Individual Computers - New accelerator cards for A600 & A1200

[SpeedGeek]

Originally Posted by Schoenfeld

...so you can appreciate the 2-1-1-1 burst on the ACA1231 :-)
Have you seen the write-performance of the ACA1231 to fastmem? It's just under 45MByte/s, where the ACA1230-56 gets to 41.8MByte/s. Note to interested readers: There is no burst in write access, so write will always wait for a full "open-row-write-close-row" cycle.

Jens

Yes, I do appreciate that. Those are some very impressive memory benchmarks you have achieved there! If that little ACA board had an FPU option I would probably abandon my A2630 and start work on an A2000 CPU slot adapter for the ACA.

P.S. I'm not suggesting that you actually sell or even source FPU chips but an unpopulated PGA or PLCC socket would be nice ...and even if you need an extra wait state on opening cycles to support your 2x clocked SDRAM it could be enabled by monitoring the SENSE pin on the 68881/2 chip.

[vroom6sri]

ACA 1231/42 arrived today.

Yay!

First impressions are pleasing. It has sped up a few processor hungry games. The intro to Frontier doesn't seem to slow down at all at any point on the highest detail settings. AB3D is very smooth. ADoom is playable but a little jerky. Gloom (Deluxe) runs pretty well full screen.

Lovely.

[1time]

As most already know, im a huge fan of the ACA cards. Have one of each for my A1200 now, dont ask me why.

BUT, i do miss the FPU.

[Abaddon]

I just got my 1231 today and have been testing it with WHDLoad with MMU and SNOOP. It works great, I already found a few snoop bugs. I would have never found the ones in Virocop, I'm hoping the two issues may be related to the game not starting on the press fire screen when starting from registered disk 1 image.

[1time]

My 1231 arrived today, cant wait to try it. =)

[Schoenfeld]

We have a confirmed bug in ACAtune for the ACA1231 if started under Kickstart 3.0: It adds too much memory and thus makes the system unstable.

A fix is on the way - along with other fixes of ACAtune. Note that the version currently available on the Vesalia site was based on an old source, so it had bugs that were squashed months ago. The next version is a merger of the latest ACA1230-version and the current ACA1231 version "plus a little". Stay tuned!

Jens

[1time]

=(

My card is not working, it is only putting me at the 3.1 Boot logo. As soon as i remove the 1231 the computer boots fine. It also boots fine with ACA1230 and Blizzard 1230.

I have removed ACATUNE from my Startup-Sequence, but it is still not working.

Any ideas?

(Update)
When i remove IDE-FIX Express the A1200 boots with ACA1231 connected. As soon as i connect Jumper 1 on the express card the computer only takes me to the 3.1 Boot logo. I have now tried with 4 different accelerators and this ONLY happens with the 1231 connected.

Anyone?

[Schoenfeld]

Originally Posted by 1time

When i remove IDE-FIX Express the A1200 boots with ACA1231 connected. As soon as i connect Jumper 1 on the express card the computer only takes me to the 3.1 Boot logo. I have now tried with 4 different accelerators and this ONLY happens with the 1231 connected.

Looks like your harddrive doesn't like the fast access that the ACA1231 makes. Can you try a different harddisk/CF card?

Jens

[1time]

I do not have any other disk at the moment. The disk im running on is a Western Digital 160GB (http://wdc.com/global/products/specs...312&language=1)

Is the 1231 making faster access then the Blizzard PPC 060@72Mhz 603@330Mhz? Because it works with all my other cards. I will try to get it up running on 4GB cf-card.

[NovaCoder]

Originally Posted by Schoenfeld

We have a confirmed bug in ACAtune for the ACA1231 if started under Kickstart 3.0: It adds too much memory and thus makes the system unstable.

A fix is on the way - along with other fixes of ACAtune. Note that the version currently available on the Vesalia site was based on an old source, so it had bugs that were squashed months ago. The next version is a merger of the latest ACA1230-version and the current ACA1231 version "plus a little". Stay tuned!

Jens

Can we expect any ACAtune updates for the older 1230's? I have the 56Mhz version (which I love) but you can always do with more speed/features

Last time I looked a my version of ACAtune it was still marked as a BETA

[Mr B]

I have the same issue with the ACA1230, but a hot-reboot gets everything running nicely. I blamed it on the drive being to slow when initializing, and seeing as i have no means to get a image output that works, i haven't bothered with it yet.
B!

[Retrofan]

Off Topic, but rereading this thread I've found this post I made and now I think I'll be using this image for booting that now I don't remember how or when I did it...

Originally Posted by Retrofan

Something like this but well done... And don't count on me, I'm not so good on it:

[Schoenfeld]

Originally Posted by NovaCoder

Can we expect any ACAtune updates for the older 1230's? I have the 56Mhz version (which I love) but you can always do with more speed/features

You won't get more speed out of your card, but we do work on new features. First of all, the problem of "too quick start" can go as far as the computer not finding any harddisks at all if MapROM is enabled, even without IDE-fix express. To get around this problem, ACAtune always had a "patch" switch that adds a 1-second delay to the reset routine. To activate, use:

ACAtune -maprom * p
(or replace the star with your kick-Romfile).

Current work on ACAtune includes the ACA1231 Kick3.0 bugfix and Kickstart patching - those of you who want to load Kick1.2 on an A600 (for example to run AmigaBasic) can do so now, and we also have experimental support for SKick-Patchfiles. The attached version is HIGHLY EXPERIMENTAL, but fixes the ACA1231 Kickstart 3.0 memory bug and supports the 30MHz ACA630.

Jens

[mfilos]

Thanks for the quick support Jens.

I've updated my ACATune Versions post for convenience as well.

[magnetic]

Originally Posted by Retrofan

Off Topic, but rereading this thread I've found this post I made and now I think I'll be using this image for booting that now I don't remember how or when I did it...

Thats a cool bootpic! Can wait to see my Indivions MK2 bootpic


Also for reference sake earlier in the thread you guys were discussing mips. Just for info my Apollo 030@40mhz gets 7.7 Mips.

[1time]

Originally Posted by Schoenfeld

You won't get more speed out of your card, but we do work on new features. First of all, the problem of "too quick start" can go as far as the computer not finding any harddisks at all if MapROM is enabled, even without IDE-fix express. To get around this problem, ACAtune always had a "patch" switch that adds a 1-second delay to the reset routine. To activate, use:

ACAtune -maprom * p
(or replace the star with your kick-Romfile).


Jens

Is this even possible when i cant even find the HD when i have 1231 inserted? And what are your thougt on my harddrive? is it to slow? It works great with the other boards that i have mentioned above.

[mfilos]

You can try running the ACAtune utility from a bootable floppy disk having:
- a C drawer with ACATune and
- a S drawer with a mini Startup-Sequence having this declaration
...just to see if it will make your hard drive boot upon reboot.

My ACA1231 arrived today so I will give it a spin as well in the following hours (when I'm home).

[1time]

Thanks for your answer mfilos.

I have tried with acatune bootdisk without success.

Also tried the Acatune -maprom * p

[Schoenfeld]

Originally Posted by 1time

Is the 1231 making faster access then the Blizzard PPC 060@72Mhz 603@330Mhz? Because it works with all my other cards. I will try to get it up running on 4GB cf-card.

Any 020/030 accelerator makes a faster access to the A1200 than a PPC/060 accel. Don't look at the MHz number of that card, but at the bus interface: The PPC and 060 processors don't have dynamic bus sizing, which is why they lose big time if the logic is as limited as it was back in the days when the PPC card was new.

I assume that your harddrive doesn't like the accelerated access during bootup. You could try to boot the computer with the express jumper off and then set it back on after the system has started. The jumper is hot-pluggable. If the system still works, you have a workaround. If it doesn't, you have a slow drive.

Jens

[RMK]

I'm using my ACA 1230 56MHz without ACAtune installed...am I missing anything by not using it?