Move kickstart to fast RAM, MuTools alternative?

[samaron]

Hi!

I have an Amiga 2000 with an ACE2b installed for 2MB chip RAM, and a GVP Combo 030 Series II accelerator card with 16MB RAM. OS 3.2 and ROM.

Were told I could gain some performance boost by using a utility called MuFastROM. Copied this over and edited my startup-sequence file according to the documentation, but were greeted with an error that an MMU is needed. Looking on the CPU, I see it is an EC variant, which omits this.

Are there any alternative utilities that can move the ROM over to fast RAM, without requiring an MMU?

[nogginthenog]

I'm not familiar with this board but a quick google returns this

https://amiga.resource.cx/exp/gforce2030

notes
Kickstart remapping

See if you can find the manual.

[samaron]

Somehow I missed that detail... I'll have a look around for the documentation. Perhaps it is present on the disk images on the site.

Thank you for pointing it out!

[SpeedGeek]

Originally Posted by samaron

Hi!I have an Amiga 2000 with an ACE2b installed for 2MB chip RAM, and a GVP Combo 030 Series II accelerator card with 16MB RAM. OS 3.2 and ROM.Were told I could gain some performance boost by using a utility called MuFastROM. Copied this over and edited my startup-sequence file according to the documentation, but were greeted with an error that an MMU is needed. Looking on the CPU, I see it is an EC variant, which omits this.Are there any alternative utilities that can move the ROM over to fast RAM, without requiring an MMU?

You can try using older versions of the Amiga OS CPU command to remap the ROM if the MMU in the EC030 is at least partially functional. You should check the PAL @U53 for checksum A2B1. This PAL has a bug in the MapROM logic which only works with the first bank of Auto-config memory and it may be unstable when it does work. I don't recommend using the MapROM function with this PAL.

[Thomas Richter]

Questionable whether this works. The mmulib performs a function test of the MMU, and part of this test is to check whether remapping the ROM works. (Surprise, surprise!) Well, looks like it does not work in your case, so the CPU command would not work either.

[thomas]

The page linked by nogginthenog offers installation disks for download. They contain a GvpCpuCtrl utility which has a FastROM option. It works without a MMU.

[alexh]

Originally Posted by samaron

I have an a GVP Combo 030 Series II accelerator. Looking on the CPU, I see it is an EC variant

Which version of GVP COMBO do you have PGA or PLCC? If it is a PGA you could probably upgrade to a full 030 relatively cheaply.

[Thomas Richter]

I personally upgraded by Combo to a full 030 relatively cheaply, but for other reasons. If it is *only* necessary to remap the ROM, then GvpCPUCtrl does that for you. There is then, however, no write-protection for the ROM if that should matter.

[SpeedGeek]

Originally Posted by Thomas Richter

Questionable whether this works. The mmulib performs a function test of the MMU, and part of this test is to check whether remapping the ROM works. (Surprise, surprise!) Well, looks like it does not work in your case, so the CPU command would not work either.

This is not always true. Your MMUlib by default uses a different MMU config than CPU FastROM. A partially functional MMU may work with one config but not another.

Originally Posted by alexh

Which version of GVP COMBO do you have PGA or PLCC? If it is a PGA you could probably upgrade to a full 030 relatively cheaply.

If he has an EC030 than what he really has is the G-Force 030 variant. The older Combo 030 had the full 68030 SMD soldered on the Board. This unit does not support the hardware MapROM function.

[samaron]

Thank you everyone for your replies. I managed to sort this out on my own after getting that initial lead.

Found a user manual here. However, I found everything I needed on one of the floppy disk images in a readme file there.

As Thomas Richter pointed out, all that is needed is GvpCpuCtrl from the disk. Copied it into C and added it to my startup-sequence file with the string "C:GvpCpuCtrl FASTROM >NIL:" and it worked! Workbench is a little bit more snappy now. Attatched some pictures with a before and after using the bustest command to compare speeds.

This card isn't a permanent solution, as it will eventually be replaced with a more modern card. If I intended to keep it, I'd consider dropping in a full CPU. The readme file on the disk even states no modification is needed, if changing the CPU is desired.

Learned a few new things now. Another small step for a novice Amiga-user.