ACA500 tested

[BarryB]

Originally Posted by amigakit.com

@BarryB

Thank you very much for your custom and supporting our business

It is appreciated.

No problem

Also, could you email me that easynet upgrade I enquired about at PlayExpo, sent an email but didn't receive a reply, maybe I sent the request to the wrong email?

[amigakit.com]

Sure. Please resend it but don't forget to put your original EasyNet serial number in the email. It is in the About menu in EasyNet.

[Photon]

Originally Posted by BarryB

On the UK Amigakit ACA500 page: Pre-Order, Stock expected Thursday 12th December

http://amigakit.leamancomputing.com/...oducts_id=1168

...yes... so click the Buy Now-button to make sure you get one of those cards... when they come in...

[Photon]

Originally Posted by fitzsteve

Got mine today



More pics in my gallery

http://www.fitzstevesamigaworld.co.u...s.php?album=33

Will be doing a write up for my blog and will share the link here

BTW a guy requested a video of ACA500+ACA1232 on Youtube and I cheekily suggested you might post something like that on your channel

[BarryB]

Originally Posted by Photon

...yes... so click the Buy Now-button to make sure you get one of those cards... when they come in...

Have now done so!

[Photon]

Originally Posted by BarryB

Have now done so!

Yep, thread ended up on a new page so I missed the goings-on

[_ThEcRoW]

A little bit off-topic, but its possible to boot from cf with 1.3 rom, isn't it?.

[fitzsteve]

Well I already made a quick Video with my ACA1220, I didn't test my ACA1232 yet, but I will later.

[ Show youtube player ]

It's a really quick and basic Video, I've just prepped a CF with OS3.9 which I'm testing now and it runs great! There will be a new Video

@_ThEcRoW

Boot Rom is inside the ACA500 so yeah you should be fine loading 1.3rom/WB1.3 from a CF card, I will test this another time to see how the ACA500 fares on it's own with no ACA12xx

You can even boot from the AUX slot from a FAT formatted CF according to the manual.

Oh and I uploaded some more photo's to my gallery:

http://www.fitzstevesamigaworld.co.u...s.php?album=33

[Photon]

Originally Posted by _ThEcRoW

A little bit off-topic, but its possible to boot from cf with 1.3 rom, isn't it?.

Yes, absolutely. I tested it now, and it worked right away. Not that I'd need to, the same rules apply as for preparing a harddisk or CF card for use with other harddisk interface on A500 and other Amigas. You can get help in those threads in support.Hardware.

Note: It's really unnecessary to prepare a card or harddisk with AmigaOS 1.3 for compatibility purposes. Any demo or game you put on the card that fails, fails for other reasons than the kickstart version. Kick 3.1 is just as compatible. (Click the bottom link on coppershade.org for a solution to the real incompatibility reasons.)

[fitzsteve]

Originally Posted by Schoenfeld

Yep - one of the few that was shipped without the coloured sticker on the inside of the box. All others have that picture in colour ;-)

Sorry, but I wanted your unit out the door before the big rush. Hope you can forgive me..

Jens

I appreciate you getting it sent before the xmas rush Perhaps you could say mine is RARE

Having lots of fun with it, very nice product. So far seems very stable and compatible.

Even without any Turbo board it makes a nice difference to the speed of the system:

[ Show youtube player ]

Don't be fooled, this isn't Workbench 1.3, It's WB3.1 with 1.3 Icon pack (Classic Workbench 68k)

It's very quick with the ACA1232 attached, OS3.9 runs nice and quick even in 16 colours, I'm going to make another Video later

[fitzsteve]

@Jens,

Is there a new ACATune we can use with the ACA500/ACA12xx?

[fitzsteve]

Originally Posted by Photon

BTW a guy requested a video of ACA500+ACA1232 on Youtube and I cheekily suggested you might post something like that on your channel

Ok! Here it is

[ Show youtube player ]

[lukassid]

Originally Posted by fitzsteve

It's very quick with the ACA1232 attached, OS3.9 runs nice and quick even in 16 colours, I'm going to make another Video later

Hmm jealous A600 owner here

After seing that 3.9 on A500 I know that we need faster IDE for A600

[_ThEcRoW]

@photon, @fitzsteve Thanks for the reply!. Just finished a pc floppy drive for the A500(it really needed a new drive), and preparing the machine for the better to come!

[DDNI]

Originally Posted by fitzsteve

Ok! Here it is

[ Show youtube player ]

Great vid Steve!

[Schoenfeld]

Originally Posted by fitzsteve

@Jens,

Is there a new ACATune we can use with the ACA500/ACA12xx?

Sorry, there isn't a new version at this point. However, you might have noticed that all memory is automatically added to the system freemem pool, so one of the two main reasons for using ACAtune is already covered in the ROM of the ACA500.

The second reason would be to have Kickstart in 32-bit fastmem and activate Maprom. I don't know yet if we can solve this in the ROM of the ACA500, or if we'll make a new version of ACAtune. Space in the ROM is really tight.

Jens

[fitzsteve]

Originally Posted by Schoenfeld

Sorry, there isn't a new version at this point. However, you might have noticed that all memory is automatically added to the system freemem pool, so one of the two main reasons for using ACAtune is already covered in the ROM of the ACA500.

The second reason would be to have Kickstart in 32-bit fastmem and activate Maprom. I don't know yet if we can solve this in the ROM of the ACA500, or if we'll make a new version of ACAtune. Space in the ROM is really tight.

Jens

Thanks for the answer, indeed I was hoping to use the Maprom feature to put my BB2 modules in the 32bit FastRam via Maprom.

No big deal as I was only really using OS3.9 for testing and my normal OS on this system would be 3.1 based anyway.

[fitzsteve]

Originally Posted by DDNI

Great vid Steve!

Thanks mate, missed your post. I'm glad you enjoyed it

[Retrofan]

Originally Posted by lukassid

Hmm jealous A600 owner here

After seing that 3.9 on A500 I know that we need faster IDE for A600

Fitzsteve what differences there are now between an A600 and an A500 with the same ACA accelerator?

[fitzsteve]

Originally Posted by Retrofan

Fitzsteve what differences there are now between an A600 and an A500 with the same ACA accelerator?

The A600 seems to run a little faster even though it's only 30mhz vs 33mhz I can use Maprom to load my custom 3.9 rom and other ACATune features that are not available on the ACA500.

I'm also using an Indivision ECS on my A600 so I can use the Indivision mode for Doom but I could of course install an Indivsion ECS in my A500+

Any difference is quite marginal really, I can double check some benchmarks some other time.

Edit* Watching my Video's again the ACAtune optimisations on the ACA630 make a big difference!