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Conference hydra::amiga_v1

Title:AMIGA NOTES
Notice:Join us in the *NEW* conference - HYDRA::AMIGA_V2
Moderator:HYDRA::MOORE
Created:Sat Apr 26 1986
Last Modified:Wed Feb 05 1992
Last Successful Update:Fri Jun 06 1997
Number of topics:5378
Total number of notes:38326

4054.0. "New 68020 board for A500" by MEALA::COLLINS (STEVE) Fri Aug 24 1990 14:09


 I recently purchased a 16Mhz 68020 accelerator card for my A500 from Solid 
 State Leisure in England.

 I'm having some problems with it and I thought you guys might have some 
 suggestions.

 First off I bought the board without the 68020 and 68881 co-processor
 as I have several 020's and can't afford a 68881 at the moment .It comes
 with 1 Meg of 32bit memory which is expandable via DIP's to 4 Megs.

 The board is very small and fits into the A500's 68000 socket , it has no
 68000 fall back mode. It does feature shadow Rom where the kickstart Rom
 can be copied to 32bit ram so the system routines are speeded up. This is not
 done with an MMU but some other custom remap circuitry.

 The most important program on the disk that you get is allocmem it is simular
 to Davy Haynies SetCPU program which is also included on the disk. If anyone
 knows if allocmem is used on any other accelerator such as Hurricane or CSA 
 I'd be interested. There are several keywords used with allocmem to select
 the appropriate board functionality. I've listed these below ..from the
 disk documentation file (without permission) such as they are.
 -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
 The keywords are.

 KICK:- Copies ROM kickstart into RAM , enables mapping.
 
 AUTO:- Doesn't ask yes or no.

 RESIDENT:- Adds a small program to the RESIDENT code list ,to allocate
        the memory automatically after a boot , to enable the kickstart
        mapping, (if req.), and to install the TRAP code on MOVE SR.

 TRAP:- Enables auto trapping of any MOVE SR instructions. 

 NORAM:- Does not allocate any memory to the system.

 CACHE:- Will turn cache off.

 DELAY:- Causes a 2 second delay, on reset, to allow slow A590/A2090 drives
         to respond to the faster 68020 processor.

 BOOT:- Reboots the machine so that all system libraries will be loaded into
        fast ram.
 
 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
 
 Now for the problem .

 I find I can use any of the abouve combination of keywords but I must always
 use the "NORAM" keyword with allocmem ( this prevents any subsequent programs
 being run in 32bit ram ).If I don't select "NORAM" I get "NOT A DOS DISK"
 requesters when I try to do anything that involves the hard disk.
 Even just trying to do a dir or list (which are stored on DH0:c/).

 The type of hard disk I have is an HDA-506 set up this is simular to ALF
 and other A500 disk systems that allow an IBM controller (OMPTI 5520) to be 
 plugged into the A500 expansion connector through a little intermediate PCB.
 I have had 2 RD53's running on this system for a couple of years now without
 an ounce of trouble. I suspect the disk error (when 32 bit ram is enabled)
 is something todo with the hard disk driver being copied into the 32bit ram.
 I've tried editing the mounlist entry for the hard disk so that bufmemtype
 was set to chip ram but this didn't have any effect (I still get the "not
 a dos disk" error when doing anything that accesses DH0:.)

 Does anyone have any suggestions of things I could try?

 Also does anyone know of a utility on the net that will allow me to see 
 where in ram (chip/fast/or 32bit) a task is loaded.
 
 If anyone is interested I can post some benchmarks so-far but I'm not sure 
 how meaningfull they are without 32bit ram enabled.



  Steve..





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4054.1WELSWS::FINNISFri Aug 31 1990 23:1017
    
    Yes Please Post Bench Marks.... Especially on your RD53 set up...
    
    Does this problem also happen with floppys, ?
    
    Does your driver work Ok with the '020 do you know ?
    
    Not sure if ARTM (Amiga Real Time Monitor .. or something like that )
    gives what you want..
    
    
    Try a Floppy boot up from your originals and take it form there ..
    
    
    
    				- Pete -
    
4054.2Benchmarks on the 20 card and HDA-506MEALA::COLLINSSTEVEWed Sep 12 1990 13:4685
    
    I've managed to run programs on the "20 board" in 32 bit memory by
    first copying the prog to ram: or vd0: then enabling the 32 bit ram.
    This works fine as long as I don't make any attempt to access the hard
    disk. 
    I'm going to upgrade to the new  A5000 board from Solid State Leisure
    which supercedes the "20 card", It has 68000 fall back and is 25 to 30
    percent faster than the 20 card .I spoke to the SSL sales person and he
    assures me the A5000 will work with my HDA-506 hard disk setup. He says
    the difference is the bus timming has changed and that the A5000 card
    is "MORE" asynchronous than the 20 card and will wait for slow cycles
    to complete.
    
    Here's some benchmarks I ran with 32 bit ram enabled but no 68881 .
    
    CPU_MEMY Benchmark version 2.01
             Relative performance X4.52
    
    MIPS     20 card          4.166
             68000            0.815
             lucas (no cache) 0.917 mips
             lucas (cache on) 5.263 mips  
    
    CPUSPEED Amiga system information v1.0
    
             average 491% faster.
    
    DHRYR
             time for 50,000 passes 34 secs
                      =1470 dhrystones/sec
    
    DHRYNR   (non register variable version of above)
             (results same as abouve)
    
    SPEED    10,000 iterations in 211 ticks
             3.32 X speed of normal Amiga
             1.10 X speed of A2620
    
    SIEVE    20 card 100 iterations in 12.40 secs 1899 primes
             Hurricane                 11.6  secs
             A2620                     13.62 secs
             CSA CPU                   17.22 secs
             midget                    26.00 secs
             68000                     44.58 secs
    
    CRAMDEN SI
            
             4.8 X A1000
            15.8 X IBM XT
    
    CRAMDEN SI 2
    
             5.6 X A1000
             
    OSIEVE
    
             100 in 5 secs
    
    -------------------------------------------------------------------------
    I also managed to run diskspeed V2.0 on my Spirit HDA-506 hard disk
    setup with 2X RD53's. With 68000 and 20 card with 32 bit ram enabled.
    (I can't figure how diskspeed could access the disk with 32 bit ram
    enabled) any way here's the results for anyone interested.
    
    Diskspeed v2.0       Intensity set to medium
    
    A = 68000
    B = 20 card with 32 bit ram enambled and rom shadowing on.
    
    Buffer size  512          4096            32,768          262,144
    processor    A     B      A       B       A       B       A      B
    Bytescreate 62,267 83,755 147,735 156,067 234,236 257,122 244,032 297930
    Bytes write 69,166 94,636 153,305 158,649 295,471 353,343 350,896 394467
    Bytes read  53,572 55,695 153,772 155,434 308,428 353,514 333,322 395339
    
    processor          A     B                    
    files create/s    21    26
    open/close  /s    28    34
    scan        /s   100   108
    delete      /s    26    32
    seek/read   /s   192   250
    
    
    Steve..     
    
4054.3Can you post SSL's number??COMICS::HOGGANNo, I am not kidding !!!Wed Sep 04 1991 10:201