Classic Workbench; Problems with aca1233 accelerator.

[wrath of khan]

I'm just turning the clock back here a bit. Here you stated that acatune was working as it gave you the extra ram. Can you repeat this behaviour? This proved that acatune detected your card.

Also, don't forget to try the cold boot but without Startup-Sequence (see my last posts) and type 'c:acatune -status' and let us know what it says.

EDIT: Ok seems you already did that last part... In my mind, it's either the wrong (old) version of acatune, or the card perhaps isn't seated correctly, which may explain why it recognised the card earlier.

Hmm I will check if the card is not seated properly. At first it was pushed in too far and there was distortion on-screen. The manual recommends loosening the card a bit. I did this and it worked. Perhaps its a tad too loose now? I'll investigate.

I'm getting visible scan lines on my lcd from the rgb scart cable I got from amigakit too. It's the lcd telly no doubt. Someone over at eab has a thread about the same thing. Not to worry as  I will get an indivision aga soon enough.
Oh and yes every time I use the acatune disk and type acatune maprom * I get loads of other mem allocated and I can run most games just fine.

[wrath of khan]

Here is sysinfo pics attached with the acatune maprom * feature activated
Perhaps I should try the line in startup again and put it right at the top before any other line?
There is an acaoutput.txt file in my ramdisk though...

[wrath of khan]

Yes, there should be because we told ACATune to write it's output to the file 'ram:acaoutput.txt' in the command line that we entered into your Startup-Sequence. This file is created whether there's a problem or not, so until you get it working correctly you should read it.
If that file is created in ram: then it means that that line must still be in your Startup-Sequence, and you should open the file in Multiview and see what it says... or open a shell and  type 'type ram:acaoutput.txt'.

So what we've discovered here then is that ACATune is finally recognising your card. Might be worth while plugging/unplugging the card a few times, say 5 times just to create a clean contact on the edge connector.

The Sysinfo pics aren't relevant at the moment until we get your ACATune working correctly. We can know whether it's working correctly with the -status argument ('acatune -status' in a shell).

We're going round in circles here.:laughing:

If you really want fault finding in it's simplest form, then I'd suggest you power off your A1200, boot a Workbench floppy disk, open a shell, put your ACATune disk in, copy the ACATune command from your floppy to your ram disk, and run the ACATune command line straight from the ram disk. Once the command has run, in the same shell type 'acatune -status' and let's see what that says.

Well if by copying, you mean drag and drop, then i dragged the acatune icon into the ramdisk window. It copied over but there is only an acatune drawer. It opens a window called acatune but there is nothing there.

Perhaps I have copied it incorrectly. I'll try seating and unseating the card a few times.

[wrath of khan]

I finally managed to get the readme open thats on the acatune disk. It says I should copy acatune to the C directory of my boot partition. I have no idea how to do that.
Having done the above, it says to then type "acatune -staus" into a shell.
It is then supposed to give me all the aca system details, and i can see if its fully working etc.

I think they recommend some line called "acatune option argument option argument as the first thing to add to startup?

[wrath of khan]

Adding the "-" didn't make any difference. I still lost the "other mem" upon soft reset. The aca floppy disk still works fine.

[wrath of khan]

Apparently my cf card is divided into three partitions. Could this be causing problems? I am running everything from this card though I have floppies with workbench too.

[wrath of khan]

Do you boot off of more than one partition?

Ive no idea. It boots up into classic workbench. I have whdload and other programs
Would i have access to all three partitions upon boot up or do i need to access the other partitions someow?
Are partitions problematic here?

[wrath of khan]

You need to go back to basics like I said previously. Cold boot your Amiga from your Workbench floppy. Open a shell, and run the acatune command from your acatune floppy. So if your acatune command is in a drawer called 'acatunev17' then in the shell you would type 'df0:acatunev17/acatune'

If it runs correctly, you will see the extra memory appear as 'other mem' at the top of the Workbench screen. Let us know if that works. BTW... what's your name?

My name is Adrian, I'm over at eab under the same name, Adrian Browne. I tend to use the moniker "wrath of khan" as in star trek 2, on all other forums though; it kinda stuck.

I had an a500 when I was 11 and always loved miggys ever since. I had an a1200, which I purchased around 1996 but I donated it to a natami team member many moons ago, not that I am waiting on natami. Had a cd32 once upon a time but I sold it years ago. I picked up this a1200 on e-bay for a bargain.

I still have the original a500 of course and it needs repairs and cleaning.

@ oldsmobile mike, yeah I picked the Donald Pleasance avatar as a joke tbh. He was the would be saviour of commodore, alas skullduggery thwarted him or was it the Japanese. He was a prominent figure in amiga mags in the u.k particularly when commodore were in dire straits. He even had an ask "donald Pleasance section in a mag.

So, run the acatune maprom command or the line I added to the startup menu? I must be getting confused here. I can get the other mem to work, it seems but it disappears upon reboot. are you still referring to copying the acatune to ram here?

[wrath of khan]

I think the extra mem is going to disappear upon a hard reboot (i.e., you completely turn the power off). Does it survive a soft reboot (i.e., once you execute the acatune software, does the memory stay active if you press Ctrl+A+A? Or do you need to execute acatune every time?). Paul would be the one who would know about this. My understanding stops beyond that it needs to be executed first in the startup-sequence with the proper options, and I'm still concerned that some of your ClassicWB stuff may be interfering with it (as Paul pointed out).  Have you copied it to the C: directory of your boot partition yet?

Boy do I miss the days of Commodore skullduggery! Now all we have is community backbiting and in-fighting. Was a lot more fun when we were unified against a common enemy. Kind of like the cold war, LOL.

Yes all the fighters went to amiga.org and all the pacifists went to eab.
 How do I copy it to the "C" directory of my boot partition? The aca tune readme says to do this but it does not say how. The other mem disappears after a hard and a soft reset.

[wrath of khan]

You need to get the acatune command into your SYS:C directory.  If you had a directory utility like DirOpus or DirWork it would be easy.  ClassicWB probably comes with something similar, but I'm unfamiliar with it.  Barring that, just copy it via the shell (see post #39 in this thread).
 
 At a command line type:
 
 copy df0:where_ever_the_file_is_saved_now to SYS:C
 
 

So in a command line i should write: copy df0:c/acatune to SYS:C ?
I have DirOpus on my workbench btw.
Edit; I wrote above the command into a shell window, it said: unknown command; the acatune disk was in the drive when I tried the command in the shell. What exactly should I type? I guess this thread is getting long in the tooth...damn aca card or classic workbench...grrrr...

[wrath of khan]

Gaah, you're killing me now, man. You just need to copy the file from where ever it is on the floppy disk, into the C directory on your hard drive. Have you never used DOS before?

Like if the file is in the directory "Tools", you'd type:

copy df0:tools/acatune to SYS:C

Or if the file is in a directory called "Utilities", you'd type:

copy df0:utilities/acatune to SYS:C

Or if the file is on a floppy disk in an external drive, you'd replace df0: with df1: or df2: or whatever your floppy disk is. Are you familiar with commands like CD, Dir, List, etc.? You're making me feel like an old fogey now, for using dos commands, haha.

I don't know where the file is on the floppy disk, but it's there somewhere, probably in some subdirectory. You need to get it from there, into the C directory on your boot partition so you can add it to your Startup-Sequence.

Nope, only used command lines for formatting and copying disks many moons ago. I insert the disk, the acatune appears as an icon on my desktop. I click it and a window opens; inside is acatune icon and a readme icon. I have no idea where any other files pertaining to acatune might be, if thats what you mean.
Here's a pic, ignore the memory info at the top, the cards maprom feature has not been activated by me yet. How the heck do I locate the acatune directory then?

[wrath of khan]

You need to get a book, man.  
 
 Put the disk in the floppy drive.  I assume you only have one drive, so that's df0:
 
 Open a Shell window (usually in Workbench:System, in your case it would probably be in WB:System, since your Workbench partition is named weirdly).
 
 Type:
 
 cd df0:
 
 then type:
 
 list
 
 We need to find where on the disk the command is located.  Respond back with a screenshot of the directory listing of df0:

I typed "cd df0:" into the shell, i then hit the return key.
Then i typed list and hit the return key again.
And yes i only have one disk drive, Here's the pic

Sheesh, I gotta hit the sack as I have work in 7 hours... To be continued...
Good night Mike...

[wrath of khan]

Eureka!!...kind of...

I copied acatune to the "C" directory. I then checked the status of the aca, here's the pic attached. I then did a soft reset to check if the other mem would stay and erm crikey...now Its not not loading my harddrive/cf card. It goes straight to the regular workbench screen. Strange... Perhaps I can change the boot priority in boot options, pic also attached.

[wrath of khan]

Aah, you shouldn't need to mess with boot priority, what did you do to your startup-sequence???

Edit: When you say "not loading your hard drive", do you mean Workbench isn't loading properly?  It just goes to a shell command prompt?

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.

[wrath of khan]

But the card shows up in early startup?  Assuming nothing got knocked loose, hold down both mouse buttons.  Boot with no startup-sequence.  Type:

ed s:Startup-Sequence

Does the startup-sequence load?  Post a screenshot.  Don't make any changes at this point.  

It seems that now I can only access the cfcard by first booting from my wb 3.1 floppy. The cfcard classic wb desktop appears but now the floppy 3.1 is a bootable icon here. I need to change it to prioritise the cfcard/hardrive to boot first?
I'll try what you said.

Ok. first it said please insert env; i cancelled this prompt. then it loaded the startup sequence, pic attached.

[wrath of khan]

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'

I added the "p" the screen turned browne a few times and when it stopped loading, i was left with a blank screen.
The system is shagged now it seems. The cfcard desktop appears but nothing works, no programs whatsoever will launch. Only the wb 3.1 floppy icon works.
There was some boot options in a settings/startup. They were:
Sequence, user, assign, cliboot,wbsmanager, minboot, safe, runlist, shell and whdload. I may have changed these yesterday by accident; I know I clicked on minboot and on safe. Could this be the problem?
Pic attached shows system memory upon boot up; the other mem now stays at about 249,736 upon boot-up. soft and hard resets have no effect on it now.
Now this is getting annoying...grrr:(