Conference hydra::amiga_v1

    
    First thing... Check the rev of your A2000 mother board. I have heard
    that REV 6.0 motherboard causes this type of problem with boards like
    the SUPRA 8-UP. I believe it's commodores fault, they will also upgrade
    (ECO) your motherboard to 6.2, this being the case.
    
    I did have a wierd problem with my 2090A/Supra RAM board, this is what
    I had just posted to USENET:
    
    /Steve/
    
-----------
    
        I bought a Supra 8up board with 2 meg installed, and stuck this
        into slot 2 of my Amiga 2000.  In Slot one exists my a 2090A,
        the rest of the bus is empty.
        
        I happened to  of  benchmarked  one  of  my  programs  before
        installing the supra memory,  and  noticed that the benchmark
        ran 50% SLOWER after intalling the supra memory.
        
        I am doing, FASTMEMFIRST, in  fact  if  I  did  not do a fast
        memfirst and the benchmark loaded into  the internal 1 meg of
        the A2000 then it ran at it's normal speed.
        
        I wrote a small 'for' loop program todo 1 million loops. This
        ran at exactly 10 secs.  on  the  internal 1 meg, and 15 secs
        on the supra external memory.
        
        Observations:
        -------------
        
        1. I removed all drive cabling from 2090A .. Still 15 Secs.

        2. If I removed the 2090A, the supra memory ran at 10 secs.
        
        3. If I put the Supra board in Slot 1 and 2090A in slot 2
           then after one warm reboot, then the supramem runs fast.
        
(***)   4. If I put the supraboard in slot 3 and 2090A in slot 1 then 
           the  supra  works fast (10secs).  Thus leaving  one  empty
           space between the modules.
        
        
        Summary,
        --------
        
        Of  course the solution was '4.' above.  I called  Supra  and
        they  we're  interested in my findings and said they will get
        back to me. (still waiting >1 week).
        
        If I had'nt of benchmarked this I would of never noticed this
        problem. I wonder if anyone else has this problem and does'nt
        know it????
        
        Anybody got any ideas?
        
    /Steve 

    
    Hmmmm....
    
     I bought my Amiga a little under a year ago.  So, not sure what
     ECO I'm at ( is 6.2 the new Fat Angus and a few traces cut?)
    
     I had originally installed the board in Slot 3 (in case of a noisy
    	controller) and still had the same crash problems.
    
     Gave SUPRA a call yesterday (got recording, must've been closed)
     to ask about the situation....
    
     Thanks for the info, I'm going to try moving things on the bus
     to see if it can be fixed!
    
    	Please let me know if you hear anything from SUPRA (I will if
    	I do)
    
    	Any other comments?
    
    							Jack
    

Pop the cover & check the top etch in the front left hand corner. If it
is a year old it may even be rev 4.5. If so, check that there is a 3.3k
resistor soldered on the top of U605 (discussed in other notes). I had
similar problems with a 2090A and a 2MB expansion memory board.

 mark

    Checked it out....
    
    	The resistor  is in place. Even tried a 1k on the offchance
    	if might help  (thankks to Jim and his hexacon pen), but
    	the problem persists.
    
    	Going to try a swap with a friend with a 2 meg starboard
    	and see if this makes a difference.
    
    	Another thought is, could my memory simply be to slow,
    	you'd think they'd consider that when selling it but
    	then...
    
    						still puzzled,
    
    	                                        	Jack
    

    After pricing memory boards, it seems that the SupraRAM is the lowest
    priced. I've seen a few problems posted, not always indicating if the
    problem was solved. This worries me, as I'm thinking of getting
    it.
    
    What is the general opinion of the SupraRAM board? I have an AMIGA
    2000 that was part of the original USA release and has never been ECO'd,
    so I guess that means REV 4.5. Is this a problem?
    
    I also have the XT bridgeboard and an IBM OSICARD (30meg hardcard).
    Again, is it expected I'll have a problem?
    
    Finally; I expect to be installing the ECS (and the ECO's required)
    when it's out. Are there any expected problems here?
    
    
    						Thanks!
    
    

	I've had one in my 2000 (Rev 4.3 motherboard, A2090 HD Controller)
for almost a week now.  Works great.

Mark

    I've had one in my rev 4.mumble 2000 for a week or so, too.  No
    problems.  Love it!  I spent time over the weekend downloading, unzooing and
    lharcing all at the same time.  Do that on your AT.
    
    Gary

    Anyone have the SupraRam working (or not working!) with a 6.1 rev 
    motherboard? I am also considering getting one for mine.
    
    - Doug

    
    I never did hear back from Supra about the slowdown I noticed when
    my SupraRam was in the slot next to the 2090A. After leaving a blank
    slot between the 2 devices, it works fine.
    
    Those of you who have SupraRam already may wish to make sure that your
    supramem is not running slow like mine was. The only way to tell is
    to run a program that is memory intensive.
    
    I uploaded the ones I wrote to check mine, located in
    
    	CGFSV3::AMNEW:SUPRARAMSPEED.ZOO
    
    This contains SPEED.CHIP and SPEED.FAST which both compute a large loop
    and report the time taken to do so. This takes 10 seconds for both
    chip and fast. When I had the board next to the 2090a it was 10 seconds
    for chip and 15 for fast. Even though it was %50 slower you could'nt
    really notice this during normal use!!!
    
    /Steve
    
    

    
    		I've installed the borrowed card, and the person who
    		loaned it installed the Supraram in his system.
    
    		The problems followed the board, and I am sending
    		it pack on a return authorization.
    
    		Hope its just a bad board, and they send me a new one.
    
    						More news as it occurs,
    
    								Jack
    

Well I spoke to Supra today, they've had the board and been testing....

	They have determined that there is a problem between the
	memory board and the A2090 specifically.

	They don't know exactly what it is yet, as they have
	found some A2090s with no probs and others with
	probs.

	Of course AMIGA won't fix the 2090 to suit the SUPRA board,
	so who knows whats next.

	I should have a replacement board back in 1-2 days, 
	and I hope things are better then!!!

	Maybe its an inconsistent yield problem with the 2000,
	or (cross my fingers) the A2090.

						More as it devolves,

								Jack

    For what it's worth - I've installed mine and have had no problems.
    No A2090 in my configuration, but I do use the XT brideboard.
    
    
    					{kgb}

    
    
    		Well the replacement board has the same problems, 
    		definitely a 2000 .vs. 2090 problem.
    
    		ALSO!!!!
    
    		I just talked to ABEL Supply, they will
    
    				(get this...)
    
    
    		Send me a replacement memory board from
    		Microbotics if I'll send them my SupraRAM
    		board.
    
    		That pretty good for a mail order company!!
    		(usually they want to mess with you, and
    		 these folks just did it with 5 mins of 
    		 conversation)
    
    
    
    	Story Moral...
    
    		1. Guess SUPRA is going to have to find out what
    		   to do around the controller war.
    
    		2. As KGB indicates, if no 2090, no problem.
    
    		3. ABEL has some good folk who will work with 
    		   you to keep you satisfied!
    
    
    						Jack

Santa brought a 4MB SupraRAM. Great!

It all works fine EXCEPT I can't copy anything from RAM to harddisk without 
corrupting the file.  Loading into RAM and running programs all work fine.  
Just can't DMA into my 2090.  ;'(

Now I happen to remember seeing something about this in comp.sys.amiga... but
I can't seem to find it again.  It mentioned changing something on the 2090 to
solve the problem.  Does anyone remember this note?

I guess I should give Supra a call.


Thanks for any help.

...Ed

I just got off the phone with Supra and here's the scoop...


SupraRAM 2000 has a timing problem that causes data read from memory and written
to disk to be corrupted.  They have released a new set of PAL chips that correct 
the problem.  There are four PAL chips and they must be a minimum revision of:

		54-1D
		54-2B
		54-3A
		54-4B

The last letter indicates the revision.

I'm assuming this timimg problem rears it's head on DMA writes to disk only.

I'm seeing the problem with a B2000 V4.2 running a 2090 with ST225 disks and
a SupraRAM2000 4M.   I haven't looked at my PALs yet (tonite) but the Supra's
Tech Support felt this was the problem.  They said they would send me any 
required PALs after I check.

More later,

...Ed

    I had memory board problems in my 2000 until the hardware warmed up. 
    Supra also replaced my PALs.  One dead giveaway that you need the fix
    is when any of these chips is a Lattice "GAL" chip.  (No relation to
    Lattice C :-) .)
    
    Wes

I had a look at my board last night and all the PROMs were the revisions I 
listed back in .15.  So I called Supra again and found out I got one the PROM
numbers wrong.  The 54-1D should have been a 54-1E.  This PROM has the DMA code
that was changed to solve a timimg problem that occurs with some 2090 disk
controllers.


They put a new PROM in the mail to me.  

...Ed

Well the new PROM arrived from Supra on Saturday and I replaced my 54-1D with 
the 54-1E and bingo, no more corruption on DMA disk writes.

;') Happier now

...Ed