Falcon 1240 - Information / Manual

[Zetr0]

Hello there my fellow forum chummies,

Recently I have been exceptionally lucky and have one of these (Falcon 1240 / Falcon 040) within my collection.

I honestly feel that I have won on the lotto - its an awesome card, very well designed and constructed.

However I know very little about the card, I have seen what amiga.resource.cx and the big book of Amiga hardware have to say about the card, but thats just so skimpy I want more =D

• I would like to know what the jumpers do,
• can the card run in asyncronus mode with the memory
• whats the upgrade method for an 060 (although I will likely keep it 040)
• Fas16 SCSI chip onboard to (looks like a proprietary) 50pin header, does it DMA? it should but need more info!

There is so much mystery I am SUPER excited! I really must know all there is to know about this card, my OCD monkey needs YOUR help.


So if you have a manual for one of these cards I would love a scan of it, or to beg-you-to-death for it =)




my thanks for any help you may have =)

[gulliver]

Hi Zetr0, I had one of those for 10 years, I sold it a week ago to fund my BlizzardPPC purchase.

Unfortunately no docs are available anywhere. I asked both on EAB and Amiga.org. No jumper, no scsi, no nothing documentation

Despite this negativity. let me tell you it is an incredibly reliable and good piece of hardware.

I did some funny stuff with it, upgraded the 040 to a MC68040 at 40 Mhz and ran it at 50mhz with some forced cooling. I used 64MB double sided simms without issues. I dared to set it in a standart A1200 case, only having to leave the trapdoor opened.

Before I sold it, I was going to upgrade it to a 68060, but documentation, as said before was non existant. But I had a simple idea to do the 060 upgrade, probably usefull for a hacker like you: It involves buying 2 040/060 cpu sockets, and pluging them together, but hacking the socket power lines from them to provide 3.3 volts from an ATX power supply. It could have worked, depending on its custom rom firmware.

To use a 128MB simm you need to get the falconpatch program from Aminet, as the firmware rom has a buggy routine to detect 128MB simms.

I have also successfully used it with oxypatcher 3.14

Good luck

[gulliver]

More info:

Another downside is that the card doesnt have a RTC, like I cared

Other advantages that you might have already discovered are:
-Card components face inside the A1200 case (unlike Apollos or Blizzards)
-The simm socket is not angled, and does not clash with other components
-The 040 is socketed
-The oscillator is socketed

I saw the scsi add-on only once, it was in a Power Computing full page advert at the back of an Amiga Format Magazine. It was a very tiny picture, the device seemed very simple, without any chips at all. Remember the scsi chip is built-into the accelerator. Perhaps you can hack it to work!
It should be some work, but then the scsi chip is fully documented, and so is the 50 pin scsi pinout.

The card has been succesfully tested by me to work with Mediator cards. I tested the accelerator with my Mediator SX, see the following hardware pr0n for full visual enjoyment

[Zetr0]

Really appreciate this info my friend,

from my investigation I would say that SCSI pinout is likely to be close to passive as any, although in hardware terms it would be easy to build an interface, the software might be more tricky..

did you notice any SCSI type device added to startup in adapters / components?? (I must check this in the morning)


I will say I am quite taken with the card, she is slightly slower than my Apollo 040@25 (well fitzsteve's now) by about 1200 dhrystones, and when using the onboard IDE the card really suffers 986KB (on SFS with 132 buffers ) at the moment, my Apollo 040 can stream in at 2.2 on SFS. with just 32 buffers - but these are not the real story

Memory is much faster (i suspect running this 128MB SIMM in 50mhz is part of that lol) and she performs better in DOOM than the Apollo 040 at the same frequency, but again this could be memory speed.

I will note that using AIBB the Fast Ram memory speed exceeds by 20% the speed of an A4000 + 040@25


I also like the fact that - like the Apollo 040/060 the Falcon has is CPU the right way up, much more options for inventive cooling in my book lol.

she (falcon 040) is a bit of a chunk, and really like a man-handle to get into the trapdoor slot, but once there - that card is NOT moving for nothing short of a large explosion!

[gulliver]

I just found in an old magazine the following info from a Power computing advert:

Falcon 1240 at 279.95 GBP
Scsi adaptor at 29.95 GBP

If the scsi adaptor was only 29.95, it means I am right in assuming it was a passive device.

I am still looking for the picture of it...

As you mentioned before it has the fastest memory logic of any 040 accelerator I have come across.
And yes, it is a very tight fit in an A1200 case, but then no simms come out of the trapdoor like on Blizzards or Appollos. You just need to leave the trapdoor open, but unlike these other accelerators, you are not required to put some risers for the A1200 case.

[anystone]

Hi!

I have same card and same problem. Another question: maprom override is avaliable with BlizKick or other software to upgrad 3.1 kickstart?

AnyStone

[Zetr0]

we need to find some one with the 060 version (if it exists) a driver disk or disks and a manual..


there must be some one out there -

I have sent a PM to macrosystem.de, earlier this week alas I have not received anything back from them yet. I fear that this is not the same company anyway as registration dates are different.

but we have EAB, A.ORG, A1k and AmiBay.... some one.... somewhere must know somthing more than us =)

[anystone]

I write 2 mail to macrosystem (2010.03.27 and 2010.04.12), but no answer

[Zetr0]

@anystone

Although I believe it a lost cause I think I will phone them on Monday =)


If anyone has any information on how I would go about tracking down a company in Germany (that may have liquidated) please let me know,

[gulliver]

Zetr0, back in the old Amiga days, when Macrosystem Gmbh was doing hardware stuff for Amigas, the actual hardware developers they had were both Hartmut Sprave and Jorg Sprave, I guess you should try to reach them when you call them.
By the way, Jorg Sprave was the current CEO of Macrosystem, when I last checked, like three months ago, and as an interesting note, I may add that he was the actual designer of the wonderfull non linear editor Vlab Motion.

Good luck with that phone call

[Zetr0]

@gulliver

thank you my friend,

lets hope they can speak english, because my german is going to really offend them! LOL

[Loedown]

Originally Posted by Zetr0

@gulliver

thank you my friend,

lets hope they can speak english, because my german is going to really offend them! LOL

Just say ja and bitte plenty

[gulliver]

Originally Posted by Zetr0

@gulliver

thank you my friend,

lets hope they can speak english, because my german is going to really offend them! LOL

Dont worry Zetr0!!!

I have done some digging for you. Hartmut Sprave is able to speak german, french and english.

And about Jorg, just watch him with his hobby [ Show youtube player ]

He speaks a very good english!

[Zetr0]

indeedy!!!!

(must remember to be polite.... those slingshots look might powerfull!!!)

thanks gulliver!

[cosmicfrog]

wow awesome vid

good luck Z

[anystone]

I found some information source (but not in english):

http://amr.abime.net/review_33381
http://www.amigamagazine.info/index.html#hardware.html

[Zetr0]

sorry guys, I got incredibly busy today, that I didn't get enought time to cal macrosystems


infact time just dissapeared, lol both my girls (wife and munchkin) are looking mighty hungry too...

not sure whats scairey are the moment, Jorg and his catapults or the looks I am getting from the starving family...

[anystone]

No problem, family is the first!

Do you try falconpatch program (http://aminet.net/package/util/sys/FalconPatch)?
Because my amiga is crash, if i write it to startup-sequence. Crash, and yellow screen.

AnyStone

[gulliver]

@anystone

Falconpatch requires two things:

1.You use kickstart 3.1 version 40.68
2.That the Falcon is the last device in the zorro chain. So if you are using zorro or pci busboards, you may encounter problems with it.

Good luck!

[anystone]

Thank you for answer.

There is no zorro slot.
Requirements write: Kickstart version 39.106 or 40.68
I have 3.0 (39.106).

AnyStone