barrett@jhunix.HCF.JHU.EDU (Dan Barrett) (05/30/91)
Are there any available hardware products that allow someone to
put a 68030 (+ 32-bit RAM) in an A1000?
Dan
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| Dan Barrett, Department of Computer Science Johns Hopkins University |
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\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\/////////////////////////////////////davem@col.hp.com (Dave K. Martin) (05/31/91)
Depending on how much you want to spend, the CSA Mega Midget Racer will work in an A-1000. Then you can hang up to 8-meg of 32 bit memory on the MMR over and above the 8.5 meg of 16 bit memory the A-1000 can directly access. The MMR's come in 20, 25 and 33 mhz versions and there is an economy version out now that comes without a functioning Memory Management Unit in the 68030 for a hundred dollars or so cheaper. The MMR itself is pretty generic and can be used in the A-500, A-1000 and A-2000 systems. The memory daughter board is somewhat specific in that there is a version for the A-2000 but either version of the memory board will work in the A-500 and A-1000. In addition, there is a socket on the MMR for plugging the 68000 in for those poorly coded games. I haven't tried running my MMR in my A-1000 yet. My A-1000 did get the 68010 I pulled from my A-2000 when I put the MMR in though :-) While I would have much preferred to get Commodore's 030 board, I was able to budget the MMR now and get the 32 bit memory later. Even without the 32 bit memory, my 25mhz MMR makes a noticable difference in performance. I have no affiliation with Computer Systems Associates, just a satisfied Mega-Midget Racer owner. Hope this is helpful and/or informative..... davem
rich@documail.UUCP (Rich McCallister) (06/06/91)
The Mega Midget Racer will work in an A1000, but is not very easy to
install.
First, it insists that you have Kickstart in ROM (which A1000's don't,
normally). You need to get something like Kwickstart to make this possible.
Second, when you add KwickStart and the MMR, you find that they want
some of the space taken by your internal floppy drive. There are at least
two solutions to this:
1) Remove the internal floppy, and rework the A1000 to boot off an external
floppy.
2) Change to a thinner floppy drive, which will probably be difficult to
mount in the A1000 directly in front of the hole in the front panel. The
people at CSA (who make the MMR) will do this for you when you buy the MMR
for a cost of about $200.
I had planned to get an MMR, and went so far as to buy KwickStart and a
kit for moving df0: to the external drive. But then, I bought a Ronin
Hurrican board from someone, used. (Ronin may be out of business.) The Ronin
board installed with no soldering (except I needed to ground the PAL's in that
A1000, since I'd never done that).
One interesting side effect of getting the 68030: my old RAM is no longer
very useful. I had added the "front panel" chip memory, the 0.5 Meg Chris
Erving "hack", and a 2 Meg Pacific Cypress Zorro I card. I got 4 Megs of
32 bit RAM with the Ronin board. When I used the "Chris Erving" memory or
the Zorro I card (both of which are 16 bit), my effective processing power
was about double that of a stock A1000. When that memory was removed (or, in
the case of the "Chris Erving" memory, not added in via addmem), the effective
CPU speed went up to 6 times that of a stock A100.
Thus, I used to have a 3 Meg A1000. I added 4 megs, but took off 2.5, so
I now only have 4.5, but it runs much faster that way, and I wouldn't often
use the extra 2.5 Megs.