ACA1234

Quote from ljmarent

Accelerator money burning holes in my pockets again...
Running out of month....

Pre-Orders must be well hidden...

Not hidden - we're working on software. 8MB flash on the card shall be put to good use.

Well...if you guys need another month, I suppose I can save up again...
Assuming you think it'll be a while longer ?

Working on an A2000 that's pretty needy

Media blasted and black semi-gloss powder coated metal
Black satin dye for the plastic parts (at the shop now)

Custom 3D printed PSU:

Set aside a nice chipset:

And most of the harder to find bits:

I'm going to need an ACA2000 pretty soon
Oh and another Micromys V5 and Lyra V3

Quote from ljmarent

Well...if you guys need another month,

More like "a day or two" for pre-orders. Just today, the final issue with a very special A1200 mainboard has been confirmed to be resolved (specific combination of speed, A1200 board and PCMCIA networking does not cause a crash any more). I'll update the AIBB modules and pictures/product description over the course of tomorrow and launch pre-orders for this weekend.

Delivery may indeed take another 3-4 weeks, as not all software is available yet. I don't want to rush things for the developers, hence the long timeframe for finishing the software.

It would be great if your software delay involves the packaging and installation of OS 3.2 similar to your 3.1 install included with the ACA 500.

Not 3.2, but 3.1 is included. The latest OS is way too big for 8M flash with all it's translations - choice of a CD is the right thing.

You do have the possibility to flash your own Kickstart into the flash, so you really only have seconds for booting up, even if you don't have the physical ROMs. Again, Kick3.1 is included, and you can flash 3.2 if you own a copy (hint: available in our shop :-)).

YAY! After saving up like... 6 times... I finally got to buy one

I was starting to burn out on ordering Checkmate cases and Zorro expander boards....
Heck, I even broke down and started an A2000 to get rid of all the unwanted cash.

Hopefully in a month or two, we'll have ACA1240 boards to buy
Anyway... YAY! I'm finally broke again...

I haven't even started the mailings to registered persons, and 40MHz cards are almost sold out. Anyway, did you read the extended product description, especially the part about PCMCIA-CF card readers? This started to work this weekend, and it was the last thing I wanted to see working before I accept pre-orders.

I don't have a PCMCIA port, so I have to admit, my eyes skimmed right over that part.
I have been following along in both the English and the German portion of the site.
I know there was a delay for a specific A1200 board.

Quote from ljmarent

I know there was a delay for a specific A1200 board.

Yes, that was a particularly piccy one, and it was the reason why I had to dial down the speed a bit, otherwise PCMCIA accesses would crash the Gayle chip. Luckily, this did not affect chip ram access speed, which is higher than with any other async A1200 accelerator that was ever made. Only fully synchronous accelerators (which are all lower-spec) are faster on chip ram than the ACA1234.

Is there a big dial that goes to eleven, so when the card gets here and we don't have a Gayle, we can Crank it all the way up ?

Or are well all suffering latency for that one guy, in a far away land, with a rare A1200 and a rare PCMCIA card collection ?

Not exactly

On the ACA500plus, chip ram access speed is limited by ECS chipset and the async interface between the A500 and the ACA500plus. This can hardly be accelerated, and the best place to do this would be the chipset itself. However, that's for the Commodore A1200 Reloaded

That's so unfortunate...

I was just picturing your 'interposer' board for the ACA500 and older ACA accelerator boards, the one which is to get 'soft switching'
Maybe a nice NERF brand foam rubber 'soft switch' and an oversized cartoonish timing adjustment dial... and thinking to myself ... this would be sweet No one else has been brave enough to do this...

Purple solder mask has gotten easier to get, and a bright orange rubber switch and hot pink dial would be about perfect ... maybe add some white poka-dots on the silk-screen to make that purple board really POP.

Or you know...green with black chips and drab bleh ... like everyone else..

I'll have to decorate my ACA1234 when it gets here...

Funny - the next prototype of that ACA500plus/A1200-accelerator switcher board will be purple - just because a few Chinese PCB manufacturers have it on sale and I wanted to see it in real life. I guess the best-fittinig colour will be black, as it's going to be attached to a black ACA500plus.

In terms of colours and decoration, my daughter (age 5) is still waiting for pink and glitter. Maybe that's what's missing to get more females into the hobby Amiga :-)? My guess is that most of the about 30 female names in my customer data base of over 11.000 are the ones buying Xmas and birthday presents.

And me... my name is often mistaken for being female, except maybe in the UK

Quote from Glidewell

1. If ACA1234 is switched off or put into stealth mode will its fast memory (any amount/area of it), clock port and CF card still be available to the Amiga's onboard CPU?

As mentioned in the product description, it is in complete stealth mode and it's impossible to detect that the card is even there. That means that memory and CF card are also switched off. As a result, the 68ec020 CPU will always run with chip ram and the physical ROMs only, and the benefit of easy file access on a CF card reader in the PCMCIA slot will only be there if the drivers come from a different source than the ACA1234 flash, which is also not available to the 68ec020 CPU.

Quote from Glidewell

2. Will this board provide some sort of boot-time kickstart/configuration switching functionality

Kickstart 3.1 comes included with the ACA1234, and you can just activate it with a setting in ACAtool. If you want to flash your own Kickstart ROM image, it can be any size from 256k to 1MByte. There are four flash slots for ROMs, each of them is 512k, so it takes two slots for a 1MByte image. Further, images may be compressed with the "cranker" tool, available on Aminet. This improves boot time, and might get the size of a 1M image small enough to fit in a 512k slot.

There is no boot-time menu. Everything is controlled with the ACAtool. We don't require the user to install MUI like the other product you've linked to does, but we also don't offer to install libraries or a "Launch in PAL mode" feature - yet. There's still 480k of flash space that's currently unused, so if there's enough demand, we could look into that. You always need to remember that the ACA1234 has multiple target machines: ACA500plus, A1200, the forthcoming ACA2000, and possibly an A600 adapter for A1200 accelerators. This makes adding such "boot time configuration options" much more complicated, as each machine has different requirements. So for the first release, we have a single config only, but given enough demand, we may add such a feature.

I have the ACA500plus in my machine now and with the ACA1234 soon shipping, I'm curious about a great many things that will happen when the ACA1234 is plugged into the ACA500plus.

From reading the forums, it seems the ACA500plus boot menu will continue to present itself at power on, and the ACA1234 may be mostly configurable from the ACA500plus menu ?

I'm guessing the menu will let us select the 030 CPU speed, enable/disable the 127MB 32bit(add) FastRAM.
I'm less sure about the ACA500plus's ability to enable \ disable the ACA1234, as you're working on the purple interposer with switch

I'm also fairly confident that we keep the ACA500plus CF card slots, clockport and ethernet port functionality and that the ACA1234's CF card slot just gives us a third card slot.

But .. I have no idea which card provides the KS BootROM function ?
Does the ACA500plus still provide ~ 8MB of 24bit(add) FastRAM ?
Which CPU is active at power-on, is it the 68030 unless disabled, in which case the ACA500plus's 68000 takes over ?
Or does the system power on with the ACA500plus's 68000 CPU and hand-off to the 68030 once a boot profile is selected ?

I have removed the 68000 CPU and KS ROM from my A500 motherboard to minimize load, and bridged the ACA500plus's clock jumper, is that setup still acceptable with the ACA1234 attached ?

Is there a graphic somewhere that shows which card provides which functions in the system when combined ?
Is there a video that shows how the ACA1234 affects the ACA500plus setup menus ?

I'm not asking you to spend time on those things, just if they exist, I could probably answer my own questions and not pester about such things

Or like... I guess I get the ACA1234 in the mail and everything can be a Christmas surprise ...

Quote from ljmarent

From reading the forums, it seems the ACA500plus boot menu will continue to present itself at power on, and the ACA1234 may be mostly configurable from the ACA500plus menu ?

That's the plan. However, the ACA500plus menu update is not yet available, so you will have to wait for that to make use of the MapROM function. CPU, RAM and local CF card will work without the menu update.

Quote from ljmarent

I'm less sure about the ACA500plus's ability to enable \ disable the ACA1234, as you're working on the purple interposer with switch

I have developed that in order to give the "software-switchability" feature to older accelerators as well. One customer expressed an intention to replace his older ACA card with an ACA1234 just because of soft-switchability. I took that as an imperative to develop that switcher, so soft-switchability if NOT a reason to buy a new ACA1234. Demand is too high already.

Quote from ljmarent

I'm also fairly confident that we keep the ACA500plus CF card slots, clockport and ethernet port functionality and that the ACA1234's CF card slot just gives us a third card slot.

Correct. The ability to build a triple-CF-card-system is the same on ACA500plus and on the A1200.

Quote from ljmarent

But .. I have no idea which card provides the KS BootROM function ?

WIthout the ACA500plus menu update, the MapROM function of the ACA500plus will work - just not as fast as the 32-bit memory on the ACA1234 will be when we're ready with the ACA500plus menu update.

Quote from ljmarent

Does the ACA500plus still provide ~ 8MB of 24bit(add) FastRAM ?

Yes - the actual number depends on features selected; the ACA1234 does not block any of the ACA500plus memory, except for the 1MB space at 0x00c0.0000 (trapdoor space).

Quote from ljmarent

Which CPU is active at power-on,

It's the 68030. If you switch it off with the ACAtool, you will need an additional keyboard reset and LMB-hold to get back into the ACA500plus menu, so it's going to be aware of the CPU switch. With the menu update, you won't need that intermediary step any more.

Quote from ljmarent

I have removed the 68000 CPU and KS ROM from my A500 motherboard to minimize load, and bridged the ACA500plus's clock jumper, is that setup still acceptable with the ACA1234 attached ?

Yes.

Quote from ljmarent

Is there a graphic somewhere that shows which card provides which functions in the system when combined ?

No - I usually describe things in text form, and sometimes add pictures. Currently working on the Wiki, but will need some more time to snap pictures, make screenshots and test the last bits that we're updateing before shipping.

Quote from ljmarent

Is there a video that shows how the ACA1234 affects the ACA500plus setup menus ?

As I mentioned in some other thread of this forum, I'm terrible at making videos. I may make another attempt for the ACA1234 when the first rush is over, but won't promise anything. Video editing is a deep rabbit hole, and I have way too many construction sites already

Quote from ljmarent

Or like... I guess I get the ACA1234 in the mail and everything can be a Christmas surprise ...

It shouldn't be like that. Just follow the changes in the WIki and ask your questions - this can only improve documentation.

• The internal CF is bootable, a CF on PCMCIA is bootable only if it's Amiga-formatted. FAT-formatted CFs on PCMCIA are swappable, but not bootable.
• There are four 512k ROM slots, of which one is occupied with Kick 3.1. The option to compress kickstart images didn't make it into acatool yet.
• You plug in the card, and if you have an IDE drive already, you see our install disk (mounted right off flash memory) on your Workbench and can run our OS installer there, copy acatool (with CPU, IDE and a some other options) over to your existing system, or mount a network installer.
• If you do not have any mass storage yet, just insert an empty CF card in the internal CF slot, turn on the computer, wait up to 30 seconds, and our OS installer should boot up automatically.
• If you happen to have a PCMCIA network card (and if you're lucky), you can possibly get your Amiga into your home network right off the ACA1234 and install more software via network. This has been added as a bonus in a last-minute decision.
• On an ACA500+ most functionality in acatool is disabled, as the ACA500+ covers most of it.
• Please do not exchange CF cards on the ACA1234's internal slot too often, it's not meant for swapping. Consider it as a stationary mass storage. (I've bent pins from very frequent exchanging cards during development.)