Individual Computers - New accelerator cards for A600 & A1200

[1time]

Photon:

Dont really know what you are talking about. It price was 40kr "4 euros", and it was really easy to fix it.

My crashes is gone!

[Photon]

Originally Posted by Schoenfeld

ACA630-25 is not over- or underclocked, but clocked "right at spec".

"underclocking" was only applied to the (very rare) 30MHz version of the card that also came with 64M memory installed. That one used a 33MHz version of the CPU.

Jens

It's from a conversation in that thread where AlexH enlightened me that underclocking a higher rated 68030 to 25 MHz is not the same as underclocking a modern CPU, where differently rated CPUs usually imply feature and mask set differences.

Originally Posted by 1time

Photon:

Dont really know what you are talking about. It price was 40kr "4 euros", and it was really easy to fix it.

My crashes is gone!

My little stubborn posts was due to the fact that I "bought" one of those at Elfa.se, and went to the checkout and saw the total price of 240 kr incl shipping, whatever method I chose.

And also, I hate it when people doubt others' soldering skills without knowing them. I still think new components are preferable, but something stirred in my soul when Jens claimed they were "sub-cent" and an Elfa link followed...and you could have had a working Amiga in 20 minutes and 0 cents

[1time]

Sorry for miss understanding you!

Hello guys,

My first post ever on EAB =]

I just bought and installed an ACA630 in my A600. You were all right : my Amiga is faster than ever

I went through no problems, excepted one : with the ACA630 installed, many WHDLoad demos have no audio. Sometimes, sounds pops but still, no audio for most of them. With most of games this is OK.

Would you have to advice to give me to fix my issue? Should I investigate around ACATune software / WHDLoaf pref / valid WHDLoad image ?

I want to precise that I have a legitimate registered WHDLoad key and that I'm only interested in demos (so : no warez request or whatever here).

Thank you

PS. I realize I perhaps posted on the wrong thread. Please can someone point me out what would be the best location in forum?

[NovaCoder]

DOOM running on my ACA1230 @ 56Mhz

[ Show youtube player ]

[Synthesize Me]

Can somebody please give me some advice/how to on the ACATune software as a GUI was never made or at least a link to a decent explanation within this thread since I don't feel like reading over 50 pages unless it's an instruction manual. Thank you!

[Bamiga2002]

Put this for A600:
ACATune -maprom * -chipcache on -z2cache on -fastchip on -fastz2 on -cache on -burst on >NIL:
for A1200:
ACATune -maprom * -fastchip on -cache on -burst on >NIL:

as a first line in your Startup-sequence.

[Schoenfeld]

no, no, no, DO NOT enable chipmem cacheing unless you have a gfx card! It's highly unlikely that you have a gfx card on the A600.

Back when Oliver introduced the feature in the logic, I thought that CPUblit completely switches off the blitter, but in the meantime I learned that only a few functions are replaced with CPU copy-functions. Other functions still use the blitter. If I had known that back then, the function would not be in the card. Chipmem cacheing is a bad idea with a second entity writing to chipmem - the cache would have to be invalidated on a blitter-write, but that cannot be detected on the CPU card.

Jens

[Bamiga2002]

Originally Posted by Schoenfeld

no, no, no, DO NOT enable chipmem cacheing unless you have a gfx card! It's highly unlikely that you have a gfx card on the A600.
Jens

Thanx for this info
@Retro-Nerd:
Could you add a generic working example of ACATune command line for both A600 & A1200 in the first post of this thread?
It wouldn't hurt to add ACATune download link plus additional info also, to "sum-it-all-up" on the first post

[mfilos]

I use the following declaration for months without a single issue on my A600:

C:ACATune -maprom * -z2cache on -fastchip on -fastz2 on -cache on -burst on >NIL:

(I use instead of the * a path to a custom 3.9 ROM but this is a more general declaration that load the default kickstart in memory)

[desiv]

Originally Posted by Schoenfeld

no, no, no, DO NOT enable chipmem cacheing unless you have a gfx card!

Just for clarity, which is the chipmem cacheing?

The "-chipcache on" and/or the "-fastchip on"?

I am assuming chipcache, but as fastchip also has chip in the name.. ;-)

I browsed the Amigaguide doc, but still wasn't certain..

desiv

[NovaCoder]

Originally Posted by mfilos

I use the following declaration for months without a single issue on my A600:

C:ACATune -maprom * -z2cache on -fastchip on -fastz2 on -cache on -burst on >NIL:

(I use instead of the * a path to a custom 3.9 ROM but this is a more general declaration that load the default kickstart in memory)

Remove the burst, I think it's actually faster without it

[Schoenfeld]

Originally Posted by NovaCoder

Remove the burst, I think it's actually faster without it

You're thinking wrong. Burst-fill for cache lines gives a significant performance improvement. Even more than other accelerators, because the ACA1230 and ACA630 cards abort the burst at the end of the cache line instead of wrapping around and completely filling the cache line. The memory controller even decides not to do a burst if the first data word would be the last in a cache line, as this would truly slow down.

Further, with a burst, the first-access-penalty only applies to the first data word. The following data words are transferred within a single cycle - four times faster than the first access. With the ACA's SD-Ram, the 68030 can transfer one data word per cycle. Most (if not all) older accelerators required two cycles per data word because of the slow memory chips of the time.

There's hardly any scenario where burst slows down execution (I could only think of artificial scenarios).

Jens

[NovaCoder]

Originally Posted by Schoenfeld

You're thinking wrong. Burst-fill for cache lines gives a significant performance improvement. Even more than other accelerators, because the ACA1230 and ACA630 cards abort the burst at the end of the cache line instead of wrapping around and completely filling the cache line. The memory controller even decides not to do a burst if the first data word would be the last in a cache line, as this would truly slow down.

Further, with a burst, the first-access-penalty only applies to the first data word. The following data words are transferred within a single cycle - four times faster than the first access. With the ACA's SD-Ram, the 68030 can transfer one data word per cycle. Most (if not all) older accelerators required two cycles per data word because of the slow memory chips of the time.

There's hardly any scenario where burst slows down execution (I could only think of artificial scenarios).

Jens

Cool, I'm happy to be corrected

[Photon]

Originally Posted by norecess

Hello guys,

My first post ever on EAB =]

I just bought and installed an ACA630 in my A600. You were all right : my Amiga is faster than ever

I went through no problems, excepted one : with the ACA630 installed, many WHDLoad demos have no audio. Sometimes, sounds pops but still, no audio for most of them. With most of games this is OK.

Would you have to advice to give me to fix my issue? Should I investigate around ACATune software / WHDLoaf pref / valid WHDLoad image ?

I want to precise that I have a legitimate registered WHDLoad key and that I'm only interested in demos (so : no warez request or whatever here).

Thank you

PS. I realize I perhaps posted on the wrong thread. Please can someone point me out what would be the best location in forum?

Originally Posted by Schoenfeld

no, no, no, DO NOT enable chipmem cacheing unless you have a gfx card! It's highly unlikely that you have a gfx card on the A600.

Back when Oliver introduced the feature in the logic, I thought that CPUblit completely switches off the blitter, but in the meantime I learned that only a few functions are replaced with CPU copy-functions. Other functions still use the blitter. If I had known that back then, the function would not be in the card. Chipmem cacheing is a bad idea with a second entity writing to chipmem - the cache would have to be invalidated on a blitter-write, but that cannot be detected on the CPU card.

Jens

Norecess, I had problems with games in WHDLoad before disabling chipcache, maybe that's it. "No audio" as description is definitely directly relatable to chipmem handling, as extremely few OCS demos use fastmem for sound, and WHDLoad slaves are likely not modified to handle cached chipmem, as most (all!) accelerators bar chipmem from being cached. Chipmem is shared by ALL chips, not just blitter, so CPUblit [and other inventions] won't make music players work... if you know what I'm getting at...

Originally Posted by Schoenfeld

You're thinking wrong. Burst-fill for cache lines gives a significant performance improvement. Even more than other accelerators, because the ACA1230 and ACA630 cards abort the burst at the end of the cache line instead of wrapping around and completely filling the cache line. The memory controller even decides not to do a burst if the first data word would be the last in a cache line, as this would truly slow down.

Further, with a burst, the first-access-penalty only applies to the first data word. The following data words are transferred within a single cycle - four times faster than the first access. With the ACA's SD-Ram, the 68030 can transfer one data word per cycle. Most (if not all) older accelerators required two cycles per data word because of the slow memory chips of the time.

There's hardly any scenario where burst slows down execution (I could only think of artificial scenarios).

Jens

I've arrived at -fastchip OFF -chipcache OFF and everything else at max. It handles everything perfectly, from old CLI commandline utilities to WHDLoad and 3.1 extras.

Does -fastchip ON refer to burst? From what I read it simply states it requires you to know what you're doing before enabling. Or did I misinterpret that and it's about the CPU cli command? Just wondering

[1time]

I have a ACA1230/56 with a rtc running OS 3.9.

Problem is that the rtc "clock" will not save my time setting from PREF:Time.
The actually save process works fine, but after a cold restart, that time is wrong again.

Any idea?

[Schoenfeld]

Originally Posted by 1time

I have a ACA1230/56 with a rtc running OS 3.9.

Problem is that the rtc "clock" will not save my time setting from PREF:Time.
The actually save process works fine, but after a cold restart, that time is wrong again.

The ACA1230 is delivered without clock, so this would be a support question for the supplier of your clock chip.

Check the battery clip (might need cleaning), but also check the time after a "setclock save" and "setclock load" right after that. You can find the "setclock" command on older workbench disks (pre-3.0 if I remember right).

Jens

[Photon]

Perfect answer by Jens. Setclock in s:startup-sequence, if not the battery is dead or bad contact to the clip.

[1time]

worked great with the setclock command.

Thanks

[1time]

Hi again

Im having trouble finding the correct replacement part for E121R and E122R.

Schoenfeld:
"Remove resistors E121R and E122R and replace them with 0805 ferrite beads - something in the range of 60R@100MHz or more"

Could someone please try to find the correct one on this page:
https://www.elfa.se/elfa3~eu_en/elfa/init.do?toc=18705&name=electromechanical_components#toc=18708;

I have changed all my Caps, removed E123C and added E121C and E122C.

Thankful for some help finding the correct part.