Most powerful PPC that can be put in an A1200?

[danbeaver]

Myself, I never saw the point of maxing out an A1200, i.e., Mediator, PPC, 256 MB RAM, 2 TB HDD, USB, Towers to put all that stuff in, and the list goes on.  One (not you, necessarily) could get an A4000(T) with same chipset and end up spending around the same amount of money.  They were made for upgrading.

OS 4.1 is not meant for everyone, certainly not for gamers or Retro enthusiasts.  It is a modern OS with strong underpinnings of Unix/Linux.  It has elements (Python for example) that modern OS's use.  It does behave like the original Amiga OS's but is predicated on a PPC.  It hogs RAM (common to current OS's), but has a beautiful display, very nice modern enhancements, and has become my main OS on my Classic Amiga.  I know it runs better on the NG Amiga's, and if I ever get together enough cash (or sell one of my "maxed" A4000T's) I would get an x1000.  In fact having a PPC accelerator you picked up years ago and really never used, IS a good reason to run OS 4.1 but only if you really, really want to.

How many Psychiatrists does it take to change a light bulb, only one but the light bulb has to WANT to change.:laugh1:

[rvo_nl]

wow, some of you really have no clue. I cant believe what Im reading here. If you have decided to stick with a classic Amiga and you want to stick with your a1200, the ppc+68k route is definitely worth it. If you can afford it, ofcourse, and have plenty of time to set the machine up right. When you succeed you'll find it is the ultimate expansion for your a1200, bringing you the best of both worlds: full 68k compatibility, down to standard aga 020 by the press of a key on boot, aswell as easy RTG graphics by means of the bvision and with that, a fairly modern OS running natively on your ppc cpu. If you set it up as a dual/triple boot system, it gets even better! Fastest ppc card for a1200 was the 240mhz + 060 version. But these days its quite common to find 330mhz versions, too. Keep an eye out on Amibay, read up on my old threads, be prepared for quite some work/frustrations, but if you feel this is the way to go for you, by all means, DO IT.

[orange]

if you decide to buy bppc, be sure to 'towerize' A1200.
it will give you stable PSU and required cooling.

[Karlos]

The most powerful PPC that you can fit to an A1200 would be a 604e 233MHz* courtesy of a CyberstormPPC. However, that also requires a busboard with an A4000 compatible CPU slot, such as the one that came with the Micronik infinitiv tower. All of which would cost an absolute arm and leg nowadays.

*or faster, if you can find a modded one.

[Blinx123]

The most powerful PPC that you can fit to an A1200 would be a 604e 233MHz* courtesy of a CyberstormPPC. However, that also requires a busboard with an A4000 compatible CPU slot, such as the one that came with the Micronik infinitiv tower. All of which would cost an absolute arm and leg nowadays.

*or faster, if you can find a modded one.

I think I'm gonna kill myself now. :\

Could've gotten a fully functional Micronik Z3i for less than 200 bucks a year ago.
I passed, because I was unemployed and didn't have an Amiga back then.

I probably wouldn't have used a G4 (604) on it (that's probably more expensive than simply buying a SAM with very little benefit over a nice 68060 setup) but a Cyberstorm MKIII is probably still more powerful than a Apollo 060, right?

[Bamiga2002]

The most powerful PPC that you can fit to an A1200 would be a 604e 233MHz* courtesy of a CyberstormPPC. However, that also requires a busboard with an A4000 compatible CPU slot, such as the one that came with the Micronik infinitiv tower. All of which would cost an absolute arm and leg nowadays.

*or faster, if you can find a modded one.

Now why haven't I heard or seen anyone doing that to an A1200? I never even KNEW that a CSPPC could fit onto an A1200!! :shocked:

[pVC]

Now why haven't I heard or seen anyone doing that to an A1200? I never even KNEW that a CSPPC could fit onto an A1200!! :shocked:

Weren't those Z3-busboards too unstable with compatibility problems, that everyone who tried to use bigbox accelerators went pretty fast back to some other solution?

[rvo_nl]

Now why haven't I heard or seen anyone doing that to an A1200? I never even KNEW that a CSPPC could fit onto an A1200!! :shocked:

same here.. this opens up some new possibilities

[Karlos]

Weren't those Z3-busboards too unstable with compatibility problems, that everyone who tried to use bigbox accelerators went pretty fast back to some other solution?

I had a friend that owned a Micronik tower/Z3 board back in the day and fitted a CyberStorm MK III to it. I seem to recall it working fine. However, he later sourced an A4000 and using the card in that was a no brainer.

As the CyberStorm MK III is basically the same  board as the CyberStormPPC, sans a few component parts, I expect it ought to be possible.

As I said though, very expensive.

[Blinx123]

I had a friend that owned a Micronik tower/Z3 board back in the day and fitted a CyberStorm MK III to it. I seem to recall it working fine. However, he later sourced an A4000 and using the card in that was a no brainer.

As the CyberStorm MK III is basically the same  board as the CyberStormPPC, sans a few component parts, I expect it ought to be possible.

As I said though, very expensive.

I wonder how hard it would be to produce fully working replicas of those.
I could totally see myself buying one and installing it with either a CyberStorm MK III or a CyberStorm PPC (do those clock to a 68060@80MHz as well?)

[amiga-penn-wchester]

I think the issue is that when these cards were released and you shelled out the 800 and some dollars, the emerging WarpUP vs PowerUP thing only served to further fracture what was a small market for PPC ports.  This was disappointing to those of us who had shelled out for the new cards. Having one of those cards (I had a BlizzPPC 060/603 in a micronik-based tower) certainly was a blast, don't let anyone fool you, but I agree that today - other than to say "my amiga is 100% classic") - it doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

It also depends on whether you are in the camp who likes the tight classic OS vs "let's make a modern amiga OS," which IMHO that ship has sailed.

If you ran a properly configured 3.1 with all the flashupdates, memory speed tweaks, rom imaging, etc, and you had decent patches for software to use the PPC, it was a nice system in 1999.  If I still had mine I wouldn't use it to run 3.5 and onward.

[ChaosLord]

Those of you contemplating PPC+060 card for perfect heaven should be aware that the way they implemented the 060 part of the card sux and it has very slow access to memory.  I can't remember ottomh if it was only slow at chipram or both chipram and fastram but there was something really NOT optimzed about their bus interface.

Everyone's plain 040 and plain 060 beat them in timing tests because the PPC+060card memory bandwidth was only half what it should have been.

Just giving u full disclosure.

I only write 040/060 gamez so I never timed the PPC memory bandwidth.   I just assume it was fast.

[ChaosLord]

If you ran a properly configured 3.1 with all the flashupdates, memory speed tweaks, rom imaging, etc, and you had decent patches for software to use the PPC, it was a nice system in 1999.  If I still had mine I wouldn't use it to run 3.5 and onward.

Bah humbug!

I cruised the internet burning up the IRC chats and the www on my 50Mhz 060 Amiga until sometime in 2003.  My Amiga was only about half the speed of my Brother's 650Mhz Athlon Unreal Tournament Gaming Rig at rendering webpages and about 1/4 speed at rendering large .jpg images.  It was hilarious.

[rvo_nl]

again, you are missing the point. for a plain a1200, what other option do you have to get RTG graphics and access to OS4?

[kickstart]

os4 on a1200 or a4000 is a stepbackwards

[NovaCoder]

again, you are missing the point. for a plain a1200, what other option do you have to get RTG graphics and access to OS4?

PPC is pretty pointless in a 1200, RTG is nice to have of course but you can still get a pretty decent WB display happening with just an Indivision AGA and for games and most of the legacy applications AGA (68k) is all you need.