Software hut has advertised new GVP accelerators

[Crisisdog]

Joe at Software Hut said my boards would have shipped Monday, May 4th.  Still (impatiently) waiting for delivery...

 :-o

[Crisisdog]

I just received a UPS shipment notification from Software Hut.  Something will be arriving on my doorstep on Thursday.  Hopefully this will be the 4060 or A1200 Typhoon.

 :-P

[Crisisdog]

Still waiting for the A1200 Typhoon, but got my 4060 board yesterday.  Not a lot of time to play with it in a working state, but I spent three hours trying to get the board to work in my desktop A3000.  *Finally* got it working, to a point.  Although the board appears to be in solid shape, I have to make a comment on the jumpers and their settings.  First off, most of the small jumpers appeared to be "melted", exposing the internal metal conductor, which seems to be shorting out adjacent jumpers.  On top of that, several of the "reserved" jumpers were not set correctly from the factory.  After carefully going over all the settings, twice, and disabeling "active termination" on the SCSI chain (which also seems to be stopping the unit from booting), I got the thing to fire up and recognize all the installed memory.  I may need to reload AmigaOS on my system, several datatypes and some applications would not work with the new 060 board, even with the 68060.library copied over.  I'm under the impression that I may have been using specific 040 optimized versions, but it's been so long I can't really recall.  One nice thing I noticed about the board is that the clock crystal is in a socket, it's not soldered in.  Currently at 25/50MHz, it should make it easy to drop in a 30/60 or 33/66 to attempt an overclock.

Joy for now...

 :-D

[Crisisdog]

Crisisdog,

Have you had any more time to try the board out? How does it perform and what do you think of it? Any issues? Did you get your RAM from Software hut too?

I'm about to order one myself and am interested to hear some thoughts from those that have theirs already.

Thanks,

Robert

Hi there!  I still have not had a whole lot of time to play with the new 4060 board, but I did manage to get it operational with my current OS 3.9 load without needing to fully reload the OS.  Not exactly sure, but I'm under the impression that the board also required the 68040.library specifically from the install floppy along with the 68060.library.  Once copied over and rebooted, my datatypes and remaining applications began to work without any issues.

I haven't thrown any major speed tests at it, but as an example, JPEG files that are around 1024x768 would literally take about 30 seconds to open and display with my WarpEngine 040/40MHz.  The GVP 4060 board (060/50MHz) does the same in about 10 seconds.  Wow, still slow by today's standards with PCs running well over 1GHz, but it makes it more bearable.  Also, ADoom is "playable" now, I couldn't deal with it on the WarpEngine board.  It's still slow, but I think that's more to do with the incredibly slow GVP Spectrum board I have.  If I had a Picasso IV or CyberVision 64, I think it would move much faster.

Just to refresh everyone's memory, I've go this installed in a desktop A3000 with the latest chip revisions and interrupt fix.  I'm still working on modifying the drive cage / shelf to allow the board to fit, it really wasn't designed for the desktop A3000, but I did have a full size WarpEngine in there previously.  I need to order a new SCSI cable (don't ask), once that arrives I'm certain I'll be able to slap it back together, but it's not going to be pretty.  Thankfully the case cover still slides on so the internal hack job isn't revealed.

The board seems stable and well constructed, but as per by last post, the jumpers were melted and shorting out, and also not set properly for some of the "reserved" functions.  It took me three hours to troubleshoot.  I removed the jumpers and salvaged the workable ones.  Most of the contacts did not need to be "closed", so I had some spares to play with.  Although I purchased 32MBs of memory from SoftHut, it arrived as 70ns speed. I ended up yanking the 64MBs / 60ns modules from the WarpEngine instead.  At first it would only recognize 32MBs, but it seems that ended up being an incorrect "reserved" jumper setting.  There are two more jumpers to select 4MB / 16MB module size, and single / dual sided.  I thought I killed it for a while as it would not boot at all, but that ended up being the SCSI active termination jumper.  I have no clue why that setting won't let it boot up properly.  Other than that, there is a jumper to select 60ns or 70ns memory speeds (seems to work at the 60ns setting), and an additional "synchronous" boost setting for dual memory modules, which I can't get to work with the four installed modules that are exactly the same.

I'm happy, I think it was a good purchase.  I tried years ago to get a Cyberstorm MK-II 68060 running, but apparently that model had some sort of DMA issue where the built-in A3000 SCSI controller failed to work with the board installed.  Other than the size of the new 4060 fitting in a desktop A3000, it seems to be working just fine.

I'm looking around for a faster oscillator crystal, once I get one I'll try to overclock it.  Also looking at online auctions for better video boards, that will be my next purchase.

[Crisisdog]

At least you got yours working. I got one for the 4000D rev. B and can't get it to boot. The 4000 came with the 3640 which was working and I switched out to the 4060 and nothing. Won't boot, can't even get a 'Insert WB screen'. Put the 3640 back in and it works. Removed all cards, HD, floppy, CD, MB memory (MB has 16MB). Nothing. I bought 128 MB of ram which was installed on this card. I didn't change any jumpers before installing it the first time. After it wouldn't boot I tried different jumper settings with the same result.

Right now I have nothing installed except the 4060 with 128MB ram, 16 MB ram on the MB and it won't boot to 'Instert WB screen'.

Is there a jumper on the 4000 MB I need to set for this to work?

BTW, my crystal is soldered on.

Sorry, not sure what to tell you.  Here's things I had issues with, maybe it will help:

JP6 - Active SCSI Termination - Leave it off for now, wouldn't boot when on.
JP3 - "Reserved" jumper - Make sure it's on 1-2 (default per manual), mine was 2-3
JR1 - Memory Burst mode - By default it's "on", mine wouldn't work until I turned it off.

Jumper banks: JP4, JP2, JP1, JR8, JR7 - These should all be "off" by default instructions, I removed them as they were melted together and appeared to be shorting each other out.  My JR7 was on when I received the board, per the instruction manual, it's another "reserved" jumper that should be off.

I'd also try removing your motherboard memory and just keeping the 4060 memory installed for now.  I don't have an A4000, but any accelerator I tried in the past (other than the A3640) would not work with the ZIP chip memory installed on my A3000 system board.  There are motherboard jumpers for the A3000 to use an accelerator board, as it has an 030 built in by default.  Again, no A4000 here to know for sure if that could be an issue, but here's a site that lists some settings:

http://www.amigau.com/natamiga/t-4000d-jumpers.shtml

Looks like the A4000 motherboard has jumpers J100 and J104, I'd guess they should be on 2-3 for "external" clock sources.

Good luck, hope something here helps...

[Crisisdog]

@Crisisdog,

I am quite interested in your experiences installing the 4060 in your A3000D. I would like to do the same with my A3000. Could you post some photos once you have finished hacking the drive tray?

I also read somewhere that the 4060 will only boot from FFS partitions. Is that true?

Give me a week or so and I'll see what I can do.  Waiting on a crystal and SCSI cable before I seal her up again.  Be interesting to see how our new Amiga.org handles picture file uploads, if at all.  Otherwise I'll be looking for someplace to upload them.

I have not used any third party file systems, I've always used FFS since Kickstart 1.3.  I believe I have it set to International / Cache mode.

[Crisisdog]

Which is pin 1, towards the scsi interface or towards the processor? The orientation of the arrows between JR3 and JP8 makes it confusing.

And the same for JP8, is pin 1 towards the bottom of the card or the top?

Pin 1 should be the "pointy" end of the white silk-screen around the jumper.

For "JP3" (Reserved), that would be the pin toward the processor.  (JR3 / Burst Write is in the bank of 10 jumpers.)  For JP8 (040 / 060 selector), that would be the pin toward the top of the card, if you have the motherboard connector toward the bottom.