Conference hydra::amiga_v1

I have the board.    

>   o Any gotchas, bugs, or incompatibilities?

Yeah. Seems to have problems when used with a number of disk controllers. 
In particular the A2090/2090A will get R/W errors (tuned too close to 68000\
to make it work error free there, an update promised for the driver, 
but not yet delivered); The Microbotic's Hardframe in combination with the 
Quantum Pro80S corrupts large files (currently in the finger pointing stage
between quantum and microbotics. Not clear what is a large file...); C-Ltd
has problems with their SCSI2000 and arbitration with all drives, and block
reads on Adaptec ACB4000 connected drives (C-Ltd has supplied a new driver
that "seems" to fix arbitration most of the time, and the block read issue
on the adaptec seems to be adaptec problem; it is a fairly dumb and slow
SCSI device!).

In addition, numerous games screw up on a 68020. Xenon and Falcon come
immediately to mind. F18 runs, but at at least double speed. *I* think this 
is a feature and *not* a bug! Makes the game much more lively. Much of the PD
stuff has no problem at all!
    
>   o What's the part number?
 
A2620

	-SES

    
    The Software Shop quoted me a price of $1440 for the 68020 board
    with MMU and 2 megs RAM.  He was expecting to get 20 units in as
    of last week.
    
    Ed.
    

    re: .0
    
    For more information look at 2093.7 ...  I talked to a salesperson at
    Computability yesterday about an A2500.  (I'm not trading my 2000,
    I was just curious what controller/drive combo was used.)  The
    salesman said that the 2500 came with a 2090a and a high performance 
    40 meg drive.  He didn't know who actually made the drive.  Any ideas?
                  
    re: .1
    Has anyone heard other news about the GVP, MicroBotics, or Pacific
    Peripherals HardCards causing problems with a 2620?  I'd like to keep
    my drive bay empty, so I have been leaning towards one of these.
    Anyone own one, who'd like to comment on it?
    
    Steve

    
    Funny, the documentation that comes with the MicroBotics HardFrame
    specifically states that it works fine with CBM's A2620 board.
    
    The do warn that it probably won't work with a CMI Processor
    Accelerator, and they're right.
    
    Ed.

My information comes from the BIX Amiga.Dev and Microbotics conferences as well 
as personal experience with the C-ltd controller (plus C-Ltd's BBS). I am just
reporting (about the Hardframe) what I have heard.
	-SES

Hmmmmm, I have an A2620 and have had no problems with my hard disk on an
A2090 controller. Not a single error.

As far as compatibility problems, I have found the following so far:

	Digi-droid does not work. Probably cause it uses CPU loops to
	generating the timing pulses for the stepper motor?

	Marblemadness, Xenon, Hybis, Starglider II, Dragon's Lair
	and Archinoid don't work.

	Several of the PD "demos" don't work, such as WildCopper. DOC
	works, but runs too fast.

Frank

    
    If you re-boot with both mouse buttons depressed, you are presented
    with a menu of either...
    
    1) 68000 Amigados
    2) 68020 Amigados
    3) 68020 Unix
    
    If you select option 1 from above, do the compatibility problems
    disappear?
    
    Ed.

    What about my 2 Mbyte ram expansion. Does that become "lame duck"
    memory when using the 68020 due to the availability of 2 Mbytes
    of 32 bit chips? Or, does the 68020 see a total of 4 Mbytes of ram?

RE: .-1
Autoconfig takes care of this for you (assuming the 2 meg board is autoconfig!)
and you will have a total of 4megs expansion plus 1 meg on the motherboard.
that is, until you upgrate the A2620 to 4 megs, then you will have 6 megs
and 1 meg on the motherboard...
	-SES

    re: .7---Gag me with a spoon!  I don't have enough hands to reboot
    (control, left Amiga, right Amiga) and hold down both mouse buttons at
    the same time!!  If I'm alone in the house, am I supposed to put the
    mouse on the floor?  It's too big to hold between my teeth.
        John Sauter

    
    That's what I thought when I heard about the
    'CTRL_AMIGA_AMIGA_LEFTBUTTON_RIGHT_BUTTON' reset.
    
    There's an allowance for a two or three second delay to depress
    both mouse buttons (meece buttii?).
    
    It works; I've tried it.
    
    Ed.

    Ed,
    
      You have one of those boards? I am giving Moe a call today.
    $1495 is very attractive. Hope this works with my ST-506 and
    2090. No 1.3 Kick. If I don't see a big improvement in Professional
    Page performance, I may be disappointed!
    
    Paul

    
    No, I don't have one ... yet.  I've test driven Moe's unit, and
    I like it a lot.  I hope that my projected tax refund will cover
    me for one.
    
    By the way, I'd do a little more research before I jump in and buy one
    of these monsters... I read on Usenet that the Ronin Hurricane board is
    faster than the A2620 board, but doesn't have the MMU unit on board.
    However, the MMU is only(?) crucial if you plan to run Unix. 
                
    Ed.

    The Ronin may be faster right now, but according to various sources
    the A2620 will be upgradable to 25Mhz.  Stand back!  I'm sure
    the 3rd party '020 boards are very compentent, but I haven't heard
    anyone else claim to run them that fast.  Anyone heard any rumors?
    
    While I'm on the rumor mill, what about a Commodore made '030 board?
    The people going to the next SMAUG meeting will have to get some
    good info from Dave Haynie.  Do you have to be a member to attend?
    
    Steve

    From Dave Haynie's talk at SMAUG last night...  The Ronin board
    is faster (no MMU to add a wait state) in CPU cycles, but has no
    DMA.  He thinks that CPU-bound applications like ray tracing will
    be faster on the Ronin board, but hard disk-bound applications will
    run more quickly on the Commodore board plus Commodore disk controller.
    
    Haynie has apparently done a 68030 card, but given the current price
    of that processor chip, the product is unlikely to be released soon.
    
    He reports that the only current use for the MMU under Amiga OS is a
    hack to copy the Kickstart ROM into 32-bit memory, then remap the RAM
    image to the original ROM addresses, thus speeding up operating system
    functions quite a bit.  Commodore is considering some MMU support in
    Amiga OS version 1.4, but the problems associated with shared vs.
    private memory in the current operating system look pretty tough.
    
    BTW, Haynie thinks that the A2500UX (i.e. Unix version) will be
    a good competitor in the low end of the workstation market. 

             <<< MSBIS::DISK15:[USENET.AMIGA]AMIGA_USENET.NOTE;2 >>>
                    -< comp.sys.amiga, .binaries, .sources >-
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Note 6426.5                           68020                               5 of 5
MSBIS::LANDINGHAM "cbmvax!daveh"                     47 lines  27-JAN-1989 01:36
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Path: decwrl!ucbvax!pasteur!ames!mailrus!ulowell!cbmvax!daveh
Subject: Re: 68020
Posted: 26 Jan 89 00:35:23 GMT
Organization: Commodore Technology, West Chester, PA
 
in article <[email protected]>, [email protected] (Tom Wang) says:
> 
> How does the Commodore A2620 (68020, M68881, and 68851 MMU) compare with the
> Ronin Hurricane Board?  It seems to me that they are both basicly the same
> thing, except the Ronin is upgradable to 68030 and M68882 (am I correct?).
 
Any properly designed 68881 interface will support the 68882, since they're
100% pin compatible.
 
The A2620 comes with 2 megs of 32 bit DRAM, upgradable to a total of 4
megs.  The A2620 memory supports DMA from expansion devices, which may
result in hard disk performance 150%-200% that of a plain 68000 Amiga.
Non-DMA performance will be increased somewhat too.  The A2620 memory
runs in 2 wait states (the extra one being because of the 68851 MMU).
 
The Ronin lets you add on a board that'll support up to 4 megs. 
The Ronin memory add on is completely non-standard, and requires a
special configuration program to add it in.  With fast filesystem, a DMA
driven hard disk, and the suggested Ronin configuration, your hard disk
performance will be 50%-75% that of a plain 68000 Amiga.  A non-DMA
driven hard disk interface will go faster than on a plain 68000 with 
Ronin.  The Ronin memory board runs in 1 wait state.
 
Ronin also sells a 68020 to 68030 converter, which allows the use of a
68030 in a 68020 socket.  I would expect it to work in just about any
68020 board, including the A2620, CSA, and LUCAS boards as well as the
Ronin, though naturally it's mechanically designed to fit with the Ronin 
board.  Such an adaptor does not let you use any of the faster features
of the 68030, so, like the Mac IIx and most other 68030-dropped-into-a
68020 systems, you may see something around 15% increase in system speed
with the 68030 adaptor.  The main advantage of adding a 68030 adaptor to
a Ronin board will be the 68030's MMU (already present on the A2620).
 
> Tom C. Wang
 
> UUCP: {ames!elroy, <backbone>}!gryphon!pnet02!tsub
> INET: [email protected]
-- 
Dave Haynie  "The 32 Bit Guy"     Commodore-Amiga  "The Crew That Never Rests"
   {uunet|pyramid|rutgers}!cbmvax!daveh      PLINK: D-DAVE H     BIX: hazy
              Amiga -- It's not just a job, it's an obsession