Amiga 2000 & OS Version Recommendation

[madgrizzle]

I have an Amiga 2000, GVP 68030/25 MHz Combo Board, VA2000 graphics card and a Supra 6 GB RAM (downgraded to 4 GB through jumpers to work with the graphics card).  I'm running OS3.1 and want to know if this setup would work with OS3.9?  The GVP card has some RAM on it, but I'm not sure how much.  It's got 1 of the SIMMs populated.  Looks almost identical (maybe missing a sticker or two) to the G-Force 030 Combo with Items here: http://www.bigbookofamigahardware.com/bboah/product.aspx?id=177

I'd like to ultimately get the computer on the Internet so a TCP/IP stack is a must and I know(think) OS3.9 has that built in.  I'm just concerned that it will be really slow, like C-64 floppy drive slow..

Any thoughts?

[madgrizzle]

The GVP has 5 MB of 32-bit RAM.  The Supra has 6 MB but I had to set it back to 4 MB because the VA2000 needed 2 MB of address space.  So, if there is a max of 8 MB in the Zorro II address space, is the GVP doing 2 MB of Zorro II address space RAM, Supra doing 4 MB, the VA2000 taking up the other 2 MB and then the GVP doing the remaining 3 MB somewhere else?  Is there a way to put all GVP RAM "somewhere else" so I can set the Supra back to 6 MB?

[madgrizzle]

Just noticed the VA2000 is reporting as  4MB board.. The developer said it needed 2MB of address space so I'll inquire with him.

Anyway, if I switch to OS3.9 and don't like it, how hard is it to revert back to 3.1?  Can I just reinstall 3.1 from the floppies and all work?

Thanks for the help all

[madgrizzle]

Just noticed the VA2000 is reporting as  4MB board.. The developer said it needed 2MB of address space so I'll inquire with him.

I went to the website and it says it uses 4 MB of ZorroII address space.  So, If I have a Supra 6 MB card I had to jumper to 4 MB to get to work and a GVP 68030 Combo with 5 MB, how much Fast RAM do I have?  OS 3.9 needs 6 MB I believe.  When I go to sysinfo, it reports the Supra 4 MB as Fast RAM but the GVP as 32BitRAM.  Is this considered Fast RAM?

John

[madgrizzle]

I upgraded the GVP to 13 MB of RAM... was cheap enough.  I'm waiting on a GVP 4.15 ROM to arrive tomorrow (woot) so I can install OS3.9 to a CF card and see how it runs.  Since the GVP seems to load most everything it its RAM, is there any reason to have the Supra and its 4 MB in the computer?

[madgrizzle]

Well, that's interesting.. I get my 4.15 ROM today in the mail and will be trying it out.  Bummer the VA2000 uses 4 MB of Zorro space. It's not like I'm using the high resolutions. I wonder if that can be configured.  If it was 2 MB, then I could get 13 MB on the GVP card.  I'll inquire with the developer.

[madgrizzle]

I have the 030/40 one with 4 MB on board. If I load it to 16MB and add anything to Zorro it either will not boot, have glitchy operation or things will just not show up. I must remove 4 MB to put anything in Zorro. There was a post from a GVP engineer not too long ago about this on this site or the other but can't find it yet to point to it. Something about limited address space on old cards.

Well, I booted the Amiga and installed OS3.9 and boingbags 1-4 with 13 MB in the GVP, 4 MB in the Supra and the VA2000 taking up 4MB of address space (which apparently can be changed to 2 MB if needed per the developer).  I had no problems with it running all night, but I'm not sure I really taxed the memory.. All I had time to do was bring up aminet.net on AWeb after I got the plipbox working.  I'll see if I can max it out tonight to see what happens.  At the worst, I can set the VA2000 to 2 MB and pull the Supra leaving 13 MB on the GVP.

[madgrizzle]

Plenty of other cards out there that properly support up to 64MB or 128MB, assuming you have the budget. Good luck!

And there's the rub.  

[madgrizzle]

@OP - you should drop down to the command line and do an avail, or at least verify in SysInfo or some other tool that all memory is being recognized and configured correctly. But from your previous post, it sounds like everything is good. Kudos!

from running avail (commas added)
chip:  892,728 avail, 139,464 in use, 1,032,192 max, 889,664 largest
fast: 13,134,000 avail, 4,691,792 in use, 17,825,792 max, 6,272,312 largest
total: 14,026,728 avail, 4,831,256 in use, 18,857,984 max, 6,272,3212 largest

Looks like its all there.