Overview Features Coding ApolloOS Performance Forum Downloads Products Order Contact

Welcome to the Apollo Forum

This forum is for people interested in the APOLLO CPU.
Please read the forum usage manual.
Please visit our Apollo-Discord Server for support.



All TopicsNewsPerformanceGamesDemosApolloVampireAROSWorkbenchATARIReleases
Documentation about the Vampire hardware

Chiprampage  1 2 3 

David Wright

Posts 373
25 Mar 2018 00:18


I have an Amiga 500 with the Vampire that has always showed around 1mb chipram , maybe a little less. Looking now with my gold 2.8 it shows 2mb in all my benchmark software.
  Is this some sort of glitch or was there an unannouced improvement?
  I feel I am over looking something obvious.

While I’m here, why are half of whdload games crashing the system?


Matthew Langtry

Posts 199
26 Mar 2018 07:18


I think in gold 3 chipram increases to 4 mega bytes. When use my vampire with gold 2.7 or 2.8 on my rev6a a500 most I get is 1mb chip ram.


David Wright

Posts 373
26 Mar 2018 14:24


Nothing explains this on my 1 mb chip Amiga.
 
 


Martin Soerensen

Posts 232
26 Mar 2018 14:34


Try to run a memory test such as MBRTest-2. Surely it should fail after 1MB. If not, you must have some memory hidden somewhere inside the machine that you forgot about. :-)

WHDLoad crashes could very well be because it tries to use non-existant chip mem. I have not heard about your issue before though. The Vampire will not provide any chip mem until GOLD 3.0.


Gunnar von Boehn
(Apollo Team Member)
Posts 6207
26 Mar 2018 14:45


Hello David,

Can you tell us more about your AMIGA.
Which mainboard revision do you have?
What other hardware is plugged into your computer?
What OS do you run?
Do you have any OS patches enabled or installed?

Do you see the same behavior when you disconnect for CF/HD and boot from floppy WB?


David Wright

Posts 373
26 Mar 2018 16:25


My Amiga is Rev 6a
Only hardware is sd card. OS is Apollo OS coffin r49
I booted with no startup sequence and still 2mb chipram
Floppy drive not working so can't try that.
I have tried disabling fpu and ide speed just for the heck of it.

I am transferring this week to my A1000, see if that changes anything.
Weird, huh? Maybe a Fairy visited and gave more chipram?


Gunnar von Boehn
(Apollo Team Member)
Posts 6207
26 Mar 2018 16:28


David Wright wrote:

Maybe a Fairy visited and gave more chipram?

If you catch that Fairy, please tell her to visit me too!


Matthew Langtry

Posts 199
26 Mar 2018 18:04


Cool


David Wright

Posts 373
26 Mar 2018 18:19


Oh I get it, it's an easter egg in honor of this week's holy day.
Didn't programmers bury those into programs and such in the old days?

Well, who do I thank?


David Wright

Posts 373
26 Mar 2018 23:06


Just ran the cf card  OS from my A4000 , very basic.
Chipram still around 2mb. It does go up and down depending on graphic usage , So it’s not like just a stagnant number sitting there.

This is really strange.


Tim Waite

Posts 42
26 Mar 2018 23:42


The A500 6A is suppose to have the 2MB Agnus Chip 8375 318069

You would still need the 1MB Trapdoor card for the A500+ to support the 2MB of chip.

My guess would be that you have 1 MB on the Motherboard and 1MB in the A501 slot.

If you don't have the jumpers set correctly you wont see all the RAM.

MY guess is you truly only had 1 MB of chip ram before was it was all on the motherboard and maybe something with the logic of the RAM on the Vampire it is activating the memory in the A501 slot.


David Wright

Posts 373
27 Mar 2018 00:19


The Agnus is 8372A and my trap door ram is 512k.
I removed trapdoor ram and it showed a little less than half mb chipram.
Reinsert card and right back to 2mb chip.

Another issue is still so many games in whdload that crash that didn’t before. The whole system crashes not just game.

Noticed system doesn’t keep time anymore also. Just replaced cell battery even though it wasn’t old. Will check soon on that.


Tim Waite

Posts 42
27 Mar 2018 04:40


Well it sounds like something is not correct then!

Best I can think other than a Vampire bug is the ROM and extensions that is has to allocate memory. 

I would try a Kickstart that does not have the modules/modification for the Vampire Memory.  If it still shows 2 MB if CHIP ram then it is a software bug, otherwise it must be a FPGA core issue (could be both I guess).

Looks like you should also run a memory tester and see what it says about chipram.

Check out this link. remove the .PDF extension from files after you download them.

EXTERNAL LINK 
Another tester to try is

EXTERNAL LINK

If you can write a DMS disk.

Also I would try another A501 if you have one.




Simo Koivukoski
(Apollo Team Member)
Posts 601
27 Mar 2018 05:17


David Wright wrote:
I removed trapdoor ram and it showed a little less than half mb chipram.

Could you please paste SYS:Tools/ShowConfig output with and without trapdoor ram?



David Wright

Posts 373
27 Mar 2018 13:59


Here is the ShowConfig for memory both ways.
First is with trap door memory (m501+) removed.
 
 


Simo Koivukoski
(Apollo Team Member)
Posts 601
27 Mar 2018 14:37


Thanks for the report. Seems that trap door memory confuses the Core.


Com Raider

Posts 2
27 Mar 2018 18:38


Just another data point in case it helps: I have 512k onboard, and 512k trapdoor RAM in an A501, but I also have the mod to Gary to have the trapdoor RAM appear as chip ram. It works fine with the Vampire as well (shows as 1 MB as it should)


David Wright

Posts 373
30 Mar 2018 00:00


Now what?
I put the vampire in my Amiga 1000. Obviously this has only512k chipram.
Where a few thought it could be my trap door ram in the 500 giving me false readings, that can’t be it. The 1000 shows 2mb chipram also!

It also crashes on Every whd load game, and even personal paint which never crashed before. Is it something with the latest core?


Roy Gillotti

Posts 517
30 Mar 2018 00:19


David Wright wrote:

Now what?
  I put the vampire in my Amiga 1000. Obviously this has only512k chipram.
  Where a few thought it could be my trap door ram in the 500 giving me false readings, that can’t be it. The 1000 shows 2mb chipram also!
 
  It also crashes on Every whd load game, and even personal paint which never crashed before. Is it something with the latest core?
interesting... running some odd development core?



David Wright

Posts 373
30 Mar 2018 00:58


No, Coffin R 49, Gold 2.8


posts 41page  1 2 3