Introducing ACA 1221 Low Cost Accelerator At AmigaKit.com

[NovaCoder]

It's never going to be quite as 'plug and play' as a mainstream computer system, this is the retro scene where things often require the user to get his hands dirty and read some documentation and maybe tweak their setup to get new hardware to work.

If this kind of thing pisses you off then the retro scene is not really for you...

[CrashMidnick]

I think that Jen's wiki is clear enough to be understand by most of us (English is not my native language as well).

Amiga is not "always" plug and play. This is why I love this computer/OS. You start what you want to start by editing the startup-sequence or user-startup. As Nova said, you will get many times your hands dirty and it is pretty cool IMHO.

[TenLeftFingers]

I thought it was cool too until I started coding sixty hours a week. But I guess I'll just wait until they resellers are able to apply the changes themselves. Jens mentioned that in a previous post it might become a possibility in the future.

[Schoenfeld]

It's a possibility already, but it appears like the resellers also don't want to take the risk of giving warranty on overclocking. If they sell a card that's already overclocking-enabled, they'll have to buy the code from me at full price. Applying the change is a quick thing to do, but the legal part of it is that the reseller is now resposible for stability of the card. I'd expect that this will only be done if extensive tests are performed at the reseller's site, and these must be paid for in some way. Not exactly the thing you want to add to the price of a low-budget product.

Jens

Hi all,

I have just received my ACA1221 today and are having problems with entering the ACAtune in the startup sequence..

When I enter the command in the startup i get a message no card found on workbench booting up. But it I type the command in the Shell it finds the card after workbench has booted..

Appreciate anybody help.

Thanks

[demolition]

Where did you put the ACAtune command in SS? The very top?
Some people solved the problem by putting ACAtune right after Setpatch.

Hi,

I put ACAtune at the top and bottom of the start sequence but I haven't tried after setpatch!

Will try that next lol

[Schoenfeld]

Before you try ACAtune at all, please make sure it's really required: If you have Kick3.1, then you won't need it for adding memory. Only if you have Kick3.0, you'll want it in the startup-sequence. Use

ACAtune >NIL:

If you're adding it fairly early, so a shell window won't be opened which later on causes the annoying "can't change screenmode"-requester.

If you just want to check if everything is working correctly, don't add it to the startup sequence at all, but just execute it without arguments in a shell and watch the output.

Jens

Hi,

I have kickstart 3.0 roms so I need to insert the command in the startup.

Will I need to add the maprom command too?

Many thanks

[Schoenfeld]

Originally Posted by Booner99

Will I need to add the maprom command too?

That will only have effect if you have licensed the 1MByte Maprom option. In that case, you can use:

acatune -maprom ** >NIL:

to create a copy of your Kick3.0 ROM in the fastmem of your card. As an alternative, you can load a Kick3.1 file from harddrive and enjoy the latest version without having to change ROMs. Only drawback is that this will cause the machine to re-boot on a cold start. Caution: If you haven't licensed MapROM, ACAtune will not be aware of it. This may cause an infinite re-boot loop if you don't own the MapROM license.

In any case, memory will automatically be taken care of - either through ACAtune, or the new version of Kickstart that you may have loaded.

Jens

[amiga1260]

Today I get the ACA 1221 card. I tried in my ACA500 with 0.99 firmware and it will boot up, but ACAclock and ACAgov doesn't find the ACA1221.library in the libs directory.

Overclocking with ACA 1221 and ACA 500 doesn't work. I will wait for the new firmware.

After playing with the trail mode, I bought the maprom, 63 MB and overclocking up to 28 MHz.

After entering the license codes and use "ACAclock s 3 " command.

I try to reboot my Amiga 1200 with rev 1D1 and the whole Amiga hangs and sometimes it even power down.

It works with all the ACA cards I previously own: ACA 1230@28MHz, ACA1220@25MHz, ACA1232@33Mhz and ACA1232@33Mhz.

I think I need to do the timing fix. I try this card in my other A1200 with timing fix and that works without the problem.

[bubbob42]

the ACAClock command switches the clock speed immediately. Apart from the timing fixes - what power supply are you using?

Indeed, ACAClock & ACAGov won't work with the current ACA500 firmware.

[Dejavu]

Bad news for ACA500 owners.
When will the new firmware be ready for ACA500?

[crazyc]

Got mine delivered the other day, finally got round to removing my 1260 and fitting this - although my board was recapped a few years ago I have never had an ACA board before and so have no idea if I need timing fixes.
I have kickstart 3.1 and had no issues. board just worked with base specifications. ran a few utilities etc. How would any timing fix requirement show up?

Only odd thing is that previously my IDE speed on Sysinfo was 1.8, and I am sure I read somewhere that actually the 1260 creates a bottleneck on the standard A1200 ide, which is why I never even got great speeds with an IDEfix express, but using just this board with the same CF card it dropped to 1.3.
Everything felt fine in practice. in fact, am wondering if I really need the 1260 for what I use the miggy for.

Pleased with what I got for the money I paid.

[Schoenfeld]

Originally Posted by Dejavu

Bad news for ACA500 owners.
When will the new firmware be ready for ACA500?

We're working on it, but I can't give any release date yet. Give us a few more days - we'll then either have a solution, or at least a timeline. The problem *will* be solved, that's for sure.

Originally Posted by crazyc

but using just this board with the same CF card it dropped to 1.3.
Everything felt fine in practice.

You'll get more IDE speed if you overclock the card. You can try that by closing the trial jumper and use "ACAclock s 3". I can't predict a final number as I don't know what your CF card can really do, but I'd expect that more than 2MB/second is possible with that setup.
If you have an IDE-fix express, please make sure that the two jumpers on the express-adapter are *closed*, and that the latest IDE-max software is installed. This will further increase speed.

Jens

[crazyc]

I dont currently use the IDEfix Express being honest, as with the Indy MK2, and the IDE-Fix express and the various cables (so I can access the CF externally) plus the cabling for the trapdoor fan (as I had to take the one off the 1260 to allow the SCSI card to fit) and an additional one it all got a bit messy.

Dropped back to a more standard setup which is why I wanted to see how the new card did, which worked fine. Apart from a bit of tinkering I really use this for WHDLOAD but cannot convince myself to give up the 1260. Yet.

[crazyc]

For anyone interested, this is the sysinfo straight out of the box.

[amiga1260]

I'm using an Amiga 500 4.5 A PSU.

Yesterday I tested te ACA 1221 and I sometimes get lockups that the Amiga 1200 doesn't reboot and especially after using acaclock s 3.

I tried this in an Amiga 1200 with timing fix and one without it.

Before I send a support ticket to Amigakit, I want to know if someone also has the same issue.

[Schoenfeld]

Is that a lockup while working (=crash), or do you just need a second reset for the computer to re-start? The latter sometimes happens, and shows as a "red screen" for a short moment. The computer should come up after a few extra seconds.

Jens

[amiga1260]

Most of the time I get the red screen when I use the standard clock at 17 MHz, but when I set the clock speed at 28 MHz and do the reset then it will lock up and then I have turn the power off and on to get it working.