Individual Computers - New accelerator cards for A600 & A1200

[NovaCoder]

Originally Posted by Retrofan

Hey Fitzsteve, hey Novacoder.... What do we do now ????

Ask that nice Mr Jens to make some more....this time with SATA support and FPGA based

[Cammy]

After I finally somehow managed to get Workbench running again and tried Shapeshifter out, I was forced to reboot and now the A1200 constantly reboots itself, even when selecting to boot without a Startup-Sequence.

[Loedown]

Originally Posted by Cammy

My ACA1230 doesn't fit inside the A1200's case. I'm not sure if it would even work, because the connector hasn't been fully pushed through onto the board. I guess I'll have to send it back to Germany for repairs, and postage from Australia is killer.





It's just my luck that I get the faulty one.

The second picture shows that the edge connector hasn't been soldered flat to the PCB and this will cause two issues.

1. It will place stress on the connector and edge connector when it's plugged in.

2. It will adjust the angle that the card sits at and from what I hear there's not much clearance in the first place.

[desiv]

Originally Posted by Loedown

The second picture shows that the edge connector hasn't been soldered flat to the PCB.

That's just what I was thinking looking at it..
I can see how this might be missed in testing, especially if (and I don't know this) testing was performed on an A1200 motherboard not in it's case.
It would be the easiest way to test a large quantity of cards, and would explain how it might have been missed.
I haven't re-opened my Amiga case to check mine, but I know, even tho it was a tight fit, it didn't protrude at the angle that card does...

desiv

[Retrofan]

Definetely with all that crashes and having it tried in a couple of Amigas, it's time to ask the seller, and an explanation of Jens seing this photos would be ok.

[Schoenfeld]

First of all, there's a 2-year warranty on every card, and every customer has the right to get his/her unit working, no matter what. If you send in something for repair, then it will of course not be exchanged for a lower-end unit, but the same performance, as that's what you've paid for.

I don't know what the laws are like in Australia, but this sale is covered by German law, which protects the customer in a variety of ways. Cammy, please contact me through the contact form of www.icomp.de - we'll sort out the problem. It's a normal support case that should not be handled at a random forum, but by the people you've paid - in this case Alinea and me.

The gfx errors may not be related to the connector at all. They have been reported by one or two people before, but none of them went the whole way of letting me investigate the issue completely. I'm working on one case where the owner of a "special" A1200 that displays these errors will send me his whole setup for measurement purposes - including power supply. Once I have that unit here (probably late next week), I can (hopefully) provide a fix - where the "hope" mainly comes from "hoping to be able to reproduce the fault in the lab".

Retrofan,
there is no "best revision ever" of the A1200 mainboard. Commodore has mixed and matched chipsets, mainboards and re-works like hell, and there's a lot more different assembly variants out there than board revisions. The A1200 is not as bad as the A2000 (which has almost 70 varieties), but it's still much more than the five revisions known by their names. In addition to that, power supplies are ageing and over the years, mainboards may have been modded with re-works, giving the chance of even another timing model. There is only one way of finding out what's *really* going on, and that's with a logic analyzer.

Jens

[Retrofan]

Yes, Jens I know there are people that say that's the best, but surely 'cause they have one, as I do... really there are others that work without problems too.

I have very good news. This morning I've taked a couple of times the Idefix in and out and after cleaning the contacts and the gayle with a tooth brush, now it's working . I was to install the software of the floppy, but I have some dudes (yes, now it's off topic, but just a question): the software of the floppy has the patch to run with large HD?
If not, I've got a patched Idefix. What I don't know is about the Express adaptor, as I suposse it will need some drivers too, so I would preffer to use the original software.

As soon as I've got it installed (has to be late this afternoon) I'll tell you how's the speed with the ACA...

And another thing: Now what do I do with the 2B mb? Shall I take out those caps anyway although it isn't giving problems as far as I've noticed?

EDIT: It wasn't the cleaning of the parts, it's the IDE cable that was faulty, so it was working sometimes.

[ndial]

Hi all!
Received the 1230/28Mhz card two days ago from Amigakit.


My current configuration is: A1200, 3.1 ROMS, 1D.4 mobo. I'm also using my A500 PSU in order to be sure that I have enough power for the accelerator too (yes I've heard that the stock A1200 PSU is crap! Still have it though in case needed!)

Well, already known about the timing fix issues to have on the 1D.4 and 2B revisions of the motherboard, I've inserted the card without initially checking if the C123C and E125C caps are on the mobo.

Without installing and setting the ACAtune etc, everything worked fine (!) for about half hour or so, meaning that I've loaded 10-15 whdload games with no prob.
I've also loaded the SysInfo and Intuition Bench to view relevant info for my newly bought accelerator. All fine. See,



Later on though, when I quit the 15th say game to WB, I've started to experiencing weird crashes, usually preceded by graphical corruptions!!! See,



Soft resetting the Amiga nothing changed and the problem was still there!
Hard resetting the Amiga (meaning switching Off wait 30 secs then On) also nothing changed and the problem was still there!

Ok I switched Off the Amiga., awaited 10 or so minutes, then switched On and....everything fixed! No more graphical corruptions or weird crashes! But before getting too excited, unfortunately the problems where fixed only for about...... 10-15 minutes AND THEN same problems started again!!!

Ok I decided to open the Miggy, and check for the presence of the two caps. Well those caps are missing! Nice! I shouldn't have any problems with the timings from the begging! See,



Ok, packing up everything back, and decided to install this ACAtune util, initially came on a disk. Installed fine (hehe actual I did notice that only the ACAtune.lha is actually being copied on the root) and run the following line, as indicated in the forum here:

acatune -maprom * -cache on -burst on >nil:
Pressed <Enter>, and the Kick was mapped, the fast ram activated and all fine here.

Still having the same problems above though!
Then I found and installed the newer version (here too) of the ACAtune the ACATune_V102B5.lha

I then entered in the CLI the following:
acatune -maprom * p to patch the KIckrom
and then also acatune -cache on -burst on >nil:




Still having the same problems above though!
So,
1. Timings are (already) fixed here as specified in the page provided as an instructions manual
2. ACAtune installed and merely used as specified here

Still nothing works properly: distortion, freeze, Crash

Amigakit provided guides in the kit, Jens kindly provided guides for using ACAtune here in eab, and although I followed those guides and tricks I STILL HAVE PROBLEMS, AND PROBABLY A MALFUNCTIONING PRODUCT.

Oh and I am not an expert Amiga engineer.I'm not an expert Amiga user anyway, apart of playing games on it! I'm just a retro lover, who bought a new piece of hardware, followed instractions, but nothing good happened here!
Any (other) ideas on it? Do I need to sent it back to Amigakit and replace it with a new or fixed one?
Nick

[Schoenfeld]

Originally Posted by ndial

Still having the same problems above though!
So,
1. Timings are (already) fixed here as specified in the page provided as an instructions manual

You don't know for sure. The same way as Commodore installed these caps by mistake, they might have left them open on your board, although the chip combination you have would have required it.

Please file a support ticket with AmigaKit, or contact me directly if you want to send the board and the accelerator to Germany for a check.

Jens

[ndial]

Hi Jens, thanks for the quick quote!
Well this then, makes the things much more complicated.
What I will do first is to check the card on another Miggy (I have a couple of friends havings different revisions).
Then I'll send it to you at Amigakit (well sounds scary the need for sending the mobo as well!), after opening a proper ticket etc.
Will see!
Cheers!

[duga]

Originally Posted by ndial

Oh and I am not an expert Amiga engineer.I'm not an expert Amiga user anyway, apart of playing games on it! I'm just a retro lover, who bought a new piece of hardware, followed instractions, but nothing good happened here!
Any (other) ideas on it? Do I need to sent it back to Amigakit and replace it with a new or fixed one?
Nick

Do you have 2.5A or 4.5A A500 PSU?

[ndial]

got a 4.5A PSU I believe! see

[gibs]

Originally Posted by Cammy

I finally somehow managed to get Workbench running again and tried Shapeshifter out

Weird that Shapeshifter is the 1st thing you tried...I thought you didn't liked Apple stuff

[Retrofan]

Definetely I'm not going to see even if my 2B mobo has or not the caps, as it can be right or not with or without them...
As long as it's working, I'll leave as it is...

[Cammy]

Originally Posted by gibs

Weird that Shapeshifter is the 1st thing you tried...I thought you didn't liked Apple stuff

I'm not so shallow that I would dislike all Apple stuff. I just do not like any of the current physical designs of their hardware, I'm not a fan of plain, shiny shapes with no character.

I have been using Macs for years, in fact until I finally got a SX32 for my CD32 I didn't use AmigaOS much at all, the CD32 was for games and my Macs were for general computing. In those years of using the Mac I became quite fond of some of the games, which I'm glad to say most work on my 030 Amiga (SimTower, SimFarm, WarCraft II, Links Pro Golf). I am quite used to playing them on my current 030 setup so of course one of the first things I tried was ShapeShifter so I could compare the speed they run at with my old 28Mhz 030. The (patched) Amiga version of SimCity 2000 also ran quite nicely in the brief time I was testing it.

[ndial]

Originally Posted by Retrofan

Definetely I'm not going to see even if my 2B mobo has or not the caps, as it can be right or not with or without them...
As long as it's working, I'll leave as it is...

lucky one! I envy you!
well spending 100+ euros for this hardware, and finding out that "hey dude, forgot to mention that it's not compatible with all systems, blame Commodore and go search the whole universe for a solution now!" makes me feel so so stupid! .............saaaaaaad

[NovaCoder]

Guys,

You need to understand what Jens was saying above, the A1200 is not a single motherboard design or even a logical progression of versions, if you look into the history of timing issues and graphical issues you'll see that it's a complete dogs dinner (like most things that Commodore did).

If you want a computer or gaming platform without any issues (quirks) then you'd be better off with either a Mac or a 360

I for one am very happy that Jens continues to develop new HW for an old platform that is so hard to work with (because of all the hardware differences).

[desiv]

I totally understand both sides...
The "timing" issues have been known about the Amiga 1200 for quite a while.
When this thread started, I pretty early started asking about it...
I know my luck and was expecting to have problems.. ;-)
I got lucky and didn't this time...

So, it's easy for me to agree and encourage hope and patience..

But I've been on the other side of that luck more often than not, and it's hard to be patient, especially when it's something from around the world that has to be shipped back and forth...

That being said, yes. It's not a question of will it work on every computer.. Problems are expected... It's a question of how they will be handled...
Jens has done a pretty good job of stepping up and asking for those who are having problems to call support and we can hope it gets handled appropriately...

Frankly, I'm surprised, considering how classic these computers are, that there haven't been more problems. And I'm still surprised (and happy) mine worked.. ;-)

Making great products is nice. Standing by them is better. Jens and IC have a good reputation on both fronts, so I'm optimistic...

And what do you mean "old" platform? It's not "old," it's CLASSIC!!! ;-)

desiv

[cosmicfrog]

ndial welcome to the world of retro computers

[ndial]

Originally Posted by cosmicfrog

ndial welcome to the world of retro computers

Being there since 1987 my friend, as a user for playing games, not a researcher on Amiga hardware.
Never had problems at least with memory expansion bought for my Amigas (500,600,1200)
Look, I do not accuse IC here. I do appreciate their job on making hardware nowadays for our beloved Amigas.
But I do accuse myself, for not buying an old good accelerator stuff with slower memory speeds.
Again I do feel like being cheated, not from IC, but from my impatience to get this board before it extinct.