Amiga 2000 GVP G-Force 030 Combo Speed & Memory Issues

[guest11527]

What interests me more than anything though is the 1MB on board RAM. Makes no sense.

What else is in the autoconfig area? Note that there is a maximum of 8MB autoconfig memory/area in the machine. 2MB are already gone. A bridgeboard takes additional address space, and so do graphics boards. If the 8MB are used up, the GVP will not be able to add its memory to the autoconfig area and you see the red screen.

The jumper meaning is as follows: "Auto" means that the memory goes to the autoconfig area. This is recommended if there is room. If there is no room, you will see the red screen. If it is on "extended", it goes to the 32bit extended area, but will probably not be automatically added to the pool.

[LuigiThirty]

Are there any settings pertaining to ram speed that you could try? 60ns, 80ns, or the like? Hate to give up on a card but it definitely sounds like you've found the issue. Do you have another system you can test the card in? How about another card you can test in your system? (just to rule out issues with the slot)

Shame you aren't closer, I've got a bunch of 4MB and 16MB GVP simm's from my old G-Force '040 card. Check Amibay though - there was a guy on there making his own GVP-compatible memory just a year or two ago.

He makes 16MB SIMMs which aren't compatible with the 030 accelerator. Recently I posted a buy order for the 4MB ones and had lots of people offering to sell me some within hours though.

[Fats]

This would work out to be 1MB of RAM but only 8bits wide true? Or 256KB at total 32bits wide. Unless Im misunderstanding this correctly?

1MB always means 1024 times 8bits even if it is accessed 4 bytes e.g. 32bits at a time. 1 byte is 8 bits and 1MB is 1024 bytes.
(Actually according to latest standard you need to use 1MiB for 1024x8bit, blame the HD marketing guys who wanted to make their disk look bigger by using MB for 1000x8bit and GB for 1000x1000x8bit).

[arongooch]

What else is in the autoconfig area? Note that there is a maximum of 8MB autoconfig memory/area in the machine. 2MB are already gone. A bridgeboard takes additional address space, and so do graphics boards. If the 8MB are used up, the GVP will not be able to add its memory to the autoconfig area and you see the red screen.

The jumper meaning is as follows: "Auto" means that the memory goes to the autoconfig area. This is recommended if there is room. If there is no room, you will see the red screen. If it is on "extended", it goes to the 32bit extended area, but will probably not be automatically added to the pool.

Nothing else is in the machine. Just the standard 1MB Chip RAM, the 2MB "8-Up" card and the GVP accelerator card with surface mount 1MB RAM and no SIMMS installed. No bridgeboard or graphics boards.

Definitely understanding the "auto" & "extended" modes now. In extended mode the machine boots up but in auto is where I get the red error screen. I definitely don't understand it as the manual says the board can run with just the onboard 1MB 32bit RAM, ie no SIMMS. Not sure why it would thinking there is no room? Either of the two options selected, in Workbench I only have the 1MB Chip RAM and the 2MB Fast RAM from the "8-Up" board and nothing else.

[guest11527]

Nothing else is in the machine. Just the standard 1MB Chip RAM, the 2MB "8-Up" card and the GVP accelerator card with surface mount 1MB RAM and no SIMMS installed. No bridgeboard or graphics boards.

Ok, this *seems* to be clean, but just to be on the safe side: What happens if you remove the "8-Up" board? Some of these extension boards suffer from bad termination on the zorro bus and then break the autoconfig chain.

I definitely don't understand it as the manual says the board can run with just the onboard 1MB 32bit RAM, ie no SIMMS. Not sure why it would thinking there is no room?

Apparently, something in the autoconfig chain is messed up. Whether this is by a conflict on the Zorro bus or by a failing hardware on the board I cannot tell. The only thing I can tell for sure is that the GVP RAM on the board should definitely be autoconfigurable if it is jumpered to do so. I had the 40Mhz version of the same board, and I haven't had an issue with the RAM.

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

If you set it to "extended", is there a utility you need to run to add the memory? What does the manual say about that?

[arongooch]

Ok, this *seems* to be clean, but just to be on the safe side: What happens if you remove the "8-Up" board? Some of these extension boards suffer from bad termination on the zorro bus and then break the autoconfig chain.



Apparently, something in the autoconfig chain is messed up. Whether this is by a conflict on the Zorro bus or by a failing hardware on the board I cannot tell. The only thing I can tell for sure is that the GVP RAM on the board should definitely be autoconfigurable if it is jumpered to do so. I had the 40Mhz version of the same board, and I haven't had an issue with the RAM.

That was one of the first things I did to remove the "8-Up" board and it just reduced the systems total RAM to the 1MB Chip RAM which was over half used on boot up by Workbench because of no Fast RAM.

Auto configure mode here still causes the red boot error screen. I agree, the board should definitely be auto configurable without the populated SIMMS but it just won't work under any circumstances. Im still thinking either the cards onboard memory is bad or perhaps there is a fault with the PALS or MACH chip?

[arongooch]

If you set it to "extended", is there a utility you need to run to add the memory? What does the manual say about that?

Extended is the only way I can run the system without any bootup red "diagnostic error" screens.

I haven't got the system setup at the moment but there is no utilities other than what the driver disk installed in the "User-Startup" with the command "CPU xxx" I can't remember the exact arguments after CPU. There is no other utilities other than memory test, FPU or a systeminfo utility.

Interestingly enough the memory test passes but not sure on what memory it's testing. It's very vague in it's output window and no where does that 1MB of 32bit RAM show up in the system.