A1200 TF1260 Build

[Dale423]

What did your CPU heatsink start at as?

I started with this. Cut it in (nearly) half, cut&filed&sanded until desired shape was reached.

Nice, would you be able to provide finished dimensions? Like how tall it it at the tallest side and at the shortest side. Not concerned with width.

 

[trixster]

It is user upgradable if you have either a Xilinx usb programmer or a Raspberry Pi3. I did the upgrade using the RPi3, pretty straight forward.

with the upgrade the tf1260 has faster fast ram access than the blizzard 1260, clock for clock. Chip ram speed isn’t quite there but that is being addressed with a future update.

the tf1260 ide header is great with the new driver and is nearly 6.4MB/s at 80mhz!

 

[miggymad]

It is user upgradable if you have either a Xilinx usb programmer or a Raspberry Pi3. I did the upgrade using the RPi3, pretty straight forward.

Perhaps a 'How to' could be written for others to do this firmware upgrade?

 

[uigiflip]

chinesem rev6 actually rev 4 lc lol

 

[CrazyC]

the tf1260 ide header is great with the new driver and is nearly 6.4MB/s at 80mhz!

Can this now boot from the tf1260 ide? And what sort of speeds are there at 50mhz?
Cheers

 

[uigiflip]

not sure if need custom ks or can boot with a future tf1260 firmware update?

 

[fitzsteve]

View attachment 169643chinesem rev6 actually rev 4 lc lol

I looked at those on Ali Express and first review said they were re printed LCs lol

 

[miggymad]

@CrazyC

I beleive that at present you can not boot directly from the TF1260's IDE interface. That may change in future firmware updates.

You can however, boot a small CF/SD card on the A1200's IDE and keep everything else such as WHDLoad stuff, utils, mods etc on a bigger card attached to the TF1260.

 

[VosCoBoss]

@CrazyC

I beleive that at present you can not boot directly from the TF1260's IDE interface. That may change in future firmware updates.

You can however, boot a small CF/SD card on the A1200's IDE and keep everything else such as WHDLoad stuff, utils, mods etc on a bigger card attached to the TF1260.

It is possible to boot with a modified boot ROM. Though not everyone has the equipment to write their own custom ROMs… so yeah hopefully a future firmware update will bring booting from TF1260. However I haven’t seen that mentioned anywhere by TerribleFire. Just the stuff that’s already in the beta, and the faster chipmem is what seems to be coming to the final firmware.

 

[davideo]

You can fit a small HD/CF to the internal IDE of the 1200.

Fit your main HD/CF to the 1260.

Set the priority on the 1260 higher than the internal IDE

During Boot the system resets and then it'll switch over to booting from the 1260.

I've done that this morning and it's booting fine

 

[CrazyC]

You can fit a small HD/CF to the internal IDE of the 1200.

Fit your main HD/CF to the 1260.

Set the priority on the 1260 higher than the internal IDE

During Boot the system resets and then it'll switch over to booting from the 1260.

I've done that this morning and it's booting fine

What needs to be on the small cf?
Just enough to load the driver then reboot?
Cheers

 

[davideo]

I cheated lol

I copied the system: from one card to the other.

Removed the ; in front of the driver line in the startup-sequence on the card for the 1200 IDE.

You also need to make sure the 1260 HD/CF has a higher boot priority than the IDE HD/CF

Fitted both cards and booted up the system.

The system resets itself once it's loaded the driver.

It then switches over to the higher priority on the 1260 IDE and continues booting from that HD/CF

The bonus I've found is that the internal IDE and the 1260 IDE are both performing very fast with the new driver

 

[fitzsteve]

Nice idea, you could even just use an old 16mb CF lol and load the IDE driver and let it reboot. I'm thinking of ordering this for my main drive:

 

[davideo]

Nice idea, you could even just use an old 16mb CF lol and load the IDE driver and let it reboot. I'm thinking of ordering this for my main drive:

There's a thread on EAB discussing SSDs.

People have had various results with them in 1200s

http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=108321

 

[CrazyC]

It is user upgradable if you have either a Xilinx usb programmer or a Raspberry Pi3. I did the upgrade using the RPi3, pretty straight forward.

with the upgrade the tf1260 has faster fast ram access than the blizzard 1260, clock for clock. Chip ram speed isn’t quite there but that is being addressed with a future update.

the tf1260 ide header is great with the new driver and is nearly 6.4MB/s at 80mhz!

You guys have so nearly talked me into getting one of these...can you upgrade the firmware in place? (ie if I get one it will go in a checkmate case (probably) and removing the accelerator means removing the motherboard which means removing pretty much everything.....

 

[fitzsteve]

Nice idea, you could even just use an old 16mb CF lol and load the IDE driver and let it reboot. I'm thinking of ordering this for my main drive:

There's a thread on EAB discussing SSDs.

People have had various results with them in 1200s

http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=108321

Cheers, I actually bought the above and also from eBay two msata-ide adapters and two 32gb msata drives as well so I'll have a few bits to test I'll let you know how I get on!

 

[miggymad]

You guys have so nearly talked me into getting one of these...can you upgrade the firmware in place? (ie if I get one it will go in a checkmate case (probably) and removing the accelerator means removing the motherboard which means removing pretty much everything.....

You will need to have the header pins soldered onto the board for firmware updating in-situ. The seller may be able to help here if your soldering is not up to scratch.

 

[trixster]

the tf1260 ide header is great with the new driver and is nearly 6.4MB/s at 80mhz!

Can this now boot from the tf1260 ide? And what sort of speeds are there at 50mhz?
Cheers

You can't boot from it unless you create a custom kickstart and add the ehide.device driver into it. However, it's easy to make a small boot cf card which sits on the internal ide header which loads the driver, reboots the machine and then the TF IDE cf card takes over

/edit sorry, it looks like im miles behind the chat!

- - - Updated - - -

You guys have so nearly talked me into getting one of these...can you upgrade the firmware in place? (ie if I get one it will go in a checkmate case (probably) and removing the accelerator means removing the motherboard which means removing pretty much everything.....

You will need to have the header pins soldered onto the board for firmware updating in-situ. The seller may be able to help here if your soldering is not up to scratch.

That's not quite correct - you can use dupont cables and hold them in place whilst the flash is taking place, this works fine.

- - - Updated - - -

It is user upgradable if you have either a Xilinx usb programmer or a Raspberry Pi3. I did the upgrade using the RPi3, pretty straight forward.

Perhaps a 'How to' could be written for others to do this firmware upgrade?

Follow this:
https://linuxjedi.co.uk/2020/12/01/programming-xilinx-jtag-from-a-raspberry-pi/

You need to find a way to move the jed files over to your pi.

make sure the pi can communicate with the TF card:

xc3sprog -c matrix_creator -j

commands to write the JED's :

sudo xc3sprog -c matrix_creator -v -p 0 tf1260r1_ram_top.jed

sudo xc3sprog -c matrix_creator -v -p 1 tf1260r1_bus_top.jed

I accept zero responsibility if you brick your TF1260 or damage any of your other kit. the tf1260 can be in the A1200 whilst you're flashing the fw but do not have the machine turned on.
If any of the instructions are at all confusing then I strongly recommend you contact your TF1260 supplier and arrange for them to flash the card for you.

 

[fitzsteve]

Tested the M2 SSD and adapter in my A1200 today off the TF 1260 IDE, works like a charm (well apart from sysinfo crashes if I try to do a speed test)

Need to get a longer IDE cable of course

 

[trixster]

sweet work steve. have you updated the firmware?