VXL-30 RAM contention with GVP series II HD RAM

[save2600]

Been messing around with this all night... the VXL-30 and its RAM daughtercard installed, I am only able to see 8mb of RAM at a time. Take your pick: 32-bit RAM or 16-bit... never a combination of the two. I've adjusted the jumper settings on the VXL daughtercard according to the manual and it contradicts itself. In my A2000, in order for 32-bit RAM to be recognized and utilized as such, I must set the RAM allocation jumper to 'high'. The manual states that I must run the setvxl command to add this memory in my startup-sequence, but that's simply untrue. The 32-bit RAM is recognized immediately when booting in 030 mode - regardless of it being configured as high or low.

Disable the jumper to configure the 32-bit RAM as low and it simply vanishes. Yet, my 8mb of GVP memory is now recognized.

Further... when booting in 68000 mode, 32-bit RAM is disabled and the GVP shows up as advertised as per the manual. All of this is done automatically and no messing about with the maddmem command adds anything - ever. When trying that command, always comes back to say: "no extra ram found to add", regardless of what mode I booted from or switched to.

Not a terribly big deal as 8mb FAST is plenty fine (even when running 3.9), but seems to me, I should be able to take advantage of the 16-bit RAM on the GVP Series II combo card in addition to the 32-bit RAM on the VXL.

Sysinfo does not recognize the GVP RAM at all, yet Showconfig does, but it shows it as being Zero k.

Again, not a super big deal as I'm extremely pleased with this setup: A2000 with Kickstart 1.3 on the mobo, 1GB HD, GVP Series II combo SCSI/RAM card and then the VXL has its 32-bit memory as well as a Kickstart 3.1 in ROM. I can literally switch between 030 Kickstart 3.1/OS3.9 and 68000 Kickstart 1.3/floppy mode at the flick of a switch. Each mode has its respective 8mb of FAST RAM and 1MB of CHIP.

I'm guessing there's either some kind of contention here or the VXL is simply not compatible with the GVP for whatever reason. I know the Supra Turbo accelerator doesn't like to boot in Turbo mode with GVP stuff, so perhaps that's the issue here. Thing is, I have a Supra RAM card and an A2091 card with 2mb of RAM installed and both yield the same exact results: 16-bit Zorro memory is never made available in conjunction with the VXL RAM  

[Jope]

So.. Once you set the jumpers so that the RAM disappears, did you try setvxl?

[amigadave]

Interesting setup and problem.  I know that GVP gear has been ......... different than everything else for me in the past.  It does not seem to want to play nice with other brands of hardware, but it seems to me that your VXL shares the same problem of not wanting to cooperate with any of your other hardware either.

It can get really frustrating when you can't find a solution that works with different brands of hardware.  Amiga is supposed to be "plug & play" before that term was even invented.

Good luck finding the problem and getting it to all work together, but sounds like the system is quite usable just the way it is already.

[SACC-guy]

@2600
Don't forget, amiga 2000 was limited to 9mb, starting with 1mem chip ram and 8 fast ram, when you added other boards, that required to be in that space...it would just not see the other mem....
You had to add mem above the 9mb space (like the megachip adding 2mb of chip)
and accelerators that added mem above the mail space.

[amigadave]

@2600
Don't forget, amiga 2000 was limited to 9mb, starting with 1mem chip ram and 8 fast ram, when you added other boards, that required to be in that space...it would just not see the other mem....
You had to add mem above the 9mb space (like the megachip adding 2mb of chip)
and accelerators that added mem above the mail space.

I am sure he knows that, the VXL is an accelerator with 32bit RAM which should not conflict with the 16bit ZorroII 8mb RAM limit.  Re-read his post and you will see that I think.

[SACC-guy]

I am sure he knows that, the VXL is an accelerator with 32bit RAM which should not conflict with the 16bit ZorroII 8mb RAM limit.  Re-read his post and you will see that I think.

It's not the zorro space...it's the auto- config space and
Actually, all accellerators of that era tried first to fit into auto-config space.

My 2620 and my 2630 each had 4mb of fast ram at 32bit when I added my Picasso card it lost ram...
happened to folks who tried to add the 2megs on the 2091 mem and scsi card
The 9 mem limit really played havoc on the bridgeboard folks who were limited to 6megs.

I fixed these problems for tens of LAAUG AND AUGLB AND SACC users when they were upgrading.

Michael (I don't know macs, But I KNOW amigas)

[Damion]

Yup, both the VXL and the GVP have to share the same memory space, no way to have 8MB on both.

[amigadave]

Yup, both the VXL and the GVP have to share the same memory space, no way to have 8MB on both.

Hmmmm,

I remember some 030 accelerators (and 040 ones too) that had 32mb or more of RAM onboard, which would obviously not be configured within the 8mb auto-config RAM limit.  Doesn't the VXL have a greater than 8mb RAM capability like these other A2000 accelerators, or is my memory faulty and only A3000/A4000 accelerators are capable of having more than 8mb of Fast RAM?  (getting old and senile sucks!).

It's been a long time since I messed around with an A2000 w/accelerator & RAM card(s).  I have been using my A4000's, A1200 & A600 w/ACA630 and my CDTV the last few years and might be forgetting my A2000 days.  Also, my A2000 has a GVP TekMagic 060 w/128mb of Fast RAM, so I know it is not a limitation of the A2000's accelerator slot.

[tone007]

Doesn't the VXL have a greater than 8mb RAM capability like these other A2000 accelerators

No.

only A3000/A4000 accelerators are capable of having more than 8mb of Fast RAM?  

No.

It's true, VXL is a pain, never got mine to work with another RAM expansion. (Not that I tried all that hard, 8MB fast + 2MB chip was plenty on my A500+.)

[save2600]

Yup, both the VXL and the GVP have to share the same memory space, no way to have 8MB on both.

Really seems to be the case, despite the fact you can map the RAM either high (0800 0000) or low (0020 0000). If this were to play correctly with the 16-bit RAM, what address *should* it have been set to start at and why wasn't the device configured as such in the first place? Is its high setting not high enough to get out of the auto-config space?

Nowhere in the manual does it talk about sharing RAM this way. Pretty much only mentions the re-mapping of its 32-bit RAM just in case there's a conflict with something else.

One thing I should have tried in order to test this further was to set the VXL to 2mb of RAM (assuming I could trick it that way) and saw if it would have allowed 6mb on the GVP card. But if you guys (SACC and Damion) are fairly certain it wouldn't work, I won't bother.

BTW: I'm happy with the performance of OS 3.9 on this 50mhz 030. Might be neat to sneak the VXL inside my A500 sometime and have 3.9 running on that, but am afraid its stock power supply would be too wimpy for it. That and I'd have to extend the cap next to the 68000 socket so it lays downward to get out of the way of the VXL  

[mongo]

Really seems to be the case, despite the fact you can map the RAM either high (0800 0000) or low (0020 0000). If this were to play correctly with the 16-bit RAM, what address *should* it have been set to start at and why wasn't the device configured as such in the first place?

Nowhere in the manual does it talk about sharing RAM this way. Pretty much only mentions the re-mapping of its 32-bit RAM just in case there's a conflict with something else.

You should be able to use the GVP RAM and the VXL-30 RAM at the same time if you set the jumper to map the ram high. You'll need to add the command SETVXL ADDMEM USE to your startup sequence somewhere to add the memory to the free memory list.

[tone007]

I'm happy with the performance of OS 3.9 on this 50mhz 030. Might be neat to sneak the VXL inside my A500 sometime and have 3.9 running on that, but am afraid its stock power supply would be too wimpy for it.

I had the same setup on my A500+, 50MHz/8MB upgraded VXL running 3.9 from an external SupraDrive, all running on the same stock A500 PSU.  Can't recall any cap clearance issues, though I probably would've just shoved it over as far as it'd go.

[save2600]

I had the same setup on my A500+, 50MHz/8MB upgraded VXL running 3.9 from an external SupraDrive, all running on the same stock A500 PSU.  Can't recall any cap clearance issues, though I probably would've just shoved it over as far as it'd go.

Hmm... good to hear the power supply is up to the task! Re: the cap issue, do you remember what version mobo you had? Mine is a 6.x (rock lobster) and I've read (and have seen pics) where a cap south of the cpu socket gets in the way.

[save2600]

You should be able to use the GVP RAM and the VXL-30 RAM at the same time if you set the jumper to map the ram high. You'll need to add the command SETVXL ADDMEM USE to your startup sequence somewhere to add the memory to the free memory list.

See... that's what I thought and I've tried that. Just brings up an error message of "no extra ram found to add".

I just remembered something... this card didn't seem to work when I first got it. Would just hang the system in an endless warm-boot cycle. UNTIL I soldered a wire from one of the PAL's to this jumper on the RAM card as pictured. All of the pics of other peoples VXL's as well as misc. Microbotics documentation regarding DMA led me to believe that's what needed to be done to a certain revision boardset. Was kinda surprised mine didn't have that jumper installed. anyway,  when the computer worked, I figured that was the problem. Then I read later that the VXL has problems with GVP Series II hard cards, and that you may have to change the MaxTransfer value to this one they provide in order for it to read properly - which I have not had to do.

I wonder if I go into HDToolbox, make the MaxTransfer value change and remove my wire... if that would affect the RAM issue. Am inclined to think its just a hard drive mod though.

[billt]

When I ran my VXL030 I used romtagmem (should eb on aminet or someplace like that) to map in the high memory. Took a reboot to do that, but then it was able to remap kickstart up there too and have 32bit  "ROM". I don't remember if I ran Zorro2 or other memory or not with it, but I didn't map VXL030 memory low, and I did not use their own utility for it high.