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intric8
Seattle, WA, USA

Posted Wed Nov 27, 2019 8:26 am

There is brand new (not salvaged) 4 megabyte 64-pin GVP SIMMs available for sale from Inertial Computing.

It is known to be compatible with the following GVP accelerators:
  • A1208 SCSI + RAM (Fang)
  • A1230 Turbo+ (Jaws)
  • A1230 Turbo+ II (Jaws II)
  • A3001 (Impact A2000-030) - with 68030-RAM32
  • A3001 Series II (Impact A2000-030) - with 68030-RAM32
  • G-Force 030 (Impact A2000-030 Combo Series II)
  • G-Force 040
  • Impact A2000-030
  • T-Rex (G-Force 040)
gvpRAM.jpg
Pretty fantastic.

Also, the creator Tube Time has made the PCB's open source, and they are available here.

UPDATE:
A few folks have asked me if there would be an 8MB or 16MB version in the future. I reached out to Alex Perez of Inertial Computing on their behalf. There never were 8MB varieties, only 4mb or 16mb...

Alex Perez:
We don't have plans to do [another] SIMM design. The guy who did the PCB layout is a friend of mine, and while he is interested in doing 16 megabyte modules, he would need someone to volunteer a donor SIMM, preferably one that's bad. None of us have any.
So! If anyone reading this has a spare 16 MB module they can donate, new designs could indeed be made. Let me know and I can help facilitate.

User avatar
Zippy Zapp
CA, USA

Posted Wed Nov 27, 2019 2:50 pm

That's awesome. I know GVP SIMMS have been pretty rare these days so this is great news.

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dalek
Australia

Posted Thu Nov 28, 2019 3:15 am

gerbers for 4MB GVP SIMMs have been available for quite a while: http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=86182
I made up a few and they work fine.

User avatar
goodbyeclock

Posted Tue May 12, 2020 10:20 am

There's a fella over at Amibay who'd done a run of 16mb GVP SIMMS a handful of years ago: seems still active, so perhaps he's worth contacting?

Check out his thread here.

User avatar
jdryyz

Posted Mon Apr 25, 2022 11:59 am

On a related note, wasn't someone working on an adapter for the older G-Force accelerators (15mb max?) that would allow them a 64mb max instead?

I cannot find anything on the interwebs about it but I know I heard it somewhere.

User avatar
Shot97
Detroit, MI, USA

Posted Mon Apr 25, 2022 1:33 pm

"NOT FOR MACINTOSH USE" - That's not a requirement, rather general life advice. ;)

User avatar
dalek
Australia

Posted Tue Apr 26, 2022 2:11 am

jdryyz wrote:
Mon Apr 25, 2022 11:59 am
On a related note, wasn't someone working on an adapter for the older G-Force accelerators (15mb max?) that would allow them a 64mb max instead? ...

@jdryyz this can be summed up by the following 3 links at Amibay, EAB and Facebook.

A 16MB SIMM is fairly easy to make just a bit time consuming to do with little return on investment unless you are willing to put in effort. The pinouts and dimensions are known from the projects here and here. DRAMs can be scavenged from old 72pin FPM SIMMs. They need to be 2K refresh per the facebook post.

Incidentally there is a seller called "Keystron" that use 3.3V Micron EDO RAM (2x MT 4LC16M4H9) overvolted at 5V to make 16MB SIMMs for Macs (e.g. SE/30 - different pinout). They swear they have tested this ram and have no issues running it at 5V. That would be an easier path to new GVP SIMMs than having to scavenged old SIMMs, although these are 4K refresh. I'm not sure if the GALs or some other memory controller on the GVP is responsible for refresh or if it could be modified to support 4K.

But at the end of the day who really needs more than 16MB RAM on an 030 card when there are new options like the TF536 about.

I only want to do it so that I can get 32MB for AMIX.....

User avatar
jdryyz

Posted Tue Apr 26, 2022 5:36 pm

Thank you for the info!





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