WTB: VXL*30 PAL chips

[mechy]

Just a quick update on this:  I ordered a couple 30MHz oscillators, popped one in, and the system booted right up.

As a preventative measure I stuck some of those little RAM heatsinks on the PAL chips (already had them on the CPU & FPU, it's a habit of mine), and tapped a little fan into the +5V line going to the floppy drive, just to move a tiny amount of air around inside the case.  Wohoo, a +5MHz overclock on the board, balanced out with a still -10MHz underclock on the CPU & FPU.  Oh well, whatcha gonna do?  SysSpeed says she's pushing around 9 MIP's, vroom-vroom!  :lol:

nice...

Most PAL chips can be replaced with GAL's which run cooler and should suport the higher speed. Of course you need the code.Pal code can be translated to GAL code with pal2gal software. I wonder if the onboard pals can be read out or if the protection bits are set?

[mechy]

Hummm, good point!  A bit out of my experience but I'm not above learning something new.    A google search on Pal2Gal yielded some interesting links that I'm going to bookmark for future reading...

Suspect I would need the code for the V3 chips to support the faster board speeds, however.  I don't think it's just a matter of cooler running chips, it doesn't even try to run at 40MHz with the V2 chips (yellow screen at power on).  Good luck finding that, I know!  

Yes, i am sure you would still need the faster code,but i just thought i would alert you to the possible use of low power,cool running GAL chips.. they work great for replacing the 4 pals in the A3000's also.

[mechy]

Yeah, 'fraid so, I suspect.  Looks like yours is the same as mine was before I started tinkering with it, maybe even a little older.  I.e., some of your chips that say "902" - some of mine say 904.  Of course, lord only knows what those numbers actually mean, LOL.  

Shame that this board is pretty much useless without its ram.  I only have 2MB, but I configure it to load as much of the OS & libraries into that memory as possible, and leave the 16-bit fast on my GVP sidecar for applications.  She does allright, like that.  

Any accelerator without ram onboard(except the 3640-motherboard ram counts as onboard) will be dog slow without the fast ram. it seems silly so many older accelerators had ram as a option instead of default.

[mechy]

It's basically a door stop with out the RAM card :-/ Sorry I couldn't help. I have another card here of different make/model which is also 030, needs a pin repair but before it broke I couldn't get the full amount of RAM to detect. But I think it's 2MB too, speeds the Amiga 500 up no end but it's nothing compared to the ACA cards. The ACA-1233 smokes it :-)

Some of these older cards are frustrating.

Going to have a huge clean up soon though and sell a lot of my Amiga gear and just keep the A1200T.

Although I will miss the ACA 500 + ACA-1233, but would like to focus on just the A1200T.

I bet my csa derringer 030/50 with 128Mb smokes the aca I intentionally avoided the vxl because of the ram issue,without it it doesnt do much.

[mechy]

Bring back Cosmos, miss his updates. Especially enjoyed his mediator guide. Waiting on a few items so I can switch to SATA drives for the A1200 and will be using some of his libraries again for that.

It's getting out of hand in the garage so need to clean it up, can never find anything anyway in there ;-)

I miss them too! oh and you should see my mess  I can't seem to work on anything to completion lately without seeing a shiny zorro card and going off on a tangent!

[mechy]

I miss Cosmos's library updates!  I seriously have a text file saved on my desktop with all my library versions, and am constantly on the lookout for more updates.  But I understand not wanting to release them publicly anymore if some jerk-holes were profiting by selling his work.  

Thanks for the link for the RAM chips above!  Sold by the bag?  Haha, I'll have to pick up a couple "bags" and try them out!  

The same thing goes on with the Gotek stuff, profiteers selling them for ridiculous prices.