PCMCIA A1200 myths

[Daedalus]

@Daedalus

Why don't you use the software fix to avoid wear and tear on your PCMCIA slot? :-)

I do I guess I should've used the past tense in that post...

Interesting stuff there though - I've never had an accelerator that wasn't PCMCIA compatible so I've never personally encountered the issue, but I know of plenty who have had them. It doesn't really come down to the CPU on the accelerator, but the basic design of the board. I have an 020/28 which maps the memory in Zorro III space, yet plenty of the cheaper 030 boards don't, and are therefore susceptible to this issue. I was pretty sure though that PCMCIA cards like the Squirrel SCSI card used the memory space for doing its I/O and therefore wasn't compatible with the 8MB boards... Must go back and look at that.

[LaserBack]

I consider this thread very interesting My Amiga 1200 (will unwrap it this evening) will have a 030 turbocard, also with 8MB RAM. I'll be using a PCMCIA ADF Transfer Kit, so I'am looking forward to face that issue...

However, as I've learned here in the last days, the trick might be that some expansion boards use different methods to address extra RAM and thus, do not intervene as much with the maximum address range.

Awaiting a better explaination from a hardware guru

- Gil

it seems that if you have kickstart 3.0 on your A1200 the pcmcia slot will works fine with your new turboboard
but if your A1200 have kickstart 3.1 the pcmcia slot will not works if you have 8mb ram...will work only with 4mb

I think is a serious bug in Kicstart 3.1 or commodore did it purposely to avoid conflicts with pcmcia ram cards......anyways was a stupid mistake cause lots of devices works ok

please post your results later when your turboboard arrives

[magnetic]

This thread is very interesting. In all the amiga years I've never heard of this 3.0 v 3.1 rom with pcmcia. Pretty cool, we need more research and posts in regards to this please. Its valuable to the amiga community.

[psxphill]

I think is a serious bug in Kicstart 3.1 or commodore did it purposely to avoid conflicts with pcmcia ram cards......anyways was a stupid mistake cause lots of devices works ok

I might be wrong but I seem to recall reading in the 3.1 release notes that come with the NDK that they did do it on purpose.
 
It was a stupid mistake because PCMCIA IO cards should be 100% compatible with 8mb of fast ram in the Zorro II space. It's only PCMCIA RAM cards that would ever have a problem & why would you bother with those if you had >4mb of RAM anyway?

[LaserBack]

I might be wrong but I seem to recall reading in the 3.1 release notes that come with the NDK that they did do it on purpose.
 
It was a stupid mistake because PCMCIA IO cards should be 100% compatible with 8mb of fast ram in the Zorro II space. It's only PCMCIA RAM cards that would ever have a problem & why would you bother with those if you had >4mb of RAM anyway?

I agree with you...
was really stupid..why you will insert a slow pcmcia ram card if you have 8m fast ram......
what kind of dumb will insert that to slowdown the systrem?
anyways we're not talking about pcmcia cf flash adapters or ethernet cards that not existed in 1993
they forgot modems, squirrel scsi,scanners and other devices that would operate very well on the era
and the big problem is that this mistake affects to all A1200 ram-boards,all 020 turboboards and some 030 turboboards....
in other words....affects the vast majority of the A1200 out there

also there is another stupidity.... on KICKSTART 3.1 they modified something related to ready signal...and some floppy games that worked on kick 3.0 not works on kick 3.1.....even with original amiga drives....anyways this can be solved by software using relokick,skick or any other sofkicker


btw, where are those kick 3.1 'release notes?

[Zac67]

Dunno about PCMCIA - but any CPU board carrying an '020 or '030 opens up 32 bit address space. As long as the RAM is configured to extended RAM space (> 16 MB) there's little change for PCMCIA collisions.