He created heaven and earth, then ACATUNE

[Hockmiester]

Hi All.

Quick question regard regarding ACATune on my A1200 k3.0 with a ACA1220 (128mb - 25mhz 68020) on the start-sequence.  

I unpacked the lha into my programs directory. I copied the file in the drawer it created into C: as well as that seemed correct.  (Y/N?)

Anyway I note from the forums that adding it to the start sequence is a good idea. I can reach the start-sequence from the cli and was going to add it right at the end after the loadWB command.

On the forums I note several different versions for doing this...

C:ACATune -maprom System:kick31.rom -z2cache on -fastchip on -cache on -burst on >NIL: (As I have 3.0 would I replace this to kick30.rom?)

or

C:ACATune -maprom * -cache on -burst on >NIL: (This seems like the correct answer?)

or

ACATune >NIL: -maprom ** p -cache on -burst on (This doesn't start C so wouldn't look in the C drawer so seems wrong?)

When its in the start-sequence correctly I don't need to do anything other than turn on, boot WB and start playing.

Thanks

M

[NovaCoder]

It must be at the start of the startup sequence, not the end

[Hockmiester]

OK, I can move to the start (any specific place???) any ideas which one works best from my original post???

My gut says this one based on my hardware (also listed in original post).

C:ACATune -maprom * -cache on -burst on >NIL:

[NovaCoder]

OK, I can move to the start (any specific place???) any ideas which one works best from my original post???

My gut says this one based on my hardware (also listed in original post).

C:ACATune -maprom * -cache on -burst on >NIL:

No I think it has to be the very first line in the file, I used to have a 56Mhz ACA 1230 and it was awesome:)

Have a look at this thread -> a thread

You'll get some good answers there.

[Hockmiester]

Hmmm. Not sure if that complicates matters. 72 pages of forum so I jumped to the end. This draws in more questions but one is a repeat of my original post.

(from the other thread) Is this looking at the actual rom (i.e my 1200 has a 3.0) because this states in the start-sequence that its looking for a 3.1

ACATune -maprom System:kick31.rom -cache on -burst on >NIL:

Later in the post someone mentions DH0:system/kick31.rom so this could be a rom file in this location dh0:system: (I can do that but does it conflict with the physical rom in the machine?)

but then someone says theirs is...

C:acatune -maprom devs:ks39.rom -burst on -cache on >NIL:

which implies the roms are in the devs folder (again software but a 3.9?). I could change this to ks30.rom?

I see on the thread a lot of questions but not a load of actual answers.

Yet if I did this...

C:ACATune -maprom * -cache on -burst on >NIL:

with no roms referenced in the sequence as above would the 1220 on a standard 2mb Amiga work?

I appreciate you time. Did you ever get the the 600 as it should have been spec'd? (You post on page 15 or something) :-)

[Hockmiester]

I just found this...(my Acatune has been copied to C:)

4. on the very first line of the startup-sequence enter:

C:Acatune

5. Press ESC key then x key then ENTER key

Reboot your Amiga when all disk activity has stopped.

Is it that simple? I don't need any of the extra lines like -burst etc etc?

[NovaCoder]

The AcaTune command on it's own will just use it's default settings, you can see what settings your running by typing it on your command prompt.

I think at a minimum you should have 'C:ACATune >NIL:'

But like I said before, ask on that EAB thread, those guys are very helpful.

[Hockmiester]

Great.

C:ACATune -maprom * -cache on -burst on >NIL:

Should be the winner then. Assuming * server a purpose and shouldn't be replaced with something machine/setup specific.

Cheers

[PanterHZ]

As NovaCoder mentions, the ACATune line should be at the very top of the startup-sequence, before anything else.

The  main purpose of the ACATune tool is to speed up your Amiga, and one of  the things it can do is to copy the Kickstart to Fast RAM, which makes  things go a bit faster. By using the -maprom * option on the ACAtune  line, the Kickstart ROM will be copied to RAM.
You can also use a  Kickstart image file instead, but this requires that you get hold of a  suitable Kickstart file first. If you do this, you can change the  ACATune line to:

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

But  this assumes that the Kickstart ROM image is called kick31.rom and that  it has been copied to the Devs drawer on your boot partition.

[paul1981]

I use this line at the top of the startup-sequence for my ACA1232/33MHz:

C:ACATune -cache on -burst on -vbrmove -maprom DEVS:Kickstarts/myamiga.rom >ram:acaoutput.txt

When I first tried the ACATune tool last year (v1.7) I immediately discovered it was buggy, and that for the options that I wanted they (the arguments) had to be in that order exactly...or it just didn't work.

I also direct output to a textfile in ram instead of oblivion (good film btw!) so that I can easily see if anything is wrong by simply reading the text file (especially helpful to new ACA users).

Of course, not all ACATune options are available for all ACA cards... so make sure to read the ACATune docs thoroughly pertaining to your particular ACA card.

[mfilos]

I wrote an unofficial changelog a long time ago that I update when a new version hits the road:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/939939/ACATune/ACATune_ReadMe.txt

ACATune can be installed anywhere but C drawer is the most appropriate location imho.
ACATune with the maprom option either loads the default kickstart into FastRAM for faster access or loads a kickstart image from the hard drive. You need to have a ROM image in the hard drive in order to use it via the -maprom option in which you just put the path of the kickstart rom image.
For example if you have a kickstart ROM named kick31.rom which you put in drawer DEVS the declaration could be like this:

Code: [Select]

C:ACATune -maprom Devs:kick31.rom -cache on - burst on >NIL:
As other people said... ACATune "MUST" be the first declaration in your startup-sequence or else it might give you an unbootable system.

Since you don't have an ACA1230 or ACA630... many of the extra options aren't working so the best and more safe declaration is indeed:

Code: [Select]

C:ACATune -maprom * -cache on - burst on >NIL:
I wouldn't suggest running your system without ACATune first because it REALLY speeds up the system comparing it without ACATune (some benchmark utility like SysInfo will justify it) and secondly because it has some extra stuff that are really cool.

[Hockmiester]

All good advice and well explained. It's much better to understand they why rather than mindlessly entering code (like I did with POKES aged .

Lets see if it works now so crossed fingers and thanks.  

I assumed that the kick31.rom was placed in the correct location as everything was being loaded into the ram.

The bit I was unsure on was that if you loaded the 31.rom into the ram but the physical kickstart was 3.0 would this create a black hole and end time and space.

Take care

[paul1981]

The bit I was unsure on was that if you loaded the 31.rom into the ram but the physical kickstart was 3.0 would this create a black hole and end time and space.

This only happens when you don't have enough ram to load the Kickstart image into. So there's no need to worry.... but please, please I beg you... don't attempt this on an unexpanded 1200 (although I hear the black hole created is fairly localised so we'd all be okay , but I'm not sure you'd make it).

[Hockmiester]

Big thanks!

FYI the ACA1220 works perfect and shows 132mb of fast ram when it was supposed to be (127+1 of which I understood the +1 was for softkicking the rom).

Quick question because it will bug me.

Anyway what does the * do in the command. I know it doesn't work without it (black screen) and works with it. It was bugging me on what the * was instructing the Amiga to do.

[mfilos]

The "*" tells -maprom option to load the physical 512KB kickstart into FastRAM.
The "**" tells -maprom option to load the physical 1MB custom kickstart (that anyone could burn into a real EPROM) into FastRAM (It can be used for 512KB kickstarts as well)