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Author Topic: What A500 do I have?  (Read 1744 times)

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Offline darksun9210

Re: What A500 do I have?
« on: October 08, 2008, 08:20:26 AM »
Agreed with -D- on the the Rev6 thoughts. especially as you have the 512k/1Mb markings and empty holes for memory. if you get the right chips and caps, you can solder them onto the board in the empty spaces. but it would be fairly pointless as these would occupy the same address space as the trapdoor slot.

sounds like you have a 1meg agnus as these report back as ECS chips and the jumper/cut fix to mark the trapdoor memory as chip ram.

have you have the machine from new, or is it 2nd hand? if it is 2nd hand, i'd suspect the jumper/fix trick.

i thought rev8 A500's were plusses and had a full 1Meg on board, (all the sockets full) and the trapdoor mapped to the upper meg of the chipram range?

i would have done this myself to mine, but i only have a half meg agnus...

A500 Vampire2/minimegachip/lazarus/indyECS
A600 Vampire2/604n/subway/IndyECS
A1200 PiStorm32+Pi4/subway/IndyAGA
A1200 PiStorm32+Pi4/subway/IndyAGA
A1200 PiStorm32+Pi4/subway/IndyAGA
A3k C=040/CV64-3D/Xsurf100+RRoadUSB/Zoram256/acard scsi-ide-CF/IndyECS,
A4k CSMk3-060/CV64-3D/Xsurf100+RRoadUSB/Bigram256/IndyAGA, mediator+pci cards
CD32 TF360/IndyAGA
Plus an SGI O2 & consoles.
 

Offline darksun9210

Re: What A500 do I have?
« Reply #1 on: October 08, 2008, 11:17:54 AM »
ok, then from what i can guess, you have a rev6/6a mainboard with a 1Meg agnus onboard. it seems to have had the jumper/cut mod done on it to get 1Meg chipram.  converting what would have been a 512/512 chip/slow to a 512/512 chip/chip config. the first 512 being the motherboard ram, the 2nd 512 being the trapdoor / empty motherboard spaces.
to get more ram in the trapdoor, you'll need either, (and i have seen these) a trapdoor ram expansion that has a pass through that you bolt your existing trapdoor expansion onto, or something like an ICD adram 540, or solder chips to the mainboard and route some signal lines from gary to the trapdoor. either way, you'll need something that grabs some addressing signals from the gary chip.
best thing to do is get a sidecar expansion if you want more ram. plus it'll be faster as the cpu isn't having to go over the custom chip bus to get to the memory, which is what it has to do for "slow" fast ram, and why "slow" fast ram is convertable to chipram, as it is on the chipram bus.

you'll never get more than 1Meg of chip ram in there without upgrading to a 2Meg agnus which doesn't fit the socket you have., hence the minimegachip upgrade boards

thinking about it as i type this, i think for the 1Mb chip / 512k (slow)fast you are asking about, still needs a 2Meg agnus as it is the agnus chip that controls access to memory in that address range. and i guess this would not be possible without a minimegachip 2Meg agnus upgrade board. but then, how did the Adram boards work putting 1.8Mb into the trapdoor slot? :crazy:

forget adding more ram to the trapdoor, get a 2-8Mb side expansion off of ebay for 30 quid or something :-)

A500 Vampire2/minimegachip/lazarus/indyECS
A600 Vampire2/604n/subway/IndyECS
A1200 PiStorm32+Pi4/subway/IndyAGA
A1200 PiStorm32+Pi4/subway/IndyAGA
A1200 PiStorm32+Pi4/subway/IndyAGA
A3k C=040/CV64-3D/Xsurf100+RRoadUSB/Zoram256/acard scsi-ide-CF/IndyECS,
A4k CSMk3-060/CV64-3D/Xsurf100+RRoadUSB/Bigram256/IndyAGA, mediator+pci cards
CD32 TF360/IndyAGA
Plus an SGI O2 & consoles.
 

Offline darksun9210

Re: What A500 do I have?
« Reply #2 on: October 08, 2008, 11:26:05 AM »
just found the expansion systems baseboard puts 4Mb into the A500's trapdoor! :-o  but forget these as i guess they are going to be VERY hard to find!  :lol:

A500 Vampire2/minimegachip/lazarus/indyECS
A600 Vampire2/604n/subway/IndyECS
A1200 PiStorm32+Pi4/subway/IndyAGA
A1200 PiStorm32+Pi4/subway/IndyAGA
A1200 PiStorm32+Pi4/subway/IndyAGA
A3k C=040/CV64-3D/Xsurf100+RRoadUSB/Zoram256/acard scsi-ide-CF/IndyECS,
A4k CSMk3-060/CV64-3D/Xsurf100+RRoadUSB/Bigram256/IndyAGA, mediator+pci cards
CD32 TF360/IndyAGA
Plus an SGI O2 & consoles.
 

Offline darksun9210

Re: What A500 do I have?
« Reply #3 on: October 10, 2008, 08:00:20 AM »
good skills Metalguy66! especially on the piggyback ram thing! :-)
would this work on a rev5 A500 if i was able to get a 2Meg agnus fitted? :-? or am i as i suspect, stuffed? :lol:

A500 Vampire2/minimegachip/lazarus/indyECS
A600 Vampire2/604n/subway/IndyECS
A1200 PiStorm32+Pi4/subway/IndyAGA
A1200 PiStorm32+Pi4/subway/IndyAGA
A1200 PiStorm32+Pi4/subway/IndyAGA
A3k C=040/CV64-3D/Xsurf100+RRoadUSB/Zoram256/acard scsi-ide-CF/IndyECS,
A4k CSMk3-060/CV64-3D/Xsurf100+RRoadUSB/Bigram256/IndyAGA, mediator+pci cards
CD32 TF360/IndyAGA
Plus an SGI O2 & consoles.