Path: rcfnews.cs.umass.edu!barrett From: LadyHawke@cup.portal.com (Julie Petersen) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.reviews Subject: MINI-REVIEW: WarpEngine/040 for Amiga A3000T Followup-To: comp.sys.amiga.hardware Date: 28 Feb 1995 16:31:42 GMT Organization: The Amiga Online Review Column - ed. Daniel Barrett Lines: 128 Sender: amiga-reviews@math.uh.edu (comp.sys.amiga.reviews moderator) Distribution: world Message-ID: <3ivj5e$b09@kernighan.cs.umass.edu> Reply-To: LadyHawke@cup.portal.com (Julie Petersen) NNTP-Posting-Host: scooby.cs.umass.edu Keywords: hardware, accelerator, 68040, A3000T, commercial Originator: barrett@scooby.cs.umass.edu PRODUCT NAME WarpEngine/040 for Amiga A3000T - addendum [MODERATOR'S NOTE: This is a followup to Peter Seebach's review of 23 Feb 1995, available in our review archives in the file hardware/accelerators/WarpEngine3040. - Dan] BRIEF DESCRIPTION This is a 68040 accelerator/SCSI-II controller/RAM expansion device for the A3000T and A4000. AUTHOR/COMPANY INFORMATION Name: MacroSystem Development Address: 24282 Lynwood, Suite 201 Novi, Michigan 48374 USA Telephone: (810) 347-3332 FAX: (810) 347-6643 Email: macrosystem@cryogenic.com REVIEW I was happy to see a Warp Engine review and agree with the information there. I wanted to add an addendum to the review for A3000T owners. These were my experiences: I have copy of the manual version 0.9. The copy I have included no information whatsoever on the A3000 or A3000T installation, and if it hadn't been for the help of friends on IRC, I could *not* have installed it with the documentation provided. For A3000T, you have to set a wire jumper. This doesn't come with the board. I seem to recall running down to Radio Shack and buying the jumper (I ended up getting a thin shielded wire with a tiny clip at each end - they usually come in pairs, a red one and a black one - you have to be careful not to bend the fragile hook on the end, or it won't hold). Once the Warp Engine is installed, you have to hook one end of the wire to the hole labelled JP4 (near the top) and the other end to a chip on the motherboard labelled U350. The pin attaches to the bottom right leg of the chip. Make sure you attach it with the shielding facing the neighboring chip leg, so there's no chance of the metal touching the neighboring chip. Make sure the Warp Engine is seated very tight, if you get a black screen on bootup and no hard disk access, adjust it. My bootup screen is different since installing the Warp Engine and SCSI II drive, it is a very dark gray until it's finished initializing and reading my large drive, then goes to light gray and the startup routine. So don't panic too soon. Bootup time takes longer (especially if you've also added a large drive to your system). If you have problems after getting it working, it may be that your jumper has dislodged. Use your own judgement as to whether to solder the JP4 end. I decided not to for now, but might in the future. Now, jumpers have to be set correctly for the A3000T. I set mine as follows, and it works well: J104 set to Int J100 set to Ext J102 set to Ext I left everything else alone. SCSI CONTROLLER I too had problems using the motherboard SCSI port and the Warp Engine SCSI II simultaneously. My intention was to attach my new big drive to the Warp Enging ("WE") SCSI II and copy everything over from three small drives on the motherboard There was no way I could get the machine to recognize all four drives at once. It failed to recognize the WE SCSI II drive. When I reduced the motherboard drives to two, it worked (go figure). Then I copied all my data off the two small drives onto the SCSI II. I swapped in the third drive (exchanged with drive II on the motherboard) and copied all THAT onto the SCSI on the WE. It took several hours of frustration and experimentation. If I had wanted to, I could have left the two small drives on the motherboard, but I wanted them for my desktop, so I took them out and run completely off the WE SCSI II 1.7 gig drive now. The SCSI II on the WE seems to work very well with the big drive. You may experience similar problems in getting your system to recognize the WE SCSI II and motherboard drives at the same time, if you are transferring over or mixing and matching. I don't know if this is a WE problem or a motherboard SCSI problem (or both). I had no SCSI ID conflicts. I am running the WE with a third party graphics card, as many people are now doing. I use the Picasso II. There's not much information in the Picasso II literature about configuring for fast systems, and none in the version of the WE engine that I have. I *know* my configuration is not running as fast as it should be, with the Warp Engine, but there's no help at all in the docs for configuring and optimizing it. ADDING RAM RAM on the WE is supposed to be MUCH faster than RAM on the motherboard. So I got 4 megs. I have a hybrid system. Unlike the first reviewer, my system seems to work fine with a combination of page mode and static column on the motherboard (8 megs + 2 chip RAM) and a 4 meg SIMM on the Warp Engine. But, I don't know if my system fully utilizes the WE RAM. My configuration utilities report the 4 megs on the WE, so the system knows they are there, but Workbench does not display the extra four megs, and I don't know if it's supposed to or not. The documentation doesn't enlighten me. Hope this provides additional useful information for A3000T users. I am very happy with the speed, design and SCSI II controller on the WE. I'm not satisfied with the completeness of the documentation and I nope MacroSystem Development endeavors to improve it. Julie Petersen (LadyHawke@cup.portal.com) --- Daniel Barrett, Moderator, comp.sys.amiga.reviews Send reviews to: amiga-reviews-submissions@math.uh.edu Request information: amiga-reviews-requests@math.uh.edu Moderator mail: amiga-reviews@math.uh.edu Anonymous ftp site: math.uh.edu, in /pub/Amiga/comp.sys.amiga.reviews