exxos's Atari, Amiga & retro forum

Hi folks,

I have just gotten a TF536, which I've installed into my A2000 (rev 6.2). It's working well and I'm very pleased with it. Many thanks to its creator for a speedy but affordable accelerator.

There is however one issue that has came up. I have an A2091 SCSI card (with 6.6 ROMs.) It works fine on its own, but it doesn't agree with the TF536. Here is what happens with various different configurations:

A2091 autoboot jumper enabled, SCSI hard drive connected: System does flashing colourful bars, then black - does not proceed - not even the early boot menu from left+right mouse works.
A2091 autoboot enabled, SCSI hard drive disconnected: boots fine.
A2091 autoboot disabled, SCSI hard drive connected, A2091HD driver in SYS:Expansions: boot hangs early in AmigaOS loading. (Mouse remains responsive.)
A2091 autoboot disabled, SCSI hard drive connected, no A2091HD driver in SYS:Expansions: boots fine.

Jumpering the A2091 for either 2MB, 1MB, 512KB, or 0 of its onboard fastram has no effect.

The presence of a hard drive plus the loading of a driver for the card seem to be the necessary and sufficient grounds for the system to hang. The fastram onboard the card works fine.

I understand the A2091 is notorious for disagreeing with accelerators so I am not surprised it is not working right, but if anyone has any ideas on how it might be made to work I would be much obliged. Alternatively if someone knows another SCSI or IDE card (I am hoping to run two CF cards and a CD drive) which works well with the TF536 then that would be another option for me.

Many thanks,
David

This is the same issue that the CDTV has, and why I added this part to my Amibay FAQ.

The A2091 ROMs are notorious for their DMA issues. I think that if you really need a SCSI controller, you'll have to use a non-DMA one, like the Oktagon.

..but then again.. Gayle Emulation will not allow You to boot from that device.. At least i am unable to boot fom my LAN-IDE card that has Oktagon bootROM on it when TF536 is installed..

8 Bit Dreams wrote: 03 Nov 2020 22:46 ..but then again.. Gayle Emulation will not allow You to boot from that device.. At least i am unable to boot fom my LAN-IDE card that has Oktagon bootROM on it when TF536 is installed..
1604443526795-2121844443.jpg

Thats entirely down to boot priorities of the partitions. no?

EDIT: The presence or otherwise of Gayle is not the issue. Its always down to the specific boot priority of the drive. This is a software thing.

Hmm.. Not sure, Stephen, may also be an issue with my rev.4.1 A2000..
Just started to build brand new rev.6.2, hopefully will be done @weekend so further tests will be done in near future :idea:

8 Bit Dreams wrote: 03 Nov 2020 23:25 Hmm.. Not sure, Stephen, may also be an issue with my rev.4.1 A2000..
Just started to build brand new rev.6.2, hopefully will be done @weekend so further tests will be done in near future :idea:

Look at the boot drives in the ESM and how they are listed. And what the priorities are.

I can confirm that my GVP impact II HC +8 card seems to work fine on my a2000 (Rev 6.2) with the TF536 so that would be an option. They come up quite frequently on ebay. I haven't tried a hard drive on it but I have an external CDROM and zip drive working.

Johnnybarker wrote: 04 Nov 2020 21:11 I can confirm that my GVP impact II HC +8 card seems to work fine on my a2000 (Rev 6.2) with the TF536 so that would be an option. They come up quite frequently on ebay. I haven't tried a hard drive on it but I have an external CDROM and zip drive working.

Thanks for that @Johnnybarker

Johnnybarker wrote: 04 Nov 2020 21:11 I can confirm that my GVP impact II HC +8 card seems to work fine on my a2000 (Rev 6.2) with the TF536 so that would be an option. They come up quite frequently on ebay. I haven't tried a hard drive on it but I have an external CDROM and zip drive working.

@Johnnybarker

Before I go out and buy one, could I ask if you have any memory on the GVP card? And if you do, is it enabled?

Probably he have some memory installed 🤔
GVP card does DMA in Zll memory area and is working fine, if no Memory present in Zorroll - i assume it will crash, ive seen that on TF534..