New product: MNT ZZ9000

[johnnybarker]

Hello,

I have not had chance to do much with the card after I encountered a couple of issues. My mum has also just had an operation so I needed to pop down and see her. I not blaming her though for holding back my amiga tinkering.

I agree the fit is REALLY tight. I am using it in an Ateo concepts a4000 tower case which despite the tower being enormous the a4000 motherboard as been squeezed down at the bottom and there is very little space for zorro cards.

I initially left my Picasso IV drivers on the system (OS3.9) when I installed the new P96 drivers (bought the latest ones from Jens as recommended) so I could go back and forth between the boards to check stuff as I have previously done with my radeon and CV64/3d. Unfortunately it would then not boot with the ZZ9000 and with the PIV it would boot but crash as soon as I opened a folder or file. I have had to go back to an old hard drive image and uninstall the P96 drivers. I then tried to copy the new drivers back to the hard drive but I got into a fight with my zip drive and the click of death.

I have put the zz9000 back in but was then only getting a yellow screen. It took me a wee while to release that somehow the 128mb onboard micro SD card which contains the firmware was goosed. This may may been my fault as could have got caught from all the board switching although there was no visible damage. Can't get the card to be recognised in anything. I have replaced the card with an old 4gb one I had lying around which seems to at least allow the computer to boot.

At present I am just about to start again by installing the drivers. Hopefully should get this done today now I have completed my tax return and once I get the kids off to school.

Not sure how much this info will help anyone but will update when I can.

J

[johnnybarker]

Not sure I will be fitting this card today. I seem to have something more fundamentally wrong with the a4000. It appears that it will only work properly in p96 modes with the Picasso IV. If I load up anything, even workbench 2.05 from floppy in any other screenmode then as soon as I click on an icon/drawer the system freezes. I have tried it with every combination of hardware inc the onboard 030. If I remove all the simms then it will not boot at all- it is the EC version with the soldered chip ram onboard and lithium battery so it has not leaked. I will probably post my problems elsewhere if I don't make any progress- diagroms on their way!

[gdonner]

Since my initial hang during boot issue, I did a reinstall of OS 3.1.4.1 which fixed the hang--so IMO this was something essentially outside of the ZZ9000.

My system now boots properly, albeit with some known display issues in the ZZ9000's 1.3c drivers/firmware (noted below, with screenshots). Lukas is aware of most (if not all) these issues, and is working on them.

https://www.gregdonner.org/zz9000/su...eshooting.html

My BigRamPlus card is recognized properly--all RAM is there, etc. as is my X-Surf 100 w/Rapid Road. All works fine. I do have a Super Buster rev. 11 in my system--might make a difference; I don't know.

While I wait on the new 1.4 drivers/firmware to be released (in process), I've installed P96 2.4.2 with the Altais driver, and am running in Hires NTSC mode.

As others have said, the card was a VERY tight fit into my A4000, but Lukas has already said this hardware design issue will be addressed in the second batch.

Also (I know it's early for this kind of thing), but ShowConfig (and WhichAmiga) sees the ZZ9000 as an "MNT Media and Technology Merlin Board":



TL;DR: Other than a tight fit and some (known) display issues that are being worked on, I don't see any other issues with the ZZ9000 at this point. There might be some kind of installer bug, seeing as my A4000 ran fine until I installed the 1.3c drivers, but I'll wait until after 1.4 to make any determination on that.

[johnnybarker]

Hooray, I have it working! I have managed to install it over the SCSI. I will document my problems in another post!

I have to say in true colour at 1280 x 720 the picture looks perfect- definitely better than the picasso IV. When moving windows about there is a subtle jerkiness and an obvious jerking when moving the Amidock. I have played gloom and it looks glorious although I don't think it is quite as smooth. I have been following Lucas over on A1K and he has always stated that he is going for stability over speed so I think things will only improve. He has hinted at another new firmware in the next few days.

So far I really have no complaints. I will test the ethernet later although it sounds like there are speed problems to be ironed out. I really hope that some good ARM software and possibly USB drivers become available. Unfortunately I am no coder.

[gdonner]

^^ Glad it's working for you, and it's looking good!

Hopefully 1.4 will be a solid release that will help iron out a number of issues and bring some performance boosts at the same time.

[Laine]

I just got my ZZ9000 (I had them delay shipping).


A4000 a3660, 2/16meg, Duel IDE adapter 2CF cards/CDROM (IDEfix)


clean install of wb3.1 currently with a 3.9 rom (I have a 3.1.4 rom I'll put in later)
booted up no drivers yet everything works on default screens





installed the p96(v2.4.2) and roadshow then the ZZ9000 drivers, rebooted screen was black with some wiggles at first, rebooted a couple times, then after waiting about a minute or so it loaded to Workbench. I realized that I hadn't plugged in the NIC cable and it was timing out trying to get an IP, plugged NIC cable in, rebooted, then it loaded up much faster still longer then a clean system but that's normal. (also roadshow doesn't like static DHCP assigned IPs it seems the screen will stay black until you remove the static and restart the amiga.)



After learning how to use the display software setup a couple screen modes works great.


using aexplorer to move files was painfully slow moving to the amiga not to bad when I pulled a file from it.


Laine

[gdonner]

Laine, am just curious as to what 'display software setup' you're referring to--do you mean PicassoModeTNG / PicassoMode96, or is there something extra that the ZZ9000 uses?

Edit: AFAIK (as Jope notes below) the default (VESA?) ZZ9000 screen modes are:

320 x 240
640 x 480
720 x 576
800 x 600
1024 x 768
1280 x 720
1280 x 1024
1920 x 1080

Though whether or not every user's monitor supports these modes at their pre-defined frequencies is questionable. Best to check your user manual specs to be sure.

[Jope]

Likewise.. The installer ships with a P96 config file that has a pile of screen modes set up for you.

[McTrinsic]

The delay due to the NIC should have been solved with the latest firmware.

[gdonner]

^^ 1.3c? As of this writing, 1.4 hasn't been released to the public...

Good to know that the NIC issue was resolved; though my understanding from Lukas was that the NIC delay was a user-initiated setting; not a default of the ZZ9000 installation process.

[Seiya]

Someone could test this ZZ9000 with AmiGOD 2

[Laine]

zz9000 1.4a is out

'setting' meaning I had no idea what to do so I open the p96 app and looked around before I went to screenmode to change display

What is 'AmiGod2' can't find anything about it with a quick search.

Laine

[grelbfarlk]

Originally Posted by trixster

Can someone post p96speed results for the zz9000 with the latest Z3 firmware? 640x480 8bit.

Seconding this, anyone have P96speed available that can run it and post the results? Really any 640x480 or some other mode would be fine, as long as you say what CPU/System you are using.

This is an old result from early 9/19:

From these results, tested on the same system, I'd make a few guesses.
WritePixel() is pretty close, which is good, I thought this was always a pretty much a raw bandwidth test to write to the RTG GFX Memory. So lets say it's talking to the ZZ9000 nearly as fast as the PIV.
The rest of the P96 functions are not nearly as fast, guessing because they are not "optimized" in the core of the ZZ9000. But the Intuition stuff on the bottom is pretty good.

Has this improved much?

[Vypr]

Originally Posted by grelbfarlk

Seconding this, anyone have P96speed available that can run it and post the results? Really any 640x480 or some other mode would be fine, as long as you say what CPU/System you are using.

This is an old result from early 9/19:

From these results, tested on the same system, I'd make a few guesses.
WritePixel() is pretty close, which is good, I thought this was always a pretty much a raw bandwidth test to write to the RTG GFX Memory. So lets say it's talking to the ZZ9000 nearly as fast as the PIV.
The rest of the P96 functions are not nearly as fast, guessing because they are not "optimized" in the core of the ZZ9000. But the Intuition stuff on the bottom is pretty good.

Has this improved much?

Lukas posted some P96speed results with the 1.4 firmware last week, results looking good (waiting for batch 2 to start shipping so i can try mine )

https://twitter.com/mntmn/status/1177277642866909184

[Seiya]

http://aminet.net/package/util/moni/AmiGOD2

is a benchmark to test general graphics and workbench move/open/size Window

[AmigaHope]

Should be nice when blitter operations get implemented. That seems to be the Achilles heel of the MNT. Once that's implemented then stuff should fly. =)

[matt3k]

Originally Posted by grelbfarlk

Has this improved much?

Yes, substantially! Nice show indeed.

Would like to see 1080p speed tests for comparison to other cards.

Looks like I may have to part with more cash!

[gdonner]

Originally Posted by AmigaHope

Should be nice when blitter operations get implemented. That seems to be the Achilles heel of the MNT. Once that's implemented then stuff should fly. =)

Showing my ignorance here (ahem), but the following 1.4a optimizations aren't blitter-related?

(All contributed by @beeanyew):
• Consolidated and optimized rectangle filling and pattern/template filling (much faster).
• ARM accelerated DrawLine.
• ARM accelerated InvertRect.
• ARM accelerated Planar2Chunky.
• ARM accelerated BlitRectNoMaskComplete.

[Following not gfx-related, but also in 1.4a]:

• Greatly increased Ethernet speed.

I'm keeping an eye out for a bug fix to the NTSC screenmode issue (and other display bugs); hopefully in the near future.

[pgovotsos]

Has anyone from the second batch heard anything yet?

[Vypr]

Originally Posted by pgovotsos

Has anyone from the second batch heard anything yet?

Not directly but the website has been updated to say Batch 2 would start shipping in December

Edit: His twitter feed reports that the PCBs and parts for batch 2&3 were ordered 22 hours ago. A bit disappointing as the update on October 4th stated batch 2 had started assembly.