ACA500plus Saved Profiles with Map ROM

Greetings iComp team and Amiga friends,

First off, let me say I have so far really been enjoying my ACA500plus. I have installed AmigaOS 3.2 and WHDLoad and have been having good luck with its performance and capabilities. It's an awesome device!

I am writing because I have been trying to diagnose an issue I have been having with loading Saved Profiles from the Main Menu or from the Boot Menu option under Global Profile Settings.

Here are my current system specs before I get further along:

Amiga 500 - Rev 5 NTSC

Agnus 8370

AmigaKit - A500 512K Memory RAM Expansion with RTC

Commodore 1084S Monitor

ACA500plus - Small DisMo Version

Commodore PSU - 312503-01

After creating a profile in Expert options with my Map ROM (In this case AmigaOS 3.2 Kickstart 47.96) and save my profile, I can press Return and it boots wonderfully. The issue seems to be that if I ESC out to the Main Menu and select Profile 1, I get garbled text when the Kickstart loads and it hangs with a flashing screen. After shutting off my Amiga and power it back on, the Kickstart ROM defaults back to Mainboard ROM and the problem persists. One idea I had would be to save the profile and bypass the Main Menu Profile selection by using the Boot Menu feature under Global Settings, but when I choose that, during power on, it not only gives me garbled text when loading the Kickstart, but also lands on a green screen with an EXC29 [2019] error. And then my Auxiliary CF card LED stays red and the DisMo flashes E0.

I found this post here: https://forum.icomp.de/index.php?thread/1152-aca500-profile-corruption/

And this sounds like the person was having the same issue as I am and it seemed to be resolved using another PSU because of ripple in his old PSU. I completely acknowledge that this could very well be the case with myself as well, but since I don't have a secondary PSU to test, have been trying other things first, such as the Boot Menu test mentioned above.

One thing I just discovered this evening that wasn't mentioned in the above post that I find interesting, was that it seems like it saves the included Kickstart v3.1 as a Map ROM without issues. Whether I ESC out to the Main Menu and select Profile 1 or press Return and boot directly from Expert options and it's also saved between power cycles. After doing this a couple of times and having it seem to be stable, I went back to using my AmigaOS 3.2 Kickstart and it started working properly, even after power cycles. At the time of writing this, I haven't had a chance to leave it powered off for long periods to see if this is something that will come back or not, but do you think this is still PSU related or something in the firmware? Is it possible that since the PSU has been powered on for an hour or so, it could become more stable?

I figured I should mention this information, in case anyone else out there runs into the same issue or for the iComp team, in case this is something to look into. Hopefully this fixes my problem. I will report back later on, if necessary.

As an aside... Is there anywhere in the Main Menu selections that shows the current firmware version? I did update the menu (0.146) and installer (1.5) shortly after receiving it, without any issues.

Thank you for your time

Quote from Jens

Although you didn't ask - this is a combination that may fail, as the 8370 Agnus only produces 8 bits of refresh addresses. However, the AmigaKit mem expansion uses a 4MBit chip, which requires 9 addresses of refresh. I know this is very hard to diagnose, and with games running and fastmem of the ACA500plus at a higher priority, the problem may not become evident. However, you should either change this to an expansion with the original 16 256kBit chips (which only require 8 bit refresh), or take a look at the A512 card, which has the necessary refresh circuit to also with with the old 8370 and 8371 Agnus chips. The AmigaKit unit is cheap for a reason

Yes, absolutely: If ripple is a problem, it's because of dry electrolytic caps. These tend to gain back a little of their youth when they get warm. So the best thing I can recommend at this point is to re-cap your PSU - or have it done by somehone who has the required education and tools. Please be careful, as there's mains voltage in the PSU. Your life is at risk if you don't know what you're doing.

Press TAB for a complete list of versions and system information that you always wanted to know about, but were too afraid to ask

Hi Jens, thank you for the information regarding the expansion. I do own an old A501, but it has some battery leakage. I may try cleaning it up one day. I also own an Agnus 8372. Do you think that'd help address the AmigaKit expansion issue you're describing?

So far, I'm still having good luck with the ACA500plus Kickstart 3.2 profile. After swapping the Kickstart's mentioned above, it has been booting without corruption from all areas of the menu. Even after leaving my PSU off for 10 hours first and a couple of days next. I have it set to boot automatically to profile 1 on startup, but it also works if selecting profile 1 from the Main Menu. So far, so good. I will probably re-cap my PSU eventually as well.

Thanks for the TAB info as well, I see that now

I appreciate you letting me know about that. Thanks