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Announcement   Announcement : ZorRAM SDRAM Memory Card (www.amigakit.com)
   posted by amigakit on 21-Mar-2010 9:41:19 (10642 reads)
AmigaKit.com is pleased to announce ZorRAM, a new modern memory card for Zorro 3 Amiga computers.

The new card will be supplied with 128MB of SDRAM memory as standard. It features a low profile Zorro card and has full Autoconfig support.

It will be available exclusively from the AmigaKit webstores within the next 6-8 weeks. Pricing will be announced shortly.



Project Development
During 2009, it became apparent that old Zorro 3 memory boards were scarce and consequently selling for over-inflated high prices in the second-user market. We approached our hardware partners E3B and Individual Computers with a brief to produce a modern day memory card for the A3000 / A4000 (T). After encountering many problems and employing E3B's expertise in the area of Zorro expansion development, the ZorRAM card was developed.

We would like to thank our hardware partners for the many months of development work put into this project.

Amiga Computer Store
    

STORYID: 5350
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tonyw 
Re: ZorRAM SDRAM Memory Card (www.amigakit.com)
Posted on 22-Mar-2010 4:22:25
#21 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 8-Mar-2003
Posts: 3240
From: Sydney (of course)

I can't think of any reason why OS4 should have to do anything out of the ordinary to address one or any number of these cards (up to the obvious limit of 2GB, of course). It should "just happen" with the autoconfig.


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HammerD 
Re: ZorRAM SDRAM Memory Card (www.amigakit.com)
Posted on 22-Mar-2010 6:30:24
#22 ]
Cult Member
Joined: 31-Oct-2003
Posts: 935
From: Ontario, Canada

@tonyw

Support will have to be added in the kernel. Zorro 3 memory isn't currently supported, nor is the up to 16MB of fast ram on the A3/4000 motherboard.

Right now only the 2MB Chip memory is detected, and the memory on the blizzard or cyberstorm PPC.


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mihcael 
Re: ZorRAM SDRAM Memory Card (www.amigakit.com)
Posted on 22-Mar-2010 8:43:04
#23 ]
Member
Joined: 16-Jan-2006
Posts: 92
From: I come from a land ...

More info at A1K forum

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robo-ant 
Re: ZorRAM SDRAM Memory Card (www.amigakit.com)
Posted on 22-Mar-2010 12:30:17
#24 ]
Regular Member
Joined: 3-Feb-2008
Posts: 205
From: The anthill to the west of the silver maple

Wow! I wish this had been available when I was struggling to keep my A3K as my primary system on the net. It was primarily lack of memory that made me switch to Amithlon (and now I'm using a Sam).

I have retired my A3K now (it's on a shelf with its battery pulled) but I still might buy this board! I'd like to get one of my classic Amigas back into service. I just need to make some room.

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Deniil715 
Re: ZorRAM SDRAM Memory Card (www.amigakit.com)
Posted on 22-Mar-2010 13:54:22
#25 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 14-May-2003
Posts: 4237
From: Sweden

Having OS4 use this memory would imply having the PPC use this memory and that might slow down performance quite a bit. I don't know the speed of the Z3 bus though, might be similar to SIMM memory speed...

However, making it have a lower allocate priority (just like chipram) would make it appear as a "reserve" memory only used when the SIMM on the CSPPC runs out.


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HammerD 
Re: ZorRAM SDRAM Memory Card (www.amigakit.com)
Posted on 22-Mar-2010 15:08:01
#26 ]
Cult Member
Joined: 31-Oct-2003
Posts: 935
From: Ontario, Canada

@Deniil715

You are correct, the on-board accelerator memory will have a higher priority, so the Z3 memory will only be used when onboard memory is exhausted.

I still argue SLOW memory is better than none. After booting OS4 you are left with about 80MB of free accelerator fast ram. That quickly runs out if you launch OWB, TuneNet, and Wookiechat.

In fact, you can probably browse only a few websites before your accelerator memory is totally gone, and then you are into risky territory where you are more prone to crashes. Having an extra 128MB or 256MB of memory will certainly help, even though it will be slower.

Last edited by HammerD on 22-Mar-2010 at 03:08 PM.


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BinoX 
Re: ZorRAM SDRAM Memory Card (www.amigakit.com)
Posted on 22-Mar-2010 21:44:44
#27 ]
Cult Member
Joined: 2-Nov-2005
Posts: 711
From: Cornwall, UK

I might just have to get one of those for the A3000T...


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Murasame 
Re: ZorRAM SDRAM Memory Card (www.amigakit.com)
Posted on 23-Mar-2010 9:49:58
#28 ]
Member
Joined: 1-Jun-2004
Posts: 42
From: Italy, Reggio Emilia

@Deniil715

If the speed is comparable to the old DKB 3128 it'll be even slower than motherboard memory

Taken from BBoAH:

Quote:
Memory on the DKB 3128 is not as fast as motherboard memory in the A4000, about 80% of normal A4000 memory speed according to AIBB

Last edited by Murasame on 23-Mar-2010 at 09:50 AM.

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KimmoK 
Re: ZorRAM SDRAM Memory Card (www.amigakit.com)
Posted on 23-Mar-2010 17:31:57
#29 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 14-Mar-2003
Posts: 5211
From: Ylikiiminki, Finland

It would be interesting if that z3 RAM could be set as gigamem/vmem buffer or swap disk. That way the onboard accelerator RAM is always used and Z3 RAM would only be used like virtual memory.

Another "good" use for the z3 RAM would be as disk cache when the machine has only motherboard IDE.

Last edited by KimmoK on 23-Mar-2010 at 05:35 PM.


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Deniil715 
Re: ZorRAM SDRAM Memory Card (www.amigakit.com)
Posted on 23-Mar-2010 20:17:15
#30 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 14-May-2003
Posts: 4237
From: Sweden

Quote:
I still argue SLOW memory is better than none.


Exactly! That's why the rest of us have swap instead..


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Crumb 
Re: ZorRAM SDRAM Memory Card (www.amigakit.com)
Posted on 23-Mar-2010 20:52:59
#31 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 12-Mar-2003
Posts: 2209
From: Zaragoza (Aragonian State)

It's a great card for A3640 owners I don't have free ZorroIII slots so I'm unsure about buying it (if it was a Deneb plugin card it would be easier)

@Deniil715

OS4.0 Classic doesn't have swap memory. Moreover, real ram causes less problems than swap memory on OS4.1

OS4 uses a memory system incompatible with Amiga so we can't use different memory "banks" with different priorities (moreover, Amiga cards that use DMA don't work)

They have various choices to accept more memory on classics:
-release an updated OS4.0 kernel that drops the virtual addressing idea so all autoconfig boards will work (including DMA ones like Deneb, FastlaneZ3---). It would be nice if they fixed OS4 incompatibility so phase5 scsi drivers worked too. Probably the most compatible option
-update OS4.0 to accept various memory banks (with different priorities). Not too hard I hope
-update OS4.0 to support swap memory. Slightly incompatible and useless on A1200 due to the lack of scsi drivers and OS4 incompatibility with flashrom ones.

Last edited by Crumb on 23-Mar-2010 at 08:55 PM.


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realize 
Re: ZorRAM SDRAM Memory Card (www.amigakit.com)
Posted on 24-Mar-2010 2:40:32
#32 ]
Super Member
Joined: 14-Apr-2003
Posts: 1797
From: nyc

This is great news. Cool product and hopefully it sells out to show others there is still life in the Amiga hw market!

Man, if this came out 5 years ago when I was selling Toaster/Flyer systems I had customers that would have paid alot for them (DKB 3128s were hard to get)

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MEGA_RJ_MICAL 
Re: ZorRAM SDRAM Memory Card (www.amigakit.com)
Posted on 27-May-2022 3:30:46
#33 ]
Super Member
Joined: 13-Dec-2019
Posts: 1200
From: AMIGAWORLD.NET WAS ORIGINALLY FOUNDED BY DAVID DOYLE

ZORRAM


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