ACA500 plus? - Page 7

Toni Wilen · 02 January 2017, 20:14

Quote:

Originally Posted by Marlon_

The Vampire will have this functionality in the next core update as far as I know. They call it turtle mode.

Isn't that "just" slower mode, not disabling the board completely and letting stopped mainboard CPU to take over?

Quote:

Originally Posted by E-Penguin

Toni how much, if any, are these accelerators supported by WinUAE? Adding CF cards as hard disks and increasing clock speed to 200% is fairly straightforward but what about the memory mapping stuff? I assume the Vampire cards are well out of scope.

They are not. Old accelerators are very simple, newer ones are not worth the trouble, they have dozens of registers and lots of internal state variables. (and they are not that interesting, emulating real retro hardware is interesting, new stuff isn't)

Quote:

Originally Posted by demolition

The ACA500 will boot straight off a CF card with MBR and FAT32. Very convenient when you want to move the card from the PC to the Amiga, so there is little reason to use PFS3/SFS/etc.

What does booting from CF or transferring files have to do with Amiga formatted (boot) CF filesystem?. Or are you planning to install WB on FAT32 formatted drive? (Which will work, sort of, but I would not recommend it..)

Quote:

Originally Posted by E-Penguin

How does it handle CFs bigger than 4Gb? Is there a patched scsi.device? I'd like to use pfs3-aio, I guess I'll still need to do some work to install that in the RDB and format accordingly (FFS can't handle partitions >4Gb, right?)

Flash built-in updated scsi.device supports all >4G methods fully. (direct scsi, TD64 and NSD).

appiah4 · 02 January 2017, 20:25

I can't even begin to imagine what you would put on an Amiga Hard Drive greater than 4GBs, to be honest..

E-Penguin · 02 January 2017, 20:34

WHDLoad + all of the games images is bigger than 4Gb, although taking out CD32 and AGA games (that won't run on the A500) might just fit.

monkat · 02 January 2017, 21:01

Hi, loved the aca500 and really looking forward to getting my plus... can I ask though if there are plans to provide good online documentation - not just for this but other cards Indivision do? I say this because since I came back to this scene there are many many people who struggle to get the best out of the hardware being sold. Flickerfixers were a nightmare to understand, ACA cards had acatune with settings defined but examples of common systems and best settings for those scenarios would be helpful - yes you can crawl a thousand forum messages to get some answers but I feel this is a simple request the creators of such cards can provide. Oh and the wiki has limited help.

Thanks

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

E-Penguin · 02 January 2017, 21:13

Isn't trawling half the Internet to find the answers half the fun? Tracking down the fabled v1.10 firmware for the IndivisionECS was days of entertainment.

I don't know whether Jens would consider allowing users to edit the wiki ; that might be a good halfway between community support and vendor support. At least everything would be in one place.

appiah4 · 02 January 2017, 21:49

Quote:

Originally Posted by E-Penguin

Isn't trawling half the Internet to find the answers half the fun? Tracking down the fabled v1.10 firmware for the IndivisionECS was days of entertainment.

I don't know whether Jens would consider allowing users to edit the wiki ; that might be a good halfway between community support and vendor support. At least everything would be in one place.

Having to browse a dozen sparsely populated Amiga forums and decipher machine talk is not always fun, especially when you are trying to fix a frustrating hardware problem you can't wrap your head around. Better documentation, FAQs, tutorials etc. would really be useful. As a consumer of their goods, I couldn't find answers to most of my questions on individual computers' webpage on the ACA500. I really hope he allows for a user editable wiki; he could at least moderate user contributions maybe?

We could always start an unofficial EAB ACA wiki and contribute to that? I mean, I would do my part once my hardware arrives for sure..

Marlon_ · 03 January 2017, 00:03

Quote:

Originally Posted by Toni Wilen

Isn't that "just" slower mode, not disabling the board completely and letting stopped mainboard CPU to take over?

Yeah, something like that. With V500 you remove the original 68k cpu and put the Vampire in the socket, so there's no other CPU to fall back on. Not sure about V600 and how the slower mode will be handled though.

demolition · 03 January 2017, 07:05

Quote:

Originally Posted by Toni Wilen

Isn't that "just" slower mode, not disabling the board completely and letting stopped mainboard CPU to take over?

What does booting from CF or transferring files have to do with Amiga formatted (boot) CF filesystem?. Or are you planning to install WB on FAT32 formatted drive? (Which will work, sort of, but I would not recommend it..)

Turtle mode is just a slower mode which is more like a common 030 accelerator for which mode WHDLoad slaves are designed. In ludicrous mode, which is Vampire on full speed, they tend to break..

Regarding FAT32, you are right. It is probably not optimal to use it with WB so PFS3 still has its merits here. But it should be able to boot from a FAT32 card as far as I can see which is very convenient for debugging etc.

appiah4 · 03 January 2017, 07:36

Quote:

Originally Posted by demolition

Turtle mode is just a slower mode which is more like a common 030 accelerator for which mode WHDLoad slaves are designed. In ludicrous mode, which is Vampire on full speed, they tend to break..

Regarding FAT32, you are right. It is probably not optimal to use it with WB so PFS3 still has its merits here. But it should be able to boot from a FAT32 card as far as I can see which is very convenient for debugging etc.

One PFS3 CF for boot, one FAT32 CF for transferring data sounds ideal..

E-Penguin · 03 January 2017, 09:54

That's the principle behind the "boot" and "aux" slots, I guess.

I suppose with a bit of creativity and a RAD: disk to hold things between reboots, one could boot with the flash WB disks and a FAT32 CF which contains the pfs3-aio fs and related gubbins, partition it, format as PFS3 and install WB on that, without going anywhere near an emulator.

demolition · 03 January 2017, 10:19

You could just put PFS3 handler etc. on the AUX CF card since it can be accessed from a plain WB 3.1 boot without cfd/fat95 drivers which are otherwise needed with PCMCIA adapters. What would you use RAD: for?

E-Penguin · 03 January 2017, 10:36

Yes but that would require another CF card and I've already spent February's Amiga budget...

RAD: to hold pfsformat after the reboot following the partition creation. Plus any other things one wants post WB install (plipbox.device, TCP stack, IndivisionECS tools, whdload, ...)

demolition · 03 January 2017, 10:44

Ok, I just assumed one would always have some extra CF card lying around for that purpose.

E-Penguin · 03 January 2017, 12:07

The ACA500plus has just arrived! Unfortunately I have a bad cold so I'm not sure whether I will get to test it this week. I don't want to start dribbling snot on important chips.

E-Penguin · 03 January 2017, 17:32

Well I managed to plug it in briefly and install WB. In short, very smooth overall. Slightly annoying double-power on needed first time round, possibly due to the IndivisionECS.

I've written it up in full here:
https://amigadventures.tumblr.com/po...-first-install

eXeler0 · 03 January 2017, 18:06

Good "hands on". Any good 3d printed cases for that thing yet?

Skickat från min LG-H850 via Tapatalk

E-Penguin · 03 January 2017, 18:24

Thanks.

I just cut holes into the cardboard box it came in and sealed the edges with tape. It's not pretty but it'll keep the worst of the dust off.

demolition · 03 January 2017, 19:05

Quote:

Originally Posted by E-Penguin

Well I managed to plug it in briefly and install WB. In short, very smooth overall.

Yeah, it is hard to keep ones hands off stuff when you receive a present in the mail.

Thanks for the short hands-on preview.

appiah4 · 05 January 2017, 08:37

Order placed

Scavenged an old 2GB Compact Flash I had lying around and ordered a card reader.. All set for this adventure..

Two questions though: Am I better off with a USB Compact Flash Card Reader or a SATA to Compact Flash adapter for setting up my CF card? Which version of ClassicWB would be most suitable for this board? 68K? LITE? FULL? ADV?

E-Penguin · 05 January 2017, 09:15

There's still no AGA chipset and the process is still a 68ec000, so the bigger ClassicWBs are too much. I tried both 68k and Lite on winuae configured roughly as an aca500plus, and both were useable. You need to be careful not to enable things that don't work on this architecture though (I found I had to disable stack attack, fblit, copper backgrounds...). I haven't tried it on the real hardware yet though - YMMV.

USB card reader worked fine for me. Just make sure you're running uae as administrator so you have low level access to the disk.

05 January 2017, 08:37	#139
appiah4 Registered User Join Date: May 2015 Location: Somewhere in Time Posts: 492	Order placed Scavenged an old 2GB Compact Flash I had lying around and ordered a card reader.. All set for this adventure.. Two questions though: Am I better off with a USB Compact Flash Card Reader or a SATA to Compact Flash adapter for setting up my CF card? Which version of ClassicWB would be most suitable for this board? 68K? LITE? FULL? ADV? Last edited by appiah4; 05 January 2017 at 09:00.

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02 January 2017, 20:25	#122
appiah4 Registered User Join Date: May 2015 Location: Somewhere in Time Posts: 492	I can't even begin to imagine what you would put on an Amiga Hard Drive greater than 4GBs, to be honest..

02 January 2017, 20:34	#123
E-Penguin Banana Join Date: Jul 2016 Location: Darmstadt Posts: 1,217	WHDLoad + all of the games images is bigger than 4Gb, although taking out CD32 and AGA games (that won't run on the A500) might just fit.

02 January 2017, 21:01	#124
monkat Registered User Join Date: Jul 2015 Location: Guildford Posts: 24	Hi, loved the aca500 and really looking forward to getting my plus... can I ask though if there are plans to provide good online documentation - not just for this but other cards Indivision do? I say this because since I came back to this scene there are many many people who struggle to get the best out of the hardware being sold. Flickerfixers were a nightmare to understand, ACA cards had acatune with settings defined but examples of common systems and best settings for those scenarios would be helpful - yes you can crawl a thousand forum messages to get some answers but I feel this is a simple request the creators of such cards can provide. Oh and the wiki has limited help. Thanks Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

02 January 2017, 21:13	#125
E-Penguin Banana Join Date: Jul 2016 Location: Darmstadt Posts: 1,217	Isn't trawling half the Internet to find the answers half the fun? Tracking down the fabled v1.10 firmware for the IndivisionECS was days of entertainment. I don't know whether Jens would consider allowing users to edit the wiki ; that might be a good halfway between community support and vendor support. At least everything would be in one place.

03 January 2017, 09:54	#130
E-Penguin Banana Join Date: Jul 2016 Location: Darmstadt Posts: 1,217	That's the principle behind the "boot" and "aux" slots, I guess. I suppose with a bit of creativity and a RAD: disk to hold things between reboots, one could boot with the flash WB disks and a FAT32 CF which contains the pfs3-aio fs and related gubbins, partition it, format as PFS3 and install WB on that, without going anywhere near an emulator.

03 January 2017, 10:19	#131
demolition Unregistered User Join Date: Sep 2012 Location: Copenhagen / DK Age: 44 Posts: 4,190	You could just put PFS3 handler etc. on the AUX CF card since it can be accessed from a plain WB 3.1 boot without cfd/fat95 drivers which are otherwise needed with PCMCIA adapters. What would you use RAD: for?

03 January 2017, 10:36	#132
E-Penguin Banana Join Date: Jul 2016 Location: Darmstadt Posts: 1,217	Yes but that would require another CF card and I've already spent February's Amiga budget... RAD: to hold pfsformat after the reboot following the partition creation. Plus any other things one wants post WB install (plipbox.device, TCP stack, IndivisionECS tools, whdload, ...)

03 January 2017, 10:44	#133
demolition Unregistered User Join Date: Sep 2012 Location: Copenhagen / DK Age: 44 Posts: 4,190	Ok, I just assumed one would always have some extra CF card lying around for that purpose.

03 January 2017, 12:07	#134
E-Penguin Banana Join Date: Jul 2016 Location: Darmstadt Posts: 1,217	The ACA500plus has just arrived! Unfortunately I have a bad cold so I'm not sure whether I will get to test it this week. I don't want to start dribbling snot on important chips.

03 January 2017, 17:32	#135
E-Penguin Banana Join Date: Jul 2016 Location: Darmstadt Posts: 1,217	Well I managed to plug it in briefly and install WB. In short, very smooth overall. Slightly annoying double-power on needed first time round, possibly due to the IndivisionECS. I've written it up in full here: https://amigadventures.tumblr.com/po...-first-install

03 January 2017, 18:06	#136
eXeler0 Registered User Join Date: Feb 2015 Location: Sweden Age: 50 Posts: 2,974	Good "hands on". Any good 3d printed cases for that thing yet? Skickat från min LG-H850 via Tapatalk

03 January 2017, 18:24	#137
E-Penguin Banana Join Date: Jul 2016 Location: Darmstadt Posts: 1,217	Thanks. I just cut holes into the cardboard box it came in and sealed the edges with tape. It's not pretty but it'll keep the worst of the dust off.

05 January 2017, 09:15	#140
E-Penguin Banana Join Date: Jul 2016 Location: Darmstadt Posts: 1,217	There's still no AGA chipset and the process is still a 68ec000, so the bigger ClassicWBs are too much. I tried both 68k and Lite on winuae configured roughly as an aca500plus, and both were useable. You need to be careful not to enable things that don't work on this architecture though (I found I had to disable stack attack, fblit, copper backgrounds...). I haven't tried it on the real hardware yet though - YMMV. USB card reader worked fine for me. Just make sure you're running uae as administrator so you have low level access to the disk.

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