New A4000, some questions...

[Imerion]

Ok, I ran a benchmark program to check stuff out. It is a 040 processor, however, it is running in 25 Mhz and not 40 as I previously thought. What do you think, is a 040/25 Mhz faster or slower than a 030/50 Mhz? If it aint, there is probably nothing wrong at all. The strange thing in that case is that Workbench works like 10 times faster. That might have to do with faster busboard, hd, mem and so on though...

[Holley]

You need to check where the memory is , then.  If you have an A3640 board, with memory on the motherboard, then it's not surprising it's sluggish in games.  The '040 at 25MHz does have more power, but the slow memory (compared to an A1200 accellerator) will cripple it.

[TjLaZer]

A 040/25MHz is faster than a 030/50Mhz period. About twice as fast.  Even with no local memory.  Of course if you had local 32bit mem it would be even faster.

Again most games hit the hardware and do not seem to run faster/slower in relation to the CPU.  Even on my 060/66MHz the games run almost normal speed.  Though I sometimes have to turn off the cache but that still is faster than a 030.  But some games seem to use the extra horsepower, like Gloom, Doom and Quake.

Have you tried the games without all that
utility stuff running in the background?
Some of these programs really slowing things down.

 :-)

[Holley]

@Tj - I'd contest that point, in games an A3640 won't set yer pants on fire like an A1200 '040/25 card would.

[TjLaZer]

@holley

If you read what I said, local memory will speed it up, but it is not that much faster.  (local memory is what a 1240 would have, or a blizzard 1260)

[alberonn]

I have read that there are speed issues with accessing the memory on your motherboard with the A4000. If you have a processor card with RAM on it would be faster, even if it was another 25mHz '040 CPU on that board.

I have an A4000D in a Power Tower case, with fully populated RAM on the motherboard and the stock CBM '040 processor board. Unfortunately, I don't have the cash for the Accelerators available at the Amiga stores online. They all seem to just have the PhaseV boards, ect. And yes, I do run into speed issues myself from time to time. My biggest problem is with running out of RAM though. (Another reason to try to find a processor board, even an older one as long as you can add RAM to it.)

One thing that gave me a bit of speed was adding a Gfx card since this took a lot of load off of the custom chips. I have a PicassoIV which has the built in Flicker-fixer/Scan-Doubler so I don't have to worry about having an older and smaller Amiga moniter hooked up to play the old games.

My System:

A4000D in Power Tower Case
AmigaOS3.9
PicassoIV
X-Surf II (For DSL connection)
A2091 with GuruROM (for my SCSI burner, Z-II RAM disabled on it)
Sony CDU 924S SCSI burner
56x IDE CD ROM

It's a nice system, but it has a lot of room for expansion and improvement.
4gb HD and a 2gb HD

[Imerion]

I took some pics from the inside of my A4000. Perhaps those can help :





Also, I have MCP running and it has two options which might have something to do with this. The first one, called processor (pretty self-explanatory ) has loads of options. Should the be in any special order to get maximum speed? Also there is an option called "Speed Ramsey" which supposedly speeds up ram. Should I use it?

Looks like you got enough RAM-memory on that board.
What's it anyway? Some sort of SCSI-controller perhaps?
About MCP: Try playing games without MCP running, then
see what happens.

B.t.w.,
You should remove the battery, seems like it's leeking!

[Holley]

Arrr, that be a SCSI hard card with Zorro2 memory (check here).  Plus filled sockets on the MB would give a theoretical max of 24Mb.

The most importand bit is whatever is under the CDRom drive I'm afraid, though this machine would have been fitted with an A3640 from the factory.

[Imerion]

Ok, here are two pics of the Processor-board :

[Holley]

Bingo, thats an A3640 ... unfortunately anything more potent costs money these days, ho hum.  One the plus side that SCSI hard card is quite a handy piece of of kit, an you've got a good chunk of memory.

BTW if you ever sell the A3640, that one will need a lower profile heatsink to fit an A3000.

[TjLaZer]

!!!WARNING!!!

If your battery is a NiCad remove it NOW!  The Amiga 4000 is prone to RTC and SIMM damage with very little battery leakage!!!  I had 2 so I know.  The solder risist wasn't even tarnished and it looked fine, BUT the RTC was not working.

Remove the Battery now, it is not needed for the 4000 to work, just a date stamp for files.

[Holley]

Oh boy, yeah, that too!

It's ok to cut the legs off it to remove it, and they can be replaced with a remote battery if having a current clock is important.

This reminds me, gotta do the A1200 memory card I just got from Cyberus too ...!

[Imerion]

Ok, so I should remove the battery. Is it just to cut of the connectors? And are you shure that nothing else than the clock needs the battery?

So, if I got everything right, that processor card isnt good because it has no ram on it, so the ram has to be used from somewhere else and that makes stuff slow? And there is no patch or something to go around this?

Sorry for beeing so noob-ish. But I guess this is the only way to learn.

One last question, if I want to add memory to that scsi expansion card, what type of mem should I use.
Is this ok? : http://www.tradera.com/auction/AMIGA___C64___spel/aid_7535664
Well, its in swedish, but look at the pic...

[alberonn]

AFAIK, the battery just runs the clock when you power down. You can either set the clock youself when your power up or if your Amiga is on the 'net you can use a program like FACTS to set the clock for you.

I have a battery in mine, but my board was supposedly refurbished by Software Hut a few years ago.

My experience with Zorro-II RAM came when I plugged in an 8MB SupraRAM card I had in my old A2000 into the A4000. Sure the memory showed up, but it really bogged my system down bad. It would be nice if I could add some extra RAM without taking such a huge speed hit.

What really made it stand out was watching how slow the buttons were being drawn in on iBrowse when I fired it up. While I need the RAM, it wasn't worth the price I was paying by adding it the way I did. For this reason, I have the RAM on my A2091 disabled. (It's fully populated with a whopping 2MB of RAM. LOL Pity I cannot take advantage of DMA transfers with the board.)

Your SCSI controller looks like it's fully populated with RAM anyway. One thing to keep in mind is that the GVP controllers usually required special GVP SIMMs.