Blizzard 30-IV 60ns config problems.

[dillinger]

Hi,

After years of being without an Amiga, I at last have one again! I'm kinda sourcing all the essentials atm, eg: larger hd, original Workbench disks, etc, etc

The trouble I'm having right now is with this Blizzard accelerator I recently bought from eBay. It's a 030 MkIV, with 32meg of supposedly 60ns RAM. It's double sided but the guy I purchased it from says he had no problems using it in either 70ns or 60ns mode. As far as I can tell the board does seem to run perfectly when set to 70ns but when I set the jumper to 60ns mode it freezes.

This is what happens when set to 60ns:

- If I switch the Amiga on and leave it to boot from the HD, there's a very short period of HD activity (as though it's in the process of loading WB)... then nothing! No floppy ticks, no sign of HD access or anything. I don't even get a Guru meditation, just a blank screen.

- If I enter the early startup sequence and disable the startup-sequence and THEN boot things are slightly different as I'm able to get as far as the AmigaDOS cli. Once there I can browse all of the HD's directory as you'd expect, but if I type "LoadWB" to get WB going it stalls again and there's nothing but a blank screen (no ticking or sign of HD access). I'm also unable to run a graphical demo from here which runs fine from WB when the board is set to 70ns.

I'm not great with hardware issues so I really don't have a clue what's going on. Does memory performance degenerate with age? These SIMMs are surely 10+ years old so I was thinking that maybe they're just not able to keep up with the pace demanded from 60ns mode anymore??

Any help/thoughts/ideas/comments...anything would be much appreciated!!

BTW.. it's running on a Microvitec GPM 1701 multisync monitor, has v3.0 ROMS and when I opened it up (to give it a clean) I noticed the board revision was 1B. oh, and it's using the original weakling A1200 psu. Don't know if any of that lot would make any difference :-?

thanks guys!!

[dillinger]

UPDATE: I've just tried booting with CPU caches DISABLED (from the AESC) and Workbench loads up! But when I tried to load the graphical demo it crashed?!?!

Tried it again without disabling the CPU caches and got the same freezing problem

[patrik]

@dillinger:

It doesn't sound better than that that SIMM isn't fast enough for the Blizzards 60ns mode. Even if a SIMM is marked as 60ns, poor quality ones might just manage an accesstime of 65ns.

My advice would be to get a different 60ns SIMM to try with. If that one would work there is no question about it - then your current SIMM would not deserve to be marked as 60ns.

Just for the record - setting something expandable with SIMMs to access the SIMMs with a 60ns accesstime does not mean it accesses the simm that fast, it could very well access the SIMMs with an accesstime of 65ns, while others indeed would access the simm with an accesstime of 60ns. This may be why it works for the bloke who sold you the SIMM, but not for you.

(edit):

As long as you are using an 2.5" harddrive you should be fine with the stock powersupply.


/Patrik

[dillinger]

Hi Patrik - cheers, I guess you could be right, but these SIMMs actually came with the accelerator when I bought it. So apparently this guy has been using the SIMMs at 60ns successfully in this same board! Hmm, I don't know...I just hope the board isn't on it's last legs as I have now been getting crashes when using the board set at 70ns. I am getting a lot of "8000 0003" Gurus. I have only managed to get a few progs onto the Amiga to test atm, and I'm sure Workbench is badly setup on this HD (missing libraries, etc) So I guess I wont be able to tell for sure if it's a hardware problem or badly configured software, until I get hold of the original Workbench disks and do a fresh/clean install from scratch.

Does anyone know of any *new* SIMMs being sold which are fully compatible with the Blizzard mk-IV at 60ns? And where to get them?

thanks!

[Brian]

As far as I've seen there's not much speedimprovements between 60 and 70ns on the B1230MK4. If I recall correctly it was something like 0.3Mips.

[srg86]

Any 72-pin single or double sided FPM or EDO SIMM will work perfectly on this board. I have a all these types and they all work with mine. Note that althouh EDO SIMMs work fine, the board doesn't take advantage of them.

BTW I tried a 70ns SIMM with my Blizzard 030IV set @ 60ns and I got exactly the same thing as you. You should be able to tell whether the SIMM is 60 or 70ns because either the SIMM and/or the chips will have -70 or -7 on them for 70ns and -6 or -60 for 60ns.

You say that your now getting trouble @ 70ns, sounds like the RAM is bad (always suspect RAM, as RAM troubles on any type of computer can cause *REALLY* odd problems.

You should be able to get 72-pin SIMM from most places, the best (although not the cheapest) place I look for old and slightly odd memory is www.offtek.co.uk.

BTW I also recommend you to use a single sided SIMM as the double sided ones touch and melt the trap door bay cover.

hope this helps
srg

P.S. I've always found buying second hand RAM to be a hit 'n' Miss affair, I was lucky though when buying my Blizzard 1230IV and RAM.

[dillinger]

well for only a 0.3mips increase I don't think I would bother...I'd be happy to just have the card running solid at 70ns  :-D

Hmmm, none of this is clear for me right now, but I have been reading some Amiga boards and hearing suggestions that I may need to "setpatches" for 030 boards under WB30/3.1 I've also seen ppl writing about the "MMU lib" and "Enforcer" on Aminet and such which make the Amiga more stable...would this make the card more stable? Could this be why I'm experiencing regular crashes??

Again all this is cloudy for me right now so I have a _lot_ of reading and research to do...but any hints/suggestions would be really appretiated. Even just names of patches/apps, etc I might need and where to find them...

Thanks!

[srg86]

A clean install of Workbench (3.0 in my case) should be as solid as you like. I would recommend that you for now, remove the RAM from the Blizzard and reinstall workbench from afresh.

Oh that's a point, do you get any crashes with the blizzard fitted but no RAM attached to it? If you do then it's the board, otherwise it's the RAM. Still a clean workbench will help, don't come to any conclusions untill you do that. Any troubles, take out the board.

srg

[patrik]

@dillinger:

Run this memory tester on your computer and see what it says.

Some tips/questions:
Did you use a 2.5" or 3.5" harddrive? If you use a 3.5" harddrive, the stock powersupply will not be enough and will most likely cause crashes.

If you have any extra accessories connected to your Amiga, like extra floppy drives etc, try to remove them and see if it gets more stable.

You should also try to get hold of another SIMM and try.


/Patrik

[dillinger]

@srg86

Thanks for all the info! It's a little more reassuring to hear that you had the same thing when you set your board to 60ns with 70ns SIMMs installed. I guess at best that could mean that my SIMMs (even though they say 60ns) can only perform well at 70ns. Although lame, that would be acceptable! I'll try removing the ram from the board, if I still have troubles with the clean install.

Like I said, atm I'm having to do all my testing on a "dirty" WB3.0 install. I bought the actual Amiga from somebody who really didn't know about computers. The amiga would not even boot from the HD when I first got it due to the standard LIBS: folder's contents being moved to some other random directory...why that was done I have no idea! But I managed to spot it from the AmigaDOS cli with the dir function and copied them where they belonged. God knows what else is going on with the setup but it's really hard to tell because I've forgotten so much about the Amiga sys over the years. So, like you said, I really need to get these WB3.0 disks from my friend fast, try a clean install and start from there.

@patrik

Just ran the memtest (cheers) and all seems to be well, it didn't report a single error. I have a standard 2.5" Connor harddrive installed, so I guess it's not a psu issue. I do also have a PCIAM network adaptor, which I've removed while testing.

One thing I have noticed is that I never have trouble running any of the standard WB3.0 apps. Stuff like Icon Edit, Multiview, the prefs programs, etc, etc all run fine. Also, games seems to run fine too. I only have crashes with the 3rd party Workbench based stuff I've managed to scrape accross from my PC using Fat35 and a floppy. I transfered Miami and Voyager and have created a half succeful link to the Internet through my LAN setup. But Miami and Voyager both crash regularly..I'm hoping theyre just missing some libs or something! anyway...I must get a fresh install and *THEN* speculate!

I'll let you guys know how it all goes!!!


Thanks   :-)  :nervous: