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Amiga computer related discussion => Amiga Hardware Issues and discussion => Topic started by: McVenco on September 05, 2006, 04:24:54 PM
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I've got 2 A1200s, one of which I have sold, but now I'm pondering which one is the best to keep.
I have a rev.1D.1 and a rev.1D.4, and the one that I'm keeping will be powered up by a Blizzard PPC card.
I've heard rumours that some mainboard revisions do not quite work together with the BPPC. Is this true or just a bunch of bollocks?
Anyway: which mainboard is best, or is there no important difference?
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I would go for the 1D.4
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Hi,
1.D4 may need some resistors to be changed.
Use the research button on left.
For me the best is 1.A if you don't need HD Floppy and internal SD/FF.
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1D1 is supposed to be the one with no timing issues which appear when you really upgrade the A1200
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I have 3 A1200 with 1d4 revisions. I have tested ALL of them with BPPC & BVISION and never had any timing issues. Maybe im lucky, maybe i got a previosuly fixed boards? I dont know, but for sure, i have my amigas with a lot of stuff anda never ever had a timing issue thing
Regards
Sebastian
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Same here, my 1D4 is solid as a rack with all kind of expansions
I guess not all 1D4 suffer from problems..maybve some had manufacture defects
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My most humble apologies for the length of this: EyeTech is source.
**** I am not the author, nor liable for the content****
When the A1200 was designed there were - as is common in designs of that complexity - some 'bugs' in the chip designs. Many of these were corrected by the time the main production runs started, but some were not, and in fact several bugs still remain in the latest revisions of the AA chip sets.
The main production board issued in the UK - Rev 1.D.1 - had onboard provision for hardware workarounds to fix the main bugs, notably bus timing problems in the Gayle and Budgie chips. In general these boards work fine with most combinations of expansion hardware and are the boards which we use to test A1200 expansion products on before shipment.
The later revisions of motherboards - particularly the revision 1.D.4 and 2.B are a different story however. These boards revisions were designed to take corrected versions of the Gayle and Budgie chips - and therefore were designed without provision for the earlier hardware workarounds. However, revised versions of the custom chips were never produced and as a consequence all but a few of the last of the AT/Escom manufactured motherboards were shipped without either bug-free chips or hardware workarounds.
In general these 1.D.4 & 2.B defects only make themselves felt when the A1200 is expanded by the addition of an '040 (or above) accelerator, high performance IDE hard drive/CDROM subsystems, Zorro slots or I/O expanders (PortPlus etc). Often any one such accessory will work, but two or more will not work in combination. Typical symptoms are an accelerator exhibiting instability problems, a graphics card failing to be recognised or a CDROM failing to show disk icons.
I do have the upgrade file. But have not attached it to this message.
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Had an A1200 1.D4 with fastata with the following expansions:
-1230/28
-1260/50
-bppc060 + grex or bvision
and always a zII busboard present
and then a mediatorZ4 + z4 + bppc
and NEVER had any probs, the mobo was not modified in any way...
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Well, I'll just see what will happen when I stick my BPPC in the trapdoor. I guess there won't be any trouble, and if anything won't work, I'm sure there are people in here who can help me to get it to work :-D
I'm keeping the 1D.1 and sending the 1D.4 away.
Why? Because the 1D.1 has bigger mainboard :lol:
The only thing I need now is a (bigger) harddrive since my 80MB drive is walking on it's last legs.
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1D.1 is supposed to be the best, however I've never had problems with 1D.4 or 2B motherboard revisions + Mediator, PPC, Grex, or any other heavy-duty A1200 expansion.
I think that those timing problems are rare, or perhaps Blizzard cards (which I mostly used for testing) are handling different mobo revisions better than other accelerator cards (e.g. Apollo).
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I have a 1D4 mainboard, and after reading this thread, i knew there were timing errors with this board, but it got me thinking.
with a blizzard 030, solid and stable as a rock. nothing could break it. the same with a blizzard PPC. all fine on the western front.
but as soon as i try an IDE accelerator, i get problems and disk errors, partition trashing etc as soon as i try to use faster disk xfer speeds than PI/O mode 0.
IDE fix express seems to be the only one that works happily. i guess this is a symptom of the mainboard timing issues?
(obviously scsi works perfectly, but hey, i can't fit a scsi drive in the desktop case ;-) )
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darksun9210 wrote:
(obviously scsi works perfectly, but hey, i can't fit a scsi drive in the desktop case ;-) )
And why not? One of the 3 A1200s I bought this year came with 2 harddrives in it, one 2.5" and one 3.5". Of course, the case didn't close too well, and the metal casing inside was mostly gone, but still... :lol:
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hehe
cos the scsi drive i have is a 4.3Gb Seagate Barracuda.
Full Height 3.5" drive (twice 'normal' 3.5" drive height) even if i could cram it into the A1200 case, the fact that the drive has discoloured ('blued') the metal case due to the temperature it has been run at - makes me think its happier in the fan cooled drive cage it is currently in :lol: and my 1200 would thank me too !
plus whenever it gets the disk spinup signal, with the noise it makes, i'm reminded of the server rooms of old... *sigh* :-D
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OT:
hey darksun9210 , you don't have a CVPPC, u have a BVPPC... lol :crazy: