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Author Topic: Most powerful PPC that can be put in an A1200?  (Read 9917 times)

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Offline mradam83Topic starter

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Most powerful PPC that can be put in an A1200?
« on: December 07, 2012, 03:52:49 PM »
Hi all,

Please excuse any ignorance, I've never really modded an Amiga or PC before so I'm really a newbie but I'm trying to get a feel of everything and get my start of Miggy modding. :-)

I'm in the process of trying to win an A1200 and I'm collecting as much info on what can actually be done as improvements.

One area that really interests me is the installation of processors/accelerators. I read that a PPC Blizzard can be fitted that allows about 330mhz and 256mb of RAM - however it was an older site that I read the info from so I don't know if there's been any improvements since then.

What is the basis for being limited for the one sort of card? Or is it possible for higher mhz processors (PPC) such as a Broadway PPC based IBM card that's used in the Nintendo Wii ? (I'm not specifically saying this piece of tech but it's one I've just read about).

Is it do do with Workbench or the AmigaOS compatibility? Cheers all.
 

Offline ChaosLord

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Re: Most powerful PPC that can be put in an A1200?
« Reply #1 on: December 07, 2012, 04:11:00 PM »
No new PPC card has been made for Amiga since a century ago.  The ones that were made are few in number and many of them broke down.

They were quite tremendously expensive.

In any event they never really integrated into a classic Amiga very well.
They only run certain special software.

But its your money.  If you wanna buy one then go ahead :)
Wanna try a wonderfull strategy game with lots of handdrawn anims,
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Offline ChaosLord

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Re: Most powerful PPC that can be put in an A1200?
« Reply #2 on: December 07, 2012, 04:20:49 PM »
If you want a PPC Amiga and want to spend a lot of money you could get an X1000 ppc Amiga.

If you want a PPC Amiga and want to spend little money then you can get 2 or 3 MorphOS machines for the price of a PPC accelerator.

If you want the A1200 experience as many of us do then you should get the ultimate classic Amiga accelerator: 68060

There are 2 varieties of 68060 accelerator: Blizzard and Apollo.

They both came out as 50Mhz and 32MB to start with.

Apollos are limited to an absolute maximum of 64MB of RAM.  But they can be easily modded to be 80Mhz or even 90 or 100Mhz

Blizzards can easily take 128MB of RAM and if u add on the SCSI expander you can get another 128MB.  But I never met anyone with an 80Mhz Blizzard that I can remember.  They are all 50Mhz.

50Mhz on an 060 is awesome and not to be taken lightly.  But since you seem to be into hardcore modding and spending money, I am just letting u know the options.

An 060 card runs the way an Amiga expects a card to run so it integrates beautifully.
Wanna try a wonderfull strategy game with lots of handdrawn anims,
Magic Spells and Monsters, Incredible playability and lastability,
English speech, etc. Total Chaos AGA
 

Offline Duce

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Re: Most powerful PPC that can be put in an A1200?
« Reply #3 on: December 07, 2012, 04:22:24 PM »
I had a PPC/040 powered A1200 and found it a waste of money, tbh.

If I had to do it again I'd go with an '060 accelerator and skip the PPC, there's just not enough that really makes use of it.
 

Offline mradam83Topic starter

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Re: Most powerful PPC that can be put in an A1200?
« Reply #4 on: December 07, 2012, 04:43:53 PM »
Quote from: ChaosLord;717946
If you want a PPC Amiga and want to spend a lot of money you could get an X1000 ppc Amiga.

If you want a PPC Amiga and want to spend little money then you can get 2 or 3 MorphOS machines for the price of a PPC accelerator.

If you want the A1200 experience as many of us do then you should get the ultimate classic Amiga accelerator: 68060

There are 2 varieties of 68060 accelerator: Blizzard and Apollo.

They both came out as 50Mhz and 32MB to start with.

Apollos are limited to an absolute maximum of 64MB of RAM.  But they can be easily modded to be 80Mhz or even 90 or 100Mhz

Blizzards can easily take 128MB of RAM and if u add on the SCSI expander you can get another 128MB.  But I never met anyone with an 80Mhz Blizzard that I can remember.  They are all 50Mhz.

50Mhz on an 060 is awesome and not to be taken lightly.  But since you seem to be into hardcore modding and spending money, I am just letting u know the options.

An 060 card runs the way an Amiga expects a card to run so it integrates beautifully.
Well I'm not specifically saying I'm going to go hardcore - I am interested in it for sure but I'm purely gathering info on the whole thing at this stage as I'm conscious of my inexperience.
 

Offline haywirepc

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Re: Most powerful PPC that can be put in an A1200?
« Reply #5 on: December 07, 2012, 04:48:40 PM »
I agree, ppc accelerator was a nice idea, but since software for them never caught on... its nearly useless on a 1200. You'd be much better off with a 68060 accelerator, which almost all amiga software will benefit from.
 

Offline mradam83Topic starter

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Re: Most powerful PPC that can be put in an A1200?
« Reply #6 on: December 07, 2012, 05:01:57 PM »
Quote from: haywirepc;717950
I agree, ppc accelerator was a nice idea, but since software for them never caught on... its nearly useless on a 1200. You'd be much better off with a 68060 accelerator, which almost all amiga software will benefit from.
Cheers for that - so is it general incompatibility with the 1200 or a lack of drivers that makes the PPC accelerator not work on par with the 68060?
 

Offline kickstart

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Re: Most powerful PPC that can be put in an A1200?
« Reply #7 on: December 07, 2012, 05:09:06 PM »
I had a blizzard ppc years ago, ppc is useless most of the time and very expensive, you can install os4.1 with a ppc but is like kill the amiga.
a1200 060
 

Offline mradam83Topic starter

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Re: Most powerful PPC that can be put in an A1200?
« Reply #8 on: December 07, 2012, 05:13:22 PM »
Quote from: kickstart;717953
I had a blizzard ppc years ago, ppc is useless most of the time and very expensive, you can install os4.1 with a ppc but is like kill the amiga.
Thanks for the reply.

Is there major differences between say the 3.0 and 4.1? I've never found a comparison guide and as such, I would probably ignorantly assume that the 4.1 is better because it's newer. Does the 1200 benefit from a modern OS in any way or does the 3.0/3.1 suit better but with more software installed?
 

Offline itix

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Re: Most powerful PPC that can be put in an A1200?
« Reply #9 on: December 07, 2012, 05:13:25 PM »
Quote from: mradam83;717952
Cheers for that - so is it general incompatibility with the 1200 or a lack of drivers that makes the PPC accelerator not work on par with the 68060?

The operating system is running on 68k and when rendering graphics or trying to do some simple disk I/O you have to call 68k OS call which is very expensive from PPC side. You haev to carefully design your application to utilize PPC efficiently.

Needless to say many PPC ports were extremely buggy and crashed often.

I had BlizzardPPC and it made good yet expensive MP3 player.
My Amigas: A500, Mac Mini and PowerBook
 

Offline kickstart

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Re: Most powerful PPC that can be put in an A1200?
« Reply #10 on: December 07, 2012, 05:20:01 PM »
@mradam83

I never use os4.1 so i cant compare, but if you use specific software designed for os4.1 on "wanna be amigas" like sam or x1000 on a 603 are slow... i would like to see how run 68k software on os4.1 on real amigas.
a1200 060
 

Offline Duce

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Re: Most powerful PPC that can be put in an A1200?
« Reply #11 on: December 07, 2012, 05:22:43 PM »
Legacy programs run very well on 4.1 these days.

Would I recommend someone buys an X1000 to play Lemmings?  Absolutely not, there's cheaper and better ways to do that, but all in all the old stuff works quite well.
 

Offline haywirepc

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Re: Most powerful PPC that can be put in an A1200?
« Reply #12 on: December 07, 2012, 06:21:26 PM »
From an outsider looking in there is some confusion about amiga os...

Amiga OS 1.x to 3.9 - is for 68000 based processors. 68010, 68020,68030,68040,68060. Most amiga software is written for these.
The original amiga line of computers.

Amiga OS4.0+ is for Power pc processors only.
Power pc was supposed to be the successor to the 68000 series of machines, or planned to be... After Amiga INC imploded, others stepped in to do this.

AROS is a freeware open source implementation of amiga os, originally designed for x86 processors but now available on many platforms...

MorphOS is another amiga os next gen system designed for power pc processors. It runs on custom older hardware created for it (pegasos) and
also some Mac g4 or less models...

You may also check out AROS vision for your amiga 1200.
 

Offline haywirepc

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Re: Most powerful PPC that can be put in an A1200?
« Reply #13 on: December 07, 2012, 06:23:02 PM »
Legacy programs run very well on 4.1 these days.

Would I recommend someone buys an X1000 to play Lemmings? Absolutely not, there's cheaper and better ways to do that, but all in all the old stuff works quite well.

You can not run many very demanding aga games on Amiga os4.1 with the low spec sam boards without MAJOR lag. At least I don't think so. If you can, post a video, I'd like to see that.
 

Offline Duce

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Re: Most powerful PPC that can be put in an A1200?
« Reply #14 on: December 07, 2012, 07:15:36 PM »
My SAM runs legacy games every bit as well as my MOS rig does, so take that for what it is worth.  Admittedly, I don't play many Amiga games, and when/if I do, I'm more inclined to do so on my Amithlon PC.

Note I said "programs" in my previous post.  If I was more of an Amiga gamer I'd likely just own a Minimig or FPGA Arcade.