Amiga questions you've always been too embarrassed to ask

[offog]

Originally Posted by slaapliedje

On the note of the 68010: did any computer ever ship with this?

Yep - before the 68020 became available, it was quite a popular workstation CPU. In addition to the Sun 2 mentioned above, there's the SGI IRIS 2000, the AT&T Unix PC (PC7300/3B1), the Tektronix 4404, the NBI Technical Workstation, the Callan U300, the Gould PS3000, the Cadmus 9230, Unix machines by Masscomp, Harris and NCR, and Motorola's own VME/10, plus various other VME/S-100/Unibus CPU boards.

[Aardvark]

Originally Posted by ShK

What is a purpose of "WAKE-UP" jumper on Mediator PCI 1200 TX busboard? Is a jumper or connector header?

It's a jumper, allowing power up from PCI USB or LAN signals.
This is the only documention about it that Elbox provides.

[ShK]

Thank you!

[Thomas Richter]

Originally Posted by Jope

The ROM one will take priority.

Not in this generality. From 3.2 onwards, the kickstart (actually System-Startup) will check for newer modules on disk and will replace (some) of them of newer versions are available on the boot medium.

[wiz12]

Why are AGA games sometimes referred to as AA?

[NLS]

Originally Posted by wiz12

Why are AGA games sometimes referred to as AA?

IIRC one of the unofficial names of AGA chipset before release was indeed AA.
(Advanced Graphics Architecture vs Advanced Architecture)

[Jope]

Internally the engineers called it AA and AGA was a name invented by marketing.

[NLS]

Originally Posted by Jope

Internally the engineers called it AA and AGA was a name invented by marketing.

Well they were not VERY wrong in doing it.
They missed the chance to advance audio too.

[fryguy]

Stupid question, but would it be possible to put a game in the kickstart ROMs and have it autostart? I guess one would need a 1MB ROM and it might be easier with a singlefile game?
Or perhaps if using an A1200 one could somehow put an archived game in the ROM and extract it to RAM before launching it?

[Daedalus]

Yep, no reason that couldn't be done, provided whatever portions of the OS the game requires are also included. Code would have to take its state into account, so to shoehorn an existing game in there would probably need some significant modifications. But that's the entire point of the ROM - to provide code for the machine to run, whether it's a game, an OS, or both.

Whether there's any point in going to all that effort is a different story - providing games on PCMCIA card would let them be changeable without opening the machine and might be easier to adapt games to.

[fryguy]

Originally Posted by Daedalus

Yep, no reason that couldn't be done, provided whatever portions of the OS the game requires are also included. Code would have to take its state into account, so to shoehorn an existing game in there would probably need some significant modifications. But that's the entire point of the ROM - to provide code for the machine to run, whether it's a game, an OS, or both.

Whether there's any point in going to all that effort is a different story - providing games on PCMCIA card would let them be changeable without opening the machine and might be easier to adapt games to.

Thanks, one day I'll have Kalas Puffs Expressen in kickrom

[NLS]

Didn't even know that game.

[nogginthenog]

Project romdisk - Boot your Amiga from ROM

https://github.com/cnvogelg/romdisk

[kremiso]

was the Slow RAM access faster than the Chip one in the A500?
i see that ie the Action Replay calls that 'Fast' RAM

whats the correct order then, speed talking
1) Fast RAM later introducted
2) Slow RAM (called Fast bitd)
3) Chip RAM

is it correct?

[malko]

Originally Posted by kremiso

was the Slow RAM access faster than the Chip one in the A500?
i see that ie the Action Replay calls that 'Fast' RAM [...]

On the Amiga, speed wise, this is a question of used BUS as all memories are FAST .
(I don't know if BitD there was speed differences between memories modules so I would say 'no').

Originally Posted by kremiso

[...] whats the correct order then, speed talking
1) Fast RAM later introducted
2) Slow RAM (called Fast bitd)
3) Chip RAM

is it correct?

If the CPU is the only one to access the BUS and thus the RAM, the memory is called FAST because the CPU has not to wait (memory that you plug on the A500's side).
If the CPU share the BUS with other co-CPU, the memory is called SLOW or Ranger RAM because the CPU has to wait his turn on the BUS (memory that you plug on the A500's trapdoor).
If the memory can be accessed/used for operations by the co-CPU, it is called CHIP RAM.

[Thomas Richter]

Originally Posted by kremiso

was the Slow RAM access faster than the Chip one in the A500?

No. The CPU still has to wait if Agnus is busy. It's behind the (integrated) CPU bus/chip mem bus, and thus not faster at all.

[kremiso]

it was wrongly called 'Fast' or there were some reasons? (i mean the Slow RAM)

[Thomas Richter]

Reasons for it? It was the cheapest possibility to upgrade the system by providing more RAM, and just extend the refresh counter in Agnus without actually touching anything else in the system.

[malko]

Originally Posted by kremiso

it was wrongly called 'Fast' or there were some reasons? (i mean the Slow RAM)

No, it was not wrongly named.
To my knowledge, the speed of the memory chip (the module) was not different between the memory trapdoor extension and the memory sidecar extension. Only the access speed, due to the wait on the BUS, was different, thus, the name. But given the price of the sidecar memory extension, most of the users (poor schoolboys/girls, teenagers, etc.) BitD bought the trapdoor extension that was the cheapest one of the both.

[kremiso]

i understand, Slow RAM but Fast/cheapest solution then
thanks malko and Thomas