#CSA Accelerator
17 messages in this thread
I have the CSA board without the dragstrip. Without the extra memory,
the speed increase is negligible, except for math coprocessor functions.
However, it does work. Wanna buy it? —Mike
I've got somebody here who wants to sell me theirs, but thanks anyway. He
said you get about twice the performance, even w/o the extra memory. Is he
trying to pull a fast one? Doesn't really matter, since I intend to try it
in my system before I buy it.
Gene
The program "speed2" by Jez San shows that my 2000 runs at 1.06 times the
speed of a standard 2000 with the CSA board. If you use the co-processor
or 32-bit memory, it'll probably fly; otherwise, forget it. —Mike
Hah! Twice as fast, indeed! Thanks for the tip, Mike.
Gene
Gene,
Actually some operations will run at even more than double the
speed, but many operations will not so the average increase, as indicated
by Jez San's speed program masks areas of big difference. I have a
Hurricane H2000 with a 14 Mhz 68020 and a 20 Mhz 68881. Speed indicates a
1.32 increase over a stock 68000. However, various other benchmarks
indicate increases from as little as 10% to as much as 1000%! Imtronics'
benchmark indicates an increase of 1.9 over a stock 68000, while floating
math operations may be 10 to 15 times as fast. If I turn the cache off,
then the benchmarks show anywhere from a 10% decrease to a 20% increase
over the stock 68000. Be careful of claims!!! Remember that the CSA
midget (I think that's what you were looking at) still runs at 7 Mhz, so
you get mainly the benefit of the faster internal processing and that's
about it.
Thanks for the explanation. I am looking at the CSA Dragstrip (I think
thats what it's called). It has a '020 running at 14.2 Mhz, no memory, no
math co processor. I guess the best way to tell is to install it, and run
some sample timings with MY applications to see what kind of a performance
boost I get (if any).
Gene
Gene,
Before you run off and spend your bucks, check the July 1989 issue
of AmigaWorld and the more recent Feb 90 or Mar 90. The first issue did a
comparison of the CBM, GVP, CSA, and Hurricane boards together with the CMI
Processor Accellerater and CSA Midget Racer boards. The later issue
reviewed the CBM, CSA, and Hurricane 030 boards. The CSA is an excellent
product but much pricier, according to the articles, than the Hurricane.
However, the CSA memory board autoconfigs, while the Hurricane memory board
does not. The Hurricane board is synchronous while the CSA is
asynchronous. This just means that the CSA can clock the chips at any
rate, while the Hurricane runs only at even multiples of the Amiga clock (
14 or 28 Mhz).
Steve
Yeah, I read the reviews. The other strike against the CSA board is it
doesn't have a MMU, therefore you cannot remap Kickstart into 32 bit mem.
It does come with it's own 1.3 on roms, but what happens when 1.4 comes
out? You'd have to buy the CBM 1.4's, and also another set for the CSA
board. Doesn't sound too appealing. I found a used 2620 board that I'm
going to buy. The review rated the CBM board pretty high, considering you
get the math coprocessor, and an MMU.
Gene
Gene,
Actually you don't need an MMU to remap the kickstart roms, most
accellerater boards have some method of doing that. The Hurricane board
has an addmem program, for instance. However, the CBM board got a good
review and should be a good buy if priced right. I don't know what the CBM
price is on the 2620, but my guess is that a used one ought to be in the
8-900 buck range? Only disadvantage of the CBM board is that you can't
expand the memory, but 2 megs should be plenty, I would think. I picked up
a used H2000 board with a 20 Mhz 881 chip for $425. Wish I could find a
used memory board for it!
Steve
Steve,
Humm….how do you manage translating addresses on the motherboard
without an MMU?
Also, the A2620 will accept up to 4 Meg of RAM, it comes with 2 as
standard (in one configuration)…but has provisions for a 2nd 2 Meg on the
board itself.
Don
Don,
I couldn't tell you the method, but my Hurricane H2000 comes with a
utility which relocates the Kick ROMs to 32 bit memory. The board has no
MMU chip nor provisions for one. As for the 2620 I had not seen any
information on adding additional memory, so assumed that 2 meg was the
limit since reviews/ads did not indicate otherwise.
Steve
Steve,
This board has 4 megs on it already, but it can't be expanded beyond that.
I think 4 megs of 32 bit ram should hold me for awhile (especially since
I'm coming from a 1.5 meg A1000). The dealer list on this board with only 2
megs is $2,600 (CDN), I'm getting it at good price. The thing I like about
it is that it has everything, MMU, 881, 4 megs memory… one stop shopping!
Gene
Gene,
No doubt! Sure you'll like it. You cannot imagine how much nicer
all that memory will be coming from a 1.5 meg A1000!
Steve
Steven,
With the Hurricane boards, only the '030 boards could remap the ROMS
to 32 bit RAM. I have the '020 version, and it doesn't remap. The '030 has
built-in MMU capability.
Lloyd
Lloyd,
Well, then, the review in AmigaWorld is definitely quite misleading
because it specifically said the 020 could remap the ROMs. I am waiting to
get the documentation from Imtronics. The fellow I bought the board from
didn't send any docs. The docs on the disk just indicated that the program
HurricaneConfig remapped the ROMs, but didn't say that feature wasn't
available for the 020 version. Thanks for the info.
Steve
Gene –
If you find you are interested in the Hurricane board, I suggest you
call Imtronics for the latest info. Since the AmigaWorld review came out,
they have gone to an Asynchronous design, and I just got a PAL upgrade in
mine that allows the SCSI controller to autoboot the drives even with the
accellerator disabled. The memory does require a configuration program
rather than autoconfiguring, but the call goes into your startup-sequence,
so it's still fairly transparent in the boot process.
Harry
Thanks for the info, but I found a used 2620 board I can get at a
reasonable price, so I'm going for that.
Gene