My own experience with ACA 630/25MHz

[Predseda]

At first, my ACA arrived today, damaged a bit, but I think it doesnt matter


I tried to install it this way, with CF adaptor on top of ACA.


I closed the case an tighten the screws and it worked fine, but after 45 minutes of idle run it just froze and didn't want to boot even after reboot or OFF/ON switching.

So I opened the shell again, removed the ACA, cleaned the CPU feet with alcohol and reinstalled the board. I deicided to put the CF in other way.



Seems to be better now, but I dont know what caused that lockup - or better - what helped.

I tried to insert my SRAM card into PCMCIA port and got this nice result:



I encountered a problem though. With PCMCIA CF adapter. I have 4 CF cards: 8MB NIKON, which contains 3 amiga games, 256MB sandisk, that I use in my digital camera, 512MB emtec, which was previosly inside my other Amiga and contains FFS and 4GB sandisk, which is full of WHDload games.

8MB pretends it is a NDOS disk.

256mb works a bit, but there are weird file names (for example NIKON it reads as JIKOJ).

512mb locks amiga for few seconds after inserted and then it shows no files.

4GB freezes the whole Amiga immediatelly until reset.

My Orinoco and Netgear network cards are immediatelly recognised correctly.

My OS is WB2.05, KS 37.300, Mobo reviev 1.3.

[FOL]

Originally Posted by Predseda

At first, my ACA arrived today, damaged a bit, but I think it doesnt matter

Its not damaged, thats how its supposed to be.
Im guessing Jens angled it to stop it shorting against keyboard.

With PCMCIA problem, what jumper settings do you have?

[Predseda]

Thank you. I use jumper like this:

[FOL]

Originally Posted by Predseda

Thank you. I use jumper like this:

Remove "No Disk" jumper as you have a floppy drive.
I put mine on one pin of the "Card Disable" (Angled Jumper).

See if that helps.

[Predseda]

Wonderful, it works now!!!!

[FOL]

Originally Posted by Predseda

Wonderful, it works now!!!!

Awesome,

Enjoy, .

[Retrofan]

Originally Posted by FOL

Its not damaged, thats how its supposed to be.
Im guessing Jens angled it to stop it shorting against keyboard.

Thanks for telling! I'm pretty sure one has already straightened it

[FOL]

Originally Posted by Retrofan

Thanks for telling! I'm pretty sure one has already straightened it

lol.

[Bloodwych]

Oh, another picture thread - great!

How hot will that flash card get on the accelerator?

Could you fold the connector over and position it down like mfilos did? Or is it fine where it is?

[FOL]

Originally Posted by Bloodwych

Oh, another picture thread - great!

How hot will that flash card get on the accelerator?

Could you fold the connector over and position it down like mfilos did? Or is it fine where it is?

Check his second picture, .

[Predseda]

Originally Posted by Bloodwych

Oh, another picture thread - great!

How hot will that flash card get on the accelerator?

Could you fold the connector over and position it down like mfilos did? Or is it fine where it is?

I dont know how hot was the card, but imho very. The upper cooling shield of ACA630 was after 2 hours so hot that it was unable to keep a finger on its surface, but the keyboard, which almost (or maybe) touches it was absolutelly cold. The upper plastic cover of my A600 was warm, but not much.

And yes, I flipped the cable with connectors and folded it to left, it is much better now.

My ACA630 has serial number 07334. I wonder how Jens allocated those numbers as my friend who also got it yesterday has 02073



This is the total amount of the memory just after the boot



My next step is to set-up a network, which I will do today. PCMCIA is now working, so transferring files is easy. I managed to install cnet.device, newest compactflash.device, and miami. My Amiga recognized my network card properly, but at 0:30 am I was too tired to work out why miami is unable to resolve IP address, so I gave up for the moment. I am sure I will be succesfull today, though.

[Predseda]

I managed to establish network connection, but unfortunatelly it has no use for me now, because both Aweb and iBrowse want me to have at least OS3.0 and also jabberwocky wants locale.library, which is a part of OS3

[fitzsteve]

Originally Posted by Predseda

I managed to establish network connection, but unfortunatelly it has no use for me now, because both Aweb and iBrowse want me to have at least OS3.0 and also jabberwocky wants locale.library, which is a part of OS3

Maybe there are some apps you can use like messaging and IRC or FTP? Just for fun until you upgrade the Rom, assuming you'll do that?

Great write up by the way, its nice to read everyones individual experience. These really look awesome

Have fun with it.

Steve.

[Twiggy]

Couldn't you maprom a 3.1 ROM from a file? Then make it OS 3.1? Maybe use WinUAE to initially set it up.

[fitzsteve]

Originally Posted by twiggy

Couldn't you maprom a 3.1 ROM from a file? Then make it OS 3.1? Maybe use WinUAE to initially set it up.

Yep, I'm pretty sure thats possible with the ACA Tune tool.

[DDNI]

Originally Posted by Predseda

My ACA630 has serial number 07334. I wonder how Jens allocated those numbers as my friend who also got it yesterday has 02073

Ahhh you see that is NOt a serial number... Its just Jens being friendly! Turn it through 180' and it reads hello (nearly)

[Bloodwych]

Originally Posted by FOL

Check his second picture, .

Thanks for keeping me informed FOL!

In my defence, the second picture wasn't showing at the time and none of them are now, but good to know you'd already sorted it Predseda.

Time to make use of all of that nice mem now.

[AmigaFriend]

Originally Posted by fitzsteve

Yep, I'm pretty sure thats possible with the ACA Tune tool.

Indeed you have the power at your hands with the ACA, put it to good use!

[Nikolaj_sofus]

Originally Posted by fitzsteve

Yep, I'm pretty sure thats possible with the ACA Tune tool.

so meaning that you can load a kickstart 3.1 image from HD in early startup, and then load os 3.1 on the machine without a physical 3.1 rom?

[fitzsteve]

Originally Posted by Nikolaj_sofus

so meaning that you can load a kickstart 3.1 image from HD in early startup, and then load os 3.1 on the machine without a physical 3.1 rom?

Yep, thats one of the features of ACA tune.

From Amigakit Blub:

There are more optimizations under the hood that can be selected conveniently with the ACAtune software tool:

The MapRom function allows copying the kickstart-rom (256k, 512k or 1MB) to fastmem and use it like a normal ROM there. This speeds up most operations significantly, because large parts of the operating system are located in the kickstart ROM. The MapRom function is similar to the Fastrom-option that the Amiga OS CPU command offers. However, the ACA630 does not requrie the MMU for that. If you require the MMU for a different use, there will be no conflict.

Re-Kick:
Similar to MapRom, a Kickstart image is stored in Fastmem where it will apear just like a ream ROM chip to the user. The different is that the Re-Kick option does not use the Kickstart ROM as a source, but a file from your harddisk. After a re-boot, the new Kickstart is available, and it stays active until the next power cycle. The ACA acceperators are the first commercially available products that support true 1MB kickstarts!