T-Rex II image (above left) used with permission from MyAmigaShop.com

The Unofficial T-Rex, T-Rex II (G-Force 040-40, A4060DT) TekMagic 2060 (A2060) and 'cousins' Support Page

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Documentation

Note: Unfortunately, no schematics are available for any of these accelerator boards, which can make them difficult (if not impossible) to repair.

T-Rex G-Force 040-40 | T-Rex II A4060DT | TekMagic 2060 | QuikPak A4000T-060/040 and A4000-060-040 XP (Revs. 1,2)

The A4000 G-Force 040 40 User's Guide is now available! Its addendum, the A4000 G-Force 040 User's Guide Addendum, is also available. Note that the key parts of the Addendum from pages 3 and 4 have been merged into the User's Guide.

My sincere thanks to eBay seller vannysue_6 who provided me with the photos (Page 1 | Page 2 | Page 3 | Page 4) of this hard-to-find Addendum on April 30, 2021. If you have any other original A4000 G-Force 040 / T-Rex documentation not yet available here, please e-mail me.

A4000 G-Force 040 40 User's Guide (PDF: 39 MB)

A4000 G-Force 040 User's Guide Addendum (PDF: 706,595 bytes)

A4000 G-Force 040 40 Installation Disk Notes (PDF: 13,864 bytes)

A4000 GForce040 Product Info (PDF: 14,669,959 bytes)

There's no issue with Kickstart-based FFS.

How to overclock your G-Force 040 40: Overclocking the GVP 4040 TREX-1. Thanks to Robert Miranda for sending this info. He adds some additional notes:

• The ReadMe on the support disk identifies the board with the Intel FlexLogic CPLDs and 40 MHz 68040, as "GVP A4000 G-Force040', as of 24-Mar-1994.
• The documents on the disk do not mention the Amiga 3000, which was already discontinued by Commodore over a year by this point (IIRC).
• The files and tools on the disk do not have any 68060 attribute or reference, unlike the board that later replaces it, the TekMagic A4060/T-Rex II.
• The card has a soldered-on 40 MHz 68040. This is the fastest CPU of the 68040 line. No upgrades planned, or possible.
• The card has no options for the needed 68060 'fix' ROM at $F0.0000, as used by many later 68060 accelerator products. It ran only on the available Amiga OS 3.1.
• The market goal in 1993-1994 was the A4000 Video Toaster expansion market, which was the last 'hot' area for profitable sales.
• The board was physically designed, with its memory expansion card, and proposed SCSI interface, to fit only the A4000D internal spaces.
• Although this product (only the base card, nothing else) may work in other earlier A3000 machines' CPU slot, GVP of 1994 would not mention/market it without a matching install media/documentation.
• T-Rex was the internal production names for the board. Jeff Boyer later consolidated the board logic into Altera CPLDs around/after the GVP liquidation to GVP-M, and that effort became the T-Rex II/A4060.
• The GVP-M website mentions the A4040 T-Rex I disk for the Amiga 3000 and Amiga 4000—this implies the board works in the Amiga 3000, but we know the expansion options physically won't fit. The lack of A3000-installation detail on the last floppy GVP made implies Michael W. probably would have sold the card 'anywhere it may have worked'. As a CPU and RAM-only card, it should work on any Amiga where it fits.

Robert Miranda notes that:

• Users should remember that a ~6 in. (15.24 cm) SCSI cable is best to have in place (or longer). Electrical properties, when it's shorter, can be wonky, although 4 in. (10.16 cm) usually works. I ran into that with the A530 and a very short ribbon cable with a SCSI2SD v6 module. Both ends should have termination—active in this case with the mentioned devices.
• Anything on GVP/TekMagic SCSI interfaces uses: 0x7FFFFFFE for Mask (because the upper 2GB is off limits to anything in the Amiga OS), and 0xFFFFFFFE for MaxTransfer, because there's no transfer limit (in 32-bit), but for safety, the smallest transfer must be 16-bit (hence the last e). Best to use HDToolBox (3.1.4 or 3.2) and fix the Tooltypes to always use the above values. They often get set to the 'safe' values for the IDE and A2091 scsi.device, and that hurts performance (but doesn't prevent operations or cause crashes - crashes come from data corruption). Any lesser values are a hack for SCSI/IDE drivers written by coders who don't understand their environment.
• The GVP-M website mentions the A4060 T-Rex II disk is for the A4000 desktop—this later card won't work in Amiga 3000s because of the (known) missing INT2 line on the CPU slot. The ReAmiga 3000 has the line, and accelerator cards which have SCSI I/O interfaces work as a result.

Apart from jumper information and on-disk "ReadMe" notes, there is no known official manual for the T-Rex II card. However, if you have any other original T-Rex II 4060DT documentation not seen here, please e-mail me.

There is also no Auto-DiskChange detection/monitor service for removable media like the gvpscsi.device has. The driver code starts too early to spawn the needed task.

Many thanks to eBay seller vannysue_6 for sending me photos (Page 1 | Page 2 | Page 3 | Page 4 | Silkscreen/Jumpers Closeup) of the following hard-to-find documentation, including a closeup of the silkscreen with the jumpers layout (posted April 30, 2021).

A4060DT Accelerator Jumpers and IO Definitions (PDF: 4.78 MB)

GVP-M A4060DT Installation Disk Notes (PDF: 37,015 bytes)

Note that JR4 on page 3 appears to have a typo; the title says "Burst Write Enabled", but it apparently should read "Burst Read Enabled" to match the setting text below it. This has been corrected in the PDF version.

Robert Miranda notes that:

• There is no Auto-DiskChange detection/monitor service for removable media like the gvpscsi.device has. The driver code starts too early to spawn the needed task.
• Users should remember that a ~6 in. (15.24 cm) SCSI cable is best to have in place (or longer). Electrical properties, when it's shorter, can be wonky, although 4 in. (10.16 cm) usually works. I ran into that with the A530 and a very short ribbon cable with a SCSI2SD v6 module. Both ends should have termination—active in this case with the mentioned devices.
• Anything on GVP/TekMagic SCSI interfaces uses: 0x7FFFFFFE for Mask (because the upper 2 GB is off limits to anything in the Amiga OS), and 0xFFFFFFFE for MaxTransfer, because there's no transfer limit (in 32-bit), but for safety, the smallest transfer must be 16-bit (hence the last e). Best to use HDToolBox (3.1.4 or 3.2) and fix the Tool Types to always use the above values. They often get set to the 'safe' values for the IDE and A2091 scsi.device, and that hurts performance (but doesn't prevent operations or cause crashes—crashes come from data corruption). Any lesser values are a hack for SCSI/IDE drivers written by coders who don't understand their environment.

There are two known versions of tekscsi2.device: v1.0 (27.8.95) and v1.1 (5.2.96). Of the two—at least for some users—v1.0 may be more stable than v1.1 (which may cause gurus and slow disk operation.)

Many thanks to Michael Rozeboom for contributing the complete documentation for the GVP TekMagic 2060 (available below). It was digitally reconstructed in May 2019 for better quality/clarity.

TekMagic A2060-040/060 User's Manual (PDF: 345,486 bytes)

GVP TekMagic 2060 Installation Disk Notes (PDF: 37,082 bytes)

The T-Rex II 4060's designer, Jeff Boyer, also designed the QuikPak A4000T-060/040 and A4000-060-040 XP (Revs. 1, 2) accelerators. The digitally-reconstructed manuals of these 'cousin' accelerators are available below.

QuikPak A4000T-060/040 (PDF: 252,794 bytes)

QuikPak A4000T-060/040 Installation Disk Notes (PDF: 17,526 bytes)

Quikpak A4000-060-040 XP (1,2) (PDF: 165,835 bytes)