fusion forty problems

[J-Golden]

I had a FF years and yeas ago.  I remember it coming with software that had to be installed to activate the memory and get the accel. working right.

On the note of the system slowing down, that is a CLASSIC example of something overheating.  If the fan is running and clean, I throw my hat in on the checking of the thermal paste.

Also, I noticed on the web page at the BBoAH it says that the 4 meg min. needs to be in the slots AWAY from the back plate.

And on that note, memory was diversified back then so make sure you have 8x30 SIMMs, NOT 9x30.  If you are not sure, just count the # of mem. chips on each SIMM.  8=8 9=9

I have long since sold the FF but I remember who I sold it to so I'll e-mail him to see if he still has it and the disks...

Best of Luck!

J. Golden

[pyrre]

Heat is something i am concerned about too....
But the sink is glued to the 040 and i don't want to put any stress to it removing the sink.

I have downloaded the software disks from here


The simms have eight chips on them.
However, reading the size of them is a whole other story...
They are labeled: mcm84000as70 and the chips bear the Motorola mark...

EDIT:
After removing the sink and the thermal compound, i see that it is a XC68040RC25. The serial suggest that it is supposed to run @ 25Mhz... ant this card is clocked to run 40...
(according to the seller)
How can I slow it down?
Is that a matter of swapping the crystal?
(it is clocked to 56Mhz)

[A6000]

pyrre wrote:
After removing the sink and the thermal compound, i see that it is a XC68040RC25. The serial suggest that it is supposed to run @ 25Mhz... ant this card is clocked to run 40...
(according to the seller)
How can I slow it down?
Is that a matter of swapping the crystal?
(it is clocked to 56Mhz)

If the crystal is 56mhz, the 68040 will divide this by 2 and run at 28mhz, so its probably not running too fast.

[TjLaZer]

I believe that is the stock clock rate 28Mhz.  Yes that is correct, overclocked at the factory.

Enter the early RCS Boot menu by pressing the left mouse button on reboot and see if FastKick is enabled.

[rkauer]

 And, if you want to be on the secure side of things, slow the board down by using a 50MHz crystal...

[TjLaZer]

Just checked mine and it has a 56MHz oscillator.

[alenppc]

I guess that from what you've said, your memory is not getting recognized. As such it is no wonder that the card is slow. When working with onboard 16-bit memory the 040 is almost as slow as a 68000.

I would guess that your simms are probably faulty or inappropriate for the board. My FF has 32 Mb on board and it is fully autoconfiguring, no need to add anything to the startup-sequence. The only thing it is picky about is its old v36 68040.library. But that's about it.

So you should try to source some compatible SIMMs...

[TjLaZer]

For fast mem to get autoconfigured you have to enable FastKick.

[inquisitiv]

quick question, how much do these run for nowdays? I got one that I may be selling (w/ no memory).

[pyrre]

quick question, how much do these run for nowdays? I got one that I may be selling (w/ no memory).

Without memory, not much... All my reading tells me it has to have at lest 4 megs to work properly. And simms for this card is HARD to come by nowdays.
Fully populated with 32 MB ram and the 40MHz version....
That is one i guess you can get a great deal for...

[A6000]

There is no 40mhz version, the forty in fusion forty refers to the 68040, this card was made in 25, 28 and 33mhz versions but I doubt if there were any 25 mhz versions made, they jumped  straight to 28mhz.

[TjLaZer]

I've seen them go for about $100.  I got mine for $80 with no Ram.  4mb 30-pin simms are hard to find.  But not impossible.

[pyrre]

There is no 40mhz version, the forty in fusion forty refers to the 68040, this card was made in 25, 28 and 33mhz versions but I doubt if there were any 25 mhz versions made, they jumped straight to 28mhz.

The BBOAH states otherwise....

[A6000]

Sorry, I was going on information provided by your first link to the amiga hardware database.
One of them is wrong.

[CLS2086]

Hi,
now it's my turn !
I receive a card sold as "non working" FF40 rev 2.0 with no quartz and no CPU, but with PnG roms he told me.
So I received a 040RC/40 CPU and I picked up a 44.4 Mhz quartz for a VGA card... so I well fit, and should work.
I cleaned up all chips except the big FPGA (i have no extractor for such a monster).
I also noted that on the cpu socket there were a kind of glue that block contact...
I fighted for 1 hour at least to clean the support, yesterday night. Checked it well with multimeter it's ok.

I picked up 4 rams sticks from an another GVP serie2 hc+8 - 4x 1mb 3 chips (i don't know if there are good...).

Now i take my beasty 2000 ECS 6.2 (kick 3.1/VT2000/a2630/gvp hc+8/Gvp Spectrum/buddha ide/A2386/...)

So at first boot nothing happend... the GVP scsi did not boot at all.
Stop the machine, switch to 68k mode, ok the machine boot again, all my cards are present on the early, but made an error loading C:MakeDir just after setpatch.
So I reboot with no Startup, and seen there were no fastmem...

I took it off, replaced it, take off the GVP scsi
I restart and press the mouse button. This time I got the FF40 boot screen  :-D
But options are grey, only the choice of NO-fastkick.
When i click on it, it reboot....  :roll:
I got to the purple screen, put a wb3.1 install disk, it booted. No visible FastMem present...
I typed setpatch to check the 040 presence, ok it found it.
Then put a GVP install disk to view the "check-up" and ...
no Z2 board found at all  :-o !!!!

I rebooted an got a guru with code 8000000006 or something like that, and no way to get back to the FF40 boot menu except flash on screen... I rebooted one more time, go to the early and saw no Z2 cards in expension  :crazy:

I put 4 more others 1mb ram (8 chips), and switched my GVP HC+8 from 0 to 2 mb, and then started.
The FF40 menu is still the same, but in the early, i got the GVP and it's dual component present ( scsi + ram) but not the other cards !!!, whatever it booted well my Wb3.1 on scsi, but still having 2 mb of fast (GVP). Showconfig told me that i have a 040 and GVP board that's all...

I've retried with Install3.1 disk to be sure, but it's still the same thing.

I have just downloaded the DMS on amiga resource CX, but i don't think that it will resolve my problems...

Any good advice
 :-?

[CLS2086]

So,
I took off the suspect 4 memory stick, took of the FPGA and clean it and its support.
But nothing change..
I'm gonna try the DMS...