BigRam - FPU - VideoToaster

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Don't Panic. Please wash hands.
  • Hello all, I recently purchased and received my BigRam 2630. I installed it in an Amiga 2000HD that I’ve set up exclusively for VideoToaster, lightwave, deluxe paint, etc. I experienced a similar issue to several others I’ve read and initially found my system quite unstable. Recoverable alerts, software failures in rapid succession. After reading some posts on this forum I removed the fpu from my a2630 and that seemed to completely solve the problem.
    So my question then is: if I only intend to use my Amiga for video toaster and graphics editing, will I be able to get by without the fpu or am I shooting myself in the foot here?

    Thanks in advance!


    ps the hardware includes

    A2630 Rev 9.2 4mb ram (soldered)

    Video toaster 2000

    DPS TBC IV (2)

    DPS PAR

    A2091 (2) each with 2mb ram, one controlling 5gb HD and CD rom, the other simply serving as a mounting point for the PAR dedicated HD and providing additional ram.

  • So my question then is: if I only intend to use my Amiga for video toaster and graphics editing, will I be able to get by without the fpu or am I shooting myself in the foot here?

    Yes. The FPU is mostly used by specialized libraries. Should you get a "Line F exception" at some point in the future, it's because of the missing FPU. In that case, you can just exchange the offending library for one that doesn't require an FPU - and you probably won't feel any speed difference (unless you're rendering).


    To my knowledge, the Toaster software does not make use of an FPU at all, so chances are high that it's been dead weight in your system for all these years.


    A2091 (2) each with 2mb ram, one controlling 5gb HD and CD rom, the other simply serving as a mounting point for the PAR dedicated HD and providing additional ram.

    Ram on these controllers is rather slow and will have a very low priority anyway. Sicne it'll consume energy and produce heat, you should remove the memory chips on these controllers next time you have the machine open. It's always a good idea to remove heat sources in a heavily-loaded system.


    One thing you have surely noticed is that the overall system speed has gone up with installation of the BigRam2630. That's mainly because the computer will use the fastest memory first - and the BigRam2630 is considerably faster than any of the memory you've had in your system before.


    Jens

  • Thank you Jens for the information. The a2091 ram was something of a temporary fix and I certainly do not need it now so I will remove the chips. Good information about combining Video Toaster with modern acceleration/memory/etc is a bit scarce so I appreciate your input on that as well. And yes, your BigRam module has made an excellent improvement to the system as a whole.

  • The last reply was more than 365 days ago, this thread is most likely obsolete. It is recommended to create a new thread instead.