ACA1230 discussion

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Not had chance to do much more testing of this - my bloody hard drive failed whilst I was copying a load of files to it. Got checksum error, and now "Not a DOS disk in DH0" when I try to boot. :(

Still, that is a whirry old 6GB hard disk drive - gives me an opportunity to grab myself one of those nice and quiet CF-IDE drives. I believe they're a bit faster too? Guess AmigaKit are getting another order from me soon!
 
just wanted to add that my card is working awesomely. Did some tests with AIBB and it sits close to an A4000 (the one that test uses assumes 4 megs of FAST RAM, as far as I can tell), exceeding in a few regards.

Workbench certainly feels nice and snappy coming from my old card (030/25 with 8 megs RAM) and it gave a nice boost to a few games as well.

Installing was a snap. It does fit very tightly but after the pain of removing and replacing my ROM's from 3.0 to 3.1, it didn't feel so bad. Damn little legs :censored:

---------- Post added at 02:04 ---------- Previous post was at 01:59 ----------
gehtjanx said:
I wanted to buy one, but to be hinest, I didn't like the product that much...

1.) It uses old parts, so no advantage for life time
2.) It makes lot of trouble as I heard. Pcmcia not working, HDD data problems, etc.
3.) it uses that aca tool - too much complicated and with that many options. no run "out of the box"
4.) Kickstart mapping (which I would like very much) also making some problems
5.) Cut the trapdoor slot. How silly is that? You make an product, make a change and not test it again??? That QUALITY CHECK FAILED
Click to expand...
I can verify first hand that PCMCIA works perfectly fine, my HDD works perfectly fine, and it runs perfectly fine out of the box, at least with 3.1 ROM's.

As far as the trapdoor, eh. My old accelerator stuck out so far I had to remove the damn thing.

---------- Post added at 02:06 ---------- Previous post was at 02:04 ----------
MikeFishcake said:
Not had chance to do much more testing of this - my bloody hard drive failed whilst I was copying a load of files to it. Got checksum error, and now "Not a DOS disk in DH0" when I try to boot. :(

Still, that is a whirry old 6GB hard disk drive - gives me an opportunity to grab myself one of those nice and quiet CF-IDE drives. I believe they're a bit faster too? Guess AmigaKit are getting another order from me soon!
Click to expand...

I have one of them, and it works really well. Completely silent, and I kind of like not having a heavier drive sitting in there.
Its quick too, but I couldn't give you an exact comparison. It feels as quick as running stuff from RAM disk, but I could be wrong
 
My card arrived yesterday in good shape. I wanted to echo the same comments others had, fitting the card was tight but easier than getting those 3.1 ROM legs in there correctly. Seems someone used cheaper ROMS for 3.1 and the legs are weak compared to the other ROMs I've dealt with including C64 chips and the a1200 3.0 ROMs.

At first the ACA 1230/28 didn't fit in there all the way but then I got it. Booted up to red screen. Restarted and only got black screens. Pulled the card out some and it worked! I guess I pushed it too far up the CPU slot.

SysInfo tests reveal about 6.5 Mips, slightly less than my Viper 1230 43mhz (7.11mips), but I'm sure the memory is faster on this one. I haven't tried any of the other features but games seemed to run about as they did with my Viper and the workbench screens too. Much better than without an accelerator and light years faster than my a600.

I was amazed how much smaller the card was from my Viper. The size of the components is so much smaller, it's amazing what a few years can do in the size of electronics. I found that did need to open the case to get positioned right although it didn't need to do what the Viper. I'm not sure I need all that RAM given DOOM or a web browser really isn't practical at 28mhz. But hey I"m sure there are some additional utilities that I can run.
 
Mraccess said:
My card arrived yesterday in good shape. I wanted to echo the same comments others had, fitting the card was tight but easier than getting those 3.1 ROM legs in there correctly. Seems someone used cheaper ROMS for 3.1 and the legs are weak compared to the other ROMs I've dealt with including C64 chips and the a1200 3.0 ROMs.

At first the ACA 1230/28 didn't fit in there all the way but then I got it. Booted up to red screen. Restarted and only got black screens. Pulled the card out some and it worked! I guess I pushed it too far up the CPU slot.

SysInfo tests reveal about 6.5 Mips, slightly less than my Viper 1230 43mhz (7.11mips), but I'm sure the memory is faster on this one. I haven't tried any of the other features but games seemed to run about as they did with my Viper and the workbench screens too. Much better than without an accelerator and light years faster than my a600.

I was amazed how much smaller the card was from my Viper. The size of the components is so much smaller, it's amazing what a few years can do in the size of electronics. I found that did need to open the case to get positioned right although it didn't need to do what the Viper. I'm not sure I need all that RAM given DOOM or a web browser really isn't practical at 28mhz. But hey I"m sure there are some additional utilities that I can run.
Click to expand...

Try sysinfo with all the ACATune tweaks enabled.
 
I'm attaching my own just for reference (56MHz version)

61_4d1faacf846b9.jpg



I honestly coudn't believe how fast an 030 can be. OS3.9+BB3 with a custom 3.9 kickstart just boots in less than 10secs and everything works like you have an at least 040!

For the screenie I used:
ACATune -maprom * -cache on -burst on >NIL:
 
mfilos said:
I'm attaching my own just for reference (56MHz version)

I honestly coudn't believe how fast an 030 can be. OS3.9+BB3 with a custom 3.9 kickstart just boots in less than 10secs and everything works like you have an at least 040!

For the screenie I used:
ACATune -maprom * -cache on -burst on >NIL:
Click to expand...

You can make it go faster, :).
 
With enabling all of the options for caching, maprom, z2, etc from the ACATune guide I only get about a .28 increase according to SysInfo. It's at 6.78mips (after running several tests to get a good mean). I'm not complaining -- this is just an FYI.
 
@FOL
I just don't think that using all ACATune switches is clever for gaining a bit of horsepower.
I would really love to know which are the most viable switch use. I used the ones that Oliver suggested in the long EAB thread.

I Read The Folded (lol) Manual along with the Guide from Disk btw. Stop being an Illuminati and share da info pl0x! :D (j/k)
 
mfilos said:
@FOL
I just don't think that using all ACATune switches is clever for gaining a bit of horsepower.
I would really love to know which are the most viable switch use. I used the ones that Oliver suggested in the long EAB thread.

I Read The Folded (lol) Manual along with the Guide from Disk btw. Stop being an Illuminati and share da info pl0x! :D (j/k)
Click to expand...

Well, my A630 runs smoother with it all enabled.
I doubt jens would release tweaks to the card if its going to kill it.

I just setup AmigaSYS 4 AGA on my A600, :). Runs ok, obviously some apps will fail, but all in all it runs ok.
Been playing with Master system and spectrum emulators on it, :).
Think Ill have a talk with Dary, see if we can get a proper A600 AmigaSYS 4 out.
 
As posted by Jens over on EAB.

Jens on EAB said:
I've had several customers in Germany who had stability problems with their ACA1230-28. Three of them have now confirmed that the attached timing fix is perfectly working for them. One feedback is still pending, and one feedback indicates a warranty case.

Chris from AmigaKit confirmed the fix as well, he even did cross-tests by removing and re-applying the caps to really confirm that these are the cause for the stability problems. Thanks for all that work, Chris!

I have snapped pictures and wrote the attached document. Should anyone of you have stability issues with the ACA1230, please check if you have the capacitors E123C and E125C installed. Only remove them if you really have stability problems. By removing them if you don't have any problems, you're likely to introduce timing issues. In other words: If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
Click to expand...
 

Attachments

After some tinkering, I think i've found a problem with ACATune and ClassicWB FULL.

On a cold boot, having ACATune <NIL: as the first command in startup-sequence freezes the machine on a black screen. Adding it back in, then resetting witth ctrl-a-a will boot normally.

I'll experiment with this some more, at first I thought it was a problem with visualprefs or magicTV.
 
Hell_Labs said:
After some tinkering, I think i've found a problem with ACATune and ClassicWB FULL.

On a cold boot, having ACATune <NIL: as the first command in startup-sequence freezes the machine on a black screen. Adding it back in, then resetting witth ctrl-a-a will boot normally.

I'll experiment with this some more, at first I thought it was a problem with visualprefs or magicTV.
Click to expand...

Little lost, your not using it right?

ACATune will do nothing.
On an A630, its there to enable disable options.

Try adding an option/s. See what happens.
 
What?

We're talking about the ACA1230?

I'm running it to get the ram working. You know, like you're supposed to.

sticking it after the first setpatch makes it work properly. Write that down.
 
Hell_Labs said:
What?

We're talking about the ACA1230?

I'm running it to get the ram working. You know, like you're supposed to.

sticking it after the first setpatch makes it work properly. Write that down.
Click to expand...

Doh, thought we were in the A630 thread, ;).
Hmmmm, not even going to reply to your last two sentences.
 
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