Questions re: PPI Zeus '040 Board in my A2000

[Huxley_D]

Hi guys!

You might have seen that I'm looking for a couple of manuals in another thread, so forgive me if some of the following questions will be answered once I get my hands on those materials...

So, I've now got a Progressive Peripherals Zeus 68040 board (clocked at 33MHz), populated with 12 megs of RAM.  I've got a few questions that wiser minds might be able to answer:

First, I've just installed the Zeus in my A2000, and I've got to say, it makes me a bit nervous!  I haven't fired up the system just yet, but the installation of the board seems so super close to the drive chassis.  It butts right up against the batch of cables that come out of the PSU, and it's close enough that those cables are actually causing the entire Zeus board to lean over to one side.  Granted, that'll probably stop when I re-install the screws at the back of the board, but still... is this normal?

Second, a RAM question:  My A2000 has a Rev. 6 mainboard.  I've got two Commodore 2-meg RAM boards installed.  Should I leave those boards in my system now that I've got the RAM on the '040 board, or are they just going to slow everything down?  I guess I'm still a bit fuzzy about Amiga RAM.

Finally, a SCSI-drive question:  My A2000 boots from a GVP A4000 HC+8 board (recently upgraded to the Rev. 4.15 ROM) with an onboard 40-meg HDD, and a chained internal CD-ROM drive in the 5.25" bay.  The GVP board has RAM slots, but they're not filled at the moment.  Since the Zeus board has onboard SCSI, would it make sense to relocate the HDD from the GVP board to the Zeus, or should I just leave 'er where she is and hope it all plays nice together?

Any clues would be awesome!

Huxley

[Xanaa]

I have the manual for PPI 68040 accelerator the 2000 ( sorry don't have it scaned). My book shows it can take either 4 megs in bank 1 ,8 megs in banks 1&2, 16 megs in bank 1,32 megs in banks 1&2.there are jumpers on the board to set memory config set to. I also have the install disk for it. It works great in my 2000 .
I will try to answer questions

[Xanaa]

Forgot to tell you the ram on the Accellerator is much faster than  any of the ram you also have installed.

[Huxley_D]

Forgot to tell you the ram on the Accellerator is much faster than  any of the ram you also have installed.

So does that imply that I'd be better off removing the two Commodore RAM boards?  Are they slowing my system down?

Thanks for the info!

Huxley

[Huxley_D]

Quick update:  I just installed the Zeus board, along with my two RAM boards and the GVP SCSI board.  I installed the drivers from the floppy that came with my Zeus, rebooted the A2000... ***and holy crap this thing is flying now!!***

Granted, I've still got some questions about getting the best configuration, but WOW, just loading workbench windows, running a couple of apps, etc. - it's crazy just how much faster poking around in my filesystem is.  I just loaded a couple of images in DPaintIV (I think they're samples that came with the program, like a '56 Chevy, etc.), and rather than taking 20 or 30 seconds to load, they just popped onto the screen with barely any delay at all!

I think I'm in love.

Huxley

[gertsy]

Now that's the way an A2000 should always be.!!

Well Done !

[Huxley_D]

Now that's the way an A2000 should always be.!!

Well Done !

Agreed!  Now if my Spectrum video board will just get here from Australia already, I can start enjoying all this speed in *color*!

Huxley

[marcfrick2112]

Well done, indeed Huxley_D !

As for the SCSI question.. Someone else can probably give better info... I know the Zeus is a SCSI-2 controller, no idea about the GVP card... I'd think an accelerator's on-board SCSI would be faster... but then again, I've been wrong before.... :lol:

[gertsy]

Amiga Hardware database says the Zeus SCSI driver is badly written and steals all the processor. But that might not mean it's slow.  
The GVP is going to give you a steady 3.5MB a sec, which is close to the max speed you're gonna get on a ZoroII.

Sounds like you're very happy with the usability of your current config.  That's the main thing.

Gertsy

[tone007]

It butts right up against the batch of cables that come out of the PSU, and it's close enough that those cables are actually causing the entire Zeus board to lean over to one side.  Granted, that'll probably stop when I re-install the screws at the back of the board, but still... is this normal?

Normal, a bit of poor design on the A2000 unfortunately.  I've seen processor cards that were permanently warped due to this.

[Huxley_D]

Normal, a bit of poor design on the A2000 unfortunately.  I've seen processor cards that were permanently warped due to this.

Cool, thanks.  Not a great design feature, but it's reassuring to know that it's not just my A2000 that's saddled with it.

I'm thinking right now that I'm going to leave my SCSI setup the way it is, using the GVP card.  However, I'm still just a bit fuzzy about the RAM question.  I understand that the Commodore RAM boards are quite a bit slower than the Zeus's onboard RAM, but is that only a factor when the Zeus RAM is "overflowed" onto the slower Commodore boards?  Or is their mere presence actually dragging down the performance of my system?

Thanks again - you guys are always a wealth of great info!

Huxley

[zipper]

Amiga uses "fast mem first" technique.  Fill your RAM and you see when the slower RAM gets used.

[rkauer]

As a matter of advice, sack the 2Mb RAM cards and populate the Zeus and GVP boards with 30-pin SIMMs.

 The Zeus have the ability to use 4Mb 30-pin RAM (to the maximum of 64Mb!). GVP SCSI controller will accept up to 8Mb RAM (8x 1Mb SIMMs).

 The more cards you have inside, more power will be required by the system. Spare a Zorro slot for a graphics card (like the Spectrum) and reduce the Zorro-II RAM to 6Mbon the GVP SCSI to have a 1 + 70Mb RAM system (NOT BAD AT ALL!).

[Huxley_D]

As a matter of advice, sack the 2Mb RAM cards and populate the Zeus and GVP boards with 30-pin SIMMs.

 The Zeus have the ability to use 4Mb 30-pin RAM (to the maximum of 64Mb!). GVP SCSI controller will accept up to 8Mb RAM (8x 1Mb SIMMs).

 The more cards you have inside, more power will be required by the system. Spare a Zorro slot for a graphics card (like the Spectrum) and reduce the Zorro-II RAM to 6Mbon the GVP SCSI to have a 1 + 70Mb RAM system (NOT BAD AT ALL!).

Awesome info + advice!  Thanks for sharing this - hopefully I'm not the only dope who'll benefit from this.

On a *totally* unrelated note, does anyone want to buy two Zorro 2MB RAM cards?  :-D

Huxley