Advice on best A1200 accelerator

[desiv]

no i was quoting some one else!!!!!!!
 Mine is still as dead as a do-do!!!!!

Oh sorry..

and the card is WORKING!

Yeay!..

er.. wait.. are you quoting again??  :-)

Yeah, the fitting of that card is a bit tricky....

desiv

[portarinos]

Yessssssssssssssssssss!!! I was sure that there was something wrong that didn't have to do with the card. Anyway, that's why i have asked you a lot of times about the mobo revision. I tested the card with 2 different amiga's and with the first one worked out of the box while the other needed tweaking. As for the rest we have been talking about on Amibay, i'll PM you shortly and we'll even short out the Workbench configuration.

[paul1981]

A tight fit is always a good fit. :knuddel:

[utri007]

Timing fixes are required to get rev 2b mobo work with ACA

Details here:

http://www.ianstedman.co.uk/Amiga/amiga_hacks/A1200_Mobo_fix/a1200_mobo_fix.html

[Snoozy]

Hells bells i hope i don't have to do any of those fixes :confused:
 
So far the a1200 has been up and running lords of the realm aga for nearly 2 hours with no probs.
 
What i would say is this: there doesn't seem much of a chance of installing the aca1230 without removing the mobo and physically pushing the two together (significant amount of gentle force required!) There are plastic runners on the a1200 plastic casing near where the card sits that protrude and prevent proper fitting if the mobo remains screwed into the lower outer 1200 white casing. I used some industrial strength (fiskar) scissor to chop away nearly all of the white plastic runner of the a1200 casing and then the aca1230 card JUST fits snuggly. I think i was on a hiding to nothing with fitting this card and trying to prevent the card touching metal shields etc without actually chopping and removing the plastic. The A1200 survived the surgery
 
Anyway now that the upper metal shield has deparated the CF card is plugged in and laying freely on some chips !! Is this safe and stable for the system, it worries me slightly..

[portarinos]

OK mate! Don't worry about either the rf shield that won't be there or the CF lying on the mobo. I would suggest that you put a small piece of paper or even better some tape under the CF adapter just in case. I have been running my amiga with a CF like this for years and never had a problem. As for the fact that you have to disassemble all the parts of the amiga in order to install properly the ACA, this isn't true. Never had to do this in the past. I also told you that you might have not pressed the card enough so that it wasn't seated properly. It seems that is the first accelerator that got in your hands and you weren't sure about the force you had to apply on the card in order for it to slot in properly. I had the same concern some years ago when I first bought a magnum 030 and I thought that i could damage it easily. This is not the case anyway and of course ACA is a splendid piece of hardware that will give you lots of enjoyment with your miggy. Especially with Classic WB ADV SP and/or 3.9 you'll experience a nice classic OS surprise.

[NovaCoder]

Ok  guys i thought i'd let you know straight away that i have taken my a1200 completely apart and finally the metal shielding is off (yes novacoder i hope to see it melted down!) and the card is WORKING!

Cool, another happy customer

[NovaCoder]

What i would say is this: there doesn't seem much of a chance of installing the aca1230 without removing the mobo and physically pushing the two together (significant amount of gentle force required!) There are plastic runners on the a1200 plastic casing near where the card sits that protrude and prevent proper fitting if the mobo remains screwed into the lower outer 1200 white casing. I used some industrial strength (fiskar) scissor to chop away nearly all of the white plastic runner of the a1200 casing and then the aca1230 card JUST fits snuggly. I think i was on a hiding to nothing with fitting this card and trying to prevent the card touching metal shields etc without actually chopping and removing the plastic. The A1200 survived the surgery
 
Anyway now that the upper metal shield has deparated the CF card is plugged in and laying freely on some chips !! Is this safe and stable for the system, it worries me slightly..

Hiya,

Yes I thought the plastic runners might be the problem (which is why I asked for a picture), I had the same issue with both of my 1200 cases and had to cut the runners back to get my ACA nice and snug.

As for your 'loose' CF don't just lay it on the chips because you might get a short, go for something snazzy like this instead -> CF Extender

[Snoozy]

Ah thanks novacoder i'm glad it wasn't just me that had to do that fix...i think if i had tried installing the card with those plastic runners in place i would need to have been He-man and would have eventually risked damaging the card as it abutted the runners and may have ended up cracked or snapped!! When your pushing tha card in you are pushing it from the edge with the least components on the card (where the board feels more flimsy) so it doesn't instill much conifdence in pushing really firmly on it
 
Maybe portarinos has a different mobo or revised outer a1200 casing?
 
I hope my saga may help other ppl (esp beginners) when they come to install their aca card in the a1200 :roflmao:

[desiv]

Yeah, I was worried about the timing fixes and fits with mine when I ordered it, because I'm almost always the one that something fails for if there's a possibility.. ;-)

But I got lucky (this time)...

I had to take my 1200 apart to install it, but I only had to pull it back just a tad to get it to work(I had that problem with my 8M RAM card, so I was prepared for that) and it fit without even removing the RF shield (that everyone hates and I probably should have removed anyway....).

I think you'll love your ACA...

I think it's awesome..  ;-)

Enjoy!

desiv

[Snoozy]

hi guys i'm just coming to the final stage of installing my aca card, i've edited my wb start up sequence to this:
 
C:ACATune - maprom Devs kick31 -cache on -burst on>NIL:
 
and this replaced my previous command line which was something like WBPatch <> NIL:
 
so now when my 1200 boots up it doesn't quite boot up properly first time, but boots up properly if i do a soft reset. Is this right? Is there any way i can get it to boot up properly on first attempt? Maybe i shouldn't have deleted the initail command line and added the above directly underneath it?!
 
So High Priests and High Priestess's of ACA can you please advise?

[desiv]

Kual!!

...i've edited my wb start up sequence to this:

Quick question:
What do you mean when you say your "wb start up sequence?"

You mean s:startup-sequence?
 

C:ACATune - maprom Devs kick31 -cache on -burst on>NIL:

I don't think that is quite right.  More like:
C:ACATune -maprom Devs:kick31 -cache on -burst on >NIL:
 
(Not at my Amiga now, so not positive.  That  is assuming that there is a file called kick31 (no extension, just kick31) in the DEVS: folder.)

and this replaced my previous command line which was something like WBPatch <> NIL:

Generally, you don't want to "replace" anything.

You want to add the ACATune line as the first line in your s:startup-sequence.

 desiv

[Snoozy]

Oh no what have I done!
Can u give me ur s:start up sequence!

[Snoozy]

Hi guys,
 
i need a little more help with my s:start up. I have edited s:start up by inputting C:ACATune..etc command line into the first line of my s:startup and my aca1230 card is recognised fine once wb loads..problem is wb doesn't load from cold start..it starts up but the screen goes blank (as if going into a reset mode) and then the system hangs on black screen. So i then do a soft reset and it works normally with ACA card recognised. Anyone know what is happening here? FYI my s:startup is very standard apart from the ACATune line i inserted at the beginning.
 
Another question! My PCMCIA port recognises my 2mb pcmcia ram card but no longer recognises my PCMCIA CF adaptor :cry:
 
Why is my 1200 so tempermental :smack:

[bbond007]

Oh no what have I done!
Can u give me ur s:start up sequence!

the s:startup-sequence is specific to your configuration.

My statrup sequence contains a bunch of stuff for my pcmcia network board, fast ATA, Poseidon USB, MMU, etc... stuff you probably don't even have.

Maybe you should just post yours so we can have a look...

[Snoozy]

If i can get my pcmcia sorted i will copy and paste my s:startup onto my cf and then paste it onto here if that is possible