ACA500 plus?

[Schoenfeld]

New Menu software released on saturday: http://wiki.icomp.de/wiki/ACA500plus...re#Menu_update

Robbie: No, the ACA2000 is not dead. However, I did a few changes on the ACA500plus design first, so I can keep on producing it: I had to change the LED display on the DisMo, as the small ones are not available any more, and I also made new PCB versions for different processors that I bought over the past few months (68HC000 and 68SEC000). As you may know, CPUs are harder and harder to find, but the good news is that the design of the ACA500plus works with pretty much any kind of 68000 variant. The functionality is identical to the version that is in the field already. There's still some work to do until the new production run of the ACA500plus can be considered "running", but with the work on the design, I also had a nice idea how everything can fit the A2000 without case modifications. This will require the second ("left") floppy drive to be removed.

Rockwater: If you plan to make such a case for the new version of the DisMo, you might want to make the position of the button configurable; it has moved to the far-left of the DisMo in order to make space for the new, bigger double-digit display.

The X-Surf-500 is also taking shape; the prototype arrived on the programmer's desk, and the hardware test routine works nicely. It will come with a TCP/IP stack included, and this will be embedded in the automatic installation procedure of the ACA500plus. Installing network will be as easy as installing the OS with the ACA500plus. Ideally, you don't even notice that you're online: If physical link works and getting an IP address through DHCP worked, no window will be opened. You're just online, and accesses to the bsdsocket.library will just work silently.

Jens

[spudje]

Nice! What stack will be included? Roadshow?

[Rockwater]

Originally Posted by Schoenfeld

Rockwater: If you plan to make such a case for the new version of the DisMo, you might want to make the position of the button configurable; it has moved to the far-left of the DisMo in order to make space for the new, bigger double-digit display.

Questions here since you've disabled PMs on this forum:

If you find the opportunity, could you throw down a metric ruler or grid next to the new dismo daughter board and post a photo so I can plan ahead for the new design?

And would it be possible to order one of the specific vga header cables you're supplying along with your Indivision boards? I'd like to see about planning for it to be in the case design if possible.

I still need to work out venting/cooling too, especially for the top end CPUs. When you indicate "active cooling" does that mean heatsink and fan, or would just a heatsink be sufficient if it were somehow exposed to the case surface? (I know, this might just be an educated guess.)

[Schoenfeld]

Rockwater,

case design for ventilation is an art in itself. You first need to make a choice about the direction that your air flows, and ideally, the funnel effect will help you move the air. Just adding vent holes may not be enough - you need to carefully place them, making sure that you don't add too many, as a venting hole "too much" (or in the wrong spot) may mean that you do get air flow inside your case, but it does not touch the heat-generating components.

I've had such a situation with a contractor before: My task was to find out why their device overheats if they *remove* a power-consuming add-in card from the case. I was hired to re-design their DC-DC converters, but ended up making a new ventilation concept. That's what happens if a software company starts making hardware :-)

Will publish dimensions of the new DisMo and X-Surf-500 in a few days.

Jens

[alpine9000]

What’s new in the menu update?

[Schoenfeld]

Originally Posted by alpine9000

What’s new in the menu update?

Lots of stuff!


- added experimental support for Z2-expansions, fixes autoconfig chain if another Z2 card is installed. This is purely experimental and only in preparation of the ACA2000. It does NOT mean that we now support adding a Zorro card to your setup!

- Shift+F7 will now mount the install disks, but it will not launch the automatic installer and not boot from any of the disks. This is a convenience-function for those who want to copy a single file from one of the disks. THe function was previously there, but broke in a previous update.

- If there is not enough memory configured for the virtual OS floppy disks, they will not be mounted and a warning will be displayed. This function actually had a bug in V0.120, which was fixed yesterday night and now works properly in V0.122.

- If you launch automatic OS-install, the FAT-handler will not be activated, as it's not required anyway. Saves a bit of memory and speeds up things.

- Action Replay II/III is now partially 68020+ compatible: Freezing works, but most of the debugger-fuctions don't (like trace).

- If you are using a 68060 accelerator, a software emulation for MOVEP will be added very early in system startup. Action Replay III uses this instruction, but it may also make floppy-based software more compatible.

- 68060 was only recognized as "real" 060 if it was the full version (not EC or LC). Only the TAB-infoscreen showed the correct version of the CPU. Fixed.

- New F8 68020+ VBR Move option: NMI Protect. This one moves the VBR and directs all vectors back to the old values of VBR=0, only re-directs the NMI vector to the routines of the ACA500plus. Action Replay/HRTMon will now stay active if you boot from floppy and that software wipes all vectors as one of it's first init-actions. In 68000 mode, this function does nothing, which is OK, as the ACA500plus hardware will catch the NMI in hardware - AR/HRTmon will be active anyway.

- Some configs with A1200 Turbokarten were buggy in terms of "memory adding to the system". Fixed.

- Bugfix: It was not possible to re-enter HRTmon after a reset.

- Bugfix: Max Trapdoor memory config caused a crash with almost every ACA500plus-related software-patch, if there was no fastmem with higher priority enabled.

- MMU Libraries updated

- added new Fastmem options: 512k, 1M, 2M, 2M+2M und 4M (2M+2M and 4M are aligned to a fixed start-address and get smaller if Action Replay or HRTmon are activated)

- EEPROM can't be erased any more if a crashing software is accidentally executing ACA500plus ROM code. This fixes a bug that lead to overwriting the first saved profile.

That's it for 0.120 and the 0.122 hot-fix.However, there's still a few things on the Todo-list:

- Superfloppy Support for AUXPort and the file systems that the ACA500plus provides

- automatic installation of the TCP/IP Stack if the X-Surf-500 is present

- saving network-related settings in EEPROM (DHCP/static IP, nameserver(s), domain names, Samba-credentials or kind of a Master-password, so a stolen CF card (e.g. at a demoparty) will not reveal all your passwords of your home LAN.

We also have a nice-to-have-list (things that may or may not be added, depending on available time and personal drive of involved people):

- fix for wrong PAL/NTSC recognition under Kick 1.3. A ROM patch would be very intrusive, and we still lack a good idea of how to solve it more elegant.

- automatic checking and installing of updates if X-Surf-500 is present

Special thanks goes to Jasmin68k, who continuously made excellent bug reports (properly-described reproduction paths!), and also made a few feature requests that we were able to implement.

Jens

[softiron]

What do I need to do to see my boot card under HDToolbox?
I can see AUX card but not boot card...
its a 16GB Sandisk.

[E-Penguin]

Originally Posted by Schoenfeld

- added experimental support for Z2-expansions, fixes autoconfig chain if another Z2 card is installed. This is purely experimental and only in preparation of the ACA2000. It does NOT mean that we now support adding a Zorro card to your setup!

I'll give this a go with the z-500 Zorro-Adaptor & Matze graphics card and report back (next week). Unsupported though it may be...

Thank you for all the hard work Jens, ordered one and very much looking forward to using it.
Still find it hard to believe that after all these years new products are still coming out for my beloved computer.
The community is just great.

As a joke does this mean I won the playground battle of Amiga vs ST?

[AmigaHope]

What would be amazing is if the ACA500+ could somehow be made to work with an adapter in a Z2 slot. Like if you had one of the many A500 Z2 expansions and then slot the ACA500+ into that adapter and have it become the bus master. I realize this is almost certainly impractical but it would be very cool.

I have a Bodega Bay expansion for my A500 and it looks slick and amazing, but it means I can't use an ACA500+ with it. =(

I'm assuming the ACA2000 will slot into the CPU slot since that's where it belongs.

The most ideal A500 expansion would be one that added an A3000/A4000 CPU slot that enabled Z3 cards, like the old Micronik Z3i expansion for the A1200. I remember a loooong time ago you told me you had one of those (but didn't know the Z3 support only worked with a 32-bit card in the CPU-slot). >.<;

[ForD68]

Dear Folks. I've got one question, since now nobody couldn't answer for sure.
I'm using 4GB-CF-Bootcard with 3 partitions (Amiga formated) with Classic Workbench 68000er-version. With this card everything works like back in the 90s on a "real" Amiga500 with harddrive. In these days, I'm using the ACA500plus with an external 8GB-CF-Card formated with FAT32 and I've stored all those WHDLoad-Demos and Games on it. I tried several times to snapshot the windows and icon positions, but it seems not to be functional. Everytime, I start the snapshot, the led from the external CF-Slot begins to flicker, but after a reboot, all "snapshooted" positions were gone.


My question: is it possible to save these positions using FAT32 or can I only do so within the Amiga-File-System?



Perhaps there is a patch to do so, if Amiga don't "understand" FAT32?


On the CF-Card, nothing is write protected.


I'd like to read comments.


Many thanks in advance


Best regards


ForD68

[Jope]

Are the icon files rwed or r-ed when you list them? If they are not write enabled, snapshotting will also fail.

[Nightshft]

As I already mentioned in another post I'm a new user of the ACA500+.

I just bought it directly from icomp last week. First of all, big compliments to icomp (Jens?), it's an awesome card that offers more than I expected. The menu is capable, well-laid-out and nice. Kickstart mapping and/or booting from CF-Card works well. I also like that it offers a lot of detailed options and not only simple profiles. What a great contrast to modern devices that are "smart" and choose settings for you.

Now the question:
What about the higher speeds, like 21Mhz and more. Is there cooling or anything else required? Is there any risk of using it?

[RetroPassionUK]

I did a guide on using a maprom function below works great! :-)

http://www.amigapassion.co.uk/mappin...n-aca500-plus/

Steve

Originally Posted by Nightshft

As I already mentioned in another post I'm a new user of the ACA500+.

I just bought it directly from icomp last week. First of all, big compliments to icomp (Jens?), it's an awesome card that offers more than I expected. The menu is capable, well-laid-out and nice. Kickstart mapping and/or booting from CF-Card works well. I also like that it offers a lot of detailed options and not only simple profiles. What a great contrast to modern devices that are "smart" and choose settings for you.

Now the question:
What about the higher speeds, like 21Mhz and more. Is there cooling or anything else required? Is there any risk of using it?

[ForD68]

@JOPE: the files are writeable...(also the directories)


I think (don't know) that this seems to be an issue because the CF-Card's format is FAT32.
On my Bootcard everything is working fine. Formatting another card with an Amiga Format also works in the external CF-Slot from the ACA500plus.
I've asked several people on meetings and they all "think also" (they don't know this for sure) it's perhaps a FAT32-Problem...


Best regards


ForD68

[roondar]

I have a small question about the ACA500+ and it's "make DF1: act as DF0:" feature. I've been having trouble getting this to work, whenever I use it the external drive does start booting but then the Amiga ends up hanging.

How should I set this up for it to work correctly and does it actually work for non-DOS disks?

[Dynamic_Computi]

Originally Posted by roondar

I have a small question about the ACA500+ and it's "make DF1: act as DF0:" feature. I've been having trouble getting this to work, whenever I use it the external drive does start booting but then the Amiga ends up hanging.

How should I set this up for it to work correctly and does it actually work for non-DOS disks?

Hmmm... I have not used this feature but I can sure try it out on mine and see how it reacts. Anything odd or different about your external floppy drive?

[roondar]

Not that I know of, it always worked fine. I mean, I suppose it's possible the external drive broke in some subtle way, but it seems to work for other purposes.

But if you could try it and tell me the results that'd be very useful!

[Nightshft]

Originally Posted by roondar

I have a small question about the ACA500+ and it's "make DF1: act as DF0:" feature. I've been having trouble getting this to work, whenever I use it the external drive does start booting but then the Amiga ends up hanging.

How should I set this up for it to work correctly and does it actually work for non-DOS disks?

Hello Roondar,
just tried this and it works fine using the F3 Standard A500 Profile Menu.

I booted and loaded 3 different games from floppy in DF1.
ZakMcKracken, Super Wonderboy ML and Pipe Dream, no problems. Loaded them completely until "into the game".

First I used "KS1.3, 0.5+0.5MB, no Freezer, DF1 Bootselect, 7Mhz" as a config, but a completely different worked too.
I also tried 2 different ext. drives. An Okano AF500 and a noname drive, both worked.

Do you use the F3 Standard A500 Profile Menu or the F10 expert menu?
Your A500s Memory is fine? You could use a Memtest.
How "far" does it boot before it crashes?
It happens with Dos and Non-Dos Disks to you?

[E-Penguin]

Originally Posted by E-Penguin

I'll give this a go with the z-500 Zorro-Adaptor & Matze graphics card and report back (next week). Unsupported though it may be...

It's only taken me a year to get round to doing it but I can finally report that the Z2 graphics card works with the latest firmware and an X-surf-500 also. The ungainly stack of accelerators is a bit flakey but I strongly suspect power supply issues.

When mentioned on the iComp forum Jens made it quite clear this is an unsupported configuration working by luck than judgement, so your mileage may vary