Viper 520 CD questions

[gyubrush]

I have already installed a Viper 520 cd accelerator card on my A500.The card has 3.0Roms.The question is if i can take out the 3.0Roms and put the 3.1Rom instead in order to run OS3.9....The card comes with MC68EC020,8MB Fast Ram(i am still looking for the MiniMegi Chip in order to increase the damn chip ram!) and i already have installed a CD-ROM and  a 3Gig SEAGATE HD.

Thanks!

[Brian]

I'm pritty sure it's just a metter of plugging in the new ROM's to get it to work. Getting the machine to run smooth with 020 and OS3.9 will meen cutting back on most of the bells and whistles of OS3.9 though.

A quick way to increase the memory to 1M is to either install a 512Kb mem card and hack the motherboard (or if you have the later A500 motherboard simply solder the extra 512kb direktly to the motherboard and the hack), the hack is only a matter of cutting one line and soldering another so could be connected to a 2pol switch if you don't want to make the hack permanent.

[Effy]

A better way is to sell your A500 and buy an A500+ and an 1 Mb Chip Ram expansion so you will have 2 Mb Chip. Once you have then lugged your cool Viper520 then you will have one heck of a machine  :lol:

[Dorgath]

To get OS3.9 running on my viper I installed an a500 3.1 rom on the motherboard itself. It's a lot slower then the 32-bit roms on the viper but I didn't feel like trying to desolder the 3.0 roms and solder 3.1 roms on the viper board.

Too bad you lose the 1.3 rom that way :-(

[Effy]

 :-o Didn´t know the 3.0 roms were soldered on the Viper520  :-o

[mr_a500]

Getting the machine to run smooth with 020 and OS3.9 will meen cutting back on most of the bells and whistles of OS3.9 though.

Wrong. 3.9 ran fine on my A500 with Viper 520 - even using the slow A500 3.1.



You can plug the A1200 3.1 ROMs in the Viper 520 3.0 ROM slots - if you're an expert at soldering. I bought the A1200 3.1 ROMs to do this, but got too scared to actually do it (no, I'm not a soldering expert). One false move and you're sitting there with a $300 pile of junk and a stock A500! I was thinking of taking it to a professional service, but there's no guarantee that they won't fry it.

I suggest you keep the 3.0 ROMs and use WB 3.1. 3.9 is overrated anyway and has no improvements for an A500 other than HD > 4Gb and this can be done in 3.1 using loadmodule. Even if I put the 3.1 ROMs in the Viper, I'd still use WB 3.1 instead of 3.9.


If you need any help with fixing up WB 3.1 on your A500, I'd be happy to help. :-) (..see my A500 WB3.1 screenshot: http://www.amiga.org/gallery/photo.php?lid=2175 )

[Effy]

And what about softkicking kickstart 3.1 ??  :-?

[Xanxi]

I have too this fine piece of hardware in my PAL A500Plus (and 2 Mo ChipRAM) but unfortunately i don't use it much, it comes after my A1240PPCAteo, my A1240Mediator, my A2030 and my A630.
I only use it with a simple OS3.1 on bootable IDE 2,5'HD and a special zorro adaptater on the side slot to test some zorro boards.

However, i don't think that it would be ok to replace the 3.0 roms with A1200 roms. I take for sure that the Viper ROMS are something special.

As someone said, it is much better to use the jumper to fire up some 3.1 roms on the mobo, or may be to softkick 3.1 roms.

By the way, does some one know of a SCSI controller compatible with this board? My Macropolis side slot SCSI harddrive doen't work, even if i remove the fastram either on the viper or the macropolis.

[Xanxi]

@mr a500:

I definitely want my A630 to look like your wb but i PMed you for some advices some weeks ago with no response.

[gyubrush]

Mr a500 your screenshots are incredible.I will keep your advice.Anyway the main problem is chip ram..Does someone can show me with photos the procedure to follow,in order to solder 512kb memory in motherboard?

Thanks everyone for your responses!

[mr_a500]

I definitely want my A630 to look like your wb but i PMed you for some advices some weeks ago with no response.

Really? I just checked my Pmail and there's nothing there. That may explain the lack of response ;-).

I can give you my archive with icons, fonts, prefs & images if you want.

I've got an even better config now, but it'll be a while before I make a new archive (converting hundreds of icons).

[Dorgath]

From what I remember you loose DMA capability on the expansion slot once the viper is installed.
As such I doubt an existing scsi controller would work (unless it's non DMA?), my a590 didn't either.

[Xanxi]

Indeed, the loss of DMA is explained in the german manual of this board.
However, if i plug a A2091 board (with 7.0 roms) in my zorro adapter for the side slot of my A500Plus, the computer still boots normally (from the IDE hardrive) while it doesn't with the Macropolis, and the board is seen in the early startup and sysinfo.
I have not tried to connect some hd or scsi devices on the A2091 yet though. And there is no ram on this particular A2091, maybe this disable dma???
According to the manual A590 and A2091 shouldn't work.

[PaSha]

Xanxi wrote:

However, i don't think that it would be ok to replace the 3.0 roms with A1200 roms. I take for sure that the Viper ROMS are something special.

Nah, the ROMs on the Viper are 100% standard A1200 3.0 ROM chips. So as long as you can be bothered to do some soldering, you should be able to use A1200 3.1 ROM chips.
The Gayle chip on it is also the standard A1200 one.

[Dandy]

Effy wrote:
 :-o Didn´t know the 3.0 roms were soldered on the Viper520  :-o

And it's even worse:
Below each of the ROM-chips there is annother flat, tiny chip - and the ROMs are glued on top of it.

When I cut off the original ROM chips and tried to pull them out, I ripped one of these small chips off the PCB and so destroyed one Viper.

Even DCE were unable to fix it back in those days.

So be careful!