Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!wuarchive!cs.utexas.edu!samsung!usc!snorkelwacker!mit-eddie!uw-beaver!tektronix!psueea!parsely!agora!billsey From: billsey@agora.UUCP (Bill Seymour) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga Subject: Re: Adding memory Message-ID: <1669@agora.UUCP> Date: 2 Nov 89 04:34:06 GMT References: <1254@lakesys.lakesys.com: Organization: Advanced Solutions, Hillsboro, OR Lines: 73 From article <1254@lakesys.lakesys.com:, by mikes@lakesys.lakesys.com (Mike Shawaluk): : In article <1665@agora.UUCP: billsey@agora.UUCP (Bill Seymour) writes: :: When I had a similar setup I was able to add a C-Ltd aMEGA one ::meg card and a Spirit Technologies 1.5 meg internal card to my system. ::That gave me 4.75 meg (With the Kickstart Eliminator giving me the extra ::.25 meg.) : : Speaking of which; does anyone out there who owns a Supra 4X4 for the A1000 : have the RAM board which fits inside of the 4X4, which Supra _used to_ sell? : I currently have 1.5 meg of total memory on my 1000, which is getting to be : not quite enough for me, and it's frustrating to know that there is a : connector on the inside of my Supra interface that will accommodate extra : memory, but that Supra decided to quit offering, because memory chip prices : skyrocketed. Actually, the main reason the memory board never really made it to market (they didn't sell more than a dozen or so...) was because of recurring noise problems between the 4X4 and the daughtercard. The only way they could get it running on most machies was via a *lot* or extra power and ground connections and on many 1000s it wouldn't even run then. The logistics of replacing the 4X4 board with a different (and more expensive four layer) design at the same time as the 1000 market was going away just didn't appeal to them. : Has anyone heard whether Supra would consider re-offering this : board, now that prices have come down? Personally, I would doubt it, since : they seem to have abandoned the A1000 owners in terms of several other : possibilities (specifically, AutoBoot ROMS, which I was told by Supra was a : possibility with the 4X4 for the 1000, but they hadn't decided yet if it was : worth doing on the 1000... Grrrr.) If enough people called up and asked for it, they'd do either a piggy back card for that same expansion connector, or a seperate SOTS card to add autoboot. The problem is that there just aren't enough 1000 owners who'd be willing to pay a reasonable price for it... After all, you can always go the RAD route for all boots except cold boots. : Another possibility; barring any offerings from Supra to address these : issues, has anyone either (a) tried to create their own RAM board which would : fit in the A1000 4X4, and plug into the expansion connector? Is the : technical information available which would permit design of such a beast? : If no one has tried this yet, would there be any interest/market/whatever to : create something like this? There have got to be a significant number of : A1000 owners with Supra 4X4's out there, who would presumably jump at the : chance to have Autoboot ROMS and/or extra expansion memory on their systems, : but who don't want to have to trade in their disk interfaces or else have to : make their system box another 3 inches wider. The folks at Supra would probably (no guarranties here!) be willing to publish or at least describe the pinouts for that connector. Building a autoboot card would be fairly easy, but programming the ROMs would be another matter altogether. I doubt very much if they'd be willing to provide source code for their device driver! I don't know if there'd be any way past that hurdle without active cooperation direct from Supra. Something simpler to do would be a generic autoconfig ROM card with autoboot. you could put whatever software you want in the ROMs and have it act like a small RAD disk. BTW, I talked to the folks at Supra this last week, and the next release of their software will have the scsidev.h stuff fully supported. He even said he'd have some sort of example source code for accessing the SCSI buss directly. Things are moving in the right direction! (Now, if they will only allow me to change SCSI IDs on the host card and run NET: over the SCSI buss!) : - Mike Shawaluk : "Rarely have we seen a mailer -: DOMAIN: mikes@lakesys.lakesys.com : fail which has thoroughly -: UUCP: ...!uunet!marque!lakesys!mikes : followed these paths." -: BITNET: 7117SHAWALUK@MUCSD -- -Bill Seymour ...tektronix!reed!percival!agora!billsey ...tektronix!sequent.UUCP!calvin!billsey Bejed, Inc. NES, Inc. Northwest Amiga Group At Home Sometimes (503) 691-2552 (503) 246-9311 (503) 656-7393 BBS (503) 640-0842