BCI NET 2/BCI NET 2.iso/archives/textfiles/warpeng4040_3.txt

Internet Message Format | 1995-03-06 | 6.0 KB

Path: rcfnews.cs.umass.edu!barrett
From: [e-mail] (Julie Petersen)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.reviews
Subject: MINI-REVIEW: WarpEngine/040 for Amiga A3000T
Followup-To: comp.sys.amiga.hardware
Date: 28 Feb 1995 16:31:42 GMT
Organization: The Amiga Online Review Column - ed. Daniel Barrett
Lines: 128
Sender: [e-mail] (comp.sys.amiga.reviews moderator)
Distribution: world
Message-ID: <3ivj5e$[e-mail]>
Reply-To: [e-mail] (Julie Petersen)
NNTP-Posting-Host: scooby.cs.umass.edu
Keywords: hardware, accelerator, 68040, A3000T, commercial
Originator: [e-mail]


PRODUCT NAME

    WarpEngine/040 for Amiga A3000T - addendum

    [MODERATOR'S NOTE:  This is a followup to Peter Seebach's review of
    23 Feb 1995, available in our review archives in the file
    hardware/accelerators/WarpEngine3040.  - Dan]


BRIEF DESCRIPTION

    This is a 68040 accelerator/SCSI-II controller/RAM expansion device
for the A3000T and A4000.


AUTHOR/COMPANY INFORMATION

    Name:        MacroSystem Development
    Address:    24282 Lynwood, Suite 201
            Novi, Michigan 48374
            USA

    Telephone:    [phone]
    FAX:        [phone]

    Email:        [e-mail]


REVIEW

    I was happy to see a Warp Engine review and agree with the
information there.  I wanted to add an addendum to the review for A3000T
owners.  These were my experiences:

    I have copy of the manual version 0.9.  The copy I have included no
information whatsoever on the A3000 or A3000T installation, and if it hadn't
been for the help of friends on IRC, I could *not* have installed it with
the documentation provided.

    For A3000T, you have to set a wire jumper.  This doesn't come with
the board.  I seem to recall running down to Radio Shack and buying the
jumper (I ended up getting a thin shielded wire with a tiny clip at each end
- they usually come in pairs, a red one and a black one - you have to be
careful not to bend the fragile hook on the end, or it won't hold).

    Once the Warp Engine is installed, you have to hook one end of the
wire to the hole labelled JP4 (near the top) and the other end to a chip on
the motherboard labelled U350.  The pin attaches to the bottom right leg of
the chip.  Make sure you attach it with the shielding facing the neighboring
chip leg, so there's no chance of the metal touching the neighboring chip.

    Make sure the Warp Engine is seated very tight, if you get a black
screen on bootup and no hard disk access, adjust it.  My bootup screen is
different since installing the Warp Engine and SCSI II drive, it is a very
dark gray until it's finished initializing and reading my large drive, then
goes to light gray and the startup routine.  So don't panic too soon.
Bootup time takes longer (especially if you've also added a large drive to
your system).

    If you have problems after getting it working, it may be that your
jumper has dislodged.  Use your own judgement as to whether to solder the
JP4 end.  I decided not to for now, but might in the future.

Now, jumpers have to be set correctly for the A3000T.  I set mine as follows,
and it works well:

     J104 set to Int          J100 set to Ext     J102 set to Ext

I left everything else alone.


SCSI CONTROLLER

    I too had problems using the motherboard SCSI port and the Warp
Engine SCSI II simultaneously.  My intention was to attach my new big drive
to the Warp Enging ("WE") SCSI II and copy everything over from three small
drives on the motherboard There was no way I could get the machine to
recognize all four drives at once.  It failed to recognize the WE SCSI II
drive.  When I reduced the motherboard drives to two, it worked (go
figure).  Then I copied all my data off the two small drives onto the SCSI
II.  I swapped in the third drive (exchanged with drive II on the
motherboard) and copied all THAT onto the SCSI on the WE.  It took several
hours of frustration and experimentation.  If I had wanted to, I could have
left the two small drives on the motherboard, but I wanted them for my
desktop, so I took them out and run completely off the WE SCSI II 1.7 gig
drive now.  The SCSI II on the WE seems to work very well with the big drive.

    You may experience similar problems in getting your system to
recognize the WE SCSI II and motherboard drives at the same time, if you are
transferring over or mixing and matching.  I don't know if this is a WE
problem or a motherboard SCSI problem (or both).  I had no SCSI ID conflicts.

    I am running the WE with a third party graphics card, as many people
are now doing.  I use the Picasso II.  There's not much information in the
Picasso II literature about configuring for fast systems, and none in the
version of the WE engine that I have.  I *know* my configuration is not
running as fast as it should be, with the Warp Engine, but there's no help
at all in the docs for configuring and optimizing it.


ADDING RAM

    RAM on the WE is supposed to be MUCH faster than RAM on the
motherboard.  So I got 4 megs.  I have a hybrid system.  Unlike the first
reviewer, my system seems to work fine with a combination of page mode and
static column on the motherboard (8 megs + 2 chip RAM) and a 4 meg SIMM on
the Warp Engine.  But, I don't know if my system fully utilizes the WE RAM.
My configuration utilities report the 4 megs on the WE, so the system knows
they are there, but Workbench does not display the extra four megs, and I
don't know if it's supposed to or not.  The documentation doesn't enlighten
me.

    Hope this provides additional useful information for A3000T users.

    I am very happy with the speed, design and SCSI II controller on the
WE.  I'm not satisfied with the completeness of the documentation and I nope
MacroSystem Development endeavors to improve it.

Julie Petersen ([e-mail])

---

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