Micro A1-C, overclocking, PCI cards, etc..

@LyleHaze

If I understood well the pinout of the internal USB, the 2x4 pins were set in opposite order, so it means the connector of the front panel can be attached in any direction, (after I modded to the same order of course) it won't kill any USB devices, so seems to be quite helpful.

Good to know, but then it is strange why not the same method became common in every mobos. Using idiot proof solutions helps in any case...

Nothing more to do then for me but changing the wires on one side in the connector and pray, when I boot up the machine and plug a stick to the front port... :D

Finally I managed to upgrade my Micro, now I have 1 GB RAM and processor 750GX 1200 MHz. Nice machine now. And I have question:

-Return to Castle Wolfenstein - AmigaOS MiniGLversion from HunoPPC:
can anybody succeeds to run this game on Micro? And if yes, pls, can you post the wolfconfig.cfg?

OOTB Wolfenstein runs on AmigaOne XE and Sam440ep-flex, not works on Micro and Sam440ep.
But it should, it fulfills minimal requirements, which I found for windows: 16 MB VRAM, 128 MB RAM

- do you install Debian Jessie on Micro?
Here is great installer from Hypex.
I am installed it on XE, but Micro not boots after installer ramdisk loaded.
I have UBoot 1.1.1 on XE and 1.2 on Micro - should it be the problem?

@sailor
How did you get 1 GB ram? what brand / type can be used? I have 512 MB only and found it too low amount for most recent stuff.

It is Cisco router memory, reg+ecc:

look here: https://www.a1k.org/forum/index.php?threads/32210/#post-923684
if you are not member, you probably cannot see it.

In this case look here:
https://www.amigaportal.cz/node/160452
- part 4.1 Bigger Mmory
It is in Czech language, so use google translate.

@sailor
Thank you for sharing that info for the memory module I bought one and works pretty well.

https://ko-fi.com/post/microA1-hit-1GB-of-Ram-X8X4NAV7Q

@walkero
that is great, I like it hepled.
Original memory testing made boys from a1k.org, I only second that - REG memory is a must on Micro.

@sailor
I'd like to apologise because I originally mixed your gender in my blog post, which is now fixed. It was really stupid of me as I didn't know. I hope now I made things right and I will try to not happen again in the future.

The question one has to ask.

Is the PCI slot in the MicroA1 just purely for decoration?

@walkero
no problem, it is often in English - you can't know it from the context. In Czech language yes, but it is a little bit difficult
thanks

@Mikey_CQuote:

I have in PCI slot SATA controller SiI3512 - it is faster than builtin IDE with overclocked CPU GX/1200 MHz. With original 800 MHz I have no comparison, but probably speed increase is not significant.
During the testing with no-ECC/no-REG memory I had the impression, that my Micro is more stable with SATA controller. I have no real measurable proof of this and with REG memory there is no stability problem at all.

Somebody also used 1 GbE NIC card here, but for me not works both tested. Again, it helps mainly with overclocked CPU, internal 100 MbE NIC is 100% utilized on frequencies around 700 MHz ( tested on Sam440ep ).
On my AmigaOne XE PCI NIC works, and has real max speed around 140 Mbps on 800 MHz, and 175 Mbps on 1400 MHz.

@sailor

I had a Radeon 9250 PCI years ago. It probably needed an updated UBoot and it could use only half of the VRAM but it worked.

@Capehill
you are lucky men. In my Micro not works any tested PCI / AGP graphics card.
And 32 MB VRAM of internal gfx is biggest weakness of Micro, so external card should help.

@Capehill
Do you remember any details about which Gfx card was that and which version of uboot was it?

I agree with sailor that the Gfx card memory is a bottleneck right now for this little computer. I use it on 720p resolution and 16bit which saves me around 10MB from the Gfx card memory.You can also make the icons smaller from Workbench prefs and everything can still look pretty good.

Now I am worrying about the old PSU, which is a "MEGA POWER 200W ATX Switching Power Supply Mini ITX SH200A8H". I was looking for a replacement but the form factor is pretty custom and it is difficult to find anything. So I am thinking of either opening it, changing capacitors and giving it a good clean or buying a more modern case that can host a newer and more secure PSU. What would you recommend?

@walkero

if you can’t find a good replacement I’d change the caps and clean it up as that’s what I did with my original Amiga4000 PSU 10 years ago and it’s still working great now

@walkero

It's Radeon 9250 PCI 256MB. P/N 102A3420801 156475.

I cannot check UBoot version at the moment but probably it's the latest. I checked that Hyperion's site has a 2005 version publicly available but it must be too old.

@328gts
Quote:

I can find a couple of used exact same PSUs but I guess it doesn't make sense to buy them, since they are also old. I think I am going to do the cleanup and change the capacitors. And see how it goes.

@Capehill
Quote:
Thank you so much for sharing it. Difficult to find the exact one. Those cards cost a lot nowadays. Do you still have it? Is it possible for you to test it again?

@sailor
Your latest article on overclocking the G3 is really good. Well done there. I am almost tempted to try to push mine a little bit.

@walkero
this is the same like ervus@macrumors.com pushed me with his results of G4 cache speed comparison.

Such big speed increase namely in emulators is caused probably by GX 1024 kB L2 cache. It looks like most of JIT compiller stays in cache. My theory

@Capehill

Just out of interest, which UBoot version did you have? I have version 1.2.0

@walkero @Mikey_C

Unfortunately I couldn't get my Micro to boot. It hasn't been used for a long time. Nothing on serial. It could be the CMOS battery but I cannot seem to access it without taking the motherboard out of the case so I need to try it again some other day.

I could see a green light on the board and the CPU fan worked.