Individual Computers - New accelerator cards for A600 & A1200

[Retro-Nerd]

Or buy some new seals from Rainer Benda.

http://www.ebay.de/itm/5-x-Commodore...item1c2fcd6949

[demolition]

Originally Posted by Lord Aga

Oh sorry.
Well... if they lasted this long it would be a shame to break them

Well, it might be necessary at some point when the caps go bad enough. I had an A600 with an intact seal that I broke half a year ago. It had a bad case of cap leakage which had eaten its way through vias etc., so it wouldn't boot anymore. It might not be the best choice to wait until it stops working to open it up as it might run fine for several years after the caps start leaking, giving it plenty of time to destroy the copper.

[Lord Aga]

True. All my Miggies are with open seals, for checking and upgrade reasons. And the new Petro's one on its way will be opened for inspection as soon as it arrives. I would do so regardless of the seal.
But... can't argue with the eye of the collector

[moijk]

Originally Posted by Lord Aga

Oh sorry.
Well... if they lasted this long it would be a shame to break them

Intact seals is the sign of a boring life for an Amiga

[Lord Aga]

Ha ha, well said my friend

[chocolate_boy]

Originally Posted by Toni Wilen

My test A600 has 37.300 and 2G CF works fine.

It must have some limit but I am quite sure it is not size but some other (possibly related to size) incompatibility. I'll debug this someday.

Seconded, 37.300 works with my 4gb Sandisk cfcard just fine too. The 40mb limit is false rumour perpetuated on the forums for years. The limit is 4 gig.

[thgill]

Posted this over at Amibay, and thought I would try here as well.

So, just received an ACA1232 and having troubles getting the memory on the board to be added. This is a more or less stock A1200 with 3.0 roms and a 32GB SD card partitioned into 3 partitions that are SFS formatted. kick31.rom is located in DH0:System

Installed ACATune 1.7

This is at the top of my startup sequence:

ACATune -maprom System:kick31.rom -cache on -burst on >NIL:



Machine boots up fine, however all it adds is 1mb fast ram. Can not get the rest to show up.


Thoughts?

[fitzsteve]

I dont know how important but I have C: before ACATune

Also the Maprom seems to be case sensitive including the line System: (you might need to make the S lower case or try dh0: instead.

Some Kickstart are not supported like Amiga Forever.

Also I found any error in the line an all ACATune commands seem to be ignored!

To add the Ram you just need to run ACATune, open CLI and type ACATune you might need to do a soft reset to see of your Memory is added.

Also be sure that you added ACATune to C: in the first place!

My final advice, try first with just:

C:ACATune >NIL:

Tell me if your Ram shows up.

At any time in Workbench you can open CLI and type:

ACATune -Status to show you what options are being used.

[jimbob]

I'm not sure this will fix your problem but System: isn't normally one of the volumes available by default like c: s: or sys:

I think you need to use the full path to a ROM file.

DH0:system/kick31.rom

[fitzsteve]

I have my Rom in Devs:

My ACATune line reads exactly:

C:acatune -maprom devs:ks39.rom -burst on -cache on >NIL:

Also you mentioned you're using a 32gb SD card, I assume you have some kind of scsi.device patch? You could put the updated scsi.device inside a custom Rom image

[Nostromo]

Just wondering, what are the chances of a new Indivision being released with an HDMI socket with audio on it?

[mfilos]

Hum... wrong thread mate. This thread is for the ACA accelerators :P

[Nostromo]

Oh oops.

But wait, while at it I do have a relevant question

I need to get myself an accelerator soon for my strictly WHDload A1200 machine. Which is the cheapest/most compatible option for me? (timing fixes and all that scares me)

[Nipedley]

If all you want is WHDload, a cheap RAM expansion (are they cheap these days?) would push your system the least (less likely to cause timing issues etc.)

That said, I've an ACA1230/56 in mine and it's been fantastic, and if it did have any issues with my board I doubt it'd be much effort to get it sorted.

[fitzsteve]

Have a look at the ACA1220, from £72 and will give you 128mb Ram and Maprom to load in a custom Rom or just map your internal Rom to the fast memory to speed up your system:

http://amigakit.leamancomputing.com/...oducts_id=1100

Often 4/8mb Ram boards on eBay can sell for a similar price unless you can find one on Amibay cheaper, but they don't come up too often now.

There are other ACA's too that provide 030 CPU's for a bit more of a speed boost, but for just WHDload the 1220 is perfect and it's a brand new item with warranty.

The only point to mention with the ACA cards is they can bring out timing issues that you might not get with other cards and can mean spending extra money getting timing fixes done or capacitors replaced which eventually you'll need to do the latter anyway... (Assuming you can't do the work yourself.)

[roy bates]

Originally Posted by Nostromo

Oh oops.

But wait, while at it I do have a relevant question

I need to get myself an accelerator soon for my strictly WHDload A1200 machine. Which is the cheapest/most compatible option for me? (timing fixes and all that scares me)

get a blizzard 1230 if you can find one,it'll never let you down and dont ever need any timing fixes

[Mr B]

Originally Posted by Nostromo

Just wondering, what are the chances of a new Indivision being released with an HDMI socket with audio on it?

As was said, this isn't the place for that question, but rather, over here. That said. The chance is slim, next to none. We'd all want it, but it's not likely to happen. As luck may have it, almost all units that can accept a HDMI video-feed also will let you select a analog input for the sound, if they are capable of playing sound at all. And Kipper2k made that analog audio mod, letting you stick the sound in to the cable, and breaking it out "on the other end". It's a crude solution, but it works, if you want to get rid of the audio cable. If you got more questions about that, better get it in that other thread... ;- )

[shleed]

I recently got an ACA-1220 for my Amiga 1200. It has a 2B board so I was aware I may have to apply timing fixes.

Once I received the card, I put it in and all seemed well. However, it started to lock up randomly after a short while and sometimes failed to boot into Workbench fully.

However, after removing 125C and 123C, it seems to work fine now. No random freezes or anything of the sort yet despite using it for hours. WHDLoad games seem to work fine, although some WHDLoad Demos such as State of the Art don't work right, however I suspect that to be more due to the config of them itself than the ACA itself.

To cover bases, I also ordered a PSU from Amigakit just in case my current PSU contributed to the freezing to an extent. Besides, the extra juice could come handy for future expansions and mods.


Going back to timing issues, is there any good recommendations to test in case any further fixes are needed?

[NovaCoder]

Hiya,

Are you sure that you should have removed 125C and 123C?

Timing issues with 1200 motherboards seems to be a bit of a 'black art', you can't go by your motherboard revision either as they are all a bit 'individual' if you know what I mean.

For anyone having MB issues the first thing I'd recommend is to change your CAPS if they haven't been done already, after that check your power supply and only after you've eliminated those two would I start to investigate timing fixes. You would obviously use a 'clean' install of WB for testing (eg no hacks/patches installed).

I sent my 1200 motherboard to AmigaKit and got them to replace the CAPS and at the same time asked them to test with an ACA card and fix up the timing issues they found. They did a really good job, very happy with the service they offer.

[FOL]

Originally Posted by shleed

I recently got an ACA-1220 for my Amiga 1200. It has a 2B board so I was aware I may have to apply timing fixes.

Once I received the card, I put it in and all seemed well. However, it started to lock up randomly after a short while and sometimes failed to boot into Workbench fully.

However, after removing 125C and 123C, it seems to work fine now. No random freezes or anything of the sort yet despite using it for hours. WHDLoad games seem to work fine, although some WHDLoad Demos such as State of the Art don't work right, however I suspect that to be more due to the config of them itself than the ACA itself.

To cover bases, I also ordered a PSU from Amigakit just in case my current PSU contributed to the freezing to an extent. Besides, the extra juice could come handy for future expansions and mods.


Going back to timing issues, is there any good recommendations to test in case any further fixes are needed?

Im guessing you have E123R and E125R, installed?

[shleed]

Yup.

[shleed]

Originally Posted by NovaCoder

Are you sure that you should have removed 125C and 123C?

Well, they made things worse when in the motherboard, so no harm really. Random lockups pretty much disappeared once they were removed.

Timing issues with 1200 motherboards seems to be a bit of a 'black art', you can't go by your motherboard revision either as they are all a bit 'individual' if you know what I mean.

I'm aware of this. Some 2B boards refuse to even boot with the card in. Mine seemed to be fine until the random lockups.

For anyone having MB issues the first thing I'd recommend is to change your CAPS if they haven't been done already, after that check your power supply and only after you've eliminated those two would I start to investigate timing fixes. You would obviously use a 'clean' install of WB for testing (eg no hacks/patches installed).

The capacitors don't seem to look like they're bulging or leaking, however this will be an option. The 1200 is running a clean install of WB 3.1 and I've already ordered a 300W PSU for it.

I sent my 1200 motherboard to AmigaKit and got them to replace the CAPS and at the same time asked them to test with an ACA card and fix up the timing issues they found. They did a really good job, very happy with the service they offer.

What's the turnaround for the service? Considering it if I run into any other problems.

[shleed]

Further testing shows it does still hang, but nowhere near as frequent. It only seems to randomly do so when doing various actions (ie. copying files on dopus), rather than literally randomly at any moment as it did before. However, I only have encountered this twice so far and the majority of the time I'm able to do the same actions without issue. Also I'm able to soft-reboot this time (ie. by CTRL + A + A), while before I had to switch it off.

[mugo]

@Jens

Is it possible to upgrade the 33MHz CPU on a ACA1232 by a 50MHz CPU?

I mean, of course it's possible to unsolder the original CPU and solder the 50MHz version, and i have all the tools and the expertise to do so. What i want to know is if it's possible to make the board drive the processor at it's new clock rate?

In the table silked on the board there are jumper wirings for up to 40MHz. Is the 50MHz clock possible with the same (standard) FPGA core?

Beside this question, am i wrong in thinking that i may benefit of the CPU change anyway, as the ceramic 50MHz version, even clocked at 40MHz would heat a lot less than the original plastic 33MHz version? Of course, i'm not worried with warranty matters...

Thank you very much!

[FOL]

Originally Posted by shleed

Further testing shows it does still hang, but nowhere near as frequent. It only seems to randomly do so when doing various actions (ie. copying files on dopus), rather than literally randomly at any moment as it did before. However, I only have encountered this twice so far and the majority of the time I'm able to do the same actions without issue. Also I'm able to soft-reboot this time (ie. by CTRL + A + A), while before I had to switch it off.

Can you explain everything you done step by step.
Do you have any pics of what you have done.

[Mr B]

Originally Posted by mugo

Is it possible to upgrade the 33MHz CPU on a ACA1232 by a 50MHz CPU?

Not sure, but i think i saw Jens mentioning this when he was working with the boards, and stated that we shouldn't be tempted to do this, since it's not just a matter of moving a jumper, it also has to have new software loaded. And that software is his own, and not likely to be released.

However, i can't swear i'm right, just putting it out there so you know that if you go ahead your like 50/50 likely to just have a ceramic 33MHz one...
If you decide to go for it, good luck, share the story as it progresses.

[zipper]

And probably screw the pretty tight timings....

[shleed]

Originally Posted by FOL

Can you explain everything you done step by step.
Do you have any pics of what you have done.

From the beginning? I have no pics of the set up, but hardware wise I've done nothing else apart from remove 125C and 123C. Here's what I remember, including stuff I just did today:

- fresh install of workbench 3.1
- installed card
- added ACATune to startup sequence
- random freezes
- took ACATune off startup sequence, still freezes randomly
- took HxC out and plugged out external floppy drives, still randomly freezed
- took ACA card out, completely stable
- put card back in, tried various programs, still randomly freezes
- removed 125C and 123C, desoldered with soldering wick and iron. made sure iron wasn't too hot and didn't leave any remains that could short anything out. wiped with isopropyl alcohol.
- tried WHDLoad games, the games run fine but some demos (ie. state of the art) were glitchy.
- much more stable, but occasionally freezes on certain actions, ie. dopus copying files, or opening too many instances of programs
- took card out, system completely stable once again despite hours of use

today:
- clean contacts with a tiny amount of isopropyl alcohol, put card back in. system stable so far
- tried demos via the HxC, they work fine. State of the Art runs glitchy until I turn CPU caching off and turn the chipset to either OCS/ECS mode.

I will continue testing once I get the PSU, to rule out power issues. I can send my 1200 to Amigakit to do the full timing fix if all else fails.

[FOL]

Originally Posted by shleed

From the beginning? I have no pics of the set up, but hardware wise I've done nothing else apart from remove 125C and 123C. Here's what I remember, including stuff I just did today:

- fresh install of workbench 3.1
- installed card
- added ACATune to startup sequence
- random freezes
- took ACATune off startup sequence, still freezes randomly
- took HxC out and plugged out external floppy drives, still randomly freezed
- took ACA card out, completely stable
- put card back in, tried various programs, still randomly freezes
- removed 125C and 123C, desoldered with soldering wick and iron. made sure iron wasn't too hot and didn't leave any remains that could short anything out. wiped with isopropyl alcohol.
- tried WHDLoad games, the games run fine but some demos (ie. state of the art) were glitchy.
- much more stable, but occasionally freezes on certain actions, ie. dopus copying files, or opening too many instances of programs
- took card out, system completely stable once again despite hours of use

today:
- clean contacts with a tiny amount of isopropyl alcohol, put card back in. system stable so far
- tried demos via the HxC, they work fine. State of the Art runs glitchy until I turn CPU caching off and turn the chipset to either OCS/ECS mode.

I will continue testing once I get the PSU, to rule out power issues. I can send my 1200 to Amigakit to do the full timing fix if all else fails.

But you have'nt done the timing fixes. Theres more to do, than remove two caps.
What about the E121R, E122R, E121C and E122C?

Pics of what should be done.

http://eab.abime.net/showpost.php?p=879911&postcount=23

[shleed]

To me, removing them have sorted the timing issues for the most part. So far it has been running about 3-4 hours now and it hasn't even froze yet, which shows that it's unlikely and the computer is usable for the most part. While not a full fix itself since it's obvious that it is indeed more than removing a few capacitors, I am not going any further since my confidence in electronics only really goes so far. I'll leave that to Amigakit once it's needed.

However, a PSU-related issue would need to be sorted regardless simply because 1200 PSUs are not known to be particularly beefy. Even with the full timing fixes, there's no harm sorting out a new PSU to completely rule out any other issue that can cause freezes.

[shleed]

Got the PSU for about a week now. The Amiga hasn't frozen since.

I can't rule out that it was a PSU issue, but I know that the random freezing happens too far an interval for me to actually worry about it. I will probably send it off for timing fixes one day, but for now it's fine.