Individual Computers - New accelerator cards for A600 & A1200

[Cosmos]

Excellent !!!

[NovaCoder]

Cool, getting close to how the A600 should have been spec'd to start with

[alexh]

Looking good I gotta say. Better get saving then.

[Slayer]

That's what credit cards are for alexh, get now and save and pay but use at the same time? ;-)

[FOL]

Originally Posted by Slayer

That's what credit cards are for alexh, get now and save and pay but use at the same time? ;-)

We all know it never works out like that, lol.

[amigarobbo]

Originally Posted by Schoenfeld

I haven't made the SD-Ram controller for anything faster than 25MHz/28MHz yet, so at this point, the Blizzard is faster. You cannot pre-order, the accelerators will be available before Xmas from my known resellers.

[Sledge/FLT]

Jens: It's amazing to see your work in progress. I'm impressed how good you are at doing things like this.

thomas

[Schoenfeld]

Sledge,

that's because I don't post pictures of the "epic fails" :-)

Jens

[Schoenfeld]

more WIP:

The new A600 prototype is now fully functional. The jumpers worked out as planned:

- both jumpers open: Nothing changed, all disk drives behave as expected

- "Bootselect" jumper closed:
-- internal floppy connector is disabled.
-- external floppy drives become df0: to df2: (if available)

- "noDisk" jumper closed:
-- all connected and unconnected disk drives appear empty (even with disks inserted), which speeds up boot-time on a totally floppy-less computer.

- both jumpers closed:
-- doesn't make sense. I could add something funny here, like swapping the joystick fire buttons port 0/port 1, but that's about as useless as making all drives appear empty and have them "shifted". I guess I can just leave this as-is, unless someone here has a useful suggestion.

Jens

[desiv]

Great development!!

Originally Posted by Schoenfeld

I guess I can just leave this as-is, unless someone here has a...

Oooh! You could...

Originally Posted by Schoenfeld

useful suggestion.

Oh, in that case.. Carry on.. ;-)

Waiting for the 28Mhz A1200 one myself..
I know, I said I broke down and agreed to an 8M 1200 expansion just before this was offered, but 2 things..

1: This is much nicer, and I'd want it anyway..
2: It's been almost a month since I paid and it hasn't shipped, so I'm beginning to think I'm not getting that one... (Not e-bait) :-(

desiv

[rockape]

Hi Jens,

Thats most excellent work your doing

There are a few here at LAG saving for Christmas.

Regards, Michael

aka rockape

[Pyromania]

Originally Posted by Schoenfeld

more WIP:

The new A600 prototype is now fully functional. The jumpers worked out as planned:

- both jumpers open: Nothing changed, all disk drives behave as expected

- "Bootselect" jumper closed:
-- internal floppy connector is disabled.
-- external floppy drives become df0: to df2: (if available)

- "noDisk" jumper closed:
-- all connected and unconnected disk drives appear empty (even with disks inserted), which speeds up boot-time on a totally floppy-less computer.

- both jumpers closed:
-- doesn't make sense. I could add something funny here, like swapping the joystick fire buttons port 0/port 1, but that's about as useless as making all drives appear empty and have them "shifted". I guess I can just leave this as-is, unless someone here has a useful suggestion.

Jens

Both jumpers closed could enable the Quantum Computer co-processor.

[gulliver]

Originally Posted by Pyromania

Both jumpers closed could enable the Quantum Computer co-processor.

Or better, enable the built-in fpga VideoToaster

[dalton]

The A600 board looks really nice. I invested in an apollo 630 board several years ago, but it was useless because of (mainly mechanical) design flaws. This seems like a much more solid design, well done!

Looking forward to more news about the A1200 accellerators too. Apart from missing FPU (many demos require it), the specs are really promising!

[cv643d]

Originally Posted by gulliver

Or better, enable the built-in fpga VideoToaster

Hehe

[stefcep2]

Originally Posted by gulliver

Or better, enable the built-in fpga VideoToaster

8 meg chip ram-oh wait, they did that on the A4000D.

[Amigaman]

Just seen the pics, that is a work of genious! Jens, wish you good luck with the board(s) I know I will be getting one as soon as possible. Hope Amigakit will have them in stock!

Couple of questions
1. Is there a minimum kickstart requirment?
2. Seriously, any chance of a disable switch? (without dismantling the A600 and removing the whole kit!) just a jumper that we can add a cable and switch onto maybe?
3. how did the heat test go?
4. Approx power requirements for running all the setup as demoed in your pics (A603, indivision, accelerator and flashdrive on top of normal operations)

Good work man!

[Cloudane]

Good, now manufacture some more indivisions, they're like gold dust at the moment :P

[Schoenfeld]

Originally Posted by Amigaman

Just seen the pics, that is a work of genious!

Thanks - however, I'm far from "genious". I do my job and look for the obvious solution. Sometimes it requires things like http://rr.c64.org/wiki/File:Contraption.jpg to wake me up, and some other time, I don't fail that badly. Thanks anyway :-)

Originally Posted by Amigaman

1. Is there a minimum kickstart requirment?

Yes, there is. The A1200 version is best operated with Kickstart 3.1. Kickstart 3.0 does not find the memory, so you should upgrade. If you don't want to upgrade your kickstart, you can close the kick3.0 jumper. This will give you 1MB fastmem (where all the system stuff will be located), and after running the ACAtune tool, you'll have the rest of the memory added to the system.

The A600 card requires Kick2.0 or higher for the fastmem to be found. It's taking advantage of the Z3 autoconfig mechanism, which is not available under Kick 1.3.

The obvious question one might ask is why I didn't implement the same thing on the 1200 card: The answer is "not enough pins on the logic chip". The designs are substantially different.

Originally Posted by Amigaman

2. Seriously, any chance of a disable switch? (without dismantling the A600 and removing the whole kit!) just a jumper that we can add a cable and switch onto maybe?

More than just a chance:

The disable-function is untested at this point and will not be tested until the mass-produced boards are here. I'm not planning to make another prototype run, as this feature is not a key feature. It may or may not work, with probabilities for "will work" being higher.

The A1200 version does NOT have this option.

Originally Posted by Amigaman

3. how did the heat test go?

I haven't even started. My weekend-activities were "longer than planned". I have a life outside the office as well :-)

Originally Posted by Amigaman

4. Approx power requirements for running all the setup as demoed in your pics (A603, indivision, accelerator and flashdrive on top of normal operations)

I will of course measure power during the heat test, because the power going into the computer is directly proportional to the amount of heat that needs to be dissipated. My guess is that the setup with flashcard and flickerfixer will be very power-efficient compared to a setup with a real harddrive and a floppy drive installed. It's the first accelerators with full 3.3V logic and low-power SD-Ram. The flickerfixer is known to be very power efficient with it's 1.5V core voltage, and the A603 is based on S-Ram instead of D-Ram, so there's every chance that the standard power supply will be sufficient for the whole thing.

Jens

[Predseda]

Please, Jens, KEEP THOSE SIGNS on the final board as well! I love them!!!