Retronaut > The Grand Slam SCSI controller, do I really need it in this Dicke Olga, 68030 equipped Amiga 2000?

[Tchucolate]

The Grand Slam SCSI controller, do I really need it in this Dicke Olga, 68030 equipped Amiga 2000?

In a recent review I fitted my prized Amiga 2000 with a Dicke Olga 68030 accelerator.
It also came with super fast IDE, so, do I really need the machines original Grand Slam SCSI controller?
Using a BlueSCSIv2 that card MIGHT give me a virtual CD-Rom Drive and also WIFI networking. But, will it actually work?

This video also gives a brief tour of my Amiga 2000, and the kit I currently have it it.
The question is, will the Grand Slam card also join the party? Watch to find out...

 

[fitzsteve]

SCSI for sure has its advantages such as lover CPU overhead and easily adding external devices but I'd be looking at the controller speed vs IDE on the accelerator, are they comparable?

In one of my previous setups I've ran my boot drive on the IDE then had a CD and storage drive on SCSI, in my situation the SCSI was faster and that was where I installed my larger games like Doom and my music files.

 

[samaron]

Got one of these Dicke Olga cards today, but lack a proper IDE drive for it at the moment. I personally have come to prefer SCSI, and will have to use an A2091 temporarily while I wait for an SSD to arrive. Currently using an old G-Force 030 card with BlueSCSI. I really like the flexibility SCSI provides in general, and especially paired with these modern drive emulators. However, the addition of S-ATA did intrigue me on the accelerator card.

 

[Tchucolate]

SCSI for sure has its advantages such as lover CPU overhead and easily adding external devices but I'd be looking at the controller speed vs IDE on the accelerator, are they comparable?

In one of my previous setups I've ran my boot drive on the IDE then had a CD and storage drive on SCSI, in my situation the SCSI was faster and that was where I installed my larger games like Doom and my music files.

Yes, this card gives 2.5ish mb a sec. And that would have been good in the late 80s, and indeed similar to IDE in the 4000. But the Dicke Olga IDE, at least with the NVMe on the back was clocked at more like 8.2m, so the Grand Slam cant compete with that.

I was looking more to using it with the BlueSCSI to get the virtual CD-Rom and WIFI. Sadly, neither worked. I do wonder if a stock install of 3.2.2 might work though. I was a bit surprised the CD-Rom did not work. Whilst the DaynaPort was more risky as its a new driver, which has not been tested with lots of devices. Rob Smith published it, and I guess expects others to take it forward. He already had to add a special GVP mode to it, for GVP devices. So its perfectly possible the Trump Card/Grand Slam needs similar support due to non standard SCSI commands?

When I get time, I may give that a try. Though I would like to move on to other topics for a while...

 

[Tchucolate]

Got one of these Dicke Olga cards today, but lack a proper IDE drive for it at the moment. I personally have come to prefer SCSI, and will have to use an A2091 temporarily while I wait for an SSD to arrive. Currently using an old G-Force 030 card with BlueSCSI. I really like the flexibility SCSI provides in general, and especially paired with these modern drive emulators. However, the addition of S-ATA did intrigue me on the accelerator card.

If the A2091 works with the bonus BlueSCSIv2 features, sounds like its worth keeping. But Im guessing it wont keep up with the NVMe on the Olga. But as you say, being able to connect to external devices is also something Im into using.

In my case, using the CFlash on an external bracket, is at least getting me fast file transfer and 8-Bit Dreams has informed me that you can format the CFlash with Fat32, so you can just transfer files directly from Windows/MacOs, which is pretty cool.

 

[fitzsteve]

Yes, this card gives 2.5ish mb a sec. And that would have been good in the late 80s, and indeed similar to IDE in the 4000. But the Dicke Olga IDE, at least with the NVMe on the back was clocked at more like 8.2m, so the Grand Slam cant compete with that.

I was looking more to using it with the BlueSCSI to get the virtual CD-Rom and WIFI. Sadly, neither worked. I do wonder if a stock install of 3.2.2 might work though. I was a bit surprised the CD-Rom did not work. Whilst the DaynaPort was more risky as its a new driver, which has not been tested with lots of devices. Rob Smith published it, and I guess expects others to take it forward. He already had to add a special GVP mode to it, for GVP devices. So its perfectly possible the Trump Card/Grand Slam needs similar support due to non standard SCSI commands?

When I get time, I may give that a try. Though I would like to move on to other topics for a while...

You can use something like this to mount CD images, it works really well:

Aminet - docs/help/MountISO.lha

aminet.net

However I do like a physical CD drive in my big box/tower setups for games with CD audio.

 

[samaron]

...But Im guessing it wont keep up with the NVMe on the Olga...

It is actually S-ATA, not NVMe. Very similar physically, but very different.

For some reason I am having stability issues with my Olga. Looks like I first need to sort out this before I can even consider using the A2091 SCSI card.

If I get the card playing nice with my Amiga 2000, I might migrate over and just use the S-ATA on the card. Would still like to keep the SCSI card for other peripherals, but I would take a serious performance hit using it as the main drive.

 

[qz3fwd]

I always enjoy your videos. Yours was the 1st on the Dickie Olga as I recall! It really is a fine card for the 2000z

 

[8 Bit Dreams]

It is actually S-ATA, not NVMe. Very similar physically, but very different.

For some reason I am having stability issues with my Olga. Looks like I first need to sort out this before I can even consider using the A2091 SCSI card.

May I ask what kind of issues do You have?

first thing You needs to do - is to measure voltage on the 5V connector in the upper Jumper row. It is quite often that Coprocessor slot is corroded or making poor connection, so that voltage drop is quite big. If You have less than 4.85v this might be Your issue - use the floppy power connector near CF Slot to add power directly on the card, it helps a lot

If I get the card playing nice with my Amiga 2000, I might migrate over and just use the S-ATA on the card. Would still like to keep the SCSI card for other peripherals, but I would take a serious performance hit using it as the main drive.

It will slow down Your system acting as a handbrake. IDE on that accelerator runs pretty fast even if it's not tweaked wit MapROM yet....

 

[samaron]

May I ask what kind of issues do You have?

first thing You needs to do - is to measure voltage on the 5V connector in the upper Jumper row. It is quite often that Coprocessor slot is corroded or making poor connection, so that voltage drop is quite big. If You have less than 4.85v this might be Your issue - use the floppy power connector near CF Slot to add power directly on the card, it helps a lot

It will slow down Your system acting as a handbrake. IDE on that accelerator runs pretty fast even if it's not tweaked wit MapROM yet....

Wasn't my intent to scare you with the trouble I encountered. Had not exhausted all the troubleshooting steps at the time the post was written.

The manual is fantastic, and had the answer to the stability problem. It certainly was low voltage, and connecting power directly to the card solved it.
Initially it wouldn't boot at all, and removing all the expansion cards woke it back to life, but with some graphical glitching.

Still a bit unsure why SysInfo (v4.4) reports the CPU to not have an MMU, as it isn't the EC model. The "MMU off" jumper isn't closed either. A bit strange.

As for the A2091, I know it will cause a huge penalty to the performance, but I do not have anything else to boot from at the moment. I used to run the BlueSCSI from the GVP G-Force 030 I had in it. Can't get it to boot from the A2091 for some reason. Maybe the card is faulty, but it does show up properly as working in the expansion board diagnostic.

For now it looks like I just have to wait for the m.2 S-ATA SSD stick to arrive. Had to order it online. Regardless, it is a fantastic product for being a hobbyist project. In my other Amiga computers I boot from either a Blizzard SCSI controller or a Fastlane Z3 SCSI controller. I just lack IDE devices for this purpose...

 

[8 Bit Dreams]

Wasn't my intent to scare you with the trouble I encountered. Had not exhausted all the troubleshooting steps at the time the post was written.

The manual is fantastic, and had the answer to the stability problem. It certainly was low voltage, and connecting power directly to the card solved it.
Initially it wouldn't boot at all, and removing all the expansion cards woke it back to life, but with some graphical glitching.

Hmm, graphical glitches pointing towards Agnus, it socket, or RAMs.. maybe You just need to remove Agnus and give it a good clean..

Still a bit unsure why SysInfo (v4.4) reports the CPU to not have an MMU, as it isn't the EC model. The "MMU off" jumper isn't closed either. A bit strange.

You need to install MMULibs to let MMU to work, probably these are missing currently

As for the A2091, I know it will cause a huge penalty to the performance, but I do not have anything else to boot from at the moment. I used to run the BlueSCSI from the GVP G-Force 030 I had in it. Can't get it to boot from the A2091 for some reason. Maybe the card is faulty, but it does show up properly as working in the expansion board diagnostic.

It is possible that Your drive needs a dedicated driver to be able to boot from that drive - just like in this video @Tchucolate posted...

For now it looks like I just have to wait for the m.2 S-ATA SSD stick to arrive. Had to order it online. Regardless, it is a fantastic product for being a hobbyist project. In my other Amiga computers I boot from either a Blizzard SCSI controller or a Fastlane Z3 SCSI controller. I just lack IDE devices for this purpose...

Not a single IDE or SATA drive at home?

 

[samaron]

The graphical glitching went away with the additional power provided. Had no glitching with the GVP or no card installed. The Agnus is replaced with an ACE2b from Individual Computers and works great as far as I can tell.

Thought SysInfo would detect it has an MMU regardless of MMULib? Regardless, I will try and get the full system up and running again. I have multiple old IDE drives, but my experience is that they tend to be a bit unreliable. However, I found and old 500GB S-ATA SSD I can use temporarily.

My A2091 has a home made adapter for something called GuruROM. Were told it uses omniscsi.device. The card still wouldn't boot with the original ROMs installed either.

I think we should leave it here and maybe continue over PM, as it is getting a bit off topic. But don't you worry, I will get it sorted eventually.

 

[8 Bit Dreams]

The graphical glitching went away with the additional power provided. Had no glitching with the GVP or no card installed. The Agnus is replaced with an ACE2b from Individual Computers and works great as far as I can tell.

Yeah, ACE2b are good, however, You need to patch Kickstart to force them to boot in PAL mode..

Thought SysInfo would detect it has an MMU regardless of MMULib? Regardless, I will try and get the full system up and running again. I have multiple old IDE drives, but my experience is that they tend to be a bit unreliable. However, I found and old 500GB S-ATA SSD I can use temporarily.

Nope, MMULibs are really needed for MMU to get working...

My A2091 has a home made adapter for something called GuruROM. Were told it uses omniscsi.device. The card still wouldn't boot with the original ROMs installed either.

Aha! omnisci.device isn't included anywhere in the system by default, hence it can't boot

I think we should leave it here and maybe continue over PM, as it is getting a bit off topic. But don't you worry, I will get it sorted eventually.

Sure! Just wanted to be helpful...

So yeah! Don't forget to install proper driver for the storage media hardware if You plan to use an extra card!

 

[Christopher777]

You don't really need the SCSI Grand Slam controller for your Amiga 2000, especially when you have the Dicke Olga 68030 accelerator with fast IDE and BlueSCSIv2, providing virtual CD-ROM drive and Wi-Fi network capabilities. You can try using the BlueSCSIv2 and see if it meets your needs before investing in an additional SCSI controller.

Best regands Christopher