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Amiga computer related discussion => Amiga Hardware Issues and discussion => Topic started by: Effy on November 25, 2003, 06:59:42 AM
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I think I have asked it before but didn't get a clear answer. I now have got a bare A4000 with 3.1 chips and an empty harddrive. The motherboard has got 16 Mb Fast Mem and that's it. I sold my MK2 68060+scsi for 180 euro and got an original 68040/25 instead. Seemed a fair deal. Now I wanna raise the memory, and I have got a Voodoo4 pci 32 Mb ready, got it from german Ebay a half year ago. The question is : if I use that card with a Mediator, do I really get 32 Mb extra Fast Ram ? Yes or no ? Do I get then 48 Mb Fast Ram ??? If not then the only options to increase Ram are a turboboard or a Z3 card to put Ram on ... :-?
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Effy wrote:
I sold my MK2 68060+scsi for 180 euro and got an original 68040/25 instead. Seemed a fair deal.
:-?
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I failed to understand this part. Trading in an 060/SCSI for a 3640 card? Hows that a good deal?
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No, the video card ram is not used as fast ram. You're now basically screwed. There is not easy way to get good 32 bit memory on an A3000/A4000 if you accelerator does not support it. You could get a zorro card like the DKB card, but they were about the $200US mark when I was looking at them, *if* someone would even part with it. For that reason alone, I stayed with the 3640 card until I could afford a CSPPC
There are lots of cheap cards out there to add 16bit ram, but remember that your machine is going to crawl the moment you use that ram.
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You certianly wont get the video cards RAM as fast ram, and even if you did, the bandwidth isnt that fabulous. Some tests I got a few users here to run a while ago showed that even for accelerated systems, transfers across the mediator to the video cards' memory was not particularly quick (between 8-12 M/s depending on exact config).
I think the confusion on the memory issue may have arisen from the various things I've seen written about using some of the video cards SGRAM to accelerate transfers between other PCI devices on the bus.
Whilst this may be true, it has no effect on communication between the CPU / PCI devices.
Id say ditch the 3640 and find an accelerator with local memory ASAP.
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Hello,
I've got an A1230 + Mediator PCI. I don't know if it's the same with an A4000 but it works with mine : just download WBCtrl from the Aminet.
Add :
WBCtrl IMT=FAST
in your user-startup and the memory from the Mediator should appear in your Fast RAM. So you should then get 16+32 Mb Fast
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(almost) everything is possible on Amiga.
But not everything is sensible.
A3640 does even slower memory operations than 030 card on the A4k (Also A1200 with 030 beat A3640 in things like video playback).
Why did you sell the MK2 in the first place?
I have MK1 (&128MB RAM) and I would never ever downgrade to 040. (060 with SCSI would be the dream come true for my 68k Amiga...)
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>Add :
>WBCtrl IMT=FAST
>in your user-startup and the memory from the Mediator should appear in your Fast RAM. So you should then get 16+32 Mb Fast
Hmmm, I looked that up right away out of extreme curiousity.... here is the entry from the .doc
To me, it looks like that is the same function as the 'Images in: Other memory' of WB3.9's workbench.prefs
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IMT=IMAGEMEMTYPE/K: when set to FAST or ANY, wb and icon.lib will
use fastram for imagedata (p96/cgx or fblit required!). Use
CHIP for chipram. It's safe to use this option without p96/cgx
as WBCtrl will check for an RTG system / fblit before actually
performing the change. If you use fblit by Stephen Brookes,
you should use ICONFAST instead of FAST to avoid problems
with workbench.library. Last but not least WBFAST tells wb
to use fastram for imagedata and resets icon.library to use
chipram.
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@Eniodis
I've got an A1230 + Mediator PCI. I don't know if it's the same with an A4000 but it works with mine : just download WBCtrl from the Aminet.
Add :
WBCtrl IMT=FAST
in your user-startup and the memory from the Mediator should appear in your Fast RAM. So you should then get 16+32 Mb Fast
That is NOT true.
You will NOT get more fast memory with that, only less.
IMT=FAST will only instruct Workbench to load icons to fast memory.
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Yes, that only loads the Workbench images into Fast Ram, as said before. I use it.
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I don't want to sound rude or anything but WHY did you bleating get rid of that 060 one and then replace it for an 040? One of the most bizarre discisions i have ever witnessed. :-?
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Well you will save RAM, by having bitmaps stored in the GFX-card, but
since you are updateing fom pure AGAmost of the saved mem would
be Chip. Normally you will allways have ~1.9MB Chip free, and maybe
even a few bytes of Fast (dependeing on what patches you ran on AGA,
and what settings you use for the Voodoo).
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I've got an A1230 + Mediator PCI. I don't know if it's the same with an A4000 but it works with mine : just download WBCtrl from the Aminet.
Add :
WBCtrl IMT=FAST
in your user-startup and the memory from the Mediator should appear in your Fast RAM. So you should then get 16+32 Mb Fast
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
That is NOT true.
You will NOT get more fast memory with that, only less.
IMT=FAST will only instruct Workbench to load icons to fast memory.
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Yes, you're right. Memory makes me defaults since I don't really use my Amiga for any other platform :roll:
Sorry for this mis-information
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Seems like a lot of feedback that I`m getting ...
I first wanted to sell my A4000 but nobody was interested. Then a guy from Belgium, local that is, offered me to buy my MK2 for the price of 180 euro+his 68040/25. I didn't just trade my MK2 against an ordinary 68040, don't get me wrong.
About the Fast mem then. It seems that I can't use the gfx mem of a Voodoo4 as Fast mem. But can I instead redirect as much calls as possible to the so called Chip Ram ?? Would that help ?? I shall probably, as mentionned before, have only maximum 1.9 Mb of memory, but since there's 32 Mb to be filled I might be so lucky to save a lot of Fast mem ..., am I wrong ?? This is very new to me ...
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Yes you are wrong :-o
There are3 kinds of RAM in your system (only 2 atm to be precise).
1. FastMem: Those 16MB on the mobo
2. ChipMem: 2MB also on the mobo, much slower in access, but the only
kind of RAM that the AGA-chips can use (listed as GFX-Mem in the title-bar).
3. RTG-Mem: Everything on the GFX-card(won't be directly listed anywhere).
Now what you will want is this:
Redirect as much as possible from Chip to Fast as this is about 6 times faster.
Patches likes FastBlit will do that.
Once you get the Voodoo you might want to move any GFX-related data into
the RAM on the card freeing much-needed FastMem. That should happen on itself,
some GFXApps may have an option where you can select the type of mem to be
used for buffers and so.
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Effy wrote:
Then a guy from Belgium, local that is, offered me to buy my MK2 for the price of 180 euro+his 68040/25. I didn't just trade my MK2 against an ordinary 68040, don't get me wrong.
Sorry man, but that guy must have been laughing his a*se off afterwards. He got shot of his 3640 card and replaced it with a vastly superior one for just 180 euro..
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Karlos : If it were a MK3 then the price would have been higher ... and I didn't pay too much for that A4000 anyway. I don`t plan on buying myself a brandnew car from the money I get from selling Amiga hardware. I can still sell my A4000 as it is and concentrate on my A1200 PPC ...
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@Effy
Don't get me wrong I am not criticizing you. I realise you could have gotten a higher price for the Mk3, butI still think you were a bit ripped off.
The CS Mk3 is better than the Mk2, but even the first CS060 was far better than the 3640.
Assuming the other guy wanted a better CPU card for his A4K or whatever, he would have had to buy one (probably for a good deal more than he paid you) then have to see about selling the 3640 which not many users would want.
As I see it, he got a very good deal out of your good self.
Anyhow, all that aside, if you want more RAM with a higher bandwidth, you need to find a replacement CPU card (you are now in that other guys position).
The A4K has a terrible memory bus that buts the brakes on any CPU using memory on the motherboard. This is why the virtuall all accelerator cards came with local memory slots - even the first warp engine 28MHz 040 cards (only 3MHz faster than the 3640) ran rings around the basic 3640 system.
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Okay, so it seems better to get rid of the A4000 ?? Which price should I ask for it ?? :-?
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On the other hand, in the past night I 'won' a cool gfx card on Ebay : a Voodoo5 pci 64 Mb (http://cgi.benl.ebay.be/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=2767521074&category=27388&rd=1) :-o
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Actually there is one GFX card that I know can have its RAM mapped to FAST: the PicassoII.
I have this small utility that does THAT! I've never done it because that would mean reverting to OCS+A2320 in WB1.3, or WB2.05
Likely, if I had any need to run 1.3 on 68000 I would then have to either boot off WB floppy with this Picasso-remapper on it, and I would then have 2Mb FAST.
That doesn't appeal (1.3 won't work with the 060+SCSI) so I guess I'd just stick with OS3.1 & OS3.5 with 64Mb FAST! :-D
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In other words, the info on the website of Elbox about sharing the gfx card memory seems a bit confusing ... :-?
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I got a request from a dude in Belgium (cool !! There seem to be more than just a few users) to sell my bare A4000. It has got kickstart 3.1, 68040/25 card, 16 Mb Fast Ram, 6 Gb empty harddrive, 40x cdrom, Hypercom Zorro card, Xsurf ethernetcard. The dude has got an old A2000 with oktagon +tandemide+ picasso2+ ... so how much can I ask for my A4000 desktop ?? I don't want to ask too much, I don't plan to buy a new car from the money I get ;-)
I still have got my 1 Gb scsi hd with the workbench on but I sold my MK2+scsi and can not use that hd anymore to boot up, but I guess I can connect that hd to his oktagon and boot from that one, not ?? :-?
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Forgot to say, the battery is okay, I cleaned it a bit just to make sure ...
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I don't think 180 Euro is a bad price (as a seller) for a MK2 CS060. I bought mine for £80 = approx 120 Euro
And I got a Fastlane Z3 off ebay for about £14/20 Euro
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The PCI gfx card wont give you more fast RAM. It does free up your chip ram since the cards ram is used in its place.
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Acill : does this mean I can divert as much as I want to the Chip Ram instead of Fast Ram ?? All gfx to Chip ?? Memory that AsimCDFS needs to Chip ??