#IV24 from GVP…
30 messages in this thread
Greetings,
How many of you folks have the GVP IV 24 board in an Amiga 2000? I have a
customer that we have installed two of these boards for, and the I have got
to say that either the A2000 is flakey or the GVP IV24 is far from a
finished product.
I have not seen a commercial product crash and burn as often as does this
software for the IV24. Is this everyone's experience or do we really have
a bad IV24 or bad Amiga 2000.
By the way, we have swapped the IV24 once already. Same problems. The
system is a new A2000 with AmigaDOS Release 2.04.
-mark=
– whappity whap whap… whap whap!!
Mark:
I have an IV-24 installed in my 3000 and have never had a problem with
their software. A friend of mine has an IV-24 installed in his 2000 also
with no problems at all. What software are you having trouble with? Also,
I found that the 2.04 version of QMOUSE causes all sorts of trouble for
the IV24, making ADPro display what looks like a 16 color image, and also
makes the IV24 versions of Calagari, Scala, and MacroPaint all to fail.
Once QMOUSE is removed all is well. Make sure that the IV24 has the latest
version of the ROMs installed (mine is 3.0, there might be a later
revision, I don't know). Let me know if I can help, as I'm fairly familiar
with the IV24.
-Mike Schiller
In sunny Fort Lauderdale
I appreciate the offer to help and I will check the ROMs to see if they are
at least v3.0.
If we play with the program that changes the mode from hi-scan to
video-scan very much the board will randomly change from either mode on its
own, well after we have left the program that changes that!
Macro paint doesn't want to load all of the time, sometimes the machine
just guru's.
No, we are running straight vanilla WB 2.04 on a G-Force GVP accellerator.
We are going to pull the accellerator out and see if our poblems go away.
Any advice would be appreciated.
-mark=
– whappity whap whap… whap whap!!
Mark:
Are you running the IVCP program, or the IVCP2 program? The IVCP2 program
is a WB2.0 commodity, and really should be running in the background all
the time. I assume you checked all the connections, and that the board is
seated properly, as in the 2000 it can only really fit in the 3rd slot due
to the video connector's interfearing with components on the 2000's
motherboard.
-Mike Schiller
In sunny Fort Lauderdale
I have an IV24 in my system (2500/030, 36 megs of fast ram, 2 megs chip,
both with DKB products), ENLAN network, 2090a controller, 2632 7 port
serial board…
It All works 100% and has since day one – the catch is I don't use any GVP
software, only our own. The reason I even answered you is that I think this
says that the GVP _display_ board is fine; it's almost certainly the
software that's biting you.
GVP's always been a pretty good hardware company; only thing I would NOT
recommend is the combo 030/scsi+at/memory/fpu boards. THose things are a
nightmare of jumpers and connectors; the "hanger" for the drive is as poor
a job of engineering as I've seen in a while (it cuts right through some
traces on the board) and the SCSI driver software (rom, I guess) is
unrelaiable and prone to crashing. Eventually we returned ours and put in a
RCS management 68040 board with 32 MB of ram… haven't had a problem
since.
But I digress. :^)
–Ben
Gee… so that's whats been giving me trouble with those boards? That and
GVP doesn't know the meaning of the words "factory defualt setting", since
the board almost always come with the jumpers set wrong. BEN:Leigh's
Computer's ;-}
It may be, Ben… look at the top of the board, where the hanger sits.
You'll see some circuit traces that lie right under the (sharp) edge of the
HD hanger. Even the movement of placing the card into the machine once is
enough to slice those traces.
Those jumpers really are a nightmare; only about 10% are documented, and
those that were documented were documented in a contradictory fashion.
Scary stuff.
–Ben
Yup, I know that nightmare! (hey you don't suppose any GVP people were near
PP&S in n the past week or so huh?).
;-}
BEN:Leigh's Computer's
Ben, which controller do you use with your RCS 040 board? 2090a? I
called them and they told me to dump my HardFrame for a GVP!(?)
We're using a 2091 with rev 6.6 roms
–Ben
Oh… and Internet's ENLAN, also – that's sort of a controller.
–Ben
Ben –
> GVP's always been a pretty good hardware company; only thing I would NOT
> recommend is the combo 030/scsi+at/memory/fpu boards. THose things are a
> nightmare of jumpers and connectors; the "hanger" for the drive…
Are those the current "G-Force 030" boards or the older "3001, 3033, 3050"
boards?
. . . . . JimDoc
Jim –
I think he means the current G-Force combo boards. Mine came with a
little flyer inserted warning about the possible trace cuts and suggests
placing electricians tape (the black rubber stuff that never seems to stick
to itself 8^) ) over the traces under the hanger supports. It also says
they're looking for a solution.
– via Whap!
I'm talking about the G-Force boards, specifically the 50 mhz board. It was
a nightmare to try and get working.
I just read Lou's article about the 3000t in AW, though, and he rated the
installation "easy". All I can say about that is he must have gotten a
different board than we did.
The 50 mhz board we had was a veritable forest of jumpers, some not
documented, some poorly documented, and some documented plain _wrong_. The
SCSI formatting software crashed constantly, and the boards operation in
general was never reliable. We could never get the memory to configure as
documented (probably a jumper issue there, but it was never solved).
Since putting the RCS 040 in there, (a) we've not had a lick of trouble,
(b) there were NO installation problems or jumpers, (c) we have more
memory, (d) it runs a good bit faster than the GVP, (e) we saved several
hundred dollars.
I wouldn't get one of those combos for anything.
–Ben
Ben:
I had similiar problems trying to get GVP's 3000 040 board to work. It
appeared to have a serious heat/power problem, to the point that it was
drawing so much power I had to move my monitor off the UPS (or the warning
buzzer would stay on), and even so, the board would only run for about 1/2
to 1 hour before it would crash. We tried another board, this time with
only 2 megs (before I was trying with 6 & 4 meg configurations), but it
too had the same problems. Also a sea of jumpers, etc. I finally went with
the PP&S 040 board for the 3000 (their earlier board, the one with no
memory expansion), there were NO jumpers on the board at all, and only 2
jumpers on the motherboard that needed changing, and the board's been
running fine ever since. Granted it's only 25mhz rather than 28mhz, but so
what, it works, the other one didn't!
-Mike Schiller
In sunny Fort Lauderdale
That is the bottom line, for hardware or software.
The Amiga's auto-config architecture has made me view jumpers in general
with feelings of vague suspicion (for one jumper) to absolute horror when
confronted with a forest like the GVP board proffers.
–Ben
Then the IBM world must scare thre S**T out of you! Jumpers, Jumpers,
everywhere! Unless you go in for EISA or MCA, then you have to make SURE
that your setup disk is in a _S_A_F_E_ place….
Brian
– via Whap!
Yes, I'm not at all fond of the PC architecture. I don't like the idea of
jumpering cards for serial ports, in fact I don't like a lot of things
about them.
We've begun working in the PC market with an image morphing tool (under
Windows 3.1) and I'm sure it will prove to be an interesting experience in
the Chinese sense of the phrase (actually a curse)
"may you live in interesting times"
<grin>
–Ben
You think jumpers and switches are bad in the IBM world with hardware…
Just *wait* till you need to fiddle with Windows' configuration files.
<evil grin> I honestly have no idea how the so-called Average User manages
to get Windows to work in the first place…
I've just begun a programming project for Windows 3.1 for work, so I
sympathize with the problems you *will* have in advance. <grin> I've upped
my opinion of Windows as a development environment so that it rates
slightly higher than MS DOS (I used to rate it lower… :), but only
because it lets me run multiple DOS sessions, so I can run my DOS based
editor and my DOS based compiler in different windows at once. It's like
pulling teeth (ouch! What a statement to make after having my Wisdom Teeth
out on Wednesday…!) compared to working under AmigaOS, the Mac, or even
OS/2 (poor as that is), but one can learn to stand it. Barely. With
patience. <g>
–>Steve Bennett
Steve–
PMFJI, but if you haven't tried OS/2 2.0 yet, give it a try. Considerably
more stable than Windows and won't let you overwrite the OS with a bad
pointer. I think that you can start a VDM (Virtual DOS Machine) that will
run windows 3.1 under OS/2, but check on the IBMOS2 forum. If not, Win3.1
support will be out in a month or two.
BTW, I'm an Amy fan, and have a 2000 (+ more). However, I have used both
Win3.1 and OS/2 and, IMHO, OS/2 is far superior in many ways (replacing a
UAE with a GPF is not solving the problem). You can even format a floppy
under OS/2 without killing keyboard response. I guess that's the
difference between an operating system (AmigaDOS 2.0, OS/2 2.0, etc.) and
an operating environment.
BobS
Yes, I've used OS/2 2.0 (we have people developing for it, although I
currently am not…) and it is significantly better than Windows as an
operating system, a development environment, just about anything. But I
still prefer the Mac over OS/2 quite a bit, and I prefer AmigaOS over the
Mac.
I may be fooling around with Windows NT soon, which ought to be better
than Windows, but I don't have much hope for it: The Windows user interface
is a significant part of Windows' difficulties, and NT still uses the same
basic interface.
–>Steve Bennett
Steve, I know about em. I guess I wasn't clear; our Windows product is
done, and we're beginning to market it now… so we have quite a bit of
experience under our belt with Windows. We've already had the problems, now
the product is done and we expect to just deal with normal issues now,
barring installation :^)
There's a need to be "diplomatic" with the PC customers, but I can tell you
that from my point of view (and the two other programmers who have been
involved), Windows is a kludge on top of another kludge (MSDOS), its weak
and fitful, as well as hard to get going, as you say. It's also slow, a
memory hog, and (IMHO) pretty painful to program for. Mike is the only one
who really could be said to like it; Barry eyes our 486 with a look that
could be compared to how a US soldier looks at an Iraqi land mine.
–Ben
Hey, if you need advice about Windows programming… 🙂 or beta
testing…
Advice about windows programming? You mean, like "don't"? <grin>
–Ben
Ben:
I use the Progressive 040 board, the original 28mhz one, for the 2000 also
with no problems. I previously used the GVP 3001 board 28mhz and also had
zero problems.
Maybe GVP just has not worked out all the bugs on the new 030 COMBO and 040
boards. I do think my experience with both GVP and PROGRESSIVE have been
good.
Norm
– via Whap!
Somebody's experience must be good – they still make hardware, and if
everyone's experience was like mine, they would have gone the way of C Ltd.
–Ben
I'll bet that the GVP's problem was that you were running it @ 28 MHz. The
chip's only rated for 25 with a 33 version available "RSN". Running chips
beyond their rated speed is asking for trouble, but some people never
learn.
Of course, it _could_ just be a bad design…
Brian
– via Whap!
Ben, you should re-read my A3000T article…. It didn didn't have the 50
mhz 030 card, it used 040 cards only.
I did have a review of two GVP 030 cards in the same issue however – and
they were very easy to install, setup and use. We had a bit of difficulty
with the 25 mHz in teh video suite system, but that's only because we had
an older scsi drive as well as a 44 meg syquest. And that problem was
solved fairly easily.
They both work quite well.
Lou
Yep, that's where I saw it – in the stand-alone review. I skimmed the mag
pretty quickly, I have to admit, stopping only to read your 3000 article,
the GVP reviews and John's CDROM article. Sorry for the mis-ID there.
All I can say about the GVP board is you must not have gotten what we did.
the 040 board works perfectly; the 030 board, GVP's, didn't work for diddly
and the docs were just plain wrong – as the GVP people told me when I
called them after spending five hours trying to get things going.
Then we found the trace cuts from the drive hanger.
Then the SCSI software wouldn't keep running.
Then the ram would configure with the 2091 ram.
Then we bought an 040 – case closed. :^)
Btw – like the new format; it's definitely improving. Nice.
–Ben