RAM to your fastmem pool. Don't go any further with the upper boundary, as there's a mirror of the $00c0.0000 fastmem in the next 1MByte, and the last 1MByte is the Maprom area.

Jens

[Solo761]

Originally Posted by Photon

Solo761, this is better than your first post. The two sentences sounded like you couldn't boot your 8GB card! Startup-sequence is quite a few steps after boot

That's my flaw . When I write something it usually turns out too long and detailed so people get bored. And when I try to be short it ends up unclear .

[Pavel]

Thank's Jens - I'll give It a try.
Which ACA card would you recommend for best compatibility and speed/RAM?

/TheSwede

Originally Posted by Schoenfeld

Any test setup that I've tried with one of the three ACA1230 versions was unstable. I therefore stopped testing, as this instability will also occur at the customer's site.

The ACA1230 can't be fully supported (stability-wise), because it's a syncronous design. Maybe Toni will take a look at adding the memory, but to be honest, I think it's good the way it is right now, because it clearly says "unsupported". If a new software release adds the memory, people may think that this is a guaranteed-to-work setup, which it can never be.

If you want to run it anyway, you do so at your own risk, and you have been warned that it may crash at any time. Try closing the Kick3.0 jumper to have $00c0.0000 memory from the start, and try addmem from $0800.0000 to $0bdf.ffff - this should add 62M RAM to your fastmem pool. Don't go any further with the upper boundary, as there's a mirror of the $00c0.0000 fastmem in the next 1MByte, and the last 1MByte is the Maprom area.

Jens

[Schoenfeld]

Originally Posted by Pavel

Thank's Jens - I'll give It a try.
Which ACA card would you recommend for best compatibility and speed/RAM?

Speed-wise, the ACA1233 with 40MHz is the fastest you can get. It will give you 127MBytes fastmem and 1MByte Maprom option, which is fully supported by the ACA500 ROM.

If you can get a used ACA1232 of any speed, you'll get the same amount of RAM as the ACA1233 - these cards are *very* similar.

The ACA1220 (any speed) is also guaranteed to work. However, it's not made any more, and you may have a hard time finding one.

I have two lower-cost cards in the works, one called ACA1221 and the other called ACA1221EC. The latter uses a 68EC020-25 CPU clocked at 28,38MHz and comes with 9MByte Fastmem plus 1MByte Maprom option. It will sell for 109,90 EUR.

The ACA1221 uses a 68020-16 processor, clocked at 17MHz by default. Default memory is 9MBytes. You can buy faster speeds (overclocking) and up to 63Mbytes RAM for this card. The basic card with 17MHz and 9MByte will sell for 79,90 EUR, and upgrade fees for more memory, more speed and Maprom option will sell for as low as 5,- EUR per feature (upgrades can be installed through the internet).

Both ACA1221 cards have an optimized Chipram interface that's considerably faster than the Chipram interface that the ACA1220 had, which will help getting rid of the nasty "Turrican slowdowns". You even have the option to clock them syncronously to the 14MHz clock of the A1200 for the full 7MBytes/s performance on chipram. This may or may not work on the ACA500 - it depends on the A500 it's connected to, and is therefore not guaranteed.

These "small" cards finally cover what so many ACA500 users have been asking for: A low-cost memory upgrade, so the preload function of WHDload can be used for all games.

The ACA1233-40 is pretty low-stock, and I've raised the price to 199,90 EUR in order to slow down sales. I don't have any source for new+fast 68030 CPUs (apart from aviation/military sources where every CPU is almost 300 USD), so these will probably be the last ones of their kind.

Jens

[fitzsteve]

Nice to hear about the new upgrades. I'll check em out.

I was able to use an aca1230 with my aca500, memory worked only using the first original aca500 firmware. It was fast as a bat out of hell but unstable though. I have a video of it running I think...