Apollo 1230 Turbo Lite (LC) - Actually PCMCIA friendly with 8 megs ram?

According to Big Book of Amiga Hardware, the Apollo 1230 Turbo Lite board is NOT suppose to be PCMCIA friendly with more than 4 megs ram on it:
http://www.amiga-hardware.com/showha...cgi?HARDID=107


But, today I received it from an Amibay member and while it was suppose to come with only 4 megs fast on board, it actually came with 8.

As soon as I hit the desktop I checked and I have full access to my PCMCIA port. My 3com Etherlink III card works fine as does my Compact Flash adapter.


Not that I am complaining, but this card isn't suppose to work like this.

Is BBOAH wrong, or is something else going on here?


Picture of the suspect:

I had the same with my Mtec card. It was supposed to conflict with the PCMCIA, but worked happily with it :s

I think its something to do with 3.0 Roms, I read the same over at Amiga.org & here on Amibay about the M-Tec.

I also had a weird situation where my old 8mb upgrade worked with all 8mb and the PCMCIA on Classic Workbench Lite, then when I upgraded to CWB Full it stopped working...

Some strange things happen with these Amiga's :D

Steve.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by fitzsteve

I also had a weird situation where my old 8mb upgrade worked with all 8mb and the PCMCIA on Classic Workbench Lite, then when I upgraded to CWB Full it stopped working...

---

Ohh hell. I had planned to upgrade from CWB Lite to Full or ADVSP


Might have to rethink that plan.

I've actually been meaning to ask: "Has anyone here ever used 8MB of FastRAM on an A600/A1200 and ruled the PCMCIA port out as a result?"

The question came to me when I saw an A600 listed on eBay. It had an M-Tec 630 accelerator, with 8MB RAM (which should have ruled out the PCMCIA port). Except this little Amiga also had a 4MB PCMCIA SRAM card, and Workbench cheerfully reported 12MB of Fast RAM. I can't help but wonder if the 8MB/PCMCIA stuff is just a myth.

While using some CF cards, all goes well at up to some point when the Amiga get a visitation from Mr. Guru.

Some (few) expansion boards circumvent the problem mapping the outer-most 4Mb memory outside Zorro-2 space.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by rkauer

While using some CF cards, all goes well at up to some point when the Amiga get a visitation from Mr. Guru.

Some (few) expansion boards circumvent the problem mapping the outer-most 4Mb memory outside Zorro-2 space.

---

I can believe that, but it seems a lot of effort to go to if you're limiting the accelerator to 8MB Fast RAM. If you're going to allocate into 32bit space, why not take more RAM and be done with?

@Andy,


It all comes down to two things - Accessibility (in processable bits) and Addressiblity (a range of memory in bits)


The Amiga 1200 is a 32bit machine, thats all primary paths and dataspaces are 32bit accessible - with the exeption of the PCMCIA port which is only 16bit accessable.

Now, although the A1200 is 32bit in architecture only has a 24bit addressible space, this is not solely due to the EC020 CPU onboard but it is a big part. Because of this limmitation the maximum memory alloction space for the A1200 (as with the earlier models like the A600 / A500 / A2000) is a celing of only 16MB (24bits addressing)

This first 8MB (well close enough) of the 24bit addressible is reserved for the system, I/O, custom chips and locations, (this area also inlucdes the reserve of 2MB of CHIP as well)


Now, back in the day when deveoplers made accelerators; It was easier, and much cheaper, to used the existing 24bit addresible space of the A1200. Thus using of the remaing 8MB of 24bit addresible space instead of implementing some new CPLD(s) code and extra logic to setup / initialize the memory - outside the 24bit address barrier (i.e. making it 32bit addressable space)


You will find that a lot (if not all) of the 8MB 030 cards are simply 8MB cards with a very small provision provided for the handfull of extra 030 signal lines.


Its quite pain in terminology as the basic A1200 is a 24bit addressing yet 32bit accessbile compuer and its quite easily to get confused and get the above mixed up.

in contrast the A600 is a 24bit addressing yet 16bit accessible (for the most part ;)) computer



yeah... sorry I prolly confused the situation...


But I suspect that the 3.0 ROM and 3.1 have a difference in the AddMEM feature - perhaps in its base address or offesst..


Reviewing some of the hardware some 030 cards likethe above seem to work comftably with the PCMCIA when running under KS3.0 - the irony is under 3.1 this functionality is broken.

On the flip of this there exists a wonderfull 32bit addressing 030 card (max 128MB ram) the DKB Cobra - Under KS3.0 this card functions flawlessly adding its ram and working away... however under KS3.1 you need to update the firmware on the card for it to work with any memory. -

It is also a point to mention that there are a couple of (older) 8MB memory cards that are now auto-configured under 3.1 (where they were not before under 3.0 or earlier) - these used need the ADDMEM command in startup.

I plan one day to dissemble both the kickroms (3.0 and 3.1) and see what functionality

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Zetr0

You will find that a lot of the 8MB 030 cards are simply 8MB cards with a very small provision provided for the handfull of extra 030 single lines.

---

That's the bit I was trying to home in on. I understand exactly why you might make a 24-bit only card, even if it's got a 68030 on it. The thing is, if you're going to make some of the memory 32-bit addressable, and go through all the hard work of providing a 32-bit memory logic, why then still limit the card to 8MB?

Also, why did nobody make more use of the 1.5MB-wide slow-fast RAM area? I can't think of a reason why an A1200 shouldn't be able to address 2MB Chip + 9.5MB Fast. :-)

@Andy,

thats the point my friend, They didnt' make the cards 32bit addressible, - they didn't need to... as it was only going to support 8MB of fast ram.,.... and 8MB back in 1993/4 was a lot of memory!

infact they made not much effort as

32bit access was already available from the trapdoor port
Add 030 + 12 extra signal lines
8MB of Ram (using the upper half of the 24bit addressing area)
Addition of the FPU for sweetners

If it wasn't for the A1200 trap-door connector being next to impossible to obtain its perhaps one of the most easiest slots to design an accelerator for as everything is there for you - infact its only 3 CPLD's to add 8MB of auto configuring FastRAM

For adding more RAM, you need to able to address more bits.... since the motherboard is limmited to 24bits you then add another 32bit accessible area of memory for the processor. to do this you need add

Hard/Soft logic to define the base (offset) address for the CPU
A small auto booting programm that adds this 32bit accessable memory to the memory pool -

most likely using an AddMem command in rom thats configured either by a small probing logic (to see what ram you got installed) or by jumpers to denote what is available.


I make it sound easy but the above is a lot of development and debugging time as some simms dont report properly or are accessed in a differing way... so from a cost stand point... the 8MB 030's and this 28mhz 020's were an affordable solution - if all you needed was a faster processor and more memory.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by AndyLandy

Also, why did nobody make more use of the 1.5MB-wide slow-fast RAM area? I can't think of a reason why an A1200 shouldn't be able to address 2MB Chip + 9.5MB Fast. :smile:

---

I dont think this feature is implemented in the A1200 as the 32bit addessing of Lisa, Alice and Budgie - I will hit the specs after lunch but think that this extra 1.5mb (slow) FAST area is eaten up but the 32bit chips.