Mega Midget Racer: Am I missing something here?

[AmmoJammo]

By 1 cent...

[Azryl]

yup.. not sure where you will find the addon board for the mighty midget accelerator, they were rare even when the board was new.

Silly to build it that way because without 32bit ram its very slow. Should have had native 1 or 2meg on the board and extra add-on if needed. Similar to some of the GVP Zorro accelerators.
 
Az

[amiga-penn-wchester]

it would be a hard find, most were coupled with the accelerator itself, not sure what use one would have for just the expansion board.  

I looked in to getting one when I had an A500.   They are usually sold w/ the mem attached, perhaps you could purchase another cheap w/the memory if the price were right.

[motrucker]

A couple of people have told you the problem. If the '030 card you are using does not have it's RAM card with it, it is useless! And you're quite right - you will never find a RAM card by its lonesome.
Shame too, the Mega Midget Racer is a really good accelerator IF you have one of its RAM cards.
Next time do more research before you jump.

[desiv]

Actually, I just saw this on BBoAH:
 

The card also includes 512K of very fast SRAM which can be configured  as system RAM, or be used to cache the Kickstart for increased ROM  access. These are four chips located in the top left hand corner of the  board.

If you have that and it's enabled, that should be FAST RAM and your Amiga should perform much better.
If you can disable it being used as the Kickstart cache, perhaps that will speed things up?
(If that's the same model...)
http://www.amiga-hardware.com/showhardware.cgi?HARDID=64
(If it's in the same memory location as tom's 8M, you might not be able to use both at the same time..)

desiv

[amiga-penn-wchester]

If that's true, he should see a larger sysinfo dhrystone number, as inaccurate as that would be...

throwing kickstart into fastram vs having 32bit ram is... well I've never measured such a thing!

[desiv]

That's why I was wondering if the memory locations might be conflicting with the tomthul RAM chips.

And I think Sysinfo is great for measuring standard Amigas and normal expansions, up to about 68030's.
But beyond that and you start doing things like playing with ROMs into RAM...
I'm not sure Sysinfo can keep up.. ;-)

desiv

[amiga-penn-wchester]

I havent looked in to how sysinfo works, programatically, but i know that beyond 68040/25 it doesn't make much sense.  Or beyond what was thought of as "stock" amigas at the time...   I'm sure there's someone here that can enlighten us on that one.

AIBB was a competitor benchmarking program at the time when I had a fast amiga, perhaps it is more accurate... I don't know.

Regardless, it's been said many times - an accelerator on the cpu slot w/ no memory isn't much better than no extra cpu at all...

[desiv]

Regardless, it's been said many times - an accelerator on the cpu slot w/ no memory isn't much better than no extra cpu at all...

Yep, but that accelerator should have memory.
Just 512k, but that's memory and it should help a lot...
I'm wondering if it's not enabled for some reason.
(Setting or conflict)

desiv

[amiga-penn-wchester]

yes, I agree, if there is 512k up for grabs on it, and it can be jumpered or something to be 32bit RAM, you should see a noticeable increase in speed. (however you measure it)   Unfortunately, I don't know a whole lot about this accelerator in general, but I'm just speaking about how amiga accelerators behave in general.

I can say that A) a microbotics 030 with no RAM is as slow as a stock A1200/020

I can say that B) an Apollo 040 with no RAM appears to be slightly faster than an A1200/20.  

Add some SIMM memory to these boards and the CPU comes to life

[AmmoJammo]

Yep, but that accelerator should have memory.
Just 512k, but that's memory and it should help a lot...
I'm wondering if it's not enabled for some reason.
(Setting or conflict)

desiv

its optional, as per this link:

http://amiga.resource.cx/exp/megamidget

and doesn't have it either.

[amiga-penn-wchester]

what happens memory-wise when you select 68000 fallback mode?

[desiv]

its optional, as per this link:

http://amiga.resource.cx/exp/megamidget

and doesn't have it either.

That's for the 8m RAM board.
But it should come with 512k, as per the link I posted above.

desiv

[desiv]

Tablet won't let me edit.
Aha.
So the 512k is optional too, but not a board.
He just might need SRAM chips.

desiv

[AmmoJammo]

what happens memory-wise when you select 68000 fallback mode?

using the hardware switch, it crashes... won't boot, have had the "red screen of death" as well as another error...

That's if it does anything...

[joekster]

Yeah, the speed of the MMR w/o 32bit ram is aweful!!! You are actually lucky with Tom's 8mb board. It uses SRAM which is about 5% faster than dram (no refresh cycles/delay). You can put 512kb of SRAM on the MMR and it will be really fast! - should put your sysinfo rating about 10% higher than a stock a3000... I just happen to an extra set of those chips, send me a PM if you are interested.