#Commodore A3640
10 messages in this thread
Is anyone familiar with the Commodore A3640 accelerator? I was considering
adding one to my A3000, but I wanted to hear from some folks who were familiar
with it before I bought it. Any comments would be greatly appreciated. -Dan
I have installed one in my desktop A3000 and it works. You'll need to find a
smaller heat sink and figure out what jumpers to change on the A3000. If you
have a Buster-11, I would suggest getting a Rev 3.0 accelerator instead of the
newer Rev 3.1, for there seems to be a DMA compatability problem. You would
need to find the newer DMAC and RAMSEY if you use both the Buster-11 and
A3640-3.1 together, which at this point seem to no longer be in supply.
Regards, Keith.
Thanks for the info, Keith. By the way, are you satisfied with its performance?
Is there a significant improvement? Would you recommend it? -Dan
I'm satisfied with the accelerator. It was a pain trying to get it to work
(especially with the Zorro bus), but I feel it was worth the $300 I spent for a
used one. I don't have any software to rate the speed improvement, but I would
say native Amiga graphics have speed up about 80-100%, bus access is up about
50%, and standard Workbench useage also seems about 50%-80% faster (depending
on the application). The processor and board itself does tend to heat up,
however I have not experienced any lockups with just a smaller heat-sink
attached. I would like to get a small fan in there _IF_ I ever find one small
enough! As far as I know, this is the only accelerator left that will work in
a desktop A3000, unless you find an old G-Force. The Warp Engine's SIMM
sockets will hit on the drive bay, and the GVP G-Force for the A4000/3000
requires the new RAMSEY and DMAC.
Regards, Keith.
Thanks for the info, Keith. Copperhead has a new one listed for $395 and I'm
considering getting it. Your info was very helpful…
Be careful with Copperhead. For one thing, there is no such thing as "New"
A3640 cards. And I read on the Internet where someone purchased a 3640
from Copperhead and it came with NO 68040 processor. He had a heck of a
time getting it from them.
// John (Warp 4040 & Emplant Quadra 840)
\X/ Mercury@ins.infonet.net
Many thanks for the warning! Maybe I'll just live with my stock 3000! It could
be worse…I could be using a 386…
Hello Keith, please help- I have an A3000 @ 16 mhz, I tried to run a A3640, and
the machine would not boot- the ramsey is rev 04. I was told that if I ran a
program called scramer, and changed some settings, the A3640 would
work-(something abt the way it addresses Ram). ANY Help would be greatful to
me- Thanks in advance- Mike….
No, the Scramer program will not work in fixing your problem with the A3640
accelerator. It sounds like your jumper settings are not set correctly on the
A3000; unfortunately my 50MB hard drive seems to have crashed and I can't
access all my notes on installing the board. Give me a day or two and I'll get
you the correct jumper settings. Oh, make sure you have _SOME_ fast RAM. The
board will not boot with just Chip Memory.
Regards, Keith.