Vesalia, 12+3MB ACA620, customer service

[brownb2]

I'm based in the UK and looking to order a ACA620 from Vesalia. I emailed them on Thursday enquiring as to why the ACA620 is advertised as 12+3MB when, as far as I know, it should be 9+1MB.
http://www.vesalia.de/e_aca620.htm
I'm not yet had a response from Versalia (or even automated acknowledgement) as to what this new model is.

Can anybody advise me as to whether it is a 12+3MB (15MB total) model, if it is 15MB what the differentiation between the memory amounts is for, and whether Vesalia is considered reputable?

[k4lmp]

I don't know about the technical part of your question, but I bought an Indy ECS from them and received it in less than 2 weeks.  I had a good experience with them, and would buy from them again.

[amiga1260]

The service of Vesalia is very good.

I also bought a ACA620EC board for my A600.

The First time you boot the Amiga 600 with this board you have 5 MB fastram

When you use the tool ACATune 1.7 with the command acatune -maxmem, you get the rest of the memory. You than have a total of 12 MB of RAM. 1 MB is reserved as Mapping Kickstart ROM.

Actually the card has 16 MB but you can use only 12+1 MB.

[brownb2]

So what you're actually saying is that this card isn't a 9+1, 12+3, its really 12+1 lol?
I wonder where the 3 came from...

What is the MIPS rating of that card so I have a rough idea of speed? I expect it'll be in the order of 3 MIPS?

[amigakit]

We sell the ACA620 in the UK and I can confirm that it is a 9MB accelerator where one megabyte can be used for flashrom. This can be useful for speeding up ROM instruction calls.  Hope this helps. Here is the product description:

http://amigakit.leamancomputing.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=1102

I will just make some checks for the speed ratings of the ACA620

[psxphill]

When you use the tool ACATune 1.7 with the command acatune -maxmem, you get the rest of the memory. You than have a total of 12 MB of RAM. 1 MB is reserved as Mapping Kickstart ROM.

Maxmem bit: 0xb8f034
This bit is reset after every system reset. While this bit is reset, the following address spaces are mapped to fastmem:

0x20.0000 to 0x5f.ffff (4M using autoconfig™)
0x60.0000 to 0x9f.ffff (4M)
0xc0.0000 to 0xcf.ffff (1M will be added by all Kickstart ROMs)
0xde.8000 to 0xde.ffff (32k as buffer mem and trampoline code area)

All other addresses will access the A600 mainboard, where the usual Amiga memory map applies.
It is not recommended to add the 32k space at 0xde.8000 to the freemem list.

While this bit is set to 1, the following spaces are mapped to fastmem (in addition to the above spaces):
 
0xd0.0000 to 0xd7.ffff (512k)

0xa8.0000 to 0xb7.ffff (1M)

0xea.0000 to 0xf7.ffff (896k)
 
The Maxmem bit can be set and reset at any time. While reset, the contents of the unmapped memory areas stay unchanged and survive a system reset.
 
 
Which by my maths makes it 11.375mb, so nobody is advertising it correctly. But then you can do some funky things to use even more ram, but not in a way that you can call AllocMem() and get it
 
Special memory mapping
 
If the Maxmem bit is reset, but the expansion ROM protect bit is set, the memory area

from 0x40.0000 to 0x7f.ffff will contain the memory areas that would normally be
unavailable due to IO and chipmem areas covering this memory. In order to make almost
all physical memory available to special software, this bit setting will move:

0x00.0000-0x0f.ffff to 0x40.0000-0x4f.ffff

This Fastram area is normally covered by the lower 1MByte of chipmem. Caution: This
includes lowest 4k that is used by the IRQovl function. Make sure that your software does
not accidentally overwrite this memory area, as it contains all CPU vectors in case that
VBR is 0.

0xd0.0000-0xdf.ffff to 0x50.0000-0x5f.ffff

The lower half of this area is available with the Maxmem option, and the upper half from
0xd8.0000 and higher is normally covered by IDE, RTC and chip registers. Caution: This
Inside Amiga Classic Accelerator 620 Page 5
also includes the 32k area from 0xde.8000 that is always visible. Make sure that your
software does not accidentally overwrite this memory area, as it might be used as a jumptarget
for Level-7 IRQs.

0xa0.0000-0xaf.ffff to 0x60.0000-0x6f.ffff

The upper half of this fastmem area is available with the Maxmem option, and the lower
half is normally covered by PCMCIA/Gayle registers.

0xb0.0000-0xbf.ffff to 0x70.0000-0x7f.ffff

The lower half of this fastmem area is available with the Maxmem option, and the upper half is normally covered by CIA registers and the ACA620 registers. Alltogether, this option lets you use the hidden 2.5MByte of the physical memory, for example for a reset-proof RAM disk.

 
I assume that this board prevents you from using some or maybe all PCMCIA cards, not that many people will care.
It'll be interesting to see if the hidden 2.5mb of ram can ever be used for anything. There is something in the docs about another mode that is designed for a freezer type mode (like action replay). Without either software you only have access to the standard extra ram & the 1mb of mapped rom.
 
Source: http://eab.abime.net/showpost.php?p=844037&postcount=242

[aotta]

i bought a a604 and ecs from Vesalia (and some cables, if i remind right..), and had to send back in August the a604 and indivision because the ecs didn't work. Now Vesalia is waiting for Individual Computer, and i'm still waiting for a working video card!
All theese guys seem serious, but really not fast!!

[cv643d]

They are good yes...

[yssing]

I have bought from both Amigakit and Vesalia, both have excellent customer service.
But Vesalia have a lot of other things not related to the amiga.

[brownb2]

So this is actually the same model as Vesalia's then?
Really I'm wanting the A600 to feel a less sluggish on the Workbench

We sell the ACA620 in the UK and I can confirm that it is a 9MB accelerator where one megabyte can be used for flashrom. This can be useful for speeding up ROM instruction calls.  Hope this helps. Here is the product description:

http://amigakit.leamancomputing.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=1102

I will just make some checks for the speed ratings of the ACA620

[Jiffy]

So this is actually the same model as Vesalia's then?

Yes, it's the same card.

[brownb2]

Unfortunately as Vesalia didn't respond to my email I think I'll be ordering from Amiga Kit instead (or to be more precise my wife will)! Customer service is very important

The only thing I'm disappointed with was that I was also considering getting the ACA1231 42mhz 030 since I have a 42mhz Viper on its last legs and really didn't want a slower 33mhz ACA1232 (thus I was going to use Vesalia as the 1231 is currently only available from them). Basically I was looking for at least 7.36MIPs which I wouldn't expect the 1232 to achieve (although I may prove wrong).

Oh well Vesalia's loss is AmigaKit's gain I suppose.