Individual Computers - New accelerator cards for A600 & A1200

[Schoenfeld]

Originally Posted by DyLucke

Would that mean if one of the chips gets ruined the board wouldn't work at all?

I guess that's the case on pretty much every computer board: Every chip has a key function and for proper operation, all chips must be present and working.

The 64M (32M) memory of the ACA1230 (ACA630) cards is composed of two chips, where both of them are always selected at the same time. The chips are 16 bits wide each, so in order to form a full 32-bit word, both memory chips must be present and they must work properly.

Jens

[Mad-Matt]

Originally Posted by amigarobbo

Also the Silkcut demo crashs with a $800000B error at startup, and iBrowse crashes as soon as it gets to a google results page with the IndivuDUAL card, both of which work correctly with a Blizzard 12030 card.

The silkcut one is easy, an fpu is required to play the demo. I suspect the IBrowse issue is the same if you have datatypes installed that require the fpu.

[amigarobbo]

Originally Posted by Mad-Matt

The silkcut one is easy, an fpu is required to play the demo. I suspect the IBrowse issue is the same if you have datatypes installed that require the fpu.

Yep, I reinstalled a non-fpu version of Ibrowse and that's working fine.

Do we also have to raise a support ticket to mention you misspelt 'cache' as 'caches' in the ACATune.guide? And 'burst' is spelt the same way too.

Have you run -config... Flippin' heck...

[DyLucke]

Originally Posted by Schoenfeld

I guess that's the case on pretty much every computer board: Every chip has a key function and for proper operation, all chips must be present and working.

The 64M (32M) memory of the ACA1230 (ACA630) cards is composed of two chips, where both of them are always selected at the same time. The chips are 16 bits wide each, so in order to form a full 32-bit word, both memory chips must be present and they must work properly.

Jens

You're right but i have some other point of view under my experience, time ago i had a GeForce2 with 64mb of RAM, when one of the RAM chips got wasted, the board still worked with only 32mb. Same happened to me long time ago with some RAM SIMM on my Blizzard, it was a 64mb SIMM, but when it got ruined only was able to address 32mb????

I do suppose this could be technically possible on any board if the wasted portion of memory is the one mapped on the higher part of the RAM.

But from your words i get that on the ACA, as long RAM is performed by 2 16bit chips, both are needed. Maybe a RAM burst technique a-la RAID?

[rave]

@Amigakit
Just pre-ordered an ACA630

@Jens
Vielen Dank für diese magische Geschenk zu Weihnachten!

[amigakit.com]

Thank you :-)

[TronPlayer]

I received my ACA1230/56 yesterday. I've never used a real amiga much before but I didn't realize how many of the demos I loved used an FPU. I remember seeing a post earlier that it may be possible to emulate a FPU via software so at least the demos would run. Is there a good chance that this will happen? Other than that, installation was a breeze and the card seems to be of good quality.

For some reason only about half of the games that run on my WINUAE are working on my real 1200. I'm still trying to figure out why. I get errors like ($6C) at $BFFA570 with games like Mortal Kombat 2. Also, my attempts at maprom have failed. I've tried acatune -maprom *, and using specific roms as an argument but I just get a black screen or the system freezes and needs the power cycled. I didn't really want to submit a support ticket since I may be doing something wrong and might need suggestions. I've also had a few fatal errors while doing basic tasks. I've cleaned contacts, reseated card etc.

Also, I just Received Kickstart 3.1 ROM chips from Amigakit with my order. One of the legs on the chips were completely bent over. I was able to carefully straighten it but am worried since the leg seems weak. I don't think this is my problem but threw it in just in case.

Specs -
Classic WB ADVSP
KickStart 3.1
ACATUNE - STATUS recognizes my card as ACA1230-56MHZ
No other expansions in my A1200

[JACK98]

Is there any good apps/games that make use of the 030 on the A600?.

[fitzsteve]

Originally Posted by JACK98

Is there any good apps/games that make use of the 030 on the A600?.

You can try some Emulators, ZXAM Spectrum works well on 030/A600

IBrowse or other networked apps should be quicker if you have a PCMCIA network Card.

Other workbench proceses will be faster like unzipping archives and loading menus and programs, but don't expect miracles becuase ECS still makes Icons and such load slow

[JACK98]

Just did a search on lemon amiga with terms ecs and games 1995 onwards.good few supported ECS+Extra ram

[Oliver_A]

There is one important thing to keep in mind: ACATune currently does not support encrypted rom files, which might be a part of Cloanto Amiga Forever.

We are working hard to find out what happens. As it seems to be, in many cases, the ACA1230-56Mhz with its very fast Fast-Ram and Chip-Ram interface accelerates the Amiga up to a point that certain harddiscs aren't recognized anymore when Maprom is activated. The reason for this is the Kickstart 3.0/3.1 IDE initialization routine, which aborts way too quick for some drives when the Amiga is accelerated too much.

We are trying to implement a workaround for this. For the time being, use the cpu command to do the maprom by typing:

cpu cache burst fastrom

That way, the Amiga starts from ROM each time the machine is reset, and decelerated sufficiently so that such harddiscs are recognized again on boot-up.

[Cosmos]

>certain harddiscs aren't recognized anymore when Maprom is activated

Time for users to buy CF + CF reader

[extralife]

@tronplayer: are u using whdload http://www.whdload.de/ to put your games on to your harddrive ? If not i'm pretty sure u will find that this might fix quite alot of your problems with your games
many early games won't even load on a non expanded a1200, coz of the different changes between different amiga chipsets, kickstarts and other weird compatibility issues from different amiga models, so some nice people have patched many of these games through whdload to run from your harddrive with most of these issues fixed

give a try

[amigarobbo]

Originally Posted by Cosmos

>certain harddiscs aren't recognized anymore when Maprom is activated

Time for users to buy CF + CF reader

I'm not quite sure what you mean by that, but I have a CF IDE Hard drive that's not being picked up when maprom is mapped.

Just off to try the above suggestion..

[Cosmos]

Oh... Can you try with a faster CF ?

[amigarobbo]

Short answer.

No.

[TronPlayer]

@extralife: Thanks for the suggestion I really appreciate it but I am already using whdload. I am running WB from the same CF drive that runs perfect under winuae.

@oliver: When I initiate "cpu cache burst fastrom" the cpu returns - 68030 FastROM (INST: Cache Burst) (DATA: Cache Burst) but the system seems unstable and freezes with a black screen when I attempt to reboot via Settings->System->Reboot, so I am afraid to stick it in my startup sequence.

[Oliver_A]

Originally Posted by amigarobbo

Short answer.

No.

Put the following lines into your startup-sequence:

acatune >NIL:
cpu cache burst fastrom >NIL:

Does this solve your problem?

[Retrofan]

Originally Posted by amigakit.com

We have written a GUI for the ACAtune tool, we can provide it as a download for our customers:

About the GUI/reunified GUI, any stimated date for it? I don't mind to write the commands, it's just to know, as it seemed Amigakit had it ready, and with the Soldering Ironman help...

[amigarobbo]

Originally Posted by Oliver_A

Put the following lines into your startup-sequence:

acatune >NIL:
cpu cache burst fastrom >NIL:

Does this solve your problem?

Err, in my case, that would work, as the maprom command has not been run.

Should the first line be acatune -maprom * >NIL:

???

Because I just tried it, first boot fine, the on reboots only showing the purple insert disk screen, no dh0: in boot devices etc.