Amiga.org
Amiga computer related discussion => General chat about Amiga topics => Topic started by: amigakit on May 12, 2010, 09:07:14 PM
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Production of the new ZorRAM memory expansion (http://amigakit.leamancomputing.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=958) is complete and they are being quality tested this week.
Here is the final production photo:
http://www.amigakit.com/images/zorram.jpg
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Looks very nice indeed! Congratulations on... your first in house design?
PS: What's that external connector for? JTAG?
AH.
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Do I spy a spot for a clockport in the upper left? ;P
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Do I spy a spot for a clockport in the upper left? ;P
No. The pitch is wrong and there are not enough pins. Probably JTAG, not something that would be used after manufacturing, I'm sure.
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Wasn't sure. It's been years since I've seen an actual clockport....
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Some initial tests of the initial ZorRAM we have received from production.
I am testing 4x ZorRAMs in an A4000 Rev B (desktop) with a Commodore standard Zorro daughter card and Commodore A3640 Rev 3.1 and Buster 11. Apologies for the bad picture :-) Testing goes on...
(http://www.a1k.org/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=26662&d=1274461887)
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Outrageous!
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1GB of RAM in an Amiga?! That is freakin' sweet :D
BTW: SGRab is your friend! :laughing:
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:-D It was exciting to see such a huge amount of Fast memory on a humble A4000!
I will add a caveat to this. When I replaced the A3640 with a WarpEngine 040, I could only use a maximum of 3x ZorRAM cards (maybe Kickstart limitation?)
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@amigakit
Can you post memspeed test results?
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Is it possible to mount this board into an Amiga 3000?
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@ Piru
Which speed test program would you like me to try?
@Domi73
Yes ZorRAM is for all Zorro III Amigas including A3000, A3000T, A4000, A4000T
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1GB of RAM in an Amiga?! That is freakin' sweet :D
Thanks! I was counting on my fingers and toes how much that was :lol:
One Gig of fast ram... that is insane!
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Some initial tests of the initial ZorRAM we have received from production.
I am testing 4x ZorRAMs in an A4000 Rev B (desktop) with a Commodore standard Zorro daughter card and Commodore A3640 Rev 3.1 and Buster 11. Apologies for the bad picture :-) Testing goes on...
It is too much for computers (A3000) that have never seen more than 16MB! My 68030 will die when he will have that to control all this RAM memory with other chipsets.
Simply MA-GNI-FIC !!!! :)
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@ Piru
Which speed test program would you like me to try?
I think memspeed is actually the name of the benchmarking application: http://aminet.net/package/util/cli/memspeed (http://aminet.net/package/util/cli/memspeed)
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Some initial tests of the initial ZorRAM we have received from production.
You just made my 256MB A1200 cry. Happy now?
:roflmao:
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Dont worry- from projects we have currently on the drawing board I think the next lot of cash investment goes to new hardware for the A1200..
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..makes me want to boot up the AmigaOne to see the 2GB of RAM available.
I know, I know, not the same.
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Dont worry- from projects we have currently on the drawing board I think the next lot of cash investment goes to new hardware for the A1200..
Could you be kind to give us any information on that. As little as it may seem, it could be great. My A1200 also cries a river when it sees ZorRAM :)
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@amigakit: isnt that this 1 gig of ram come together of four falsely recognized 128mb zorram cards? so half of it is so to say virtual? j.s. said something like that on a1k. or did you already assembled a batch of 256mb versions?
a for speed it will hardly exceed the bandwith of z3 which means it will mot likely stay below 10mb/s but i would still love to see some benchmark.
i have to think of 256 version, although not a priority atm.
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So 256 Meg units were made already?
And I did a doubletake at 1GB on an Amiga classic.
New products for A1200? ...like maybe a PPC so we non-millionaires with lots of old machines can run 4.x ?
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Yes I want to buy a couple 256MB units. Maybe even four!
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I agree with most here, an Amiga is never going to use 1GB of memory.
My PC only gets to 1,24GB when running from start / idle, when I use a few programs it can go to 2,5 maybe 3, but that's about it.
256MB would already be sweet, I'm picking up an A4000 soon with no fastmem, so would become handy, hell even 128MB would do well.
I can imagine some Warp / OS4 / PPC apps coming to this amount or even a bit more, but 1GB ?
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Yes, please AmigaKit, can you give more info about the ZorRam and your upcoming A1200 projects??? Pretty Please?
@Karlos, yeah, I hear you...my 256MB A1200T is sobbing a bit now as well....
But... @ buzzfuzz, the amount of memory that would be 'enough' for your Amiga depends on what you use it for.... Some would think 128MB is enough.. but I do some heavy duty Lightwave renders; I have a scene that needs 128MB to just load... add to that, Rend24 to compile DCTV .ANIM's, and the other progs. I want to run... It soon becomes clear, that for me, 128MB isn't enough....
Really, I'd love a 1GB RAM Amiga, for A) Bragging Rights, and B) To try to run every memory-hogging program I have at the same time.... Though, I fear I'd run out of Chip RAM pretty quick :( .
Anyway, great job, AmigaKit!
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@ Piru
Which speed test program would you like me to try?
http://aminet.net/package/util/moni/bustest
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I agree with most here, an Amiga is never going to use 1GB of memory. hell even 128MB would do well.
I can imagine some Warp / OS4 / PPC apps coming to this amount or even a bit more, but 1GB ?
I think the point of this experiment/test was to push the boundaries of the new hardware and see exactly what it is capable of. Just for fun. I don't think anyone is suggesting that 1GB of RAM would be a necessity for AmigaOS at the moment, but it's interesting to do the test none the less. As you say, 256MB on an old classic machine like that would be awesome.
Congratulations on your new product Amigakit. It's looking good!
AH.
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:-D It was exciting to see such a huge amount of Fast memory on a humble A4000!
I will add a caveat to this. When I replaced the A3640 with a WarpEngine 040, I could only use a maximum of 3x ZorRAM cards (maybe Kickstart limitation?)
Thats a bummer, did you have any ram on the warpengine?
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I agree with most here, an Amiga is never going to use 1GB of memory.
My PC only gets to 1,24GB when running from start / idle, when I use a few programs it can go to 2,5 maybe 3, but that's about it.
256MB would already be sweet, I'm picking up an A4000 soon with no fastmem, so would become handy, hell even 128MB would do well.
I can imagine some Warp / OS4 / PPC apps coming to this amount or even a bit more, but 1GB ?
But think of the possibilities! What could we do with 1gig of ram?
Weed
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http://aminet.net/package/util/moni/bustest
Oh yeah, forgot about that one :)
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But think of the possibilities! What could we do with 1gig of ram?
Weed
Not just 1GB of RAM, but 1GB of contiguous RAM (looking at the showconfig shot). If I recall correctly, X-Ray experimented with using Zorro 3 RAM expansions (screenshot in the gallery somewhere), but his memory seemed to be split into separate ranges.
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See here (http://www.amiga.org/gallery/index.php?n=2741)...
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But think of the possibilities! What could we do with 1gig of ram?
Got any ideas?
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Got any ideas?
umm yeah, how about a sensible soccer mod with a real size soccer field :laughing:
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Got any ideas?
Well, I could use MIDI In to mix entire tracks (converted to AIFF) :lol:
Just imagine the time it would take to load them all !
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I don't expect any Classic Amiga user to utilise a full 1GB of FastRAM- the example test was just a bit of fun :-)
However, I often use up to 256MB Fast memory on my own A1200 especially when I am using Pagestream, TVPaint, PDF, Ghostscript, and FXScan applications.
A4000 accelerators with memory on-board are very scarce (and expensive on Ebay unfortunately). Hopefully, ZorRAM (http://amigakit.leamancomputing.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=958) will give standard A4000 users a well-priced and readily-available way of adding memory with modern SDRAM technology and warranty/support.
It designed to be the most cost effective way of adding memory to the A4000 so it need not be constrained to standard 16MB on board memory.
If it has the added benefit that larger, more memory expansive programs are developed for the Classic Amiga, then we will be very happy.
I estimate that access times of Zorro memory would be around the approximate 10Mb/sec rates- but I have not yet run the memspeed test yet. When I am back in the office on Monday/Tuesday I will run speedtests and post back the exact results.
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I estimate that access times of Zorro memory would be around the approximate 10Mb/sec rates- but I have not yet run the memspeed test yet. When I am back in the office on Monday/Tuesday I will run speedtests and post back the exact results.
I'd certainly expect the Zorro bus to be the limiting factor, rather than the memory itself.
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Sure, the memory chips are very fast, they will not even break into a sweat when the Amiga is accessing it ;-)
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amigakit, just curious, is the 16mb onboard A4000 necessary for anything ? can a A4000 work with just ZorRam ? (just 2 mb chip mem installed on the mobo)
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The initial tests I did were without any onboard memory except 2MB chip mem.
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I estimate that access times of Zorro memory would be around the approximate 10Mb/sec rates- but I have not yet run the memspeed test yet.
Hmm so it takes roughly 2 minutes to fill the 1GB memory. That's not very fast ;-)
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Hmm so it takes roughly 2 minutes to fill the 1GB memory. That's not very fast ;-)
The theoretical Z3 bus transfer rate limit is, what ~150MB/s ? Of course, the buster puts the brakes on long before that is reached.
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10Mb or 10MB?
Anyways, the CSPPC has UW SCSI with theoretical speed of 40MB/sec, so in principle it can be faster.
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10Mb or 10MB?
Anyways, the CSPPC has UW SCSI with theoretical speed of 40MB/sec, so in principle it can be faster.
Megabytes/second. Z3 is not a serial bus, so quoting figures in Megabits/second would be unusual.
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Hmmmm.... More ram = less limitations.
Regadless of speed, even an A4000/VTFlyer with a Warp'40/128 (although myWarpEngine is only sporting 64mgs at the momnent) would benifit greatly from extra added ram even if it's just another 128 megs. Chip ram is of concern when having all the VT programs (Switcher, LW, CG and TPaint) running concurrently.
Will be chucking change into a jar for this board and removing the TBCIV from the A4000 to make room. (TBC will find it's home in an A2000 with a couple of other anolog video cards when capture from VHS tape is needed)
Removal of the FLZIII/64 from my A3000 and replaced with 256mg ZorRAM would put way less strain on the stock A3000 powersupply and greatly increase it's memory space.
Hmmm... another change jar needed for this...
Thumbs up to AmigaKit!
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I estimate that access times of Zorro memory would be around the approximate 10Mb/sec rates- but I have not yet run the memspeed test yet. When I am back in the office on Monday/Tuesday I will run speedtests and post back the exact results.
So how was the speed?
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@Piru
do you know if MorphOS powerUp supports extra ZorroIII ram? It may come handy to run OWB*on my A4000 :-)
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So how was the speed?
Yeah, I'm intrested to know that as well, I'd love to double the memory I currently have.
In the meanwhile, what is the expected speed we can realistically expect from Zorro3 memory? Or could I achieve faster memory by using some VirtualMem patch running on SSD in CSPPC's UWSCSI?
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Or could I achieve faster memory by using some VirtualMem patch running on SSD in CSPPC's UWSCSI?
I'm quite sure an SSD on CSPPC's UWSCSI is faster than this, hence I also dont quite see the need for support in OS4.0 or MorphOS.
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I'm quite sure an SSD on CSPPC's UWSCSI is faster than this, hence I also dont quite see the need for support in OS4.0 or MorphOS.
Except I don't think there's virtual memory support either.
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@Piru
do you know if MorphOS powerUp supports extra ZorroIII ram?
No clue really.
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@Piru
I hope it does support extra ram since A4000 motherboard ram is recognized correctly but it would be nice to have some short of confirmation, let's hope somebody tries it out soon
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So how was the speed?
amigakit?
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I'm quite sure an SSD on CSPPC's UWSCSI is faster than this, hence I also dont quite see the need for support in OS4.0 or MorphOS.
i have a fast (and expensive) slc (or whatever is it called) sdd on csppc uw scsi. i havnt used it as vmem of course. the cells have a write limit, it would be a waste. but i can observe an sdd like that is still slow when it comes random access or write of small chunks. so no this is obviously not a better solution.
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Yay! Some new classic hardware. I have decided none of the nextgen stuff floats my boat, in fact I am going to sell my A1XE instead of buying OS4.1 for it, so I hope Amigakit will make some A1200 upgrades so I can buy them instead - keep up the great work! Amigas Pooooowerrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!
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When I am back in the office on Monday/Tuesday I will run speedtests and post back the exact results.
So I guess you only had time for
First batch of 256MB versions are now available. We will start shipping pre-ordered ZorRAM units immediately.
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@Piru
On our test machine today, Bustest produced results around 9.2 - 11.4 if I remember correctly, thats with 4x ZorRAM 256MB installed (1024MB) :-)
I can certainly try it with a Morphos 1.4.5 installation, but does MorphOS support Zorro cards? I thought it didnt.
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@Piru
On our test machine today, Bustest produced results around 9.2 - 11.4 if I remember correctly, thats with 4x ZorRAM 256MB installed (1024MB) :-)
I'd appreciate if you could post the output from the bustest tool, if only possible.
I can certainly try it with a Morphos 1.4.5 installation, but does MorphOS support Zorro cards? I thought it didnt.
MorphOS supports Zorro cards just fine.
The question is whether it supports memory on Zorro cards. My understanding is that this memory isn't added (IIRC the rationale for this was that the memory would be dead slow anyway, so it wasn't worth the trouble. Don't hold me for that one though, there might have been better reasons as well). But as I said before already, I really have no clue. I never had a Zorro Amiga anyway.
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Will AddMem tool work with MorphOS if it doesnt auto allocate the memory? Or does classic MorphOS have an equivalent command?
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We have also today tried 4x ZorRAM (http://amigakit.leamancomputing.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=958) 256MB installed together with a 4060T accelerator (68060) with 128MB SIMM memory- here is the results:
http://www.amigakit.com/images/4xzorram-4060t.jpg
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Hi amiga.org :afro:, this my first post, sorry that it is a question (in a 5 month old thread) :(:
I've read the thread two times and the product documentation at amigakit, too. It is not really clear to me if the memory upgrade will work with my 4000T (233mhz ppc, 50mhz 68060, cyberstom, 128mb) and hopefully with OS 4.0. 128MB is alot for OS4 but 256mb or maybe 384mb would be better ;-).
(MorphOS has not to be usable, I'm playing with it on my macmini)
Does anybody has a hint for me?
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The new ClassicOS4.1 is going to support ZorRam.
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Amigakit:
Could you try this with a Cyberstorm PPC and a bus board with say 7-zorro3 slots? i would love to see the practicle limit workbench has for memory(well zorrospace?)
7x 256MB cards=1792MB + 128 on the accelerator =1920MB....just under 2 gig! is this possible? hmm i guess you mine as well add the 16MB motherboard ram bringing it to 1936MB.
Makes me think i shouldn't of sold my old eagle tower and 7 slot bus board :)
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If I look at the Zorro3 spec at serverftp (http://amiga.serveftp.net/Datasheets/Zorro3_specifications.pdf) it shows Zorro3 expansion space to be from $10000000 to $80000000, which looks to me like 1.792 MB of address space...
So my guess is that 7x ZorRAM will not work ;-)
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If I look at the Zorro3 spec at serverftp (http://amiga.serveftp.net/Datasheets/Zorro3_specifications.pdf) it shows Zorro3 expansion space to be from $10000000 to $80000000, which looks to me like 1.792 MB of address space...
So my guess is that 7x ZorRAM will not work ;-)
Keep in mind, also, that the Mediator PCI can take upto 512MB of that address space. Other cards will take some of the address space too, such as a Deneb.
So in practise you'd be unlikely to get more than 4 ZorRAM cards at any one time. You can get 4 as has been demonstrated by AmigaKit, but there were no other cards in the machine at the time.
I am using two ZorRAM cards in my machine (128MB+256MB) and a Deneb, and a Mediator PCI taking up 512MB address space - enough for a Voodoo 3 or Radeon gfx card :)