Blizzard 1230 board - Jumpers and libs

[Piru]

@rkauer

If you want your Amiga a bit faster, put this line very early in your startup-sequence:

"CPU fastROM" (no quotes)

No. This is for the lame non-phase5 accelerators. Phase5 users should use MAPROM feature. Phase5 MAPROM does not use MMU at all, and thus leaves MMU free for other uses (+ it also works with CPUs without MMU, such as EC030).

[Hodgkinson]

Hmmm...(Again)...
Dont you need a MMU for your PCMCIA port to work correctly when >4MB of RAM is installed?
Im wondering wether the MMU "Not in use" might explain why the PCMCIA port on the tower is being crippled. Shouldn't the MMU remap the memory to prevent this from happening?

Oh, btw, re the Sysinfo screen shot - Yes, the FPU status appears just as it is shown (Not sure about other properties or the second screen shot, though).

Hodgkinson.

[Doobrey]

Hodgkinson wrote:
Dont you need a MMU for your PCMCIA port to work correctly when >4MB of RAM is installed?

The problem is that both the PCMCIA slot is hardwired to use the same 4MB memory range as the 2nd half of the 8MB expansion space.
 Also, both the PCMCIA controller in the Gayle chip, and the memory controller on the memory board are hardwired to work *only* for accesses in that 4MB memory range. No amount of MMU trickery can overcome it.

[Hodgkinson]

What if the 64MB of memory is on the accelerator board? Could the MMU (In the 68030 on the same board) sort it out???


Thanks for all the replies,
Hodgkinson.

[Piru]

@Hodgkinson

Dont you need a MMU for your PCMCIA port to work correctly when >4MB of RAM is installed?

No.

Im wondering wether the MMU "Not in use" might explain why the PCMCIA port on the tower is being crippled

No.

Shouldn't the MMU remap the memory to prevent this from happening?

No.

[Piru]

What if the 64MB of memory is on the accelerator board?

64MB of memory suggests that the memory is mapped to 32bit area. Which basically means it will not conflict with the PCMCIA port.

Could the MMU (In the 68030 on the same board) sort it out???

No. MMU cannot remedy the problem. MMU cannot change physical mapping, only logical. The board must put the memory to 32bit area, that is the only way to fix it. Only lame 020 and 030 accelerators have this problem anyway, for example all Phase5 030 boards are free of this problem (with or without MMU).

[Hodgkinson]

The Blizzard board that I have IS a Phase 5 board - I've just checked.

Thanks,
Hodgkinson.

Could somthing on the board be faulty?

[Piru]

Well, then your PCMCIA port is working just fine.

Assuming the port/mobo is physically ok that is.

[Piru]

@Hodgkinson

One last question - Any idea what the "8MB RAM" jumper on a Blizzard 1200/4 RAM board supposed to do? I thought this board only had 4MB of RAM? Would it be for an add-on RAM card?

Yes:

An additional 4MB expansion called the Blizzard 1220/4/ADD4 was available for this card, allowing you to add up to 8MB in total

NOTE: Using full 8MB with this board disables the PCMCIA port. 4MB should be fine, however.

[Hodgkinson]

The mobo's fine too, I dismantled the tower to change the mobo and there was no difference.

I can only assume that there might be a jumper that needs setting on the 6860 PCI board (Or the accelerator's got a problem - I mean the Blizzard 1230 board here...). Anyone know where there might be info for the jumper settings on the 6860 board?

Hodgkinson.

[Piru]

Reading the hardware description:

** If an A3000/A4000 accelerator is used then the Zorro slots are capable of functioning as Zorro III slots, however if an A1200 accelerator is used then they can only be used as Zorro II slots.

This might have something to do with it, as the Zorro II primary 8MB auto-config space overlaps with the PCMCIA memory area. However, IMO for the PCMCIA port to shut down, it would require that some Zorro card appears at 0x600000 area.

Anyway, it'd be quite easy to test it: Just set up the system without the Z3i-board and see if the PCMCIA port works then.

the 6860 PCI board

I wouldn't call it PCI board really, as the Mikronik Z3i PCI slots are inactive.

[Hodgkinson]

the 6860 PCI board...
Yeah, just making sure that everyone knew which board I was on about (Its sometimes called this on hardware databases).

Sounds like i'll have to take the accel board and put it into my basic garage A1200 and see what happens to the PCMCIA port and networking.

Thanks again,
Hodgkinson.

[Hodgkinson]

I’m back!

I tried the '030 68882 64MB board in my garage A1200 and it works fine. Card prep can see and prep a 1MB SRAM card as disk, which can then be formatted without errors.
Must be something to do with the 6860 board in the A1200T causing the PCMCIA issue (The other common point here is the right-angled PCMCIA adaptor that I use in my tower, but I've had it out and re-soldered all of the connections - I might of laid the tower on its side and unscrewed the base once to insert the SRAM card directly just to make sure - Btw Its a Micronik tower).
Oh, and the MMU is still displayed as "NOT IN USE" under Sysinfo on the garage A1200 WB3.0.

Since I use my garage A1200 for all the serious stuff and the A1200T for games, I might just leave the '030 board in the garage A1200. Gives a real boost to emulation programs, too (Anyone want to comment on this decision...?)

Thanks for all your help,
Hodgkinson.