PPC cards doesnt work on Escom A1200 motherboards ?

[Calen]

Lempkee:

Surpised this hasnt come up before if it is true. lets hope not as some people may have dumped there cards thinking there faulty when its down to incompatibility.
My ppc card has been fine besides little timing issues on 1D.4 and 2.B revisions (Commodore)

I do remember Eyetech  using 1d1 revisions for testing most of the hardware they sold so its makes it seem even more unlikely.

Here's a snip from Eyetech's site...

The main production board issued in the UK - Rev 1.D.1 - had onboard provision for hardware workarounds to fix the main bugs, notably bus timing problems in the Gayle and Budgie chips. In general these boards work fine with most combinations of expansion hardware and are the boards which we use to test A1200 expansion products on before shipment.

snip some more..

The later revisions of motherboards - particularly the revision 1.D.4 and 2.B are a different story however. These boards revisions were designed to take corrected versions of the Gayle and Budgie chips - and therefore were designed without provision for the earlier hardware workarounds. However, revised versions of the custom chips were never produced and as a consequence all but a few of the last of the AT/Escom manufactured motherboards were shipped without either bug-free chips or hardware workarounds.

info was sniped from here

[Calen]

Are you sure its 1d.1 (escom) By the way?   according to Eyetech, 2b and1d.4 (commodore) are later revisions, hmm weird.

Sounds like 1d.1 was one of the first a1200 models to ship from Commodore

[Calen]

Ok. very weird indeed given that the 1d.4 and 2b timing issues seems to be not even present on 1d.1 boards as they seems to be top dog mobo according to Eyetech.

Be nice to know what the problem is indeed,  perhaps some hardware addon is causing a conflict (clutching at straws here)

[Calen]

Yeah thats the one, probably  the first A1200 mobo and one of the most reliable by whats been read, weird indeed. perhaps though it does need some fix.

My early ppc setup had problems to with crashing and gfx currupted on cold bootup times, this was mainly down to lack of power getting to the mobo with my blizzard vision gfx card installed.  But since day one i usaly do a warm double reset to get her kicking in, i think thats more down to a timing thing though

If all ideas fail maybe you can get your friend to give eyetech a call, they are usually very helpful on these matters.

[Calen]

Yeah, don't blame ya for being upset, classic ppc h/w is far from cheap and for it to not work with the Amiga out of the box just sucks,  I for one would feel the same.

If i was in same boat and all else fails (there must be something though) i'd resort to ebay and pick up a dirt cheap basic a1200 with a model known to work with those cards.

Perhaps someone else here can shed some light on this problem, step up Bppc owners..

[Calen]

utri007

They are all originaly Commodore models, 1d.1 1d.4 and 2b. i have two of them that date back to '93,  but yeah,  people who bought them in the escom era probably got the same revisions, rebranded & perhaps repaired.

[Calen]

Not sure what use this is to you but thought i'd post it anyway.

Eyetech-supplied Amiga International Magic Packs

Like several other Amiga dealers Eyetech has been supplying Amiga 1200 Magic packs since the became available from Amiga International in late 1997. Where applicable these packs bought from Eyetech have had the 1.D.4 and 2.B modifications already carri ied out. There are however two design limitations on these Magic Pack computers which were not present in the earlier Commodore-manufactured A1200's. These are design limitations rather than manufacturing defects and the rectification of them - although u usually possible - is specifically excluded from all warranty provisions.

These limitations are as follows:

    * Some copy protected games software uses floppy disk drive signals which are not present on the Magic Pack floppy disk drives. This software - which is in a minority - will not run on the Magic Pack A1200's without the addition of Eyetechs EZ-D DF0 floppy drive interface.
    * Changes to the A1200's video circuitry to meet new EC interference emission standards means that some monitors exhibit horizontal 'tearing' of the screen image when using the PC-compatible screen modes of DBLPAL, DBLNTSC, Super72, Productivity etc. (Standard 15 kHz screen modes work fine). Eyetech can undertake a (charged) modification to the A1200 main board to replace these suppression components with ones which allow the vast majority of PC-type monitors to function perfectly. However do check fi irst - you may find that your A1200 functions fine with your monitor in these screen modes without further modification.

Please contact Eyetech if you experience these symptoms and would like to arrange for your motherboard to be suitably modified.

Technical support

got from here

[Calen]

There are still quite a few Amiga owners around here with ppc cards, hopefully they will see this thread.
I think Ryu ? has more than one bppc card, perhaps he has a mixed bag of mobo revisions and can share some info.

[Calen]

I have also had it working fine on a 1D4 motherboard but I have never tested a 2B one, I belive those to be the worse revision and were mainly produced by escom... The main problem with BPPC cards is the +5v rail... often due to the small tracks on the amiga mobo the card doesnt get a stable 5v supply so behaves erratically.

Yeah that was my original problem on my 1d.4 mobo, not getting the extra power so the system was quite unstable, all was fine later though with some little cable from eyetech to get the extra power fed to it.

I have also used my bppc card with bvison on a 2B board, it was pretty much as stable as the 1d.4 board after i got the power issue sorted, a double warm reset and she was OK, suffice to say i havent powered her up in some time so thats all alittle cloudy, i'm also unclear if my 2B board has had timing issues fixed as i bought it 2nd hand  but i would go with no, both are Commodore models, i have no experience with any later escom rebranded boards.