My ACA1233N has arrived

[Glen M]

Hurry up 5pm as I want to get home and get it installed....

On a serious note however.

I've not installed an accelerator card since my Blizzard card many moons ago. From memory that was just plug and play but is there anything in particular I need to do to the ACA to get it up and running?

I didn't get it delivered with the utility disk thinking I could just download that myself which is all well and good until I realize I have no way of getting it onto the Amiga. I have a gotek usb drive, is there any way of writing the lha file I've downloaded from their wiki to an adf so I can use it on my gotek?

[Vypr]

The ACA1233n doesn't need the software to run as it is autoconfiguring but if you want to use features like mapROM, you'll need the software.
Probably the easiest way to get the lha onto an adf is to use WinUAE to create a blank adf file, then copy the files onto it from a virtual Amiga.

[Daedalus]

You could use WinAUE to mount an ADF and put the file on it that way. I've heard that there are tools on the PC that can be used to manipulate ADFs but I haven't used any myself or know for sure that they can do that. An alternative that is extremely useful is the CF card reader for PCMCIA option. This is something I use all the time for transferring files between my Amigas and other systems, and is super cheap too.

As for setting it up, the ACA1233N is apparently autoconfiguring so you should have all your RAM etc. already set up without needing any software or utilities. These are only needed to use the MapROM feature or to disable the board for compatibility, so you might not need to worry about transferring them at all.

[Glen M]

Problems

With the accelerator installed the Amiga only shows a black screen. Powers on hard disk spins up but black screen. Hard disk doesn't attempt to access, neither does the floppy drive. Take the accelerator out and all is fine again.

Could this be the timing problem?

Tried it with both my a1200 and a500 psu's just in case it was a power problem but no difference.

Any suggestions?

[Glen M]

Btw if it makes any difference my board is a revision 2b

[Glen M]

Fixed it.

Followed the instructions on their wiki and removed caps E123C and E125C

Booted up straight away and running like a charm

[Toryglen-boy]

Originally Posted by Glen M

Fixed it.

Followed the instructions on their wiki and removed caps E123C and E125C

Booted up straight away and running like a charm

good news.

make sure you have acamaprom i, as one of the first entries on your user startup. i run mine on a 2B board, and get around 9200 drhystones in Sysinfo.

[Glen M]

Originally Posted by Toryglen-boy

make sure you have acamaprom i, as one of the first entries on your user startup. i run mine on a 2B board, and get around 9200 drhystones in Sysinfo.

Does this actually improve performance as such? I thought it was more just to improve boot times etc?

I've tried to search for noted performance gains by using the maprom feature but I can't find much other than the ACA wiki stating a significant improvement.

[Daedalus]

It depends on what's being done. It won't improve direct chipset access or anything like that, but for OS components that are located in ROM, they can be executed much faster from fast RAM, so any CPU-bound OS calls will benefit greatly.

[bubbob42]

Your IDE-Drive will gain around 10% performance with MapRom, at least in SysInfo.

[Glen M]

Since I'm a bit of a noob when it comes to the editing start-up can someone kindly point me in the direction of how I access and edit it and what to write. Also do I need any library files installed to make this work?

[Daedalus]

First, you need to install whatever commands are required from the archive. They typically go in the SYS:C drawer, but check the readme or guide to make sure.

Next, to edit the startup sequence, open a Shell window and enter the command:

Ed S:Startup-Sequence

And press enter. This will open the script in a basic text editor. Make the edits you need (should be detailed in the instructions, but will typically involve inserting a command on a new line) and use the menu to save the file. That's about it

[Amiga1992]

On Workbench, hit Right-Amiga key and E, then type "ed s:startup-sequence" and hit enter.

As to what to write in there, you will have to follow the instructions of acatune defined in its readme. So read that.

When you are done editing, press ESC then X and it will exit and save your file.

[Toryglen-boy]

make sure you install Fblit, it works better with a faster CPU, but there is a noticeable difference in some games after running it, even with a 68030, AB3D comes to mind.

[Glen M]

Been playing all the 3d games. Gloom, alien breed 3d 1&2, fears etc. Even adoom which actually seems to run better than some of those mentioned above.

The biggest improvement though for one of my favorite games must be guardian. It's silky smooth now, so much more playable, I just wish I could get the cd audio from the cd32 version.