Adding ram on an amiga 2000: Simple question

[barney]

Hello everybody, I have a simple question about adding ram to an Amiga 2000.  I recently bought an accelerator for my A2000: GVP 68030+SCSI+RAM Accerator.  It has 4mb onboard and 3 slots for 3 more sticks (total memory of 16MB).  I am also thinking about adding 8 mb of ZORO II memory.  I have an 8up card with 4mb, a SupraRAM card with 2MB and a GVP SCSI Impact A2000-HC+8 Series II card with 6MB.  

If I add any of these other devices in addition to the Accelerator, is it going to slow my system down.  Would I be better off just using the memory on the accelerator board and nothing else?

Thanks.

Barney

[Matt_H]

16-bit Zorro memory will only slow the system (relative to 32-bit accelerator memory) if the acclerator memory is depleted. 16-bit memory relative to no accelerator to begin with is, of course, faster (slightly). That's why it's called Fast RAM.

Your best bet for performance is to grab 3 more custom GVP SIMMs for the accelerator.

Plugging in all those Zorro boards will overload the bus (8MB maximum). Since you already have SCSI on the accelerator, I'd suggest using only the 8up card in the interim.

[gertsy]

Considering it's quite possible that you're not going to be using the A2000 for anything too serious using the 8UP card as Matt_H suggests and getting the extra 4 MB is the way to go.
Getting additional memory for the GVP 030 Combo is mega expensive. Is it worth the 3-4 x memory speed increase for the minimal times you go over 4MB?  Depends on what you use you miggy for.

gertsy

[barney]

Actaully, I already have the three 4mb GVP SIMS to put in the GVP accelerator.  Once I install them all, I will have 16mb.  So, will this be sufficient?  I take it that installing my 8up card will only slow my system down?  Thanks.

Also, I remember somebody recommending that the "GVP SCSI Impact A2000-HC+8 Series II" card can be used solely as a memory expansion if you disable autoboot.  Would using this GVP SCSI card be faster than using my 8UP card?  Which has faster memory between the two?

Barney

[rkauer]

From mine experience, you can use the GVP HC8+ fully populated with 8Mb RAM and use it as the SCSI boot device controller.

 GVP combos are slower than the dedicated SCSI controllers and 1Mb 30-pin SIMM are really cheap and easy to find.

 Also, 16+8Mb is always better than just 16Mb (not the Amiga will really use this "huge" amount of RAM). RAM priority is automagically set, so if you have lumps of real-fast 32bit memory the slow Zorro-II memory will act just as a spare memory and DMA from the SCSI controller (will speed up the HC8+ SCSI).

[barney]

Somthing else I just thought of.  I went ahead and unhooked the hard drive from the scsi port on the accelerator and connected it to the GVP HC+8 SCSI Card.  I ran a hard drive speed test and it is about the same for both the GVP SCSI card and the GVP accelerator.  If this is the case, should I go ahead and just hook the hard drive back up to the Accelerator?  Thanks.

Barney

[QuikSanz]

@barney,

Does the GVP SCSI card have DMA & FPU on board? I would stick with acelerator only. Once you fully populate the GVP Combo all 8 megs will have been remapped and used. If you add a graphics card
you will have to pull one mem stick.

Chris

[barney]

The Accelerator has 4mb built on the card and three slots filled with a total of 12mb.  My total ram on the accelerator is 12mb.  I will try hooking my hard drive back up to this and see what happens.  Should I just remove my GVP SCSI card that has 6MB installed or keep it there.  I have noticed that it makes a good memory expander even when not using its SCSI interface.  Will having this memory installed bring my system down?

Barney

[zipper]

No, Amiga is clever to use the fastest memory pool first.

[barney]

That is good to hear.  One thing I noticed is that when I go into "Sysinfo", it show what the memory priority is for each type on my sytem.  My chip ram = -10, fastram = 0 and 32bit ram = 7.  This kind of confused me because I figured the lower the number the higher the priority.  In my mind, it looked like the chip ram should be used first, then the fast ram and then the 32bit ram.  I guess I am incorrect on this though.

 Barney

[zipper]

Yeah, it's visa versa - my fastest ram is probably 30 as I can have 3 different kinds of fast RAM.

[rkauer]

Somthing else I just thought of.  I went ahead and unhooked the hard drive from the scsi port on the accelerator and connected it to the GVP HC+8 SCSI Card.  I ran a hard drive speed test and it is about the same for both the GVP SCSI card and the GVP accelerator.  If this is the case, should I go ahead and just hook the hard drive back up to the Accelerator?  Thanks.

Barney

 Some expert people will disagree with your experiment. ;-)

 Like Babel's site