Accelerator Card - Yes/No

[3246251196]

I have had a lot of good help of Patrick but I am still curious and still have a few questions:

1 - I want certain WHDLoad games to work - this requires more than the std chip memory so therefore, I need more memory. Now, this doesn't mean an accelerator card - it just means a memory expansion card - right?

2 - For the things I want to do: play retro Amiga games / run 3.5OS (maybe later 3.9) / hook up with PCMCIA card / do a bit of programming too::::::: would i NEED an accelerator card (i.e. a card with NOT ONLY MEM expansion but a greater processor???) - do i JUST need memory upgrade? what would you recommend?

[x56h34]

The best value would certainly be acheived by buying the following (this includes using OS3.5/3.9 and playing WHDload games):

3.1 Roms
Blizzard 1230-IV accelerator
Blizzard 12x0 SCSI Kit
External SCSI CD drive

For WHDLoad gaming only, you could do fine with just obtaining a 4 or 8MB ram expansion card and using WB3.0 or 3.1 installed on your internal 2.5" hard drive.

[A1200Power]

Hey Patrick,

1)
Right, but more cpu power is faster loading.

2)
If you are gonna run os3.5 / os3.9 you would like some nice colors to go with that right? If you also take a high resolution e.g. interlaced screen, this wil cause a load on the cpu. It is very simple to check just open a drawer and you will see the icons coming up 1 at a time.

I'd say get a blizzard 030/50 with 16 or 32 meg simm on it. They don't cost much and are very stable with old software. Also faster a faster operating system.

If for some reason you would buy a 060, errors are bound to happen cause of the cpu instruction set. The 060 work fine with heavy programs and apps. There are some programs which could patch the workbench so it runs stable. But for games take the 030.

Greetz Henk

[SamuraiCrow]

The main reason I bought my Blizzard 1230+SCSI kit was to get the added 32 bit memory addressing capabilities of the full '030.  The 'ec020 on the A1200 motherboard only has 24-bit addressing and therefore can only use up to 4 megs of fast RAM or 8-megs if you're not using your PCMCIA slot.

I've got 16 megs in my accelerator card mainly becuase if I added memory to the SCSI kit expander I'd be stuck with 70 nsec access time on all the memory instead of the 60 nsec I've got now.  The speedup was sufficient to run Ultimate Doom at nearly full frame rate using ADoom.  I used to have 32 megs of 70 nsec memory on board and was able to run Doom from memory by making a soft link to the wad file on the RAM: disk.  That made it fairly playable.

[x56h34]

It was never clear to me whether combining a Blizzard 1240 or 1260 with the SCSI Kit would also cause ram speed to go down to 70ns (when both SIMM slots are using a memory module)?

I know that it happens with B1230-IV, but does the "70ns rule" also apply to B1240 and B1260?

[amigakit]

It only affects the Blizzard 1230.

[CLS2086]

[3246251196]

hey man, thanks for the reply. in this forum i see a lot of number: 30' 60' and i dont understand. my guess is they mean the equivalent of a 68030 and 68060

1 - can you explain the numbers you give (another eg: Blizard 1230/050 - i dont understand)

2 - A1200POWER - reckon you could link me to some of the hardware you were talking about?

thanks guys! great help!

*** note also: i own (OBVIOUSLY) 2Mb Chip, and 2*4Mb 72PIN SIMM extra (obviously, i need hardware to fit that into!)

thanks

[amigagr]

here big book you will find a lot of amiga hardware info


-edit-

@ b1230/50 and other /xx this /xx is the speed in mhz

[3246251196]

ahh sorry i should have elaborated! i meant a place to BUY the Hardware A1200Power was talking about....


thankyou

[amigagr]

i wrote this link just for the purpose it just says. i thought that you looking like too hard to decide... some info could help :-)  at least this was the general idea.

[Marco]

http://www.amigakit.com/

They should have the Blizzard accelerators, I saw the 1230-IV and 1260 last time I was there, they're a little bit on the expensive side of things, but worth it IMO

[3246251196]

amije wrote:
i wrote this link just for the purpose it just says. i thought that you looking like too hard to decide... some info could help :-)  at least this was the general idea.

of course. sorry man. got you now. nice find!

[3246251196]

see, its the price which is the problem. i would rather use eBay - not because its better: i like AmigaKit indeed but i have limited funds. i would rather try and win a bid for an accelerator... looks like the only way tbh unless someone is SELLING ONE ?

[Angus]

>For WHDLoad gaming only, you could do fine with just >obtaining a 4 or 8MB ram expansion card and using WB3.0 or >3.1 installed on your internal 2.5" hard drive.

I would say that if you like 3D games (WHDLoad or otherwise) you ought to get an accelerator rather than just additional memory. As stated a Blizzard 030 makes lots of sense, and an 060 if you can find/afford one. I would avoid the 040 though, it dpesn't appear to work with some WHDLoad games.