d0pefish's Amiga 600/030

d0pefish

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Well, it finally arrived today - my ACA630! :D

I thought I'd share some tasty hardware pr0n for all you Amiga 600 fans out there, and detail my findings/experiences with the new accelerator as I test various things out. :)

This card is the 30MHz variety, with an incredible 64MB of RAM! It boasts a very fast, modern design which allows its RAM to be accessed quicker than many accelerators, allowing the 68030 to perform at its very best. It also includes handy switches to disable/move DF0: if you plan to remove the floppy drive to make room for, example, an Indivision ECS, and even has a header for an NMI switch - allowing Action-Replay-like freezing with software like HRTMon, for some development/debugging fun.

The accompanying config tool, ACATune, allows enabling many off-by-default features such as MapROM, and "turbo" Chip RAM access - making for a very quick A600 all-round.

First thing to do in preparation for ricing my A600 was to replace its capacitors. The machine was fully working beforehand - these are purely preventative measures and to ensure the motherboard is running at its best for the new cards. Here you can see the new capacitors I have soldered in, as usual my favorite low-esr Panasonic varieties:



The storage solution: a SanDisk Ultra 16GB CompactFlash card. This card is nice and fast, which helped a lot when transferring all the WHDLoad game/demo packs, and my music collection :) You can also see one of Mika's awesome angle-CF-adaptors perched on the IDE header, courtesy of Fitzsteve! (many thanks again mate, it's perfect! :bowdown:) This adaptor is very well made, and once attached it doesn't move at all - very secure :)



Here's the A603 Chip RAM expansion, also by Individual Computers. I added a button battery to enable its clock. There is potential for adding the Indivision ECS to this, but you must remove the floppy drive. At the present time I'm happy with my oldschool monitors. There's also a clockport, which I intend to experiment with in the near future... ;)



And now for the centrepiece, the beautiful ACA630 itself... :D The design in ingenious, and very cool to look at. The machined heatsink is a work of art.





The ACA630 is pushed down carefully over the A600's 68000 chip, and then secured with two self-tapping screws, which fix it to two of the HDD cradle's seating holes.




And finally, the top cover and keyboard is replaced. It looks like a completely stock A600, to the untrained eye... ;)


Here's a quick tip if you're ever opening an Amiga 600 (I posted this in the ACA thread over at EAB).
When disassembling your A600, don't do the obvious thing, which is removing the 4 screws, flipping the machine over and then wrenching the top half off by lifting the front edge of the case. You're very likely to snap off one or more of the rear hinges that hold the back half of the case together if you do this.

Focus on carefully un-latching the side clips - one near the floppy, one near the PCMCIA port. Undo the screws, and then unlatch the two clips by gently easing the top cover's sides outwards to unhook them from the clips, one end at a time. If it's difficult, use a plastic tool, like an iPod-opening spudger, or if you must, a screwdriver covered in electrician's tape to prevent damage to the plastic.

When these side clips are released, the top half can be lifted backwards, then upwards - effortlessly away from the delicate hinges.

I've come across too many A600 cases with broken hinges. Hopefully this may help prevent more being damaged :)

My A600's CF card is installed with ClassicWB Green Amiga Alien Edition. When booting it on the stock A600, it was up and running in about 15 seconds, but I'd struggle to run much with the limited memory - even with the A603. It was a bearable experience, but quite slow, especially opening large drawers and working with windows.

As soon as the ACA630 was installed, the machine now boots up in about 4 seconds (from the moment the CF gets accessed) It's just ridiculous! :D ACATune is also in the startup sequence, with MapROM and all the turbo options enabled.

Windows and drawers fly open, the icons are displayed very quickly (MagicWB on CWB). Disk access speed went up from 580KB/sec to over 2MB/sec according to SysInfo.

TODO:
Roll my own custom Kickstart with my patches of choice, ready for softkicking with ACATune/MapROM.
Experiment with various piece of software.
???
Profit! :D
 
SOMEBODY GET ME A BOX OF TISSUES!...STAT!! :drool:

Nice one Dale, looks AWESOME! Cant wait to put mine together :p
 
Awesome wright up dude!

Now I am really envious, it looks awesome and to know what the ACA's do for IDE is an awseome bit of news.

Now I really need one!!!

When you're done testing feel free to send it on mate, you've got my address :D

Anyway what a great bit of kit and its like Christmas day all over again for the Amiga community!!!

Have fun with that beast (y)

Steve.
 
Time to install a new version of ClassiWB now ;)

In my A600HD I have installed ClassicWB 68k, but when I'll receive the A630 I'll change it with ClassicWB Full :)

Let we know how your new accelerator board manages mp3 files :roll:
 
I resisted the temptation, and what do you do? You post this hardware porn right on this forum you *****:rofl3

No only kidding, nice upgrade! (y):rainbow:

It looks like every cpu upgrade increases aga and ide in my A4000 it did. (even between 040 and 060)
 
Bloody Hell Fire! :wooha:

I am loving the 030 card & very nicely priced too tbh & only imo.

@ thread .... (Please, no trolling)

Couple of the silk screen annotations are quite amusing. RTFM by the Jumpers :LOL:

But one thing that really does tickle me is the Silk Screening next to the Timing X-Tal saying, "Don't even think about Over-clocking". - Heh...! :twisted:

So Dale, ....... Are ya? :ninja:

@ Taj

Hope your monitor didn't suffer too much damage for the gushing. :mrgreen:

Charlie
 
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Nice! Alot of card for the money, have to say looks like Christmas all over again for you. (y)

Keep us posted.
 
Bloody Hell Fire! :wooha:

I am loving the 030 card & very nicely priced too tbh & only imo.

@ thread .... (Please, no tolling)

Couple of the silk screen annotations are quite amusing. RTFM by the Jumpers :LOL:

But one thing that really does tickle me is the Silk Screening next to the Timing X-Tal saying, "Don't even think about Over-clocking". - Heh...! :twisted:

So Dale, ....... Are ya? :ninja:

@ Taj

Hope your monitor didn't suffer too much damage for the gushing. :mrgreen:

Charlie

I cleaned it up before she got home ;)
 
Cheers guys, I'm glad you like the pictures! :D (LOL, Taj! :LOL:)

Yes, I was pleasantly surprised by the IDE speedup - it's clearly a very CPU-bound interface. I am using PFS3 which may be a minor speedup, though I need to switch it out for the 030 build.

At some point I'll certainly be replacing the CWB install with a higher-end version, now that there's so much RAM to just gorge on utilities and add-ons, w00t! :D

About the crystal (and the comedy silkscreening, which I love! :D), I really do wonder who will actually have the balls to go right ahead, ignore all of Jens' warnings and solder in another crystal?

It certainly won't be me, before you ask :p Apparently the clock governs RAM too and is a very finely cut balancing act, that would be upset if the crystal were to be just changed without the ACA's logic being reprogrammed.

It's really fast as it is though - it feels very strange using the A600 and having it return this kind of performance... it's not right! :LOL: The "worst Amiga", now up there with the big boys as a serious machine! :D
 
Very nice indeedy. Mine has just been packaged ready for dispatch, so hopefully here next week.
Seeing the improvement in performance you've seen, I can't wait to get hold of mine and get stuck in. :D
 
Why is there a 60 mhz crystal on a 25 mhz accelerator? Am i missing something here?
 
I have the 30MHz version, which has a 60MHz crystal (it gets halved). The 25MHz boards will have 50MHz crystals :)

It's a bit like the A3640 - CPU clock is crystal / 2.
 
Thanks mate, sorry for the little hijack, it is nice to have an A600 at the speed of an A3000.(y) (or better)
 
@ D0pefish

I might have some 128Mb SDRAM modules here somewhere. Fancy maxing out or is the 64Mb surface mounted?

Kin
 
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Clean-up on Aisle 3.........:whistle:

Some nice hardware pr0n there; thanks....
 
I stuck a fan and heatsink on my ACA630/30 because the heatsink of mine does get quite warm. I run the harddisk in the location where it is on the photo so it is of no consequence to the heat of the ACA630. It is solely produced by the 68030. This harddisk stays quite cool while the heatsink got quite warm.

Ok, ok, the temperature might be well in normal working parameters but whenever I have heatsinks getting that temperature I do something about it. You should see the cooling measures on my PC's. :)
 

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I could not resist and ordered one at vesalia and other pieces at amigakit. :wink: Did not wan't to miss all the fun. I do like the idea of a small powered amiga.

I decided not to go with a real hard disk wich I normally prefer due to space reasons. I ordered USB as well, so over that interface lot's of space.
 
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