New product: MNT ZZ9000

[demolition]

Am I the only one that needs a different FW than the standard ones provided in regards to the phase of the sampled RGB video signal? I have an A500+ board but the 500+ versions that are provided will produce a lot of video jitter as it is not sampling correctly. The Z2 builds are supposedly using the phase that I need, but that won't work with the Denise adapter..

A while back I managed to build the FW myself with the correct phase, so I guess maybe I need to do see if I can do that again with the latest build.

So is it just my A500+ that is weird? And yes, it is a 'proper' A500+ and not just a Rev. 8 A500.

I did get my AX board a couple of weeks ago btw (also ordered it shortly after it was announced and had almost forgot about it when it arrived ), but have not installed it yet. I also have AOS 3.2 to install and just got the latest P96 so hopefully I can get everything upgraded together and working soon.

[matt3k]

Updated my old ZZ9000 to the latest firmware (tried both firmwares - full and not z3 mem).

Tried installing in my 3000D with the mediator and radeon and getting:
picasso 96 could not create graphics board context zz9000.

It then take the radeon out of the mix and I can reattach it in p96 prefs, but the zz9000 doesn't show.

I ran this zz9000 with a voodoo 3000 in a AA3000+ and it worked with, nice to move the mouse between the system... I ran a CV64 in my 3000D and wanted to try the ZZ.

Any ideas?

[gdonner]

Originally Posted by Overmann

I'm sorry if this has been discussed, but does anyone have any experiences regarding rtg performance to share. Comparing ZZ9000 to Picasso IV, warp1260's RTG, PCI rtg solutions or the blizzardvision?

I would love to see a comparison between the ZZ9000 and a Warp 1260 of 24-bit 1920x1080 Workbench backdrop load times and window redraws, as I suspect that the Warp will be significantly faster (esp. redraws).

Something on my systems (A4000/060 and A3000/040) makes my 16-bit 1920x1080 ZZ9000 Workbench screen redraws really slow... might be my A3660 with lack of onboard Fast RAM? Don't know; just a guess.

[DarrenHD]

Originally Posted by gdonner

I would love to see a comparison between the ZZ9000 and a Warp 1260 of 24-bit 1920x1080 Workbench backdrop load times and window redraws, as I suspect that the Warp will be significantly faster (esp. redraws).

Something on my systems (A4000/060 and A3000/040) makes my 16-bit 1920x1080 ZZ9000 Workbench screen redraws really slow... might be my A3660 with lack of onboard Fast RAM? Don't know; just a guess.

That very well could be part of it. A 1080P screen on a classic is alot of pixels to push around....I usually use 1024x768 on my classic machines. I've found that higher resolutions can really slow things down. But faster memory would probably help. Still, swapping out a 1080P screen is going to take alot of memory

[RDP]

I'm stumped at my performance, sometimes in certain tests even slower than my Cybervision64. That being said in some tests (SysSpeed) my chipram scores are almost 50% of the other A3000 that is in the default test results.

From what I had heard the ZZ was supposed to be close or on par with a PIV. Your mileage may vary.

https://imgur.com/kg7UJ7n

https://imgur.com/DqR2sgU




thanks,
RDP

[spudje]

Anyone can suggest a good program with which I can record/sample audio in 16-bit/48000 Hz stereo AHI from the RCA input and AHI playback over the RCA outputs to test the ZZ9000AX?

Oh, and advice on a mixer program that is not dependent on a mediator would also be welcome.

[daxb]

http://aminet.net/search?query=ahirecord for example.

[matt3k]

The ZZ9000 is a great card I really like, but performance is sometimes spotty as you have encountered. Even more so in HD screens. HD on my ZZ is way slower than my Radeon via 3000Di. The NIC speeds are also about half of what the Xsurf-100 yields on a 80Mhz 060.


For what it is, the ZZ is very impresssive and in time we may see more improvement.


Having an audio option alone (with MHI coming soon) it is worth the card alone.

Originally Posted by RDP

I'm stumped at my performance, sometimes in certain tests even slower than my Cybervision64. That being said in some tests (SysSpeed) my chipram scores are almost 50% of the other A3000 that is in the default test results.

From what I had heard the ZZ was supposed to be close or on par with a PIV. Your mileage may vary.

https://imgur.com/kg7UJ7n

https://imgur.com/DqR2sgU




thanks,
RDP

[IvanEBC]

Hey Fellas.
Had my ZZ9k on my 4000D for a years. Always had some niggles on my OS3.9 but my OS3.9 is full of alterations, patches, commented out software in SS that i couldn't make heads or tails of anymore so i moved to the most current 3.2.1 (Kickstart ROMS and OS), bought Jens most current P96 v3.3.2 and everything installed wonderfully and had a great smooth night... UNTIL next day ... Dum duummmmm

Next day, machine booted up in 16 colours, no RTG WB screen, but a CRTL-A-A reset and everything "almost" looked perfect.... i had my pretty WB back but i noticed i lost the 256mb of memory from the ZZ9000, ok, a second 3 fingered salute and now the ram is back.... i can keep resetting as much as i like, everything seems normal.
But once i switch it off by the power button.... next time i turn it on, i need to go through all of the above 3 boots again to get back to normal (if i can handle only having 128mb memory from my Apollo CPU card, i don't NEED the third boot... but hey you know... why?)

I'm still on a very fresh 3.2 + 3.2.1 patch update with only assigns and MMUlibs installs (not actually starting any of the MMU software like Mufast4k etc etc.

In the old 3.9 i know there used to be some loadmodules but this time around, at least at the start, i wanted to leave it fairly clean, but found this issues... any ideas guys?

[Leon Besson]

So you have removed stuff out of your SS ? Did you comment them out first ? Or actually deleted them? Only logical course is what you may have removed looking at your post.

[IvanEBC]

Originally Posted by Leon Besson

So you have removed stuff out of your SS ? Did you comment them out first ? Or actually deleted them? Only logical course is what you may have removed looking at your post.

No the SS is still as default.
The MMULib for the 060 added two lines from in the User-Startup which i commented out for now.


I emailled Lukas who said that the Amiga has always needed the second reboot in order to see the memory, i never noticed this as my previous OS3.9 was using a loadmodule command that forced an early reboot to throw something in memory, thus the reboot was happening and giving me my memory... not sure that explains the WHOLE situation here as a reboot seem required to activate the RTG graphics as well.

[stevelord]

Originally Posted by IvanEBC

I emailled Lukas who said that the Amiga has always needed the second reboot in order to see the memory

That might be true for current fw and OS 3.2, but certainly wasn't true for historical firmware versions. I used to run OS 3.9 with the 1.5 - 1.8 firmware. I'm not sure at which point it switched to being auto-probing (1.7, 1.8 maybe?) but I didn't need to reboot for that.

I don't run modern ZZ firmware because 1.9 was such a hot mess I decided not to buy the AX, and 1.8 is stable enough on my machine. There's no benefit in paying the Jens tax to keep up with support for things I don't have.

[Jope]

Originally Posted by stevelord

That might be true for current fw and OS 3.2, but certainly wasn't true for historical firmware versions. I used to run OS 3.9 with the 1.5 - 1.8 firmware.

Did you have a setup that didn't require the reboot for the updated 3.9 modules?

[IvanEBC]

Originally Posted by Jope

Did you have a setup that didn't require the reboot for the updated 3.9 modules?

Trying to wrap my head around the question.


Firstly, I'll put my hand up straight away and admit, i never really understood the loadmodule command, i believe i know why, but never used it except when installing OTHER software did it for me or told me to.


So you want to know if ... loadmodule was never used? I can't recall as we are talking years ago when i first had the whole VA2000 stuff and then upgraded to the ZZ9000. Loadmodule has been in my SS but don't really know why, maybe those HSMathLibs too (should i use that still in 3.2.1?)



If you help me find a good reason to use loadmodule NOW on my 3.2.1, something to load into memory to help speed things up maybe, I'll be happy to give it a go and see if this helps me for now?

[stevelord]

Originally Posted by Jope

Did you have a setup that didn't require the reboot for the updated 3.9 modules?

AFAICR there wasn't a reboot when I originally got the Amiga and I had that install with an 040 (by the previous owner) when I started using the ZZ9000. It's possible it might not have needed the reboot, or it might not have loaded the updated modules... dunno.

I got replacement KS roms with my A3660 but I can't remember if that had the modules in them or not.

[spudje]

It's a known issue of the latest firmware versions that Fast RAM only appears after a reboot...

[Leon Besson]

So to help the OP. What firmware do people recommend? Curious myself, as I too have a ZZ9K.

[IvanEBC]

Note the Cut/Paste from my Email
"To make the ZZ9000 FastRAM appear, you usually have to reboot the computer once more. It will be there on second boot. Also note that we just released a new FW and drivers (1.12.1) and it's also worth to get the latest P96 version from iComp."

My email to him stated i just purchased (for a second time the new P96 from icomp) and i had already upgraded to 1.12.1 that day as it was released only 24 hours BEFORE i went ahead with my reinstall.

He certainly makes it look sound this is now normal behaviour to go through that second reboot to access memory.
It doesn't bother me tooo much as i still get 128mb from my Apollo card, but if the ZZ9000 is your only significant fast ram, this change would certainly make a few irate?

[thebajaguy]

The firmware load from the ZZ9900 media doesn't happen fast enough before the Amiga Kickstart hardware AutoConfig process has come along. AutoConfig sees nothing from the ZZ9900 and moves on - on cold boot.

There's never been an OS spec for how soon a PIC had to be ready for the AutoConfig process to reliably sample it, and since all past PIC was hardware-based, it was never an issue.

The only ways to solve it are to:
1) load up a very small and fast base HW config that is ready for AutoConfig to see, and respond accordingly, and then load the rest of the ZZ990 image later in another module (this might not be a bad idea for base components that are reasonably debugged)
2) Set the hardware signals response to 'hold' the bus response to the AutoConfig read until it's ready (or some timer - and might need part of #1 to pull this off).
3) use and off-card 'solution' similar to that of the BFG9060 F0 ROM that inserts an AutoConfig delay.

I have summited bug/enhancement request to the AmigaOS bug tracker to look into establishing a standard for this kind of PIC. It was never thought about 30+ years ago - can't think of everything.

Oddly enough, we used to have this kind of 'slow device becoming ready' problem with slow HD's and removable media drives...

[Thomas Richter]

Originally Posted by thebajaguy

Oddly enough, we used to have this kind of 'slow device becoming ready' problem with slow HD's and removable media drives...

Well, not quite. The slow start of harddisks has no impact on autoconfig. It's the firmware/bootrom of the host adapter that has to wait, and AmigaOs has no problems with that. Expansion is another business, it just scans the expansion bus. How long it takes until the CPU reaches expansion is a matter of what is run upfront, and that is hard to control. There could be still an F-space boot ROM delaying the process, or not. Or expansion could be in chip - or not. It is very hard to come up with a solution here.