[comp.sys.amiga.hardware] A 2000 with 1 MB Board

Gerrit_Heitsch@ibase.stgt.sub.org (Gerrit Heitsch) (06/02/91)

>I recently traded in my A500 for an A2000 at a good price, it was 
>cheaper than the UK price for a Bodega Bay (take the US price and 
>apply $1 -> 1pound), The A2000 had a card marked A2000 1Mb expansion 
>with 512k on it and 16 empty chip sockets. I tried populating 
>the board - extra memory does not appear.
Oh oh, seems that you have got an old A2000A. Try to change
it against a A2000B. With the old A2000 you cannot use 1 MB Chip
annd the ECS.

>There is a set af jumpers, by tial and error I found one position 
>that gave me the extra memory and gurus. Does anybody know what the 
>jumpers should be set to ? (assuming the sockets can be populated) 
>Once they are set correctylt I can start worrying about locating bent
>pins on the chips I put in.
The position that gave you the extra memory and the Gurus seems
to be the right. But with this card theres another Problem.
Some years ago a friend of mine had the same problem. He tried
different 41256 RAMs, but none of them worked.
He fixed this problem by using 41257 (he 7 indicates Nibble-mode),
because the board seems to have a strange timing. There is another
problem with some of these boards. They use a Waitstate !
There is a workaround for it, but you can only use it, if all
Chips are 41257, so you have to remove the 16 soldered chips and
replace them by _socketed_ 41257.
I believe that no VLSI-Chip should be soldered in or on a
PCB because of replacement. Thats why I hate SMT...
Thanks to C= that they socketed nearly everything important
in the A2000, but they have forgotten to socket the RAM.

If somebody knows a way to use normal 41256 please write to me,
because the 41257 are hard to get and cost more than 
normal 41256.

Hope it helps
 Gerrit

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