exxos's Atari, Amiga & retro forum

alenppc wrote: ↑Sat Oct 24, 2020 11:41 pm Yes it does the same as disabling it via software but it does it via hardware so you don’t need to access the ESM. And yes, it will slow it down further.

I finally soldered a header to CDIS and gave it a try. Sysinfo went down to 6600 from 9400, that's a 30% percent slowdown. NVRAM does work though.

Hi all - hope it's OK to add a query to this thread; I thought it better to keep all relevant stuff to the existing one, but if that's not what I should have done I apologise in advance!
Also just to get this out there; I'm a total novice when it comes to anything technical on the Amiga (CD32 in this case), I've spent a good few days reading up on stuff but if I make any real howlers in what I'm about to ask (quite likely) I apologise for that as well

I've recently acquired a 2nd-hand TF330 with the MC6BEC030RP40B chip on board, it all seems to work fine and gives the expected & impressive speed boost when running the system benchmarking tool in Workbench, however it also inhibits the CD32's ability to access NVRAM for the games that do use it (I've got a Heimdall2 game on the go that I started before fitting the card and that now can't be loaded, the RGB output is too big an improvement over the composite picture for me to continue playing with the TF330 uninstalled though )

From reading through the contents of this thread there appear to be a number of possible options/required steps to resolve this. I'm not too worried about being able to access NVRAM from the Workbench environment, just when booting direct from a CD32 disc so I don't know if that simplifies things a bit?

Option 1: Use a mouse (I don't have an Amiga one but do have one of the Tom+ adapters en route to allow me to use a USB one for this) to access the Early-Startup menu and disable caches when booting a game that requires NVRAM access

Option 2: Solder pins to the CDIS points on the TF330 and bridge these to disable cache (or wire a remote toggle switch to the outside of the CD32 so that this can be enabled/disabled when required?)

Option 3: Assuming my CPU is MMU-capable (a rummage through Google suggested it might be but I wasn't able to 100% confirm this), then copy the MMUlib files to the CF card (which is going to be a challenge in itself as I've not yet been able to get WinUAE to work correctly on my PC, see previous statement on me being an Amiga novice/numpty ) and then configure with the NVRAM exceptions listed on page 3 of this thread (and I wasn't sure whether this works for booting from CD32 disc or whether it only helps to access via Workbench when booting from CF, sorry!!)

I'm going to assume that my card isn't on the very latest firmware, and I don't currently have the required equipment (and probably expertise) to upgrade this so I'm hoping that doesn't make this a non-starter!

Any advice on the above would be massively appreciated, and sorry for the long-winded post, just wanted to get as much info down as poss!

Cheers

Alex

If the NVRAM isnt working you are on the wrong firmware. Is there any indication of who built your TF330 and can you tell us what the product code on the ESM menu is.

Thanks for the speedy response TF!
There's nothing on the card that I can see that would make it obvious, it's the standard green TF330 card on a Kipper2k v6.0 adapter. The only thing I can see maybe is there's a small "SD210" written on the edge in pen, and it has a couple of foam half-discs stuck to the main board on the underside, one in the back corner and one just by the where the IDE pins come through from the top side.

I can't get into the ESM currently (unless there's a way to do it without a compatible mouse of course) but the Tom+ should arrive any day now so hopefully I can get that info soon-ish.

bigmacdaddy wrote: ↑Fri Feb 12, 2021 10:57 am the RGB output is too big an improvement over the composite picture for me to continue playing with the TF330 uninstalled though )

The RGB output will still function with the 330 removed from the riser.

go0se wrote: ↑Fri Feb 12, 2021 11:26 am

bigmacdaddy wrote: ↑Fri Feb 12, 2021 10:57 am the RGB output is too big an improvement over the composite picture for me to continue playing with the TF330 uninstalled though )

The RGB output will still function with the 330 removed from the riser.

Aha thanks, you learn something new every day! OK that's Heimdall back on the cards then at least

bigmacdaddy wrote: ↑Fri Feb 12, 2021 11:24 am Thanks for the speedy response TF!
There's nothing on the card that I can see that would make it obvious, it's the standard green TF330 card on a Kipper2k v6.0 adapter. The only thing I can see maybe is there's a small "SD210" written on the edge in pen, and it has a couple of foam half-discs stuck to the main board on the underside, one in the back corner and one just by the where the IDE pins come through from the top side.

I can't get into the ESM currently (unless there's a way to do it without a compatible mouse of course) but the Tom+ should arrive any day now so hopefully I can get that info soon-ish.

It was built by @supaduper ping him a message about updating.

Amazing - thanks very much, really appreciate it

yep that`s one of mine, according to my records sold on 30 Jan 2020 , so warranty is just out ...only fooling with ya

It will have V3 Burst firmware so if you will need to upgrade the firmware to the V3 NVram one if you want to use that option

supaduper wrote: ↑Fri Feb 12, 2021 11:48 am yep that`s one of mine, according to my records sold on 30 Jan 2020 , so warranty is just out ...only fooling with ya

It will have V3 Burst firmware so if you will need to upgrade the firmware to the V3 NVram one if you want to use that option

Thanks, I'll ping you a PM in a moment, I suspect it may be better than airing my ineptitude here for all to see