MIDGET RACER AND PHOENIX  


			        by Ken Simpson


    ## 26 ## 26 ## 26 ## 26 ## 26 ## 26 ## 26 ## 26 ## 26 ## 26 ## 26 ##


    "Zoomin' Dude", that is the verdict of the latest version of Nic
  Wilson's SysInfo on my current system. Some time ago I upgraded my old
  A1000 to a Phoenix board with 2 Megs of memory and a 1 meg Agnus with
  Super Denise.  Unfortunately this leaves you with a machine that has
  almost the capabilities of a 3000, but the heart of an A500. Even with
  the Phoenix FPU option included it barely raised the performance of the
  machine except when it was doing Math intensive tasks that used either
  the Commodore libraries or addressed the MathIEEE.resource directly. I
  can count the number of programs that do that on the fingers of no
  hands!

    So I finally decided to bite the bullet and go for a Mega-Midget Racer
  from Phoenix as well. I ordered a version with no processors as I had
  both a 68030 and a 68882 just sitting at home waiting for me, and with
  the money thus saved I added a Mega-Memory board with 2 Megabytes of
  memory and 512k of Static Ram. his duly arrived in about September
  and I have been turbocharged ever since.

    Computer Systems Associates (CSA) make the Mega-Midget Racer (MMR),
  and they have been in the Amiga accelerator business for some time.
  They made one of the first accelerators for the A1000 ad followed it up
  some time later with this 68030/68881 or 68882 based accelerators for
  the A500 and B2000.

    On receiving the package, the first impression was that the board has
  been well engineered, with surface mount devices and only one jumper
  lead. The 68030 and 68882 all fitted in perfectly and the mega-memory
  board fitted like a hand in a glove. But then comes the first major
  drawback - you cannot have an internal drive AND the MMR in the same
  machine. This is simply not possible. As it is the MMR hangs over
  about 4-5 cm into the space that the internal drive should occupy.  This
  means that you need the know-how (or a suitable techie) to be able to
  set up your internal drive as an external drive. Thankfully this is not
  too hard on a Phoenix, but if you have any doubts contact someone like
  Chris Ralph (02 557 1050) to help you with it. Having removed the
  internal drive you find that the MMR still doesn't fit. It needs
  another 68000 socket to clear the various connectors and chips on the
  motherboard.

    Let me stress, this is not primarily Phoenix's fault. The CSA MMR was
  made with the B2000 in mind, not an A1000, so the geometry is perfect
  for a 2000 but less than ideal for a 1000. Putting in an MMR makes a
  few things impossible. Like using the 2000 Zorro II slot is now not
  just awkward but totally impossible. Oh well....

    So saying, once we got the internal drive out of the way and the extra
  socket in place, things started to really buzz. First we tried just the
  MMR without the 32-bit wide memory. It worked perfectly first time. I
  greedily reached for SysInfo - 0.95 times the speed of an A500! What
  was happening? Sure enough, the 68030 was there and pumping at 22 MHz,
  and the 68882 was too at 28 MHz. How disappointing!. Off went the
  machine and on went the memory board.

    FLYING
    This made a major difference. Just with the extra Ram on board we
  went up to 0.80 times the speed of an A3000, and with Kickstart remapped
  into the 32-bit Static Ram that increased to 0.95 times. Now we were
  really flying!  Everything definitely happened much faster now. Windows
  snapped quicker, refreshes were more "refreshing" and as for search and
  replaces on large text files.... Need I say more!


    The MAIN PROBLEMS that I see now are:
  Because of the way the memory is added after the system has started
  rather than being auto-config'ed, ExecBase, DosBase, IntuitionBase,
  GraphicsBase and ExpansionBase are all in Slow $c00000 memory. Even
  under WorkBench 2.04 all the library bases except workbench.library are
  in slow RAM or Chip Ram. Pity about that, it slows things down a bit.

  The other problem is that chip Ram is still chugging along at 7.16 MHz
  in 16 bits! So every time a program accesses chip ram it has to
  synchronise with the slow old system and let the custom chips execute
  the program at 7.16 MHz! Ahh.. now that gives us an answer to why the
  system actually slowed down when there was no 32-bit memory around! The
  processor was waiting all the time, and the sync signals were just
  slowing the whole thing down marginally. Moral? Don't buy an MMR
  without the memory!


    OTHERWISE?
    Other than that the MMR has performed flawlessy. It does have a 68000
  fallback mode which can be switched either in hardware or software. I
  still haven't needed to use it despite reviewing lots of games etc.
  (Maybe people are getting smart and not using privileged instructions
  anymore).  The setup software is easy to use and performs as promised.

    All in all I am glad to have invested in a Mega-Midget, the only thing
  that would induce me to leave would be a nice 3000, I guess anybody can
  dream that they're Zoomin' Dude!


    ## 26 ## 26 ## 26 ## 26 ## 26 ## 26 ## 26 ## 26 ## 26 ## 26 ## 26 ##