Posts by ljmarent

I removed the SMARTBLOCK from my Startup-sequence

Aca1234upd211117.lha applied

MBRtest-2 still locking up

Amiga Test Kit is 'working' now. I'm not getting thrown out on an error right after loading and pressing a couple menu buttons

If I try to run the Audio Test it plays music briefly and throws this error

(edit) Actually it will just crash like this on it's own if I wait long enough after booting into it.

WHDLoad works sort of.. subjectively..

Some games work fine, others still having trouble that seemed to go away with the full range blocked

I'm still getting Exception "Line 1111 Emulator"errors

Is it possible ? that there is more than one memory overlap ?
In an A500 machine with ACE2b and ACA500+ ?

(edit) Also noticed...
Before the latest firmware MBRTest-2 reported size 129024K

And now with the new firmware MBRTest-2 is still reporting 129024K
based on the loss of 1MB comment, I was assuming I'd see that 1MB removed from the total...
Of course I have no idea what exactly is being done by 'allocating' that 1MB chunk as described.

SMARTBLOCK 47C00000 47CFFFFF

In my Startup-sequence

Does indeed work exactly as well as the whole 40000000 47DFFFFF

And off I go to try the flash update

Using:

Amiga 500 rev 5 with ACE2b, Indivision ECS v2, ACA500+, ACA1234 50MHz (33MHz), OS3.2
68000 removed, ROM removed

68030.library and mmu.library from OS3.2 copied into SYS:libs

I'm getting similar results to the original poster.

Using Amiga Test Kit I saw these:

Of course I came here and saw MBRtest-2, so I ran that and it freezes right here:

I've already pushed the latest firmware update to the ACA1234, so I can change clock speed.

Like above, I tried disabling features in the ACA500+, which didn't seem to help.

WorkBench 3.2 is booting fine, SYSinfo runs great, all the workbench basics seem fine.

What actually got me looking at the RAM in the first place was that WHDLoad was throwing random and frequent errors when I tried to play games.
I checked the 5V rail, 4.98V at the floppy drive, seemed good.

And then I ran to Amiga Test Kit to see if something else was wrong, got a bunch of errors.

And then I came here and saw this.

I've got a sort of 'temporary patch' that seems to be allowing me to use the ACA1234 without the built-in RAM.
I've used "SMARTBLOCK 40000000 47DFFFFF" early in my startup and now I can play most of the games in my WHDLoad library without constant Illegal Instruction and Bad Memory Errors dropping me out of the games.

blockmem11.lha

I'm glad to see this is already under investigation...

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 ...

7-14 days
And their minimum brokerage fee is really quite high.
I've received things where the brokerage, duty, tax was as much as the thing I imported

On the receiving side, I've much preferred DHL to UPS for as long as I've had choice.
DHL gives electronic notice of parcels arriving and an easy way to pay fees online or on my phone.
UPS mostly just sends surprise invoices after delivery, or more commonly fakes a delivery and leaves a note asking for fees to be paid before a second attempt. Fully my least favourite courier service, with what seems like the least automation.
I do like your Parcel One service, goes straight to my mailbox. It lacked a bit of transparency during 'peak covid', but it worked fine, even when DHL wouldn't.

How did your UPS expedited exploitation end ?

Sure to be an epic UPS tale.

Quote from pwsoft

I programmed the firmware of the C64 reloaded MK2 (that menu thingy that appears on usb port serial so you can change settings) ... For Amiga I mostly did things "in the background", but had my contribution to many of the icomp "flickerfixers/scandoublers" or how you want to call those things ... The 1240/60 was the first time working on 680xx accelerators and now that got rudely interrupted.

I'll be back.

Ah... So it's your sticky finger prints on my C64 Reloaded MK2 ?

I also have a 'bunch' of the Indivision ECS V2
And will certainly buy an ACA1240 when they come on the market...
I think the ACA1260 will be too "hard-core" for me...I just like my Amiga, I don't feel like selling a kidney for it...

Anyways, good to learn of you and the products you've touched.
Hope you're on the mend and will make a speedy recovery.

Les,

Quote from Jens

There is only one rule: You can always fit one more panel. You'll save a lot of money and do something for the planet that (not only) my kids want to live on. In the long run, you'll have even more money to spend for retro hardware

Works the other way here in Canada.
We get our money from extracting waste oil from the tar sands and sending it by pipe or rail to be refined and ultimately buried in the earths atmosphere. Or digging up uranium ore to keep the home fires burning. Send your kids, we'll take em seal hunting in the winter.

I'm not pressuring you... I'm talking to you...
I'm telling you the things that 'pain me', the things that I'd be totally into putting my money into, and I'm asking others who have given you money before, the surest sign they might do so again, to voice if they'd be into those same things?
It is grass roots early adoption.

Most LEAN businesses, even ones run like a hobby, would give their teeth for active early adopters.

It's not like I'm running a "go fund me" to hire a tire repair guy in Brussels to pay you a visit if the conversation doesn't go my way'

Have a great day Jens,

Quote from Jens

I won't promise anything, but I'm getting closer. With the ACA2000 being planned as "much simpler" than the ACA500plus, the development time will be much shorter than the almost-two-years that I have spent on the ACA500plus.

Great... since volumes will likely be much lower than ACA500+, can we have a Developers Edition, where we pay double or triple the release versions projected cost, but do so to help offset the development cost, de-risking the project for the developer ?

Quote from Jens

Buddha and X-Surf-100 will benefit big time, and I have more tricks I want to try.

Developer edition would also mean the developer has access to a pool of external use cases for testing ideas before pushing updates to a larger base of users.

It's not a kickstarter or pre-selling, but it does help cover costs, frees up some capital, provides a base for testing ideas, enables incremental product improvement based on sales, instead of having to rely on the old "If you build it, hopefully they will come"

I'm sorta curious, how many others would be interested in helping to support development costs on the things they would like to see in your store ?

If I don't infer too much, who will ?

And besides, it gives iComp a time and place to set the record straight

Also, I had no idea that there was a Peter, or that he was on sick leave.

Hope he makes a strong recovery.

As for ACA2000:

Compatibility with A500 floppy games is not even a thought for me.
I'm using WHDLoad on the A500 for the odd game, that's getting the job done.

But I guess I'm not a video game player, so my priorities may be different from the majority.

On the A2000 what I really want to use is AMOS, SAS/C, MATLAB, Final Writer, etc..
Essentially a machine to play with the Amiga productivity software.
Your 'plan' sounds great for my intended use case.

If you build it, I absolutely will buy one.

So... now that we have some '030 accelerator cards again and the '040 and '060 cards are...I assume in the pipe, with their component shortages mostly sorted... ? and the Indivision products are back on the shelf.... (ooh.. I should order an ECS v3 next week)

Is there time and space now for the ACA2000 ?

Or... Do I have to buy that silly ribbon cable disaster adapter from some third-world country, that 'sorta' fits in the floppy drive bay and adapts an ACA500+ to 'maybe', 'kinda', 'work' but not really, especially with Zorro II cards ?

I don't want to commit Amigacide, but without an ACA2000 the only path forward is a case full of janky adapters

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

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...

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 ?

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.

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...

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

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

Pre-Orders must be well hidden...

Totally agree on the China thing, it's fun explaining you want to pay more, not less, but you have quality requirements.
Some factories love that, others still don't get it.

Testing is automatic, but I've been in the meetings in North American semiconductor manufacturing. where we eliminate tests to save money...it happens every day... and on a $0.10 chip, I'd just assume there is an inrush current, steady state current and some sort of heart-beat verification and then on to the next chip, as fast a test as possible. And I strongly doubt the presence of AECQ101 lot testing, or any corner lot testing. This is not TSMC its mainland China fab'd.

I started with a good old probing of the solder joints back to the PS/2 connector, looking for shorts or breaks in the cheap wire.

For sure this mouse is made in China, like 80%+ of all electronic goods.
China is the worlds 'preferred' factory and they have the greatest collective manufacturing experience of any nation.
But we can all pretend, I guess, that only badly made things come from there, if that smoothes over our egos.

It uses the dirt cheap KA2B optical sensor, which complies with the following spec:

Absolute Max is also 5.5V

It has a built-in regulator with 3.6V I/O output, so it may not like being voltage starved, like some of iComp's own devices.

POR is not specific to micro controllers...

Your FPGA NOR configurator, NAND flash and DRAM all have POR circuitry, as will this optical mouse chip.

I'll keep digging until I have a believable failure mechanism.
I'm not confident this mouse is innocent, heck, that optical chip sells for $0.10 in low volumes, so we know how much testing it got and the mouse assembly is about $20, so we know how much testing the whole system got. But that does not mean it's defective, just not vetted, and it can be tested in the field.

I would, at the very least, like to save others from buying a widely available PS/2 mouse on Amazon,

if it's going to cause them the very same grief.

I assume you'd like to save your customers the same.
So, I'll stay on it for a bit, see if I can root cause it.