Classic Workbench; Problems with aca1233 accelerator.

[paul1981]

I would check this carefully.  I think because the RAM isn't there at initial power-on (i.e., not autoconfig, but waiting until you add it via the startup-sequence) all that stuff is getting loaded into "slow" (i.e., chip) ram, because that's the only ram that the system "sees" upon initial power on.  Dunno. How much chip ram do you have available after boot?

There's always 1MB of fast ram from the ACA card from power on, so nothing eats chip ram here. But to avoid the system finally eating into chip ram (when the 1MB is used up, probably after booting ClassicWB) then the acatune command line needs to be run as early as possible...ie 1st command executed in the Startup-Sequence is the best place, plus it means you get faster booting as it remaps the kickstart to fast ram.

[paul1981]

No, its simply bypassing the cfcard entirely and loading the regular boot screen, the one that prompts you to insert the floppy disks. Its acting like there is no cf card at all.

Quoting from the ACATune-readme:

ACAtune -maprom * p

With Kickstart in fastmem, the computer starts extremely fast. Sometimes so fast that the Gayle chip is not yet out of reset state - it will miss some accesses. As a result, the computer does not find a harddisk and comes up with the "insert disk" screen, waiting for a bootable disk to be inserted. By adding the "p" option to your maprom command line, ACAtune will attempt to patch the kickstart and insert a short waiting period on every reset. This will give the Gayle chip and harddrives enough time to wake up from reset condition and go into normal operation. The screen is turned light brown during the waiting period.

It could be this. On your ACATune line in your Startup-Sequence, after the '*' write a 'p' as shown above. So '....maprom * p >ram:acaoutput.txt'

[paul1981]

This is what came on the cf card. Everything is set up, programs, whdload etc. If i format I lose everything.

I'll have to check if the damn cf card came loose inside the case, I guess...
Is there any command to get the system to boot from hardisk as a priority over floppy/df0? Scutterbucket!:)

Why is your Workbench floppy inserted? It will boot from floppy if a floppy is inserted.
The screen shot you show above, was that booting from hard drive or floppy?
You don't need to alter any boot priorities, they are setup fine.

[paul1981]

You had it working in post #61. From there all that needed to be done was to add the acatune line to the beginning of the Startup-Sequence. It's annoying for me and Mike as well as we've put efforts in to help and still haven't managed to help you yet!

[paul1981]

I see. Yes from floppy. I can only boot from floppy now it seems. When i copied the acatune to the C directory, this happened, after i did a soft reset.
I was checking to see if the other mem would disappear after a reset.

No clue, maybe some confliction with classic wb?

Please boot from your Workbench floppy. Go into Workbench3.0 and then into Utilities, then load the program 'Multiview'. A file requester will appear. Press Volumes and go into drive DH0: ... then drawer 'S' ... then double click the file 'Startup-Sequence'. I'd like to see it.

[paul1981]

My battery is about dead so will have to call it a night. Push comes to shove you can post me your CF card and I will fix it for you if necessary, so all is not lost.

[paul1981]

j

The ACATune line looks good. PM me and I'll reply with my postal address if you want me to sort it out for you. Like Mike says, I'm sure it's something simple that is wrong but hard for a novice to see. I'm on holiday in 8 days time however, so will need posting immediately and first class.

Is it still not booting at all from the CF drive? Or does it boot but go to a black screen?

[paul1981]

Yup, it boots and then alternates between a black screen and a brown screen several times and then finally goes to a black screen.
Edit. I'll have to open the miggy up to take out the card, so i should check if it came loose, though i doubt it. Failing that I'll send it your way.

I need to untangle my brain after a long days work; I'll break out the screwdriver later.

You're saying it boots now, whereas before you said it was at the purple 'insert disk' type screen. Do you think then that putting the 'p' on the ACATune line to delay the startup is actually causing your black screen after it boots? If it is indeed booting from the hard drive now, try changing the ACATune line to just the basic option and cold boot:

C:ACATune >ram:acaoutput.txt

Or better still, before you do that just put a ';' at the beginning of the ACATune line so that it comments the line out (which means it will read the line as a comment and will not execute the ACATune command line). Your Startup-Sequence will then act as if the ACATune line isn't even there, so that we can see if you can boot correctly again without the ACATune line.

;C:ACATune -cache on - burst on....ETC

So, if booting from your Workbench floppy; to edit the CF Hard Drive Startup-Sequence you'd type 'ed dh0:s/startup-sequence' into a shell, or use the Execute Command in the Workbench menu.

[paul1981]

And yes indeed, adding the ";" to the startup sequence has fixed the cf card. Its working fine again. Damn good thinking chap!

But we are back to the same problem...I have to manually add the other mem via the maprom * command.

Perhaps the acatune startup command would have to be placed somewhere else in the startup sequence. Perhaps classic workbench is
loading something else first? Or there is some kind of confliction?

It's good news that your system is still working after using the ';' to comment out the line. I did say though to try this afterwards (in your Startup-Sequence):

C:ACATune >ram:acaoutput.txt

This will simply add the extra memory at every boot.  So try that, and see if that works. We'll take it from there.

P.S. The maprom feature is nothing to do with adding the extra memory.

[paul1981]

I tried this and it seemed to work. Upon a soft reset, ctrl,A+A the other mem remained and there was lots of it.
Sadly powering off at the brick and powering back on it did not work. The hardisk drive light attempts to load but just results in a black screen.

What next maestro?

I wonder if you've had issues with the reset signal on pin 1 of the ide cable as mentioned here under the 'Hard Drives' section:

 http://www.lysator.liu.se/amiga/hard/txt/a1200hardfaq.html

Or even the slow spin-up issue of Kickstart 3.0? Does anyone know if any of those issues are possible with a CF hard drive on the 1200's ide port?

When you say that the hard disk light attempts to load, does the light flicker in the same manner and for the same length of time as it does when it normally boots?

Also, when it's in this 'black screen' state, if you reset the Amiga and hold both mouse buttons down to get into the Amiga Early Startup Control; do your hard drive partitions show up? If they do, what happens if you select the button 'Boot with no Startup-Sequence'? Does it take you to the AmigaDOS prompt?

[paul1981]

Not sure. It flickers quite a bit, so probably. Yes, I have accessed the amiga dos, just like you said.

 
 Ok, tomorrow when I get home from work I'm going to setup a CF card with ClassicWB Light and boot from it, confirm it's working, then I'll add the ACATune line in and see if I hit any problems. How's that for service?

[paul1981]

Above and beyond the call of duty, my friend. Many thanks. I'm really enjoying my a1200 btw.
An indivision should make the games look really sweet on an lcd telly, when I get one that is.

 You're welcome. Anything to help a fellow Amigan...
 BTW, what revision is your A1200 motherboard? I'll be using a 1A. A 1A doesn't require timing fixes, but your board may well do, which could possibly be the problem... Or if it's not a problem with the booting issue it will certainly show itself up in WHDLoad with certain games freezing or with graphics corruption.

[paul1981]

You're in luck...

I replicated the issue. I can't upload a photo as I have no way to scale down a jpeg file to 97KB on my phone.

Solution:

Move the ACATune line to just above the 'C:GetMouseInput LOCAL'. So it'll look like this:

;ClassicWB Startup-Sequence
;--------------------------------
;LITE 3.1

IF EXISTS DEVS:scsi.device
C:LoadModule DEVS:scsi.device
EndIf

C:ACATune -cache on -burst on -vbrmove -maprom * p >ram:acaoutput.txt
C:GetMouseInput LOCAL

IF $MouseInput EQ 1
...

It turns out that LoadModule doesn't appear to work if run after ACATune in this particular configuration, even if no extra options are added such as maprom. ACATune with no further options simply adds extra memory...but LoadModule doesn't appear to work with it in this way. But this makes sense really... Here we have an ACA1232/1233 that under Kickstart 3.0 doesn't configure all of its extra ram - it only configures 1MB. So after the ACATune command is run, followed by the LoadModule command, the machine resets and because we're running Kickstart 3.0 here the ram is lost and the Amiga configures 1MB again. This then appears to leave us with a black screen, although I was able to hold both mouse buttons down and boot with no startup-sequence and confirmed that the scsi.device was at 37.64 (standard with Kickstart 3.0). Of course, if the LoadModule command had worked then it would have been of a higher level.

There's no real reason for you to upgrade to Kickstart 3.1, but like I said earlier, you can use the ACATune command to softkick 3.1 and if you were to do this then remember to put the ACATune command line back to where it was - before LoadModule.

Also, what capacity is your CF Hard Drive? If it's 4GB which I suspect it is then the scsi.device shouldn't even be there on disk, and you could simply comment out the LoadModule line for a quick fix. If it is only 4GB, then the person who configured your setup has made an error which has cost us both a lot of time (ClassicWB by default doesn't use an upgraded disk based scsi.device, although it is optional).

Let me know how it goes...

[paul1981]

Your an absolute star. I can't thank you enough. Its working now; I'm getting tons of other mem.Two soft resets and a hard reset and the other mem is still there.
Now that's more like it! It would have been a shame not to get the most out of my aca card.

The cfcard is 8 gigabytes btw.

It says in the readme that the aca can be used to simulate other system configs, i.e. a 1 meg amiga etc. I noticed some games for example apano sin don't run. Perhaps it requires a specific system set-up?

Anyhow; i guess I could use the acatune floppy to change the config as I needed it, to run a specific game? The setting would be erased upon powering the amiga off anyhow, I guess; and so the acatune startup line as we have it now would remain untouched?

Again thanks very much. And thanks to oldsmobile mike too.

I'll get myself a cd drive soon and then have a crack at setting up this easynet wireless thingy.

You're very welcome. I'm glad it's working for you now.

Apano Sin looks to be a newish game according to Lemon Amiga...Year 2000. This should be hard drive installable anyway, without the need for WHDLoad (source the ADF's online). Do not change the ACATune line now that it's working correctly. The whole idea of WHDLoad is twofold; that it can install games to your hard drive that were originally uninstallable to hard drive, and also that these 'installs' will work on any hardware configuration, whether it be a bog standard 68000 amiga with little ram or a super fast 68060 amiga with 256MB ram. WHDLoad isn't perfect (yet) and nor are all of the installs. Some don't work correctly, some need WHDLoad v16.9, whilst others want 17.1 etc. I'm not quite sure what the latest version is but later versions can break compatibility with older installs - it's a constant battle and updates to the installs to fix issues are ongoing, and quite slow.
If you have problems with particular games or WHDLoad then you should start another thread, as your issues with your ACA1233 are now fixed, and there is nothing more to do here.

I wouldn't bother with a CD-ROM drive... you can install most things onto hard disk manually from CD-ROM's. Wireless network card...YES!

[paul1981]

Yup, I have the easynet wireless network thingie, but no cd drive to install the software, which comes on a cd. Lol.

Perhaps I should rename this thread as "Aca 1233, problems with classic workbench". So if anyone has the same trouble in the future they can search out this thread.
Now that we(you) have solved the problem, let all Amigans drink from the goblet of wisdom...:lol:

I'm surprised it comes on a CD. My point was that if you had a network connection to your Amiga then you could download ISO's and mount the CD images on your hard drive without even having a CD drive. Plus, you don't want to keep unplugging your network card every time you want to use the CD drive, surely? I understand the chicken and egg scenario here, but I've always solved things like this with the good ol' floppy drive.

The only time I'd ever unplug a wireless card from an A1200 would be if I was going to plug in a CF card adapter - certainly not a CD-ROM drive.

@Mike - Cheers!
@gizmo - I used to have my hair center parted just like that.