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Offline punkpieTopic starter

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A1200 Motherboard quick question
« on: April 19, 2006, 10:15:46 AM »
My a1200 motherboard died a few weeks a go so I need a replacement.  I'll give one lined up but I'm just checked for issues.
I know certain revisions had the timing issue with accelerator cards.  Does anyone know which ones I should be avoiding?
I've done a quick google but cant find a straight answer.

Cheers,
Lee
 

Offline doctorq

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Re: A1200 Motherboard quick question
« Reply #1 on: April 19, 2006, 10:24:34 AM »
I thought only the rev 1D4 and 2B suffered from the timing issues, but it turned out that the rev 1D1 also had these issues. Experienced it myself recently. As for the timing fixes, on the earlier motherboards it's easy to do them.
 

Offline punkpieTopic starter

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Re: A1200 Motherboard quick question
« Reply #2 on: April 19, 2006, 10:43:20 AM »
That's great.  Thanks for the info.
I wont worry about the timing issues for the moment then, I'll just fix it if it needs it.

Thanks,
Lee
 

Offline JaXanim

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Re: A1200 Motherboard quick question
« Reply #3 on: April 19, 2006, 12:11:16 PM »
@punkpie
Here's what Eyetech published in 1999.

'Fortunately, revision 1.D.1 had the most serious timing faults in the Budgie and Gayle chips fixed at the time of manufacture. A few early, pre-main production boards, notably 1.A and 1.B found their way into the shops. As far as we can determine, these also had timing work-arounds fitted.

Commodore always planned to correct these faults and so produced revision 1.D.4 and 2.B without provision for a workaround. Unfortunately, these were shipped with the old chips when the company started getting into financial difficulty. If you have one of these boards, then it will need fixing if you intend to use anything which requires fast bus access. E.g. 030/40 or faster accelerators, PowerPC boards, clock port accessories and IDE Flyer.

(I have a 1.D.4 with all the bells and whistles, and it runs perfectly)

When Amiga Technologies/Escon started manufacturing in 1995, they used the same 1.D.4 and 2.B boards and bugged chipsets. AT began fixing this fairly quickly, but we reckon 15-20% of the new production was shipped without the fix. Unfortunately, there are no records of which serial numbers were fixed. Escom made units had 'Amiga' rather than 'Commodore' at top left of the keyboard and 'Made in France 1995 (or 1996)' on the underside.

Eyetech said that their timing fix was proprietary and not in the public domain. Fixes published on Aminet were different and - in Eyetech's view - and didn't fix the problem.

Though the 1.D.4 and 2.B fixes bring these boards to the 1.D.1 standard, there are other issues which are, for all practical purposes, insoluble. These problems only come to light when using a Zorro 3 card. The necessary redesigned Budgie chip was never produced.'

There are other issues discussed (video tearing, etc) but as far as timing problems are concerned, Eyetech consider revision 1.D.1 to be the best one.

JaX



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Offline doctorq

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Re: A1200 Motherboard quick question
« Reply #4 on: April 19, 2006, 01:01:50 PM »
@JaXanim

I saw that a year ago, and decided to go for a rev. 1D1 motherboard for my A1200 tower.

I bought a BPPC board and tried it in the tower; random lockups, the fastest lock up was 10 seconds after power up, when the computer hadn't been turned on for a day. Send the board to repair, and in the meantime I bought another BPPC. Same errors; random lockups.

After doing the timing fixes it has been running for approx. 20 hours without any lockups.

Since my motherboard is a rev. 1D1 board I don't think the Eyetech website is valid for all boards. Or not all rev. 1D1 boards had the workaround.
 

Offline Oliver

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Re: A1200 Motherboard quick question
« Reply #5 on: April 19, 2006, 01:14:17 PM »
Quote

doctorq wrote:
...I don't think the Eyetech website is valid for all boards. Or not all rev. 1D1 boards had the workaround.


Yeah, I've heard that from other people as well.

It's lucky dip PCB time.  Anyway, the timing fixes aren't extremely difficult to perform.
Good good study, day day up!
 

Offline JaXanim

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Re: A1200 Motherboard quick question
« Reply #6 on: April 19, 2006, 01:44:56 PM »
@doctorq

I'm sure you're right. Remember Eyetech said that in 1999. At lot (a bit anyway) has happened since then.

JaX
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Offline adolescent

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Re: A1200 Motherboard quick question
« Reply #7 on: April 19, 2006, 05:48:31 PM »
Stedy has a nice page on the timing fixes.

http://www.ianstedman.co.uk/Amiga/amiga_hacks/A1200_Mobo_fix/a1200_mobo_fix.html

I believe I have this problem on one of my 2B boards.  Everything runs fine on the 020, but with the Blizzard 1260 I have to turn off the CPU caches otherwise I get random GURUs all over the place.  Does this sound about right?
Time to move on.  Bye Amiga.org.  :(
 

Offline lurkist

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Re: A1200 Motherboard quick question
« Reply #8 on: April 19, 2006, 06:03:35 PM »
@adolescent

I'm getting random crashes with my Blizzard 1260, both on a 1D4 and on a 2B.  Currently I have the 2B installed, which is harder to fix (needing extra components, not just removing them).  I never thought to disable CPU caches though, how much difference does this make and what kind of stuff stops working because of it?

Cheers

EDIT - Oh I see, severe reduction in speed... at least half according to SysInfo.  No crashes since though...
A1200 Power Tower, Blizzard 1260 66 +32MB, OS3.9, 2.5\\" HD, IDEfix97 + DVD-RW + Zip, SD/FF + 15\\" CRT, Ioblix1200P + scanner, PCMCIA LAN + router
 

Offline amiga1260

Re: A1200 Motherboard quick question
« Reply #9 on: April 19, 2006, 07:34:33 PM »
I have three A1200's. They have the following motherboard revisions: 1D4 (Commodore), 1D4(Escom), 1D1(Commodore).

I tested these motherboards with DCE Blizzard 1260, Phase 5 Blizzard 1230 IV, Blizzard 1230IV SCSI-kit, GVP1208 with SCSI kit, DCE Scando Flickerfixer, Power Computing HD diskdrive, Amitek(Dell) Slimeline HD drive.

The only compatiblity problem I got was the Amitek(Dell) Slimeline HD drive. I couldn't use it as DF1:. It works only when I use the Power Computing HD diskdrive as passthrough.