ACA500 plus?

[alpine9000]

Originally Posted by Photon

Hehe, all clear Thx for the explanation. As dev, *brr* I wouldn't want to 'detect ACA500Plus just to move VBR to fast - for 68000'. I'm sure you know what I mean. There's no performance gain and if you make other vectors work all software will break... :P well I'm sure you know this.

Sorry for even mentioning it, it was some desperate try to see the 4.5MB/s I saw once and once only instead of 4MB/s for IDE...

Keep it like it is, it's perfect for WHDLoad and the Quit key works great, only 1 game so far and it was probably the slave. MUCH better than the Matrix 1230 that I tried many years ago and probably lots of other possible Amiga setups...

And if it's like it is now yep Alpine9000, ACA500Plus will behave as plain A500 whether 7 or 42 MHz... you can trust it for development even more than the ACA500 that I also have.

My plus is unstable at anything > 14mhz

[E-Penguin]

Yeah, mine too. I stuck an ACA1221 in it and now it flies.

[Toni Wilen]

Originally Posted by alpine9000

OK, so after reading this I figured my game should work with "VBR Move" enabled as it shouldn't do anything, and it did indeed work.

It seems the scenario which causes it to hang is having both "VBR Move" enabled and having the Freezer set to "Action Replay MK III".

If I disable either of those, my game works.

A500plus config? (screenshot please)

[alpine9000]

Originally Posted by Toni Wilen

A500plus config? (screenshot please)

I emailed you the game also.

[Toni Wilen]

Originally Posted by alpine9000

I emailed you the game also.

Thanks. Confirmed and will be fixed in next update. (vbrmove gets incorrectly activated after exiting AR, even when it wasn't active when AR was entered)

[demolition]

Have a minor visual bug with 0.99:

If I right after power-on type '6' to launch profile #6 and later reboot and enter the profile menu with F10, it will list the name of profile #6 although it will list the contents of profile #1 which is also the active profile. Going right or left will update it all and make it correct.

[Toni Wilen]

Originally Posted by demolition

Have a minor visual bug with 0.99:

If I right after power-on type '6' to launch profile #6 and later reboot and enter the profile menu with F10, it will list the name of profile #6 although it will list the contents of profile #1 which is also the active profile. Going right or left will update it all and make it correct.

Fixed but I am not sure if it should return to main menu or perhaps it should return directly to profile page after returning back to menu?

[demolition]

Well, some people may like it one way, some another.. For me, it would make the most sense if it would go straight to showing the profile that was last launched since I would be likely to use the same again but with some small change.

[Photon]

I think it was better in the ACA500 actually. I.e. not automatically hop into a profile.

This automatically hopping into the last profile is only useful the first day you get it, and then it's just in the way.

After the profiles are done, you just use the Amiga.

Then, the only reason to go into the menu is to switch to another config you made, and then you "sometimes" have to Esc to main menu to press a number. ("Sometimes"=not after power-on, but all other times.)

[softiron]

got a question about ACA and A512 expansion (IComp one).
If I install one of them it will be recognized as 1MB Chip as per ACA.
MB 8.1a rev.
so if I install 2 of them I should get 1,5MB Chip?
and crazy idea... 3 of them will make total 2MB Chip? or just won't work?

[E-Penguin]

Depends on the fatness of your Agnus, I think.

[softiron]

its 8375 Fat Agnus

[demolition]

Yes, you should be able to install two of them and get 1.5MB chip. To get the full 2MB chip you can solder in the missing RAM ICs in the MB, however I am not sure whether you can get the same result with 3 boards.

[softiron]

Well, my MB has 512kb only but I dont want to solder anything on it. If someone could prove it right or wrong if 2MB Chip can be achieved by stacking 3 expansions together... Or maybe ACA will at least see it as 2MB Chip total, thats also fine with me. If 3 such expansions together could be recognized as 1.5MB Chip, the last one would have to be also the one from IC or can we use anything here? 502 for example

[Schoenfeld]

Originally Posted by softiron

Well, my MB has 512kb only but I dont want to solder anything on it.

If you don't want to solder, then your Amiga is stuck with 1MB chipram. For making use of the 2MB capability of your Agnus, some glue logic needs to be added to the main board, the extra 512k must be soldered on the board, and then two A512 cards can be used. Three A512 can never be used [without further hacking].

A new menu update and an automatic installer are now online: http://wiki.icomp.de/wiki/ACA500plus_Firmware
The update must be done in two steps; copy one file to the root dor of your AUX card, press F8->F, then copy the other file and do F8->F again.

Version 0.110 of the menu with the following changes:

- PIO Mode selection was not stable. This could lead to CF card performance being slower than chosen.

- Horizontal movement range extended in the global menu. The new setting is not compatible with what you may have saved with the V0.101 version, so re-adjustment is required if you have previously used that version.

- Recognition of DF2: drive is now more reliable

- start-options F1 and F2 are now using the CPU speed setting from the global F8 menu, if the 68ec000 CPU is active, or an A1200 accelerator is switched off.

- new IDE update options: If a CF card has been prepared with the new automatic installer (see further down), it will have a third partition if the card is 256MB or bigger. This third partition is called "DH0:" and it has the "do not mount" flag set. Using the new IDE options, this partition can be mounted an made bootable,

- launching with F2 chooses the "last" (=new) IDE-update option, so it mounts DH0: and boots from it. This makes a transparent selection of a different boot partition if you choose a different Kickstart (here: V1.3).

- the F8 global menu had a missing "K - Load A1000 Kickstart" text.

- new installer is launched with F7 from the main menu; this will now mount seven instead of six virtual disks.

This new installer implements what just a few days after the ACA500plus appeared in Vlogger videos: Some of these videos have shown (well-cut!) installation of OS3.1 within just a few seconds, totally pain-free. Reality looked different, as the Amiga cannot handle media of more than 4GB size. The new installer solves this problem.

Installing a CF card with HDToolbox, which is not compatible with large media either, is tedious and error prone. Lots of steps need to be followed in every detail, otherwise things go wrong and installation is either not successful, or partitions can't be used, as the overwrite other partitions' data.
This is now a thing of the ast, as the new installer *really* does it automatically now. No need to read about partitioning, 64-bit file systems, RDBs, boot priority and more pitfalls. Just insert a CF card, install it automatically, and reboot a freshly-installed computer after less than one minute (!).

In detail:

The chosen CF-card (Boot or Aux) is checked for size. 8MB and smaller cards are refused, but I guess you guys don't have such small cards any more. Up to 64MB media size, a single FFS-TD64 partition will be created, formatted and installed with OS3.1.

Starting at 128MB size, it'll be split into two equally-sized partitions, where the first half is used for OS3.1, and the second half is a "work" partition. Both these partitions use PFS3.

Starting at 256MB size, a third partition of about 20MB size will be created and formatted with FFS-TD64. It's called DH0:, but not mounted automatically. If you want to access this partition from OS3.1, then double-click on storage/dosdrivers/DH0. This will mount this partition (which is reserved for OS1.3), and you can copy your WB1.3 files to that partition (this is NOT automatic!).

Starting at 1GB media size, this "third" partition is increased to about 50MB size.

Starting at 2GB media size, the OS3.1 partition reaches it's largest size of 537MB. The "work" partition will take up "all the rest" of the media. If you take an 8GB card, the resulting "Work" partition will be almost 7.5GB. Thanks to PFS3 and the scsi.device of the ACA500plus both being 64-bit capable, this will work without any headaches. It just works.

After installation, a few "essentials" are being copied to the OS3.1 partition: LHA, Kick1.3 as a file, and the relocation table that WHDload wants to see. This means that the system is "almost completely" prepared for a WHDload installation. Not yet completely, but we're working on it.

This new installer is a sneak preview for the A1200 Reloaded software. It can be controlled with mouse, joystick or keyboard. The font is really proportional, and it's rendered really "smooth" with very few colours. The transitions from screen to screen are not hardware-hacked, but fully OS-conform.

Jens

[E-Penguin]

Nice!

I'm tempted to format my CF and start again just to try the new installer!

[spudje]

That sounds like an awesome update Jens, thanks! Hope to revisit my a500 again after I beat my a4k struggles.

[Schoenfeld]

Originally Posted by E-Penguin

I'm tempted to format my CF and start again just to try the new installer!

The installer will delete all data on the CF card, so you should have a backup (it tells you so and lets you stop, so no worries). At the low prices of CF cards these days, you might want to consider a second card :-)

What I'd like to see is YT-Videos that show an *uncut* installation procedure.

Jens

[alpine9000]

The new installer is great!

[demolition]

Thanks, this automatic installer is a very nice addition to an already nice product which should solve a problem that many newcomers face when they get bit by the Amiga-bug. It is also nice for the seasoned ones like myself so I can quickly set up a new system without moving files back and forth, typing hex numbers etc..

It would be nice if it was possible to specify how large you want your system partition to be instead of being stuck with the default settings. I generally prefer my system partition to be 200-500MB max. no matter if I am using 4 or 8GB CF cards since that will hold pretty much all the programs that I would need to have installed.

One minor thing I noticed - if you read the licences, you cannot go back to the menu any longer without rebooting. Not that it takes long to reboot though.