NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #16/NN_1992_16.iso/spool/comp/sys/amiga/hardware/13185

Internet Message Format | 1992-07-24 | 22.7 KB

Path: sparky!uunet!mcsun!sunic!psinntp!psinntp!internet!sbi!zeuswtc!lorentz!peter
From: [e-mail] (Peter Murray)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.hardware
Subject: Accelerators...thaks...
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Date: 23 Jul 92 14:52:32 GMT
Sender: [e-mail]
Reply-To: [e-mail]
Organization: Salomon Brothers Inc.
Lines: 416


I have recieved several responces to my request for information on
accelerators for the amiga 500...and thank you all for responding...
Here is a copy of what everyone sent me....

First my conclusion...

To upgrade my 500 it would cost $250.00 + memory to go to a blizzard board...
This hardly seems worth it since an 030 cost 299.00 memory for the 030
cards are 260.00 for the first 2 mb and tend to cost much more than normal
memory... so say 600.00 for the accelerator and memory for the A500.
Well for 820.00 I can get a new A2000 and then sell my A500 for say 600.00
(A500 w 2.04, adram 540 w/4mb, and Supra HD controller SCSI XP500? NEW)

so it cost me say 250.00 for the A2000...Well say a GVP combo card cost 650.00
for the A2000 and for a fast one 1000.00 so we are talking around 900.00 to
upgrade to an a2000 w/an acc w 32bin ram w/scsi port...

So how much is an A3000/25/50 ? I found them for 1800.00 - 600 = 1200.00 to
upgrade to an A3000 which alread has a flicker fixer -> 950.00 and if I want
to expand its memory its only 180.00/4mb... So I think Ill save for a while
and get and A3000....

Oh if you are intrested in my a500 let me know...


=============================================================================
>
>I as many of you proably have  an A500 with 2.0 which just can't handle
>the work load.  The 68000 just can't keep up. So Im looking for an accelerator
>to help my little Amiga out...
>
>At this stage their seem to be two choices for the A500:
>
>VXL and CSA, I have a feeling a 68000 at 14Mhz won't keep me hapy for
>long and be a waist of $ and 040's cost way to much.  I know precious
>little about either other than what I have heard and have seen in adds.
> I hope there are some people on the net that have had experience with one or b
   oth of the accelerators.

I disagree with your line about the 040 being "a waist of $..."  Ever hear the
expression you get what you paid for?  the 040 chip at 25Mhz is about 2 times,
if not more  faster than an 030 chip running at 50Mhz.  Here are some relative
prices for accels offered by various manufacturers:

GVP G-Force '030 50Mhz 4 megs ram                               $1550
PP&S '040 28Mhz 4 megs ram                                      $1750

Sure you can say that the G-Force comes with a hard drive controller, but most
people in the market for accelerators have this, plus GVP doesn't let the user
use the controller in 68000 mode.  Plus the 040 is probably riding on the edge
of CISC technology (though a RISC Amiga would be neat,) while the 030 is 5
years old and really showing its age.  I recently bought RCS's Fusion Forty
when they were having their user group deal and I got it for a steal ($995 plus
shipping.)  With the money I saved from buying this accel, I went out and
bought 16 megs of 70ns ram, KS2.04, and the ECS Denise.

>
>I will want some memory 2mb or the accelerator is almost usless in terms of
>ganing speed.
>
>So the questions are:
>
>   How well does the acc work: compatablilty, Reliability, can you push the
>                               speed up a bit?, price/peformance
>

Most newer programs are accel smart (even games.)  Most programs which are not
are real old (the original MaxiPlan, and many old games.)  You probably have a
couple, but you'll be glad that once you've got your accel that you can't use
'em any more.

Both boards you mention above can be sped up using higher clocked chips.  This
is the mark of good board design (see if you can find a 386 motherboard which
will accept a faster 386 chip inside without having to do some major surgery.)

I was the MMR advertised at $399 for a 20Mhz 030, 20Mhz 68882, no ram.  Should
speed up your system by say 3 times.  Add some 32-bit ram and you can expect
a speed increase of 8 to 10 times that of you're standard 500.

>   What are the Mem options and costs if you know:
>        - can you expand them your self or do you need to send the card
>          to the factory.
>        - what type of mem can you populate the board with, and how much
>          can you put on it?

If you're going to get memory, gotta get the 32-bit variety.  Both the CSA and
Microbiotics boards support this (VXL-30 just came out with their, after
promising it for about 5 months.)  CSA's memory is extended meaning its not
autoconfigured (you have to run a program to let you're Amiga know its there,)
but because you do this, memory can go beyond the 9 meg Amiga set limit of your
500.  In fact you can get a total of 17 megs in your 500 if you play it right.

>
>   Do either of these cards have a switch like PP 040 card does to switch
>   between two roms 1.3 2.04
>
>Thanks for you time....
>
>peter
>ttfn...
     ////////
       //                                             [e-mail]
      //                                              [e-mail]
     //  eddy Wang                                    [e-mail]
    //   Computer Art and Animation at SUNY Albany
         New Illusions      Albany, NY                  "Increase the Peace..."

From [e-mail] Thu Jul 16 09:27:11 1992
Date: Thu, 16 Jul 92 07:26:47 -0600
From: Dave K. Martin <[e-mail]>
To: [e-mail] (Peter Murray)
Subject: Re: Accelerators
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.hardware
Content-Length: 11564

Being the proud (and very satisifed) owner of a CSA Mega-Midget Racer, I guess
I could give you *my* views on the MMR.  The following is a response I sent to
another person requesting info on the MMR.  The original question was directed
towards using a MMR in a 2000 as I do but the MMR should work as well in a 500
or a 1000.  Hope this provides some useful info for you.

---

>1.  How easy is it to install the CSA Mega-Midget Racer in a B2000?

Not too hard, pop the cover off and the frame with the power supply and
floppy drives has to be removed (7 screws and 2 cables to unplug).
Although the 68000 does not sit under the frame, the MMR is large enough
that it would be very difficult to install without removing the frame.
The 68000 chip is removed from the motherboard and plugged into a socket
on the MMR.  The 32 bit ram board plugs into the side of the MMR then the
MMR is plugged into the 68000 socket on the motherboard.  The MMR can be
switched between 68000 and 68030 modes via a software program or a switch
can be connected to the MMR (connection posts are on the MMR, you provide
the switch).  I mounted the switch in the plate for the video slot along
with a switch for NTSC/PAL display modes.

Installing a MMR in a 1000 is a bit more difficult.  The original internal
floppy drive has to either be relocated outside the Amiga case or a smaller
drive mounted internally.  This is due to the close proximity of the drive
and the 68000 socket.  I think that CSA will do the complete installation
if you like, swapping the floppy drive and installing the MMR.  The metal RF
shield must be left off after the installation also.

Installation in a 500 is pretty much pull the 68000 out, pop the MMR in and
screw the case back together again.  The metal RF shield must be left off in
this case also.  There may be conflicts with some of the other adapters that
want to use the 68000 socket though.  Things like the IDE hard drive adapters
and such.  While they may work well with the MMR, the height of the boards
will interfere with the keyboard.

>2.  (Please forgive me if this is a stupid question.)  Can I
>continue to use my old 16-bit RAM with the accelerator, as well as the
>newer 32-bit RAM?  (I have 4 meg of 16-bit RAM that I would prefer to
>not have to discard.)

Works fine.  I have 2m of 32 bit dram on the MMR, an C= A2091 with 2m and a
Microbotics 8-UP with 4m along with 1m of chip ram on the motherboard.
This gives me the maximum 7m of 16 bit ram that can be used with a Bridgeboard.
The 32 bit memory is outside of the 16 bit address space so you could have
up to 9m of 16 bit and 8m of 32 bit installed if you could afford it.
I haven't noticed any obvious speed penalties for using the 16 bit ram.

>3.  Which better-known applications have broken with it?  Most
>especially have you tried to run Workbench 2.0 with it?

Offhand, I can't recall any productivity or businesss software that didn't
work other than ProWrite version 3.0.  That was due to my configuration though.
ProWrite versions 3.1 and up work fine.  Some games work fine with the MMR
(F-18 Interceptor is super smooth now!) and some don't.  The ones that don't
will work in 68000 mode just fine.  I've found that more games break because
of the 2.04 roms than because of the MMR.  For those games, I fall back to my
trusty (but slow :) 1000.
The MMR has worked great with 1.3 and 2.04 roms.  Actually in 2.04, I use the
SETCPU command (replaces Dave Haynie's SETCPU program) to configure the
caches and copy the kickstart rom images on the MMR.

Some general info:

The MMR will run without 32 bit ram but you only see about a 1.5-2x speedup.
This allows you to purchase what you can afford at the moment.  Adding 2m or
more of 32 bit dram is like super-turbo-boost!

The MMR's are available in 20, 25 and 33 mhz versions.  Supposedly you can
take a 20 mhz version, swap the '030 and crystal and the same board can run
at 33 (possibly 38) mhz but I cannot confirm this (yet!).
You can get the 'economy' MMR without a Memory-Management-Unit (MMU) but for
about $100 more you can get the MMU which is well worth the extra cost.
With the MMU, you can copy the kickstart roms (either 1.3 or 2.04) into the
32 bit ram for a significant speed boost (screen updates are about 3x faster
as are any instructions executed from the kickstart rom).  Programs such as
Enforcer and MungWall need the MMU to work as does Unix if it ever becomes
available.

You can get up to 512k of optional static ram for the MMR to copy the kickstart
rom image into.  This is even faster than copying into dram and does not
require the MMU.  I don't have the static ram so I cannot say how well this
works.  It runs about $140 for the 512k.
For the 32 bit dram, there are two different types of boards available.  For
the 500's, the ram board has sockets where you can plug your own chips into.
For the 2000's, the ram board is much smaller (to fit under the power supply
and not block the video slot) with soldered in zip chips.  Either board will
work in a 1000.  For the 2000 memory boards, CSA has an upgrade policy.  If
you have a 2 meg board and want to upgrade to a 4 or 8m board, CSA will
take your 2m board for credit toward the new memory board.

There is a socket for an optional math co-processor, either a 68881 or a 68882.
The math chip can be run faster than the '030, up to 50 mhz.  I don't have
the math chip so I can't say much on this either.

CSA's tech support has been very good the couple of times I've called.  When
I called CSA to get a 2m ram board, they actually had me call a different
company which has the ram boards cheaper than CSA retailed them for.

The only real drawback with the MMR is that hard drive access times can take a
pretty big hit.  Because the MMR cannot do DMA from the hard disk to the
32 bit ram, file transfer times can drop by up to 75%!  I've used a GVP HC+8
which was transferring around 400k per second with the MMR and now have a
C= A2091 which gets around 580k.  I can put you in touch with a guy who has
written a utility to restore the disk speeds however.  I can live with the
slightly reduced transfer rates to get the 9x processing speedup :)
Also, the MMR covers the kickstart rom socket so a daughterboard for using
1.3 and 2.04 roms is not possible unless you have an adapter with a short cable
to move the rom board out from under the MMR.

The MMR comes with a fairly good set of utilities for configuring and testing
the MMR status and speeds.  The manual covers the installation reasonably well
but doesn't have much to say about configuration.  For optimum speed, I run
with kickstart image copied to 32 bit ram, instruction and data caches turned
on and bust modes turned off (they don't work).  The caching does not
seem to have any adverse effect on the Bridgeboard.

Just for the record, my system consists of:
        A2000 with rev 4.3 motherboard (has been partially upgraded to 4.5
                                        specs to fix a problem with the GVP)
        A CSA MMR running at 25 mhz with 2m of 32 bit dram, no static ram
          or math chip yet.
        Fat Agnus for 1m chip ram.
        A2091 controller with 2m ram and a 105m Quantum.
        Microbotics 8-UP with 4m ram.
        A2088 XT Bridgboard (waiting for the 386 version!).
        Multiport IO adapter for the Bridgeboard.
        Controller for MFM hard drive for the Bridgeboard.
        A 20m MFM hard drive for the Bridgeboard (on a separate power supply)
        An extra fan mounted internally (the 8-UP runs kinda hot)
        Four 3.5 floppy drives for the Amiga.
        One 5.25 and one 3.5 floppy drives on the Bridgeboard.
        A 40m SCSI tape drive on the 2091 using BTNTAPE software,

I tend to push this system reasonably hard at times, lharcing a disk, using
ADPro 2 to convert an image, formatting a couple of floppies, restoring a file
from tape and downloading files at 2400 baud as well as having a text editor
going along with all my normal background utilities.  The response may be a
little slower than normal (about the same as an unaccellerated system) but the
system doesn't miss a beat or drop any characters.

One of my thoughts when I got the MMR was that if I ever trade the 2000 in for
a 3000, I could put the MMR in my 1000 to give it a boost.  I've never tried
the installation yet, too happy with it in the 2000.

This glowing testimonial brought to you by a very satisfied owner of a CSA
Mega-Midget Racer :)

  ____       ____
 |   / /_  __\   | * Dave Martin - [e-mail]
 |  ( / / /_/ )  | * Hewlett Packard
 |___\   /   /___| * Colorado Springs Information Technology Center



From [e-mail] Wed Jul 15 22:28:45 1992
Date: Wed, 15 Jul 92 22:24:31 EDT
From: [e-mail] (Michael Ciarfello)
To: [e-mail]
Subject: Re: Accelerators
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.hardware
Organization: State University of New York at Albany
Content-Length: 3138


In article <[e-mail]> you write:
>
>I as many of you proably have  an A500 with 2.0 which just can't handle
>the work load.  The 68000 just can't keep up. So Im looking for an accelerator
>to help my little Amiga out...
>
>At this stage their seem to be two choices for the A500:
>
>VXL and CSA, I have a feeling a 68000 at 14Mhz won't keep me hapy for
>long and be a waist of $ and 040's cost way to much.  I know precious
>little about either other than what I have heard and have seen in adds.
> I hope there are some people on the net that have had experience with one or both of the accelerators.
>
>I will want some memory 2mb or the accelerator is almost usless in terms of
>ganing speed.
>
>So the questions are:
>
>   How well does the acc work: compatablilty, Reliability, can you push the
>                               speed up a bit?, price/peformance
>
First, I have a CSA MMR 680EC30 at 33mhz (No 32 bit DRAM yet), but have the
512K SRAM. I have little to no problem with compatibility. If I do have a
problem, like with a GAME, or EUROPEAN trash programs that don't work with
anything, then I switch to 68000 mode and away I go. (Lemmings and Killing
Game Show come to mind.)
  What do you mean push the speed up a bit? At 33 mzh, do you need more?
I think you vsn take out the chip/crystal and replace it with a 50mzh one
with no modification. Call CSA to find that out.
  My 33mzh accelerator gets 10-12X faster than an standard A500. Report by
SysInfo program says 12.05 times faster.


>   What are the Mem options and costs if you know:
>        - can you expand them your self or do you need to send the card
>          to the factory.
>        - what type of mem can you populate the board with, and how much
>          can you put on it?

The 2 meg DRAM board is $275 mail order. I'm not sure if you can buy the
board with no memory and add it yourself. Let me know if you find out.
 The 512K static ram (used for putting the ROM into faster RAM to make the
operating system faster) is about $160. It's pretty expensive RAM, but REALLY
fast. I beat out my friends GVP 40mzh with 4 megs 32 bit DRAM by just having
my 512K static (SRAM).
  The flyer says it takes 256k X 4 or 1M x 4 DRAM Dips. They are socketed, so
you can install them yourself. I think 8 megs is the limit. (Do you need more?)


>
>   Do either of these cards have a switch like PP 040 card does to switch
>   between two roms 1.3 2.04
>
The MMR has nothing to do with the ROM. You can software switch between
68030 and 68000 modes though. If you have a switch and want to cut a small
hole in your A500 case, then you can make it hardware switchable.

>Thanks for you time....
>
>peter
>ttfn...
 No problem Pete, good luck. Let me know if you have any more questions.


--
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Michael Ciarfello                         Internet:  [e-mail]
State Univ. of NY at Albany               Bitnet:    mike@albnyvms
Student Computer Consultant/Computer Science Major
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

From [e-mail] Fri Jul 17 13:37:51 1992
Date: Fri, 17 Jul 92 10:36:19 PDT
From: [e-mail] (Dan Charrois)
To: [e-mail]
Subject: Re: Accelerators
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.hardware
Content-Length: 1986

In comp.sys.amiga.hardware you write:


>So the questions are:
>
>   How well does the acc work: compatablilty, Reliability, can you push the
>                               speed up a bit?, price/peformance

Hi there.  I have a CSA MMR (33 Mhz 68030) and have been very happy with it.
As far as compatibility goes, it works for almost everything I have.  There
are a few exceptions where the programers broke the rules here and there
(mostly on games), but where that happens, at least the MMR has a socket for
you to plug your old 68000 in...  So it is simple to run the 68000 instead
of the 68030.

>   What are the Mem options and costs if you know:
>        - can you expand them your self or do you need to send the card
>          to the factory.
>        - what type of mem can you populate the board with, and how much
>          can you put on it?

Memory expansion is via a daughterboard, which must be purchased separately,
but just plugs into the accelerator.  It is exapandable up to 8 Megs of 32
bit RAM... There are two versions of the daughterboard - one taking ZIPs and
the other taking DIPs...  ZIPs have to be factory- or dealer-installed if
you upgrade memory from what you had when you bought the daughter board,
but most dealers should do it for free.  I have 4 Megs of ZIPs myself...
and you're right - you do need extra memory to speed things up.  In most
benchmarks, I tend to get ~11X faster than the old 68000 (graphics-oriented
functions speed up 2-3X...)

>   Do either of these cards have a switch like PP 040 card does to switch
>   between two roms 1.3 2.04

Not the MMR... though there is a jumper setting to copy either 1.3 or 2.04
Kickstart (256K or 512K of Kickstart) into 32-bit RAM to speed things up.
It wouldn't be much trouble to hook up this jumper with a simple switch
on the outside of the Amiga, which is also hooked up to a MultiROM board.

>Thanks for you time....

No problem.. If you have any questions, don't hesitate to ask!

Dan

From [e-mail] Wed Jul 22 20:24:36 1992
Date: Wed, 22 Jul 92 20:24:17 EDT
From: [e-mail]
To: [e-mail]
Subject: Re: Accelerators
Keywords: 30 68030
Content-Length: 88


if you get the RAM board for the VXL030, then it will give you a
1.3/2.0 ROM switcher.