Simmfonie/Amifast/X-Calibur or other A3000 RAM device

[dnelsonfl]

I spent about $100 on a used Fastlane for the 64MB RAM it would hold. 30pin SIMMs, yes, but they're not that expensive. I bought a lot of 'em for about $5 and fully populated it to 64MB. 'Course the SCSI part of it may never work right on the A3000, but the memory works fine.

-David

[jiffydos]

Ooo  X-Calibur...  I just looked it up.  I had never even heard of it.  That now looks like the best thing for me.  Now, I just gotta find one.  LOL

[MuLTiViEW]

I spent about $100 on a used Fastlane for the 64MB RAM it would hold. 30pin SIMMs, yes, but they're not that expensive. I bought a lot of 'em for about $5 and fully populated it to 64MB. 'Course the SCSI part of it may never work right on the A3000, but the memory works fine

 Try 256 MB of 32 mb 30-pin simms

 Also, you may need either and/or the following to get the SCSI-II controller to work on a 3000.

 New SCSI chip?  New boot roms on Fastlane board. (and possibly in conjunction with)  New Buster Chip Revision 11.

 Rev 9 simply will not work at all with the Fastlane from everything I've read.
 
 Not sure,  I think the DMAC may have a problem with it? Unsure or maybe that's only the 3640 card.  (DMAC is really the A3000's native scsi controller)

 You ever want to "lose" that Fastlane,  let me know

 

[jiffydos]

I have a buddha flash IDE, so I really am not worried about the scsi working.  It's all about ram at this point.  The x-calibur is definetly the best option.  But, I definetly cannot find that.  

I've decided that simmfonie and amifast just don't supply enough ram.  I really need more than 16.  So, I am now back to looking for a ZIII board like dkb3128 or proram.

[dnelsonfl]

@Multiview,

The Fastlane only supports 64MB. Whenever they pop up for sale, the seller always mentions that 256MB option. In reality very few (if any?) of those add-on options were made. It's easy to check if you've got a lucky one: stick a few 1MB SIMMs on it. If it recognizes them, sorry, it's not the 256MB flavor.

The RAM works great on the A3000, which is why I mentioned it. Forget the SCSI. A lucky few have gotten it to work fine, but that's not the norm. Buster-11 is preferred, and nothing came up about the DMAC and Ramsey having to be upgraded. That's probably for the A3640 and a whole 'nother story in and of itself.

While on the subject of ram expansion for the 3000, were there any other ZIII ram expansions made besides the DKB 3128?

-David

[jiffydos]

There was only one other ZIII ram expansion that I know of.  It was called the "pro-ram".

[PaSha]

jiffydos wrote:
There was only one other ZIII ram expansion that I know of.  It was called the "pro-ram".

Don't forget the BigRAM Z3 http://www.amiga-hardware.com/showhardware.cgi?HARDID=975  :-D

Anyways, read about the ProRAM 3000 here http://www.amiga-hardware.com/showhardware.cgi?HARDID=1058

And, last but not least, from hard/hack on aminet:
ftp://de.aminet.net/pub/aminet/hard/hack/PS2_adapter.lha
how to make a SIMM-ZIP adapter yourself.

Enjoy.

-Paul

[jiffydos]

Things that were never released (BigRam) don't really help me much.  LOL  

[only4thefi]

AmiFast went out of production in 1998 due to lack of sales. If the levels of 1997 had continued I could have made money on the project and contiued development of something new. As it was I barely broke even. Keep an eye on E-Bay. Someone may dump a working board sometime...

[Argus]

I have a Fastlane with my A3000, 64MB variety.  I forget the rev.# of the Fastlane, but the scsi wouldn't work at all with Rev.7 Buster.  I had an extra Rev.9 from an A4000 upgrade and plugged that it, attached my SCSI-2 system drive and it worked fine.  I think the Fastlane instructions even say there is a workaround so it will work with a Rev.9 Buster, though there may be trouble if there's more than one ZIII card in the machine.  I'm planning on trying it with a GVP Spectrum ZIII card.

I wonder how tough it would be to etch your own Amifast-like board?

[Orjan]

I bought a "simmfonie" adapter directly from Kato about two years ago.. It was chep, dont remember exactly now, but somewhere around 15-20€ including shipping..