Amiga 500 Rev 5. and ECS chip set...??

[Rabbi]

An '010 won't cause anything of the sort either. The Hires Denise might be a good lead - ECS modes won't work w/o a newer Agnus anyway. Possibly the 3.1 ROM tries to activate some trickery.

Problem solved!  If you upgrade the Kickstart ROM chip to 3.1, replacing an OCS Denise with an ECS Denise - yet retaining an OCS Agnus - yields the result of a column of vertical lines in the cursor's "column".  I found this out by replacing the ECS Denise with the OCS Denise that I swapped out.  Once I put back the OCS Denise w/the OCS Agnus, the problem disappeared.

[waltermixxx]

I should have (once they arrive) an ecs denise, and an ecs (fatter agnus)... I already have the 3.1 kickstart in there...
 

[waltermixxx]

Well my ECS chips have arrived, I Installed my Super Denise,
and my fatter Agnus....
 
I had a devil of a time getting my Fat Agnus out, but she finally did,
the socket looked fine, and the chip I got looks great as well...
 
I modded my REV 5 motherboard so Jumper 2 is shorted between pin 1 & 2 and not 2 & 3.
 
I Have a baseboard Memory card, with the Gary chip adapter...
the jumpers on the Gary chip are set to Fatter, and KS 1.3 ( I have 3.1)
 
the jumpers on the Memory card (populated with 2 megs of ram)  are both set for
1 & 2 and 4 & 5 (fatter agnus)  ...  now my A500 does not see 1 meg of chip ram like I was hoping, but only 250kbytes or so...
 
not sure what to do...  it's only seening about half of the original chip memory...
anyone know why this might be?

[omnicron10]

P 6 Of the Baseboard docs for Rev 5 says to short JP2 2-3 not 1-2.  Are you looking at it backwards?

Make sure Row 0 is populated with chips on the baseboard.  That is the other 512k chip.

Make sure you did not cut pin 32 like the commodore 1 meg upgrade state.

Also I would imagine you have the ribbon cable from the gary daughterboard to the trapdoor slot board.

[waltermixxx]

latest update...  I read the manual some more, and realized that in order for the A500 to see the additional chip ram, the chip ram has to sit in row 0.   Then it says I can populate the rest in any order...
 
sure enough the amiga does see the full 1 meg of chip ram ( actually about 820 K) as some of it is being used as a ram disk,   then 0 other memory...
 
so the question is,  I have 2 megs of ram in total  .5 will be used for chip ram, leaving me with 3 addtional rows of memory, in which rows should they go in?
 
I tried 2, 6, 3  .... if I boot of the Baseboard boot disk 1_7  the system crashes after booting, if I boot from a regular 3.1 boot disk, the computer sees the 1 meg of ram,
but it does not see the rest... so it looks like I have to do the install again...  
 
Just wondering why the a500 would crash with a guru thingy of 8000 000B then some hex number 0007ffbc or something like that...either way... hope I can sort it out... it's too late now, 2:22 am and I have to go first downstairs to unplug the soldering iron, and second to bed...
 
cheers.  ( it is nice to have an ecs system with 1 meg chip ram, but it would also be nice to have 1.5 megs of other ram as well...
 

[waltermixxx]

P 6 Of the Baseboard docs for Rev 5 says to short JP2 2-3 not 1-2. Are you looking at it backwards?
 
Make sure Row 0 is populated with chips on the baseboard. That is the other 512k chip.
 
Make sure you did not cut pin 32 like the commodore 1 meg upgrade state.
 
Also I would imagine you have the ribbon cable from the gary daughterboard to the trapdoor slot board.

Ribbon cable is on
 
pin 32 is not cut currently,
 
( I had cut it to test out the Fatter Agnus and my original supra 512K upgrade board ( it worked so I know my fatter angus is ok)
 
on page 6 Diagram D in the table it says:
 
Angus Connected Disconnected
 
Fat 2 & 3 1 & 2 Shown <--- not my setup
Fatter 1 & 2 2 & 3 Fatter** 2 & Gary Bd 1 & 3  
how does one tell which pal?
 
Currently i have my 16 Ram Chips setup like this:
 
Row 0 4 chips
Row 2 4 chips
Row 3 4 chips
Row 6 4 chips
 
so I get the 1 meg of chip ram, but system crashes if I boot of my Baseboard Install/boot disk...
 
so made a little bit of head way
 
As always your support is appreciated!!!!!
 
Cheers.

[omnicron10]

The disk might not work with KS 3.1 but to see the additional ram without the PAL upgrade on the Gary daughterboard requires that you run the cram command.  Just make a WB disk that has cram in c: and put that in the startup-sequence.  I would add it as early as possible in the startup so things will load to fast ram as much as possible.  I believe cram works with 3.1 since I had a A500 with baseboard and 3.1 a long time ago....

[waltermixxx]

okie doke, I'll create a new boot up disk
fresh copy of wb 3.1 and edit the startup-sequence file
to include the cRam app...

cheers!

[waltermixxx]

worked like a charm,
created new 3.1 boot disk with cRam at the top of the Startup-Sequence file,
and got all my RAM   1 meg chip ram and 1.5 megs of other ram...
 
thank you MR. Omnicron10  

[waltermixxx]

one interesting note:

when i go into sysinfo, it shows the ram in 4 windows.
3 x 512 k segments
1 x 1 meg chip ram...

is this use ful?   why would it not show up and 2 screens, 1 meg chip and 1.5 fast?

[bluenose]

Okay here are the chips you need :

Replace Denise w/ super denise
Replace Agnus w/ Fat/Fatter Agnus

You don't need a "gary" or "buster" as there is no Zorro 2 bus on 500s. Paula was never upgraded so no need to replace.

On Ebay they have the chips needed.

could you tell me if could replace my dead angus  8371 / 4488 / 22 with a
Commodore Amiga 8372A 8372 / 8370 Agnus Chip

[omnicron10]

You can.  Most 1MB agnus should work.  Can you get complete part numbers to make sure?  What machine and what revision motherboard?

[omnicron10]

one interesting note:

when i go into sysinfo, it shows the ram in 4 windows.
3 x 512 k segments
1 x 1 meg chip ram...

is this use ful?   why would it not show up and 2 screens, 1 meg chip and 1.5 fast?

The way the ram allocate memory but still have versatility to add memory they made the expansion this way.  

The ICD Adram 540 tends to allocate ram in larger blocks.

The ram being cut up like that can cause problems with some graphics programs that want contiguous space for large graphics or programs.

Any "Ranger" memory expansion will have those issues as they have to find areas to allocate ram.

Actual zorro II memory should not have that problem.

[Amiga_Nut]

"ECS" compatibility in games is usually all about having 2 MB chip RAM. Show me a game requiring non-PAL/-NTSC screen modes and/or SuperHires and you've got a point.

I've never seen a non AGA game that requires 2mb chip ram or obese Agnus specifically. The only distinction I ever saw was either 1mb chip required specifically, otherwise 512kb chip/512kb fast was OK as well. 'ECS games' were pretty much only 1mb chip ram requiring games, so essentially only an A1000 wouldn't run some non AGA games, other than that any fatter Agnus equipped 1mb chip ram A500/2000 could run all games, obese Agnus was never a requirement.

Ditto with super Denise being completely useless as far as gaming goes. There was no specific screen mode from ECS required, mind you it's not like they were anything useful like 128 colour mode in lo-res as far as games programmers were concerned so there is no 'ECS games' that will fail to run if you have a regular Denise chip.

Let's face it, most games coders couldn't even get 100% out of the original OCS of the prototype A1000 sans EHB mode.

[zipper]

Well, I think AlienF1 (Virtual GP demo) needed 2 MB. But it was an AGA game; just happened to run on my 2 MB Chip ECS A500 with 060 steroids - wrong colours of course...