M-Tec 68030
Type: Accelerator
Amiga: A500, A2000
CPU: 68020 @ 14 MHz
FPU: 68882 @ 25 MHz
Memory: 4 MB
Features:
- on-board 68000 CPU for fallback mode
- 4 MB of memory soldered onto board
- memory does not autoconfig
Another nice accelerator board, although the 68030 is clocked at only 14 MHz. I've used this board for quite some time together with an M-Tec AT 500 Megabody IDE controller to which it is attached. I bought these 2 boards together and never had the guts to seperate them, as they were connected pretty tight. The M-Tec IDE controller connects to the 68000 socket of the A500 and provides a new 68000 socket to which the M-Tec 68030 is connected.
Unfortunately this accelerator's memory is soldered to the board so you can't expand it further than the available configuration, being either 1 or 4 MB. The memory also does not autoconfig so you need to use AddMem or some similiar utility to add the memory to your system on startup. The memory is mapped within the 68000's 16 MB range, presumably so that it remains addressable when running in 68000 mode. This can however potentially cause conflicts with other memory expansions that utilize the same address space.
I have used this board together with M-Tec's IDE controller and unfortunately this has not been a particularly stable setup for me. I would regularly experience read/write errors on my IDE device which seemed to happen at random blocks. Retrying a read or write action would usually eventually result in success, which leads me to believe the problem is not with the disk but probably the controller or the board. The I/O errors would usually pop up more often under heavy CPU load, so I guess it could have been a heat issue. Maybe one day I will get the chance to seperate the accelerator and IDE controller boards and use them seperately.
So although I did have my share of problems, I can't really blame them specifically on this board. I like the fact that it has a 68000 fallback mode, but so did my Harms Professional 030 Plus board and the Harms also featured user expandable memory to a maximum of 8 MB and mapping of memory either within or outside the 68000 addressable address space.
