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Amiga computer related discussion => Amiga Software Issues and Discussion => Topic started by: neofree on January 29, 2003, 04:03:06 PM
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Hello,
I have an Amiga 1200 with a 40mhz 030 CPU, 8 meg Fast RAM, running OS3.9. The catch is I don't have Kickstart 3.1 ROM's, instead I am using SKick to load KS3.1 into RAM. I don't mind this, but when I boot up I only have 1.1 megs of Chip RAM left. It seems rather slow to boot up and a little slow after it's running. I tried booting OS3.0 on a floppy, and it ran much faster.
My question is, is the 1.1 meg of Chip mem the problem? I know it sounds bad, but if I get real Kickstarts, will it really make a huge difference?
Also, does anyone know how to get SKick to load into Fast Memory? It has the flag, but says the memory is not available when I try it. I have a GVP A1230 II Turbo+ board.
Also, does anyone know if I can make Genesis work in USA? It dials and connects and then gives error about unable to connect via PAP. Well, my ISP doesnt use PAP. Infact, here in the USA, I've never seen an ISP that uses it, and I've used many ISP's. I don't think it is a custom here in USA.
With the slowness, and the Genesis problem, I am thinking of just going back to WB3.1. Unless I really would benefit by purchasing Kickstart 3.1 ROM's. Which I can't get right away, as $40 USD is too much for me now. I know most of you would say just get them because you're supposed to have them... But if I'm not going to see a drastic speed increase, I may just ditch OS3.9.
Comments?
Neofree
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Hehe. We had this talk yesterday. Yes it would. More ChipRAM most certainly is good. More ChipRAM is always nice! The more the merrier! Get rid of that silly software. Hardware is always faster than software. Thats why they put the ROMs on the motherboard in the first place :-)
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Hi, I wonder if you will ever shut up going on about this. Buying 3.1 roms will give you a spead increase, because by the looks of it your loading the rom into chipram, which is slow on the old access, If it could go into fastram it would be a lot quicker, but lets face it the GVP card sucks in many respects. I have a little A1200 with OS3.9 installed, it used to softkick to 3.1 roms but now it has real roms in, I saw no speed increase, but that was becuase I was softkicking to fastram in the first place, the Blizzard 030/50 mkIV totally rules the 030 acc market for the A1200 without a doubt :-)
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Yeah but $40 USD? Geez. This is just a retrohobby for me. Do you know how I can load Kickstart into Fast memory?
Neofree
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@RYU
Yeah I`ve got a spare Blizzard030 and they do kick butt. Well for an 030 anyway.
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Hehe, you can never have enough speed...
if you need the speed then go for os3.1...that is what i use on my amiga...Most of the OS3.9 additions can be replaced with (better?) third-party software.
But i have os3.9 on my WinUAE setup just for the visuals and third party incompatability...
But i would say that it would be a lot better to invest in 3.1 roms (in the future) or just as cheap to buy a secondhand a1200 (with 3.1?)...
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Well, I think I'm just gonna try and get KS into Fast mem.. If that doesnt work, just ditch OS3.9...
I've come to the conclusion that fast mem is not available when booting with no Startup-Sequence. If I try to run other programs that require it, it also says that it has not enough fast memory. This is why SKick is not finding Fast memory to boot KS3.1 into.
So the question is, How do I turn on Fast memory before I run SKick?
Neofree
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Actually a ROM that has been softkicked into RAM (even chip RAM) is faster than accessing the ROM itself - RAM access time is much faster than the time it takes to access the ROM chips. Even though my A4k has 3.1 ROMS I still use blizkick to stick them in RAM (and fix many of the bugs in the 3.1 ROM).
Can't see why it would relocate the ROM to chip ram though - maybe your chip ram is being eaten up by something else - what screen mode and colour depth is your workbench in?
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I am running 640x200 at 256 colors. But I dont think chip or fast mem is being eatin up by anything because I put SKick as the *first* think in Startup-Sequence. I think the problem is that my fast memory is not working until something else turns it on, someone suggested I may need to run SetPatch first. Haven't tried it yet so am not sure yet.
Neofree
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No I don't think SetPatch is going to work. I was reading about what it is, and it says it needs V40 ROM to execute and will load Amiga ROM Update. So 3.1 ROM needs to be loaded already.
So I still need a way to activate Fast Memory before running SKick....
Neofree
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neofree wrote:
Also, does anyone know if I can make Genesis work in USA? It dials and connects and then gives error about unable to connect via PAP. Well, my ISP doesnt use PAP. Infact, here in the USA, I've never seen an ISP that uses it, and I've used many ISP's. I don't think it is a custom here in USA.
Funny, both the ISP's I've used my Amigas with did use PAP/CHAP authentication. I tried Genesis (demo) and got it to work OK with Earthlink but went back to Miami (registered). I'm at work now but could check my Genesis settings and see if I have any pointers as to what I might have done differently.
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I looked and looked.. but found no settings to disable PAP... Earthlink may use PAP, but I've never tried it. Most ISP's in the US dont use it. I will probably just use Miami. It works fine.
Neofree
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Yes, a ROM that has been softkicked into RAM (even chip RAM) is faster ...(who doesn`t do that?)
Hehe, what i was saying was that the OS3.1 was FASTER... :-D
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Wow, dude!
A bit strong there, but true, ...hehe. :-D
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blobrana: dont get your last post.. oh well.. i agree os3.1 is faster, but i wanna try and get ks3.1 into fast ram..
Does anyone out there know how to get my fast memory turned on when booting without Startup-Sequence?
Neofree
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my question is this..
why are you using a 3.1 ROM image in the first place?
if you dont own the original ROM, you cant legaly use 3.1!
my suggestion is this: use 3.0 until you can afford 3.1 ROMs, then use 3.5/3.9
DONT pirate AmigaOS!!!!!!
you certainly wont be helping the amiga community, if you have any interest in doing that
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I own everything except KS3.1 ROM chips. I have KS3.1 from AmigaForever CD.
That aside, I would like to have fastmem when booting without startup-sequence for other reasons. I've tried to run games that require 8 meg of FAST that wont work this way because it thinks i have no fast mem at all.
Again, my only problem now is No FastMem when booting without Startup-Sequence...
Neofree
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Sry, last post was @Ryu...
Skick doesn`t use fastram....
Please get the proper rom chips....well worth the saving up and the wait...
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Yes, SKick will use Fastmemory.. if the fast memory is available. but my fastmem is not available until I boot into WB. I dont understand why and SKick is not the only reason I want to know how to fix this.
Neofree
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OK,
That is good. And i assume that you can see the 8Mb on the top bar and that it`s physically seated correctly in the socket.
As a guess ,run a memtest (aminet) just to be sure...
It must be the location of the SKick entry in the startup-sequence... move it just above the IPrefs command. see if that helps...
remember certain programs (sry, if you know this) only use chip mem...
Can the speed of the ram (80ns) have anything to do with it...
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BlitzKick on http://wuarchive.wustl.edu/~aminet/will kick just about all of your stuff into fastram.
Please try this and let us know how it works!!! :idea:
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BlitzKick? I can't find anything by that name on Aminet.
I do know of BlizKick, but it requires a Blizzard accellerator...
I think I will just try moving the SKick line down further in Startup-Sequence and see if that works.
Neofree
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Sorry, I ment( fblit ). Got me signals crossed I did.
Sometimes I forget which app does what.
Yes, fblit is what you want.
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Isn't fblit for speeding up graphics? Not that it wouldn't help, but I'm trying to get Kickstart into fastram...?
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I think some memory is not added to the memory list util late on in the boot, depending on your card. When I used to use RemApollo for instance there was a hack called FakeLocal that would enable fast memory as "local" memory very early on.
Apart from that OS3.9 uses a LOT of chipRAM compared to 3.1, so you are best advised to use FBlit so that programs and icons etc. use fast memory. But PLEASE read the docs with regard to the special section about OS3.9, rather than coming back saying "Hey! I installed FBlit and now I get gfx corruption and it crashes after a while". Right now on my A1200 with 640x400+ screenmode in 64 cols with WB backdrop, Genesis and AmiDock running I have 1.377Mb free chip which is pretty good going for 3.9
I happen to disagree about going back to 3.1 though, I wouldn't once you get used to AsyncWb, rawWbinfo, defIcons, AmiDock, UnArc and so on and so on being there.
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Why not check to see if your fast RAM is there at boot time, or whether it doesn't appear until the GVP driver runs?
After booting with no startup-sequence, type "avail" and look at the memory it lists. Is your fast RAM there? Or only the chip RAM?
tony
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Yep I think its his GVP thats letting the side down. neo, if you like the amiga as a hobby I think your going to have to spend a few $$$ on it :-) ebay often get quite a bit of stuff on cheap, like i say most 030 cards for the A1200 only fetch around £30 here in the UK on the secondhand market. Anyhow its 2:30 in the morning and im going to bed, night night :-)
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@neofree
it wont move the kick start, but will save some chip that is used by a few programs
@machinehead
add this to your startup-sequence to fix the corruption...
C:LoadWB SIMPLEGELS
http://mysite.freeserve.com/blobrana/woa/intro.html (http://mysite.freeserve.com/blobrana/woa/intro.html)
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I don't know why nobody can give you an answer on this. There are a few questions that need answering first. If all the fast ram on your machine is accessed through your accelerator card then what you must do is look through your Startup-Sequence for any initialization software for your accelerator. Chances are that when you are calling SKick there isn't any fastmem available. The command that adds that memory to your memory pool called later.
You should initialize the hardware that contains your fastmem and then immediately call your SKick routine. It wouldn't hurt to setup your Startup-Sequence to check for the OS version and launch the appropriate routines if you are running OS3.0 and the boot normally if the OS version is 3.1. I have a setup like this on my Amiga3000 because OS3.9 crashes when I use my 040 accelerator. So my startup sequence launches, detects the cpu type, swaps to the on board 030 and then reboots. On the second boot the machine skips the cpu swapping software and moves on to boot OS3.9.
Perhaps you can mail me your Startup-Sequence and User-Startup files from your S: directory and I can help you out. My email is nyteschayde@yahoo.com.
Good luck
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Well it seems things are a little different then I originally thought...
Last night I booted with no Startup-Sequence and typed Avail and it actually reported my 8 megs of Fast Memory.
What is strange is that whenever I run SKick with the "Fast" parameter (to use only fast mem), it says it is unable to find a location to relocate the rom into. Also, if I run the demo "Relic", it also fails saying I do not have enough Fast Memory.
Well, I boot to a WB3.0 floppy, and try to run SKick from Shell, it says the same exact thing, but when I run Relic, it boots up and works fine.
I tried moving my SKick line down to right before IPrefs as someone suggested, and this had no effect.
I may have to use FBlit to make my system run better, assuming that it is able to find my fast memory.
Any ideas? Has anyone been able to use Fast Mem with SKick?
Thanks,
Neofree
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yes skick can be used with fastmem, but you need a specific relocation file for that rom image and as far as i know the 3.x relocation files that came with last release of skick do only support chipmem.
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Ah ha! So this is the magic I am mising. Any clue where to find better ones?
Neofree
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Well, I decided to Ditch OS3.9...
I put OS3.1 back on and MAN IS IT FASTER! Since all I really use my computer for is games, and as a backup to get on the internet, everything is going great. Spent about 2 hours reloading it last night... Got ton of games, IBrowse 2.3, Miami, AmIRC, Jabberwocky and a couple other things installed with no problems. It's running really fast and does everything I need it to.
I will just get real KS3.1 ROMs. But since I don't have any money, I will have to trade for them. (I put a ad in the classifieds here.)
Thanks,
Neofree
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Yes, a ROM that has been softkicked into RAM (even chip RAM) is faster
I have to correct you here - Chip RAM access is slower than ROM access! I read this on the Amiga Developer CD, so it must be true! ;-)
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Sry, i must have not remembered it correctly...fast ram is faster than rom, while ,
Chip ram is, well, slow? hehe.