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Amiga computer related discussion => Amiga Hardware Issues and discussion => Topic started by: AmigaNow on October 25, 2009, 07:30:22 AM

Title: What happens when you have more than 4Mb and PCMCIA at the same time?
Post by: AmigaNow on October 25, 2009, 07:30:22 AM

I was wondering if it's possible to use more than 4Mb at the same time when using a PCMCIA lan adapter? This is on my Amiga1200 (NTSC). The reason I'm asking is my memory adapter has a jumper for PCMCIA, and when it;s enabled my 9Mb becomes 4Mb.

If this is the case, is there a workaround?

Thanks,
AmigaNow

Title: Re: What happens when you have more than 4Mb and PCMCIA at the same time?
Post by: Homer on October 25, 2009, 08:17:11 AM

Don't quote me on this, but I think the PCMCIA slot is mapped into the same memory addresses as the simple add on memory adapters (So they can't both work at the same time), whereas an accelerator card maps this extra memory elsewhere. The work around is then to use an accelerator card ! I have 32Mb on my accelerator card, and a PCMCIA ethernet card working fine.

Title: Re: What happens when you have more than 4Mb and PCMCIA at the same time?
Post by: Jiffy on October 25, 2009, 09:22:22 AM

Quote from: Homer;527241

Don't quote me on this, but I think the PCMCIA slot is mapped into the same memory addresses as the simple add on memory adapters (So they can't both work at the same time), whereas an accelerator card maps this extra memory elsewhere. The work around is then to use an accelerator card ! I have 32Mb on my accelerator card, and a PCMCIA ethernet card working fine.

This is indeed correct. The adress space of the 68EC020 cpu in the A1200 is 16 MB, containing 2 MB chip ram, 8 MB fast ram and 6 MB other stuff (rom, chips, whatever).

The only work around is an accelerator card which is PCMCIA-friendly (most, but not all of them, are). If you don't want to use an accelerator card, you can't use more than 4 MB fast ram.

Title: Re: What happens when you have more than 4Mb and PCMCIA at the same time?
Post by: Cammy on October 25, 2009, 09:57:36 AM

Depending on your RAM card, you could run a little utility called MagicMem which allows you to use 5.5MB out of your 8MB when the PCMCIA slot is in use, which is much more useful than 4MB, trust me.