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Amiga computer related discussion => Amiga Hardware Issues and discussion => Topic started by: Rotzloeffel on July 10, 2016, 07:50:30 AM

Title: BigRAM 2630 comming soon...
Post by: Rotzloeffel on July 10, 2016, 07:50:30 AM
Hi,

a new Ram-expansion for the Commodore 2630 Card is on the way.....
adding addintional 112 MB Ram to the card

produced by Individual Conputers

here is the German Anouncment-Thread:

http://www.a1k.org/forum/showthread.php?t=55803
Title: Re: BigRAM 2630 comming soon...
Post by: gary2000 on July 10, 2016, 02:04:16 PM
Great- I'd buy one.
Title: Re: BigRAM 2630 comming soon...
Post by: Acill on July 10, 2016, 02:39:35 PM
So is he also producing more of those 2630 cards? Not sure I get why he decided to release a ram board for such an old accelerator if not.
Title: Re: BigRAM 2630 comming soon...
Post by: Matt_H on July 10, 2016, 02:39:58 PM
Oh hell yes! Been hoping for one of these. Sign me up.
Title: Re: BigRAM 2630 comming soon...
Post by: Heiroglyph on July 10, 2016, 02:47:54 PM
Quote from: Acill;810887
So is he also producing more of those 2630 cards? Not sure I get why he decided to release a ram board for such an old accelerator if not.


There are a lot of them out there, especially in old Toaster systems.

I've got one here that is next to useless as it sits, so if it's cheap enough and he gets Autoconfig + Maprom working it's as good an option as his 030 cards for other systems.
Title: Re: BigRAM 2630 comming soon...
Post by: Oldsmobile_Mike on July 10, 2016, 05:03:42 PM
Anybody with a login to that site feel like sharing the pictures? :)
Title: Re: BigRAM 2630 comming soon...
Post by: kirk_m on July 10, 2016, 05:42:22 PM
Quote from: Oldsmobile_Mike;810896
Anybody with a login to that site feel like sharing the pictures? :)

(http://www.a1k.org/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=128233&d=1468089553)

(http://www.a1k.org/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=128234&d=1468089557)
Title: Re: BigRAM 2630 comming soon...
Post by: AltRN8 on July 10, 2016, 06:25:32 PM
I sense a dramatic increase in the cost/value of 2630 cards. :)
Title: Re: BigRAM 2630 comming soon...
Post by: SACC-guy on July 11, 2016, 07:26:02 AM
How will this compare with the DKB 2632 add on 112mb ram card?
Title: Re: BigRAM 2630 comming soon...
Post by: guest11527 on July 11, 2016, 08:27:33 AM
Quote from: SACC-guy;810917
How will this compare with the DKB 2632 add on 112mb ram card?
That's still to be determined. As far as I understand, it is *supposed* to include a maprom feature (if possible) and it is supposed to link in the memory by an autoconfig emulation, and in worst case, to include parts of the memory as (fast) ranger memory in the 0x00c0 area, but as the board is currently under development, it remains open for now.

That makes it more useful than the DKB extension which you had to link into the memory pool manually, and given that it uses more modern RAM chips, it also seems likely that it might have potentially less wait states than the original DKB extension based on old technology.
Title: Re: BigRAM 2630 comming soon...
Post by: Matt_H on July 12, 2016, 01:57:22 AM
It will also have a key advantage over the 2632 in that it will be readily available for purchase :)
Title: Re: BigRAM 2630 comming soon...
Post by: smf on July 12, 2016, 07:13:29 AM
Cool, this Would make my A2630 alot more usefull, it has the cpu-Power i need but 4mb of ram is not fun.
Title: Re: BigRAM 2630 comming soon...
Post by: gary2000 on July 15, 2016, 02:35:07 PM
http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?p=1101271

:)
Title: Re: BigRAM 2630 comming soon...
Post by: Oldsmobile_Mike on July 15, 2016, 03:51:11 PM
Quote from: gary2000;811142
http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?p=1101271


Geeze louise, whatta bunch of jerks on that site. :(

Although the comment about "Will the end user have to pay 50euros to unlock each megabyte of RAM" made me snicker a bit. ;)
Title: Re: BigRAM 2630 comming soon...
Post by: gary2000 on July 16, 2016, 03:14:27 PM
It costs a little more than I expected, but I am just glad that it exists.  Can't wait until preorder.
Title: Re: BigRAM 2630 comming soon...
Post by: Matt_H on August 26, 2016, 03:05:20 AM
Pre-orders are now open (https://icomp.de/shop-icomp/). My order is in!
Title: Re: BigRAM 2630 comming soon...
Post by: gary2000 on August 26, 2016, 03:37:11 PM
Preorder in!
Title: Re: BigRAM 2630 comming soon...
Post by: amigakit on August 26, 2016, 04:59:33 PM
We will be opening preordering soon !
Title: Re: BigRAM 2630 comming soon...
Post by: Iggy on August 26, 2016, 06:19:16 PM
Quote from: gary2000;811142
http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?p=1101271

:)


The prototype board has some of the ugliest soldering I have seen in awhile.
Title: Re: BigRAM 2630 comming soon...
Post by: duga on August 26, 2016, 08:05:22 PM
Quote from: Iggy;813010
The prototype board has some of the ugliest soldering I have seen in awhile.


That's why it's a prototype.
Title: Re: BigRAM 2630 comming soon...
Post by: gary2000 on November 11, 2016, 01:52:13 PM
BIGRAM 2630 is not booting, with or without hard drive.

I see Indivision ECS splash screen, then a cycling of grey colors.  



I  have a rev.9 2630 and 3.1 kickstart.  I removed the buddha card and one  time the 3.1 splash screen appeared (corrupted).  The only other cards  are x-surf 100 and 2286 bridgeboard.


Has anyone received theirs and had a similar problem?

I'm just wondering if I missed something simple.
Title: Re: BigRAM 2630 comming soon...
Post by: guest11527 on November 11, 2016, 03:23:43 PM
Quote from: gary2000;816333
BIGRAM 2630 is not booting, with or without hard drive.

In http://www.a1k.org, two types of problems were reported. Problem 1 is that the bigram does not work on overclocked cards. Apparently, there is a pretty popular hack that overclocks the 2630 with 30Mhz instead of 25Mhz by just cutting a wire and re-routing one pin. The BigRam does not like this.

The second problem reported is due to instable power supplies that generate too much ripple on the supply voltage that confuses the PLL on the bigram.
Title: Re: BigRAM 2630 comming soon...
Post by: Matt_H on November 11, 2016, 03:36:43 PM
I am also having trouble and am working with Jens to figure it out. Current theory is the power supply. Going to try swapping it with another one sometime this weekend and will report back if there's any progress.
Title: Re: BigRAM 2630 comming soon...
Post by: gary2000 on November 12, 2016, 01:45:39 PM
Yes, the current theory seems to be the power supply's 100µF caps.  But, it would be nice to know for sure before replacing them though.

Note: my 2630 is not overclocked with 4 MB.
Title: Re: BigRAM 2630 comming soon...
Post by: gary2000 on November 19, 2016, 01:35:43 PM
Quote from: Matt_H;816337
I am also having trouble and am working with Jens to figure it out. Current theory is the power supply. Going to try swapping it with another one sometime this weekend and will report back if there's any progress.

I  temporarily switched to an ATX Power Supply with an adapter.  This  system booted with errors to a plain 3.1 workbench only, not my normal  setup.  

Fast ram showed up as 121 MB.  (112 bigram + 4 on the 2630 card) ??

I also have the original power supply apart, as I am leaning towards recapping.  

Any resolution?
Title: Re: BigRAM 2630 comming soon...
Post by: Oldsmobile_Mike on November 19, 2016, 04:31:55 PM
Quote from: gary2000;816608
I  temporarily switched to an ATX Power Supply with an adapter.  This  system booted with errors to a plain 3.1 workbench only, not my normal  setup.


This doesn't make any sense. Changing the power supply won't have any effect on your boot environment, unless you forgot to plug a drive in. How many HDD's does your system have? How many bootable partitions? Sure you didn't leave a 3.1 floppy in the drive by mistake?
Title: Re: BigRAM 2630 comming soon...
Post by: Matt_H on November 19, 2016, 10:16:49 PM
@ gary2000

I've tested 2 A2000 PSUs with the same result - no boot. I haven't had time to crack them open and check the capacitors, but that's my next step.

I know we have a few people doing motherboard recapping - is anyone doing PSU recapping? I'd much rather pay for a pro to do this...
Title: Re: BigRAM 2630 comming soon...
Post by: gary2000 on November 19, 2016, 11:57:35 PM
Quote from: Oldsmobile_Mike;816612
This doesn't make any sense. Changing the power supply won't have any effect on your boot environment, unless you forgot to plug a drive in. How many HDD's does your system have? How many bootable partitions? Sure you didn't leave a 3.1 floppy in the drive by mistake?

Ha, ha..  No, I intentionally changed to another CF card.:)

I ordered new caps, because there's nothing else left to try.
Title: Re: BigRAM 2630 comming soon...
Post by: DStastny on November 20, 2016, 04:22:18 PM
I recently received mine and also am having issues.   On cold boot the BigRAM 2630 is not recognized.  A reset and memory works fine but the floppy drives subsystem internal and external no longer work.  All disks show as NDOS and give seek errors if I attempt to reset.   The floppys work on cold boot but as soon as BigRam is recognized failure.  I have stripped machine to bare minimum to no success to get Bigram to work and have functioning floppies.

Anyone else see symptoms like this?
Title: Re: BigRAM 2630 comming soon...
Post by: DStastny on November 28, 2016, 09:55:48 PM
For any that are interested.  

 I found that my issue with BigRAM 2630 and my floppy drives not working was caused by the CloanTo 3.x ROM.   I bought a 3.1 ROM (Thanks AmigaOnTheLake) and floppies drives started to work.   I suspect some incompatibility with the 32 bit RAM and 3.X.   Still have some gurus on boot-up occasionally(Power Supply???) but seems stable once machine is running.

Doug
Title: Re: BigRAM 2630 comming soon...
Post by: Oldsmobile_Mike on November 28, 2016, 10:21:11 PM
Quote from: DStastny;817003
I found that my issue with BigRAM 2630 and my floppy drives not working was caused by the CloanTo 3.x ROM.

Problems with floppy drives and the "3.X" ROM have been reported before, on this forum and others.  I think somebody actually disassembled one and found out what the exact cause was, but TL;DR.  For the rest of us just stick with a 3.1 ROM (or burn a custom 3.9 one).  I wouldn't trust that so-called 3.X ROM as far as I could throw it. ;)
Title: Re: BigRAM 2630 comming soon...
Post by: gary2000 on January 09, 2017, 02:08:37 PM
Just wanted to check and see what everyone is doing with these expansions.  

Has anyone gotten them to work or have they been returned?  

After recapping the Power Supply and changing around all the cards in the machine, I am left with no other option but to return it (which I don't want to do).  

Also, all correspondence has dried up with the manufacturer so...:confused:
Title: Re: BigRAM 2630 comming soon...
Post by: desantii on March 02, 2017, 04:30:45 PM
Wanted to buy one of these but now wary.....any word on resolution of the issues of no boot?
Title: Re: BigRAM 2630 comming soon...
Post by: Matt_H on March 02, 2017, 07:17:42 PM
I think at this point my recommendation would be to avoid. I never got mine working, and I have seen far more reports of problems than of successes. :(
Title: Re: BigRAM 2630 comming soon...
Post by: Acill on March 03, 2017, 07:07:01 AM
As much as I like the products Individual Computers makes, this seems to be the norm for Jens when problems come up. The product just gets abandoned or he stops responding altogether about them. It's just not right.
Title: Re: BigRAM 2630 comming soon...
Post by: guest11527 on March 03, 2017, 08:00:34 AM
Quote from: Matt_H;822911
I think at this point my recommendation would be to avoid. I never got mine working, and I have seen far more reports of problems than of successes. :(
Looks to me like the side effect of the internet: Success stories are not reported, and only the people with problems show up. What's the worst thing that could happen? Send it back if it does not work.
Title: Re: BigRAM 2630 comming soon...
Post by: gary2000 on March 28, 2017, 02:48:39 PM
Quote from: Acill;822934
As much as I like the products Individual Computers makes, this seems to be the norm for Jens when problems come up. The product just gets abandoned or he stops responding altogether about them. It's just not right.

You would be correct, sir.  That is exactly what is happening.

I do not mind paying a premium price for something that works or at least is  supported until there is a resolution, but this just has too many issues.

After asking to return it, there was no response.

I would be reluctant to buy anything in the future directly again, instead of going through the Amigakit. (by the way, I don't think they stock this...  Maybe there is a reason)
Title: Re: BigRAM 2630 comming soon...
Post by: gary2000 on May 22, 2017, 03:05:44 PM
Even though I have no enthusiasm left for this bigram, Jens has said that this issue has been resolved for other customers with the CPLD update.  

Has anyone sent their hardware back to Germany for repair or gotten any resolution?

Right now, having trust issues with sending it back... losing the hardware and the money.:confused:
Title: Re: BigRAM 2630 comming soon...
Post by: Matt_H on May 22, 2017, 06:49:00 PM
Well, at least there's a theoretical solution at this point! I'll risk sending it back for service. It's useless to me at the moment and I'm already out the money, so there's not much to lose.
Title: Re: BigRAM 2630 comming soon...
Post by: gary2000 on June 15, 2017, 02:20:35 PM
Just to update:

Jens will not pay shipping to send the product back for repair, as it is costly from the U.S.

He also will not refund or adjust the price.  Whenever money is mentioned, he stops talking to you.

Without his help, I cannot do much with it.

I know few people care to read this, but I am just posting for the record.

I would have a hard time buying another product from him, but I am encouraged that there are alternatives.