ACA500 tested

[Schoenfeld]

Originally Posted by TjLaZer

Turning it off did not change the speed.

Errmm... DBurst off did not change speed? I highly doubt that. It only proves that Sysinfo is not a good tool to measure speed. Try AIBB and you'll see that DBurst helps a lot. Or better: Try a real-world application like LHA over your C: drawer and measure the required time.

Jens

[TjLaZer]

Yes I know, SysInfo is not the best tool.

[SpeedGeek]

For reasons I have already explained, burst mode will NOT always give a performance increase... and since I don't like repeating myself:

http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?...ighlight=burst

The good thing about AIBB (besides that fact that it's accuracy is far better than MisInfo) is that it has a variety tests which can give you some idea when burst mode will benefit and when it will not benefit.

[TjLaZer]

Just wanted to give a user experience comparing the 1233/55Mhz with an Apollo 1240/33 MHz. The 040 doesn't seem to be much faster (in real world use) and the 030/55 does very well in real world experience! Even ADoom is just a mere 1-2 fps faster on the 040. Really impressed with this card. Of Course I'm now hungry for more power now so I'm getting a 1260.

[d4rk3lf]

Looking forward for the aca 500+.
Hopefully it will be done, by the next spring.

Anyone tried Wing Commander, Frontier, or games like that on Aca 500, and is there a significient speed improvment?
Or fps games like Citadel, that runs pretty slowly on A500?

[TjLaZer]

Been testing a Blizzard 1230 MK IV on my A1000 and while it seems to work, I do get random crashes and reboots.

[mazxim]

Originally Posted by d4rk3lf

Looking forward for the aca 500+.
Hopefully it will be done, by the next spring.

Anyone tried Wing Commander, Frontier, or games like that on Aca 500, and is there a significient speed improvment?
Or fps games like Citadel, that runs pretty slowly on A500?

I am pretty much excited about this too!
I hope it will end to not have big difference in price.. (less than 100 euros anyway)

[rfancella]

Hello,
Not to hijack this thread, but...
1). What size and manufacture CF cards are "known/Working" (thread?)?
2). I was also looking at SD to CF adapters. Is there anyone using them successfully?
3). I was wondering about this one: http://www.ebay.com/itm/331487394299...%3AMEBIDX%3AIT or one like it?
4). Does anyone have a thread on how to install Classic Workbench or the like onto A CF card that can be used on the ACA500 using WinUAE? Thought I might start prepping in eager anticipation of mine arriving.

Thanks,
Ron

Tonight I updated my ACA500 from an ancient firmware version to the latet (0.99). That was apperently the most stupid thing I could do.

Before the update everything worked fine. The Amiga booted from the installed Amiga formatted CF card into Workbench. After the update the computer tries to boot from the Compact Flash-card but with no luck. The computer boots as when you insert a floppy disk with a boot sector but without any contents. (Hope that makes sense). Nothing else happens.

I made a backup of the old firmware but when I try to revert to it, the flash tool tells me that my "ACA500 has incompatible configuration for flashing". What does that mean?

I can still flash the card via the menu upgrade function, but none of the other versions I have tried seem to work any better than version 0.99.

So now I am stuck - the card won't boot and does not seem to recognize the CF-card. Any ideas?

[Photon]

Originally Posted by TjLaZer

Just wanted to give a user experience comparing the 1233/55Mhz with an Apollo 1240/33 MHz. The 040 doesn't seem to be much faster (in real world use) and the 030/55 does very well in real world experience! Even ADoom is just a mere 1-2 fps faster on the 040. Really impressed with this card. Of Course I'm now hungry for more power now so I'm getting a 1260. Attachment 46486

Hehe You should measure the increase in acceleration in SysInfo, though, and you should have a difference between 030 and 040 between 3x and 5x the speed!! (edit: you already did,and you're good as you see) Measuring by framerate in games is not reliable. The 16-bit chipmem bus of the A500 is death compared to the 64-bit one in an A1200 for any graphics buffer update rate.

Originally Posted by rfancella

Hello,
Not to hijack this thread, but...
1). What size and manufacture CF cards are "known/Working" (thread?)?
2). I was also looking at SD to CF adapters. Is there anyone using them successfully?
3). I was wondering about this one: http://www.ebay.com/itm/331487394299...%3AMEBIDX%3AIT or one like it?
4). Does anyone have a thread on how to install Classic Workbench or the like onto A CF card that can be used on the ACA500 using WinUAE? Thought I might start prepping in eager anticipation of mine arriving.

Thanks,
Ron

1) Sandisk or Lexar 2GB is my recommendation. (Edit: no, you can have a card that's unnecessarily huge, but be prepared to know what you're doing. 1GB is also perfectly fine.)
2) Just buy a normal CF card.
3) Just buy a normal CF card. Oh God, my eyes!
4) A quick guide (red text) has been on Coppershade for a while now, do read the underlined parts and do click the link to the detailed article.

Originally Posted by Piramania

Tonight I updated my ACA500 from an ancient firmware version to the latet (0.99). That was apperently the most stupid thing I could do.

Before the update everything worked fine. The Amiga booted from the installed Amiga formatted CF card into Workbench. After the update the computer tries to boot from the Compact Flash-card but with no luck. The computer boots as when you insert a floppy disk with a boot sector but without any contents. (Hope that makes sense).

Not sure if you mean you're seeing the disk hand of kick 1.3 or the disk insertion animation of kick 3.1, or if you're booting to the CF card but are presented with the CLI window.

I would reinsert the ACA500 and flash 0.99 again, and if it throws an error I would e-mail icomp.de. If the flashing works, and the card doesn't boot, I would check the card on a PC. (If it's Amiga-formatted, by adding it in the emulator.) If it won't work there, something happened to the card. If it works there, but not in ACA500 afterwards, I'd email icomp.de.

Originally Posted by Photon

Not sure if you mean you're seeing the disk hand of kick 1.3 or the disk insertion animation of kick 3.1, or if you're booting to the CF card but are presented with the CLI window.

Yeah, it was a bit unclear I am presented with the CLI window. I still had a PC-formatted card in the AUX slot if that makes any difference. When trying to boot Workbench from floppy it only sees the CF-card if it is inserted into the AUX slot - but here it is unreadable(?).

Originally Posted by Photon

I would reinsert the ACA500 and flash 0.99 again, and if it throws an error I would e-mail icomp.de. If the flashing works, and the card doesn't boot, I would check the card on a PC. (If it's Amiga-formatted, by adding it in the emulator.) If it won't work there, something happened to the card. If it works there, but not in ACA500 afterwards, I'd email icomp.de.

The flashing goes okay, it is just when using the restore-disk it reports the error. But yeah, maybe something happened to the card, so I will start testing it with WinUAE and if necessary prepare a new one. If it fails I hope Jens has some suggestions. Thanks!

[Toni Wilen]

Originally Posted by Piramania

"ACA500 has incompatible configuration for flashing". What does that mean?

One possible reason is enabled ACA500 1M ChipRAM option.

I still had a PC-formatted card in the AUX slot if that makes any difference

Do you have too low WB partition boot priority? ACA500 can boot from FAT formatted CF if it is in AUX slot.

Originally Posted by Toni Wilen

One possible reason is enabled ACA500 1M ChipRAM option.

Toni, you are BRILLIANT! That solved this problem.

Originally Posted by Toni Wilen

Do you have too low WB partition boot priority? ACA500 can boot from FAT formatted CF if it is in AUX slot.

It seems that somehow the CF card just went bad and stopped working. Even when put into my card reader on the PC Windows or WinUAE can't recognise the disk (or the reader). I have now tried another card (unfortunately only 32Mb), prepared it in WinUAE and tested it on my ACA-500 - and IT WORKS! :-) The old card is still unreadable when inserted into the AUX-slot. I guess the only way is to format it and hope it works after that.

So thanks to you and Photon for your help and suggestions! You and the rest of this board are awesome!

[rfancella]

Originally Posted by Photon

...snip...
1) Sandisk or Lexar 2GB is my recommendation. (Edit: no, you can have a card that's unnecessarily huge, but be prepared to know what you're doing. 1GB is also perfectly fine.)
2) Just buy a normal CF card.
3) Just buy a normal CF card. Oh God, my eyes!
4) A quick guide (red text) has been on Coppershade for a while now, do read the underlined parts and do click the link to the detailed article.
...snip...

Thank you so much for your reply!
I do have a 2gb card on hand. I was just going to use the adapter as the Aux card.
I'll give that guide link a go. I found a couple others but I cannot get the CF to show in HDToolBox. Just the hdf.

Thanks,
Ron

[rfancella]

An update and some issues.
I figured out what I was doing wrong. I was adding the CF card as a directory not as "Add a hard drive...". All good now. The CF partitioned into two drives, formatted and ClassicWorkbench installed. And none too soon.
The ACA500 and ACA1220 arrived yesterday so the CF was ready to install right away. wOOt!
Now to the issue.
Booting to KS1.2 or KS1.3 it works great!
Booting to KS3.1 boots and works just fine only the cursor is corrupt and doesn't display correctly. The screen quickly scrambles and becomes un-readable shortly after and then it just locks up.
I got it as a stock A500 Rev 5b MoBo. Added a third party 512kb trapdoor memory card. Added an Indivision ECS with the newest firmware.
The ACA500 also has the newest (not the beta) firmware on it also.

Here are some screens showing the issue:



WB1.3 with no issues:


SysInfo:


Not sure where to go from here.
Has anyone seen this before? Where should I start the troubleshooting process?

Thanks,
Ron

[bubbob42]

Your Mobo seems to have an 8371 Agnus - you get that kind of display corruption when using Kick3.1, the 8371 and a mobo jumpered to 1MB chipram.

[TjLaZer]

Try to reseat the card

[Toni Wilen]

OCS Agnus + ECS Denise + KS 3.1 = corrupted mouse cursor and some other glitches.

KS 3.1 assumes ECS Agnus in this configuration and uses ECS Agnus only features like DIWHIGH register.

[rfancella]

Thank you all three for the prompt replies.
So the best bet would be to find an ECS Agnus. Maybe install it on a switch.

Originally Posted by bubbob42

Your Mobo seems to have an 8371 Agnus - you get that kind of display corruption when using Kick3.1, the 8371 and a mobo jumpered to 1MB chipram.

What is this jumpered to 1MB ChipRam you speak of?
Do you have a thread handy. I'll probably Google it quicker.

Originally Posted by TjLaZer

Try to reseat the card

Tried and no joy.

Originally Posted by Toni Wilen

OCS Agnus + ECS Denise + KS 3.1 = corrupted mouse cursor and some other glitches.

KS 3.1 assumes ECS Agnus in this configuration and uses ECS Agnus only features like DIWHIGH register.

Thank you Tony and thank you for all the hard work you do for us!!

Thanks,
Ron

[brett71]

Originally Posted by rfancella

Thank you all three for the prompt replies.
So the best bet would be to find an ECS Agnus. Maybe install it on a switch.

Agnes is not a switchable chip like the Kickstart, AFAIK. You'd have to remove the OCS Agnes and replace it with the ECS. This should not cause any incompatibility issues since the ECS Agnes has all the same functionality as the OCS with some additional features.