Classic Workbench; Problems with aca1233 accelerator.

[wrath of khan]

Open a shell and type "version c:acatune full"

And let us know what that says.

Also, please do make sure that you have turned your Amiga off/on at the power brick. A 'cold boot' is a boot from a previously powered off state, and a 'warm boot' is a boot from a previously powered on state (like after a reset with A-A-CTRL). I'm interested to know whether it's working from a cold boot, so please make sure you've cold booted it first. So, see what happens from a cold boot please.

The shell said: Could not find version information for C:acatune. I powered on from the brick to begin.

[wrath of khan]

1.7 = 17 IIRC, so no problem there.

http://wiki.icomp.de/wiki/ACAtune

If there's still no joy, I suggest powering the Amiga off at the brick, power on again whilst holding down both mouse buttons and this will take you to the Amiga Early Startup Control.

From here select the button "Boot with no Startup-Sequence".

When the AmigaDOS prompt appears, type in "c:acatune -status"

And let us know what that says. If it recognises the card then there's something in the ClassicWB startup-sequence which is upsetting it.

Yup I did this and it said: error Aca card type unsupported.

[wrath of khan]

Thanks for your help mike and Paul. Its 2am here now so I'm gonna crash.
To be continued tomorrow...

[paul1981]

Thanks, I will try this. Oddly what seems to be happening is, I activated the maprom feature and I get loads of other mem. But after resetting the amiga, ctrl, A+A, I lose the other mem. Is there a way to save the maprom command rather than having to activate this every time i boot up?

Well I will try your suggestion. Really, that's great. I guess some games require 3.1? Oh and should I enter the command in my acatune software. Its on a floppy. Or from a cli?

I'm just turning the clock back here a bit. Here you stated that acatune was working as it gave you the extra ram. Can you repeat this behaviour? This proved that acatune detected your card.

Also, don't forget to try the cold boot but without Startup-Sequence (see my last posts) and type 'c:acatune -status' and let us know what it says.

EDIT: Ok seems you already did that last part... In my mind, it's either the wrong (old) version of acatune, or the card perhaps isn't seated correctly, which may explain why it recognised the card earlier.

[wrath of khan]

I'm just turning the clock back here a bit. Here you stated that acatune was working as it gave you the extra ram. Can you repeat this behaviour? This proved that acatune detected your card.

Also, don't forget to try the cold boot but without Startup-Sequence (see my last posts) and type 'c:acatune -status' and let us know what it says.

EDIT: Ok seems you already did that last part... In my mind, it's either the wrong (old) version of acatune, or the card perhaps isn't seated correctly, which may explain why it recognised the card earlier.

Hmm I will check if the card is not seated properly. At first it was pushed in too far and there was distortion on-screen. The manual recommends loosening the card a bit. I did this and it worked. Perhaps its a tad too loose now? I'll investigate.

I'm getting visible scan lines on my lcd from the rgb scart cable I got from amigakit too. It's the lcd telly no doubt. Someone over at eab has a thread about the same thing. Not to worry as  I will get an indivision aga soon enough.
Oh and yes every time I use the acatune disk and type acatune maprom * I get loads of other mem allocated and I can run most games just fine.

[wrath of khan]

Here is sysinfo pics attached with the acatune maprom * feature activated
Perhaps I should try the line in startup again and put it right at the top before any other line?
There is an acaoutput.txt file in my ramdisk though...

[paul1981]

Here is sysinfo pics attached with the acatune maprom * feature activated
Perhaps I should try the line in startup again and put it right at the top before any other line?
There is an acaoutput.txt file in my ramdisk though...

Yes, there should be because we told ACATune to write it's output to the file 'ram:acaoutput.txt' in the command line that we entered into your Startup-Sequence. This file is created whether there's a problem or not, so until you get it working correctly you should read it.
If that file is created in ram: then it means that that line must still be in your Startup-Sequence, and you should open the file in Multiview and see what it says... or open a shell and  type 'type ram:acaoutput.txt'.

So what we've discovered here then is that ACATune is finally recognising your card. Might be worth while plugging/unplugging the card a few times, say 5 times just to create a clean contact on the edge connector.

The Sysinfo pics aren't relevant at the moment until we get your ACATune working correctly. We can know whether it's working correctly with the -status argument ('acatune -status' in a shell).

We're going round in circles here.:laughing:

If you really want fault finding in it's simplest form, then I'd suggest you power off your A1200, boot a Workbench floppy disk, open a shell, put your ACATune disk in, copy the ACATune command from your floppy to your ram disk, and run the ACATune command line straight from the ram disk. Once the command has run, in the same shell type 'acatune -status' and let's see what that says.

[wrath of khan]

Yes, there should be because we told ACATune to write it's output to the file 'ram:acaoutput.txt' in the command line that we entered into your Startup-Sequence. This file is created whether there's a problem or not, so until you get it working correctly you should read it.
If that file is created in ram: then it means that that line must still be in your Startup-Sequence, and you should open the file in Multiview and see what it says... or open a shell and  type 'type ram:acaoutput.txt'.

So what we've discovered here then is that ACATune is finally recognising your card. Might be worth while plugging/unplugging the card a few times, say 5 times just to create a clean contact on the edge connector.

The Sysinfo pics aren't relevant at the moment until we get your ACATune working correctly. We can know whether it's working correctly with the -status argument ('acatune -status' in a shell).

We're going round in circles here.:laughing:

If you really want fault finding in it's simplest form, then I'd suggest you power off your A1200, boot a Workbench floppy disk, open a shell, put your ACATune disk in, copy the ACATune command from your floppy to your ram disk, and run the ACATune command line straight from the ram disk. Once the command has run, in the same shell type 'acatune -status' and let's see what that says.

Well if by copying, you mean drag and drop, then i dragged the acatune icon into the ramdisk window. It copied over but there is only an acatune drawer. It opens a window called acatune but there is nothing there.

Perhaps I have copied it incorrectly. I'll try seating and unseating the card a few times.

[wrath of khan]

I finally managed to get the readme open thats on the acatune disk. It says I should copy acatune to the C directory of my boot partition. I have no idea how to do that.
Having done the above, it says to then type "acatune -staus" into a shell.
It is then supposed to give me all the aca system details, and i can see if its fully working etc.

I think they recommend some line called "acatune option argument option argument as the first thing to add to startup?

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

Just copy it from the command line. I.e.:

copy source_file_location to SYS:C

Command would probably look something like:

copy df0:c/acatune to SYS:C

Or where ever the acatune command is stored on the floppy disk. And then you'll be able to run it in your Startup-Sequence, like we've been telling you to do.

It's unfortunate that ACA isn't autoconfig memory. Only thing I get out of those SysInfo screenshots is that (as you can see) it's loading all of those libraries into "SLOW RAM" (i.e., wasting your chip memory) rather than into the faster memory on the ACA at power-on. Nothing you can really do about this, just it sucks. By comparison here is a screenshot of mine, showing everything loaded into 32-bit fast memory, as it should be.

Paul - you're the expert on these ACA cards. Anything he can do about this? For better performance?

[paul1981]

Just copy it from the command line. I.e.:

copy source_file_location to SYS:C

Command would probably look something like:

copy df0:c/acatune to SYS:C

Or where ever the acatune command is stored on the floppy disk. And then you'll be able to run it in your Startup-Sequence, like we've been telling you to do.

It's unfortunate that ACA isn't autoconfig memory. Only thing I get out of those SysInfo screenshots is that (as you can see) it's loading all of those libraries into "SLOW RAM" (i.e., wasting your chip memory) rather than into the faster memory on the ACA at power-on. Nothing you can really do about this, just it sucks. By comparison here is a screenshot of mine, showing everything loaded into 32-bit fast memory, as it should be.

Paul - you're the expert on these ACA cards. Anything he can do about this? For better performance?

Thanks, I've never been called an expert before! I just wish it was true...
I have an ACA1232 and ACA1233 with KS3.0, so I know how to correctly configure it. What I don't have is ClassicWB.
I'll quote here from the ACATune-readme, as supplied with v1.7:

6.6 ACA1232

For OS3.0 users, this card has only 1MByte autoconfig memory.  ACATune will
add  126Mbytes  of memory to the system on start-up.  1MByte of memory will
not  be  added to the free memory pool.  It is kept reserved for the maprom
option.    On  later  OS  revisions,  the  memory  is  detected  and  added
automatically  by  the  OS.

Wrath Of Khan's Sysinfo screen shot showing things in SLOW RAM is very strange...shouldn't happen at all. As you can see from the readme above, under KS3.0 the ACA1232/1233 does auto-configure 1MB of fast ram anyway, even without running ACATune. There's no reboot after running the ACATune command, unless of course one is softkicking another Kickstart from disk. But no, NOTHING should show up as being in SLOW RAM.

So to correctly configure it he needs to locate his ACATune command first. I'm confused as to why it's not on the floppy any more?

[paul1981]

I finally managed to get the readme open thats on the acatune disk. It says I should copy acatune to the C directory of my boot partition. I have no idea how to do that.
Having done the above, it says to then type "acatune -staus" into a shell.
It is then supposed to give me all the aca system details, and i can see if its fully working etc.

I think they recommend some line called "acatune option argument option argument as the first thing to add to startup?

I just had a look at your Startup-Sequence from yesterday, and you forgot the '-' on the "-maprom * >ram:acaoutput.txt"

Here is how it should be:

C:ACATune -cache on -burst on -vbrmove -maprom * >ram:acaoutput.txt

Now according to the manual, the "-" isn't needed, but for consistency I would correct your mistake and try the line in your Startup-Sequence again and see if it works. The missing "-" could easily have made the whole command void.

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

If I understand your quote from the manual correctly, if he had Kickstart 3.1 it would autoconfig all of the memory automatically?

I bet you dollars to donuts he moved the acatune command off the floppy disk, and either into ram: or onto the hard drive, rather than copying it. Let's hope it's on the hard drive and he can correctly locate it and copy it into C:. If it somehow got moved into ram:, well it's gone-city and he's stuck until he either gets another floppy disk, or figures a way to transfer files from PC to Amiga.

[paul1981]

If I understand your quote from the manual correctly, if he had Kickstart 3.1 it would autoconfig all of the memory automatically?

I bet you dollars to donuts he moved the acatune command off the floppy disk, and either into ram: or onto the hard drive, rather than copying it. Let's hope it's on the hard drive and he can correctly locate it and copy it into C:. If it somehow got moved into ram:, well it's gone-city and he's stuck until he either gets another floppy disk, or figures a way to transfer files from PC to Amiga.

Yes, with KS3.1 it would configure all the ram automatically. You'd still have to run the ACATune command though just the same as I have put it in my previous post (regardless of running under KS3.0 or 3.1).

[wrath of khan]

Adding the "-" didn't make any difference. I still lost the "other mem" upon soft reset. The aca floppy disk still works fine.

[wrath of khan]

Apparently my cf card is divided into three partitions. Could this be causing problems? I am running everything from this card though I have floppies with workbench too.