New project - Fúria EC020 - Page 12

demolition · 19 July 2017, 13:55

For the ACA620 Toni Wilen made a driver which allowed you to use the excess memory as a RAM disk. It could not be used a fast mem since the 16 MB memory map of the CPU was filled out completely. Perhaps a similar solution was made for the Furia?

CMTX · 19 July 2017, 15:05

Well, I know it's not possible to use 16mb as it fulfill the map memory of the EC020. I was thinking about using the 9.5mb of ram that the card normally offers AND the PCMCIA slot. It looks like the ACA620 can do that,

from icomp wiki:

"PCMCIA compatibility
The PCMCIA port can be used together with your ACA620EC. However, S-Ram cards can not be used. Since PCMCIA is a 16-bit bus and the ACA620EC is a full 32-bit accelerator, a PCMCIA SRam card would slow down the computer considerably. Networking cards and other peripherals are fully compatible with your ACA620EC, and they will not slow down operations of your accelerator."

"The ACA620 comes with 16MBytes physical fastmem pre-installed. Not all of this memory can be used as normal fastmem. The card starts up with 5MByte of autoconfig memory under any Kickstart version. ACAtune will not add any memory unless you tell it to add memory with the maxmem option. The maximum amount of fast memory that can be used with the ACA620 is 10.8MByte. Please note that the Fastrom option will not reduce the amount of memory available for the system.
The rest of the physical memory can be used as a RAM disk. The required software can be downloaded from Aminet."

I read in the comments of a youtube video that is possible to do so with the FURIA. I just want to know if it's true before buying it, as i plan to use the PCMCIA slot of my miggy but i want to retain at least 8 mb of memory.

Cheers

idrougge · 19 July 2017, 19:39

Nope, you have to sacrifice 4 MB for PCMCIA use. I have on several occasions started to look for a hardware error when the machine didn't find my PCMCIA cards, until I realised that I had forgotten to hold ctrl-a-a for three seconds to activate PCMCIA (and drop 4 MB).

CMTX · 20 July 2017, 08:38

Thank you for the information. That's a serious drawback of the card for me, but I understand that it's fantastic for the price anyways. I have to think about it

Cheers

idrougge · 20 July 2017, 13:23

I agree, and that's the only reason I'm swapping it for an ACA630. Not that I wouldn't survive with a Furia; you still have 6,5 MB of memory with PCMCIA activated, which is enough for FTP and IRC.

CMTX · 20 July 2017, 13:43

I have good news: I've found it! The chap on youtube answered me gently, and i've found a post done by the designer of the card on a forum that confirms that is working nice. He even hosts the files in his website.

"You need this file:

http://boboo.szm.com//cardres.lha

You also need LoadModule in your C: (aminet!), edit S:startup-sequence and add the line before setpatch

C:LoadModule >NIL: L:cardres.ld.strip REVERSE

What this does is replace the ROM's card.resource with an updated one that is fastram friendly. If there is already a LoadModule line in your ss, you need to add the argument to that line. I've been using this for a year now, with a PCMCIA network card and it works flawlessly, with no noticable slowdown or anything. Good luck."

As a result, i'll be buying a furia card very soon

Cheers!

Amiga1992 · 20 July 2017, 16:37

That is awesome, you think it'd work with other cards that conflict with the PCMCIA slot?

CMTX · 20 July 2017, 16:44

No idea mate, i don't have any machine with this memory configuration to test it

idrougge · 20 July 2017, 20:58

Wow, wish I knew that before.

Jope · 21 July 2017, 09:27

Quote:

Originally Posted by Akira

That is awesome, you think it'd work with other cards that conflict with the PCMCIA slot?

It should work. Just don't plug in a PCMCIA SRAM card. :-)

demolition · 21 July 2017, 09:33

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jope

It should work. Just don't plug in a PCMCIA SRAM card. :-)

I tested the ACA620 with a PCMCIA SRAM card and it actually worked fine although it is quite silly as it replaces 2MB of the very fast RAM of the ACA620 with the somewhat slow memory of the SRAM card.

Jope · 21 July 2017, 09:35

Mm, so you had the ACA620 with full ACA RAM, you installed that patched card.resource and then plugged in a PCMCIA SRAM card?

demolition · 21 July 2017, 10:00

No need to patch card.resource with ACA620. Don't know how Jens resolved it but it is PCMCIA compatible without doing anything fancy like that.

fgh · 21 July 2017, 11:11

Toni Wilen described how to do this card.resource patch back in 2009, to simply disable the >4MB Z2 RAM check, so the PCMCIA stays active.
Someone attempted making the patch back then but failed somehow, glad to hear someone finally succeeded.

Only PCMCIA SRAM cards conflict with Z2 memory space, all other PCMCIA cards use PCMCIA I/O address space which does not conflict, so it's really annoying that 2.05 and 3.1 disables PCMCIA altogether when >4MB is found. (KS 3.0 doesn't)

Edit: I suppose anyone making custom KS ROMs for a600/a1200 should include this

Jope · 21 July 2017, 11:36

.. or just split the V37 card.resource from a 3.0 ROM and use that. :-) Not sure if any driver really requires the newer one?

Jope · 21 July 2017, 11:38

Quote:

Originally Posted by demolition

No need to patch card.resource with ACA620. Don't know how Jens resolved it but it is PCMCIA compatible without doing anything fancy like that.

It is PCMCIA compatible by only showing 5MB of the RAM by default (I'm guessing 4MB of Z2 and 1MB of ranger), thus allowing card.resource to initialize itself. The rest of the RAM you must add with ACATune in your startup-sequence.

If you have an SRAM card and activate the rest of the ACA mem, you might have interesting results.

demolition · 21 July 2017, 11:43

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jope

If you have an SRAM card and activate the rest of the ACA mem, you might have interesting results.

I did use ACAtune to activate the remaining memory of the ACA without problems. I don't remember the details but perhaps ACAtune looks for the SRAM and acts accordingly by leaving out the memory that overlaps with PCMCIA?

Jope · 21 July 2017, 11:52

That would be the smart thing to do, I hope it works just like that.

You should be able to see the the various blocks of memory as separate nodes if you run showconfig.

demolition · 21 July 2017, 11:55

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jope

That would be the smart thing to do, I hope it works just like that.

You should be able to see the the various blocks of memory as separate nodes if you run showconfig.

Yeah, but a Vampire replaced the ACA620 in my A600 so don't have the setup for testing this any longer.

Daedalus · 28 July 2017, 09:33

Quote:

Originally Posted by fgh

Only PCMCIA SRAM cards conflict with Z2 memory space, all other PCMCIA cards use PCMCIA I/O address space which does not conflict, so it's really annoying that 2.05 and 3.1 disables PCMCIA altogether when >4MB is found. (KS 3.0 doesn't)

And it was probably considered a bug of 3.0... It is annoying, but kinda reasonable at the time since its only intended use was SRAM cards.

20 July 2017, 16:44	#228
CMTX Registered User Join Date: Apr 2014 Location: Mallorca es Funki Posts: 44	No idea mate, i don't have any machine with this memory configuration to test it Last edited by CMTX; 20 July 2017 at 16:45. Reason: typo

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19 July 2017, 13:55	#221
demolition Unregistered User Join Date: Sep 2012 Location: Copenhagen / DK Age: 44 Posts: 4,190	For the ACA620 Toni Wilen made a driver which allowed you to use the excess memory as a RAM disk. It could not be used a fast mem since the 16 MB memory map of the CPU was filled out completely. Perhaps a similar solution was made for the Furia?

19 July 2017, 15:05	#222
CMTX Registered User Join Date: Apr 2014 Location: Mallorca es Funki Posts: 44	Well, I know it's not possible to use 16mb as it fulfill the map memory of the EC020. I was thinking about using the 9.5mb of ram that the card normally offers AND the PCMCIA slot. It looks like the ACA620 can do that, from icomp wiki: "PCMCIA compatibility The PCMCIA port can be used together with your ACA620EC. However, S-Ram cards can not be used. Since PCMCIA is a 16-bit bus and the ACA620EC is a full 32-bit accelerator, a PCMCIA SRam card would slow down the computer considerably. Networking cards and other peripherals are fully compatible with your ACA620EC, and they will not slow down operations of your accelerator." "The ACA620 comes with 16MBytes physical fastmem pre-installed. Not all of this memory can be used as normal fastmem. The card starts up with 5MByte of autoconfig memory under any Kickstart version. ACAtune will not add any memory unless you tell it to add memory with the maxmem option. The maximum amount of fast memory that can be used with the ACA620 is 10.8MByte. Please note that the Fastrom option will not reduce the amount of memory available for the system. The rest of the physical memory can be used as a RAM disk. The required software can be downloaded from Aminet." I read in the comments of a youtube video that is possible to do so with the FURIA. I just want to know if it's true before buying it, as i plan to use the PCMCIA slot of my miggy but i want to retain at least 8 mb of memory. Cheers

19 July 2017, 19:39	#223
idrougge Registered User Join Date: Sep 2007 Location: Stockholm Posts: 4,342	Nope, you have to sacrifice 4 MB for PCMCIA use. I have on several occasions started to look for a hardware error when the machine didn't find my PCMCIA cards, until I realised that I had forgotten to hold ctrl-a-a for three seconds to activate PCMCIA (and drop 4 MB).

20 July 2017, 08:38	#224
CMTX Registered User Join Date: Apr 2014 Location: Mallorca es Funki Posts: 44	Thank you for the information. That's a serious drawback of the card for me, but I understand that it's fantastic for the price anyways. I have to think about it Cheers

20 July 2017, 13:23	#225
idrougge Registered User Join Date: Sep 2007 Location: Stockholm Posts: 4,342	I agree, and that's the only reason I'm swapping it for an ACA630. Not that I wouldn't survive with a Furia; you still have 6,5 MB of memory with PCMCIA activated, which is enough for FTP and IRC.

20 July 2017, 13:43	#226
CMTX Registered User Join Date: Apr 2014 Location: Mallorca es Funki Posts: 44	I have good news: I've found it! The chap on youtube answered me gently, and i've found a post done by the designer of the card on a forum that confirms that is working nice. He even hosts the files in his website. "You need this file: http://boboo.szm.com//cardres.lha You also need LoadModule in your C: (aminet!), edit S:startup-sequence and add the line before setpatch C:LoadModule >NIL: L:cardres.ld.strip REVERSE What this does is replace the ROM's card.resource with an updated one that is fastram friendly. If there is already a LoadModule line in your ss, you need to add the argument to that line. I've been using this for a year now, with a PCMCIA network card and it works flawlessly, with no noticable slowdown or anything. Good luck." As a result, i'll be buying a furia card very soon Cheers!

20 July 2017, 16:37	#227
Amiga1992 Registered User Join Date: May 2001 Location: ? Posts: 19,646	That is awesome, you think it'd work with other cards that conflict with the PCMCIA slot?

20 July 2017, 20:58	#229
idrougge Registered User Join Date: Sep 2007 Location: Stockholm Posts: 4,342	Wow, wish I knew that before.

21 July 2017, 09:35	#232
Jope - Join Date: Jul 2003 Location: Helsinki / Finland Age: 43 Posts: 9,879	Mm, so you had the ACA620 with full ACA RAM, you installed that patched card.resource and then plugged in a PCMCIA SRAM card?

21 July 2017, 10:00	#233
demolition Unregistered User Join Date: Sep 2012 Location: Copenhagen / DK Age: 44 Posts: 4,190	No need to patch card.resource with ACA620. Don't know how Jens resolved it but it is PCMCIA compatible without doing anything fancy like that.

21 July 2017, 11:11	#234
fgh Registered User Join Date: Dec 2010 Location: Norway Posts: 823	Toni Wilen described how to do this card.resource patch back in 2009, to simply disable the >4MB Z2 RAM check, so the PCMCIA stays active. Someone attempted making the patch back then but failed somehow, glad to hear someone finally succeeded. Only PCMCIA SRAM cards conflict with Z2 memory space, all other PCMCIA cards use PCMCIA I/O address space which does not conflict, so it's really annoying that 2.05 and 3.1 disables PCMCIA altogether when >4MB is found. (KS 3.0 doesn't) Edit: I suppose anyone making custom KS ROMs for a600/a1200 should include this

21 July 2017, 11:36	#235
Jope - Join Date: Jul 2003 Location: Helsinki / Finland Age: 43 Posts: 9,879	.. or just split the V37 card.resource from a 3.0 ROM and use that. :-) Not sure if any driver really requires the newer one?

21 July 2017, 11:52	#238
Jope - Join Date: Jul 2003 Location: Helsinki / Finland Age: 43 Posts: 9,879	That would be the smart thing to do, I hope it works just like that. You should be able to see the the various blocks of memory as separate nodes if you run showconfig.

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