exxos's Atari, Amiga & retro forum

I received my board this week and built it last night.
It booted on first run (I love the flashing colors on reset 😃) but no fastmem is reported (no Autoconfig board is being found). SysInfo is reporting 7mhz, but I think this is the down-clocking on chipmem access in action(?).

This is a Kick1.3 A500 Rev8.a, with 1mb Chip onboard and additional 1mb Chip in the trapdoor slot. The chipmem is being reported as 1.8mb Chip in workbench.

Is there anything obvious that I might have missed?

Also, I am pleased to see that the TF530 relocator works just fine. Why were people worried TF536 would not fit?

pipper wrote: 29 Jun 2020 01:55
This is a Kick1.3 A500 Rev8.a, with 1mb Chip onboard and additional 1mb Chip in the trapdoor slot. The chipmem is being reported as 1.8mb Chip in workbench.

Is there anything obvious that I might have missed?

Yes, Z3 ram won’t work on kick 1.3. Switch to 3.1 and it will be all good.

Would AddMem as a crutch help (I don't have a 3.1 ROM handy)? If so, what are the address ranges that TF536 decodes?

pipper wrote: 29 Jun 2020 01:55 Also, I am pleased to see that the TF530 relocator works just fine. Why were people worried TF536 would not fit?

Some people seem to like to throw doubt on everyone else for some reason.

pipper wrote: 29 Jun 2020 02:19 Would AddMem as a crutch help (I don't have a 3.1 ROM handy)? If so, what are the address ranges that TF536 decodes?

Yeah you'll need to use AddMem in your startup-sequence

0x40000000 to 0x44000000

Cool, I'll try that tonight!
Would it be possible to support ZII space (accepting only 8mb Fast RAM) via a separate firmware?
Or - way cooler - via a jumper (or keyboard press during coldboot) at runtime?

Thank you!

I also want to add that the board build was a very pleasant experience. Having no Microscope, though, this is the limit of what my 42 year old eyes can do via a simple looking glass :-D. Looking forward a TF1260 build... and still hoping for an A3000 TF 060 accelerator ;-)

pipper wrote: 29 Jun 2020 01:55 Also, I am pleased to see that the TF530 relocator works just fine. Why were people worried TF536 would not fit?

The TF536 is 4mm longer than the TF530. From the second photo in your first post it can be seen that the card is overhanging the footprint of the large 1000uf radial capacitor (C401 on your late revision 8A board).

On earlier revision A500s e.g. rev 6a this cap is a significantly taller 3300uf. This can cause clearance issues with relocators if the board hasn't been recapped, or has been racapped and the caps were again placed in the upright position rather than laid flat - which is difficult due to the presence of the resistor pack between the two 3300uf caps.

pipper wrote: 29 Jun 2020 21:43 Would it be possible to support ZII space (accepting only 8mb Fast RAM) via a separate firmware?

I already have too many things to support/maintain etc. More than i can actually get to. Thats why kick 1.3 is not supported at all.

pipper wrote: 29 Jun 2020 21:43 Would it be possible to support ZII space (accepting only 8mb Fast RAM) via a separate firmware?

The main draw for an 030 and more ram in a 500 is so that you can access the WHDLoad library.
A minimum for using the TF cards should be hard set as KS3.1 and HDD.
I wouldn't even entertain running it on a 1.3 for anything other than to see if it works.
Quite what anyone would want need 1.3 these days is beyond me. If people want compatibility with old games that only run on a bog standard A500, then dont upgrade. It's not a hard choice to make.

PaulJ_2.0 wrote: 30 Jun 2020 10:33 The main draw for an 030 and more ram in a 500 is so that you can access the WHDLoad library.
A minimum for using the TF cards should be hard set as KS3.1 and HDD.
I wouldn't even entertain running it on a 1.3 for anything other than to see if it works.
Quite what anyone would want need 1.3 these days is beyond me. If people want compatibility with old games that only run on a bog standard A500, then dont upgrade. It's not a hard choice to make.

Yeah I agree with this. Its not hard to upgrade and if you are that bothered about being stock you might as well stay stock.

AddMem made the extra RAM appear and it tested out fine! I needed to find a Kick 1.3 compatible version first and found it as part of 'yKick' on Aminet.
Its unfortunately not reset-resident and "CPU FASTROM" does not work - so everything workbench is dog slow :-)

IDE is working, too. I'm using a ca. 15cm long cable with a small SDCARD-IDE adapter directly driven by power from the TF board.
SysInfo is reporting 3.7mb/s (using ide.device and since its manually mounted, it'll load into fastmem)

Time to upgrade to 3.1.x !
I clung to the idea of leaving it at 1.3 (just faster with enough of RAM) but mostly for nostalgic reasons.

Maybe I'll find a GUI downgrader to make 3.1 appear like 1.3 :lol:

Anyways, thanks again Stephen for making this thing a joy to build!