Amiga.org

Amiga computer related discussion => General chat about Amiga topics => Topic started by: runequester on December 24, 2010, 10:56:05 PM

Title: My 1230/56 from amigakit arrived today!
Post by: runequester on December 24, 2010, 10:56:05 PM
I am so happy :)

Replacing my 3.0 ROM's took a bit of fiddling, but finally they fit in right. The accelerator card itself is super small. My old one was a lot longer. It fit like a charm, and my miggy booted up nice.

Seeing 64 megs of RAM available is nice, and alien breed 3D runs super slick now.

Fears runs decent in max screen size (its just a slow game)
Gloom deluxe felt a bit pokey but definately playable.
Breathless is still unplayable in max size but reduce it a bit and it moves at a decent clip.

Gonna test out Doom and see what I get out of it.
Title: Re: My 1230/56 from amigakit arrived today!
Post by: Franko on December 24, 2010, 11:02:42 PM
Nice one... :)

Now runs some speed tests on it and let us all know what this little beauty is up to... :)
Title: Re: My 1230/56 from amigakit arrived today!
Post by: tone007 on December 24, 2010, 11:03:32 PM
Can't wait for my 630/30 to show up, this A600 is going to scream.
Title: Re: My 1230/56 from amigakit arrived today!
Post by: cecilia on December 24, 2010, 11:23:32 PM
I got an email from Amiga Forever about an update and booted up in my Windows to complete the process.

how nice!
Title: Re: My 1230/56 from amigakit arrived today!
Post by: runequester on December 25, 2010, 12:04:28 AM
What is recommended for system tests and where do I get it? ANything on aminet to try?

Even Doom runs pretty good in AGA and 320x200 (adoom), though maxing out the screen size isn't a good idea. But even reduced a tiny bit, it runs great. Better than my friends old 386 back in the day


The 3.1 ROMs were kind of a bitch. The first one clicked in pretty good... then I realized only one row of legs were in the socket, the other was sitting neatly... all outside the socket. Took a bit of messing around.

I guess I'll hang on to the spare card just in case I finally get another 1200
Title: Re: My 1230/56 from amigakit arrived today!
Post by: runequester on December 25, 2010, 06:12:52 AM
Alright, ran tests with AIBB

Not too sure what some of these tests indicate, so just reproducing the numbers here

For comparison, I included the numbers given for an A4000 in parenthesis, which the system assumes is the 040, with 4 megs fast RAM added.
EDIT: These numbers are all in comparison to a stock A600.

Linetest - 2.53 (1.87)

Savage test - 13.51 (a4000 14.x1)

Fmath test - 11.67 (16.18)

Fmatrix test - 13.64 (11.45)

Beachball - 16.07 (18.69)

InstTest 14.24 (10.05)

Flops - 13.3 (16.92)

Trantest - 13.89 (15.18)

Ftrace - 13.61 (15.58)

Cplxtest - 12.94 (15.28)

Ellipsetest - 7.64 (5.46)

Matrix - 15.18 (12.17)

Imath - 15.7 (17.15)

Memtest 15 (3.48)

TGtest 4.44 (3.81)

Emutest 13.28 (16.72)

Writepixel 8.72 (15.33)

Sieve 15.6 (10.54)

Dhrystone 14.53 (19.2)

Sort 16.21 (19.52)


Looks like this card is pretty close to an A4000 in several areas, overtaking it in some. Not shabby for a little 1200 :)

My conclusion would probably be, if you already got an 040 or 060 card, you may not benefit from this. If you need an accelerator, get this for sure. Especially at the price given.


Had some trouble with sysinfo, but I'll keep messing with it
Title: Re: My 1230/56 from amigakit arrived today!
Post by: Buzzfuzz on December 25, 2010, 10:26:07 AM
One of our Dutch forum members tested the disk speed when he turned on all the cache with the ACA tune tool, these were the results:
 
PCMCIA CF 3,7 MB/sec
CF Internal 2,1 MB/sec
 
That is a lot faster than with a Blizzard 1230 :)
Title: Re: My 1230/56 from amigakit arrived today!
Post by: runequester on December 30, 2010, 06:59:40 AM
As an update, I just installed Genetic Species today. I can't run it at the highest res, as it gets pretty choppy, but reduce it one or two steps, and it runs really smooth, even with AGA.

Aaaaawesome :)
Title: Re: My 1230/56 from amigakit arrived today!
Post by: koshman on December 30, 2010, 07:24:00 AM
Btw, try DoomAttack instead of ADoom, it runs much faster.
Title: Re: My 1230/56 from amigakit arrived today!
Post by: runequester on December 30, 2010, 07:29:00 AM
Quote from: koshman;602806
Btw, try DoomAttack instead of ADoom, it runs much faster.


I'll check it out. Last I tried, I ran into trouble with the stack size. Any short pointers on how to increase it?
Title: Re: My 1230/56 from amigakit arrived today!
Post by: amiga1260 on December 30, 2010, 07:57:36 AM
These test results:

PCMCIA CF 3,7 MB/sec
CF Internal 2,1 MB/sec

are tested on an ACA630/30 MHz
Title: Re: My 1230/56 from amigakit arrived today!
Post by: fishy_fiz on December 30, 2010, 08:19:55 AM
Quote from: runequester;602808
I'll check it out. Last I tried, I ran into trouble with the stack size. Any short pointers on how to increase it?



Sorry if Im stating the obvious here, but Im not sure what else you could mean (must admit Im surprised there's anyone with an expanded amiga who's not painfully aware of how to increase stack size (I say painfully aware 'cos its pretty much essential to use regularly))....

anyway, to increase stack size simply change it in icon information. If there's no icon use a shell and simply type "stack 999999" (replace number with the size of stack you'd like, as a rough idea use about 64KB (65536) per 1 meg of executable size,.... there's no actual rule here, I only suggest these numbers to show that typically the bigger and more hardware intensive a program is the bigger the stack size you'll want. Also make sure you set the stack just before you launch the binary, and also launch binary from shell if stack is set from there (the stack wont apply for example if you set a stack from shell and then launch an icon).
I hope this is of use to you  :)

p.s. congrats on your purchase, Im living vicariously and even I find it exciting to hear about new classic hardware :)
Title: Re: My 1230/56 from amigakit arrived today!
Post by: runequester on December 30, 2010, 08:35:23 AM
Quote from: fishy_fiz;602814
Sorry if Im stating the obvious here, but Im not sure what else you could mean (must admit Im surprised there's anyone with an expanded amiga who's not painfully aware of how to increase stack size (I say painfully aware 'cos its pretty much essential to use regularly))....

anyway, to increase stack size simply change it in icon information. If there's no icon use a shell and simply type "stack 999999" (replace number with the size of stack you'd like, as a rough idea use about 64KB (65536) per 1 meg of executable size,.... there's no actual rule here, I only suggest these numbers to show that typically the bigger and more hardware intensive a program is the bigger the stack size you'll want. Also make sure you set the stack just before you launch the binary, and also launch binary from shell if stack is set from there (the stack wont apply for example if you set a stack from shell and then launch an icon).
I hope this is of use to you  :)

p.s. congrats on your purchase, Im living vicariously and even I find it exciting to hear about new classic hardware :)


Thanks :) Believe it or not, I haven't come across a need to mess with stack size much yet.

Was aware of how to do it from an icon, but not from shell, so thats good to know.
Title: Re: My 1230/56 from amigakit arrived today!
Post by: whabang on December 30, 2010, 01:03:59 PM
Tried Genetic Species? It's fairly quick iirc, so I assume it will run fairly well. :)
Title: Re: My 1230/56 from amigakit arrived today!
Post by: cv643d on December 30, 2010, 02:45:49 PM
You should see those games even with a standard 50MHz 060 :)
Title: Re: My 1230/56 from amigakit arrived today!
Post by: gertsy on January 20, 2011, 12:59:17 PM
I see they are in stock again..   http://amigakit.leamancomputing.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=1005
Tempting.........

Runequester what does this line mean ? "The internally facing side of A1200 plastic trapdoor cover will have to be slightly modified if you intend to replace it once the accelerator is installed."
Title: Re: My 1230/56 from amigakit arrived today!
Post by: x56h34 on January 20, 2011, 02:09:34 PM
Sounds to me like the plastic of the trapdoor cover needs to trimmed down / filed a little bit, so that when you close it, it can close and stay flush with the rest of the A1200 case.

I remember having to do this for GVP1230 accelerator also.
Title: Re: My 1230/56 from amigakit arrived today!
Post by: mingle on January 20, 2011, 02:16:33 PM
Just wondering...

If the 1230/56 doesn't have  an FPU, would a Blizzard 1230 (with FPU) be faster when running an FPU specific version of Doom?

Mike.
Title: Re: My 1230/56 from amigakit arrived today!
Post by: Dwyloc on January 20, 2011, 02:55:46 PM
@mingle
Only if you write a version of DOOM that uses the FPU as DOOM does not make use of floating point maths. :-)

Quake1 is a different matter and dose use floating point maths and so requires a CPU with an FPU but as an 030 would not be upto running quake1 if Clickbooms Quake port running on my 040 card is anything to go by.
Title: Re: My 1230/56 from amigakit arrived today!
Post by: Iggy on January 20, 2011, 02:57:47 PM
Wow! I haven't been paying enough attention to this accelerator. A 56Mhz '030? I didn't even know such creatures existed.
Frankly, while I'm impressed with the '060, it sounds like the performance and compatibility offered by this accelerator should be excellent.
Thanks for posting the benchmarks.
Title: Re: My 1230/56 from amigakit arrived today!
Post by: runequester on January 20, 2011, 04:02:43 PM
Quote from: gertsy;607860
I see they are in stock again..   http://amigakit.leamancomputing.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=1005
Tempting.........

Runequester what does this line mean ? "The internally facing side of A1200 plastic trapdoor cover will have to be slightly modified if you intend to replace it once the accelerator is installed."


yeah, basically you'll have to chip down the trapdoor cover a bit. My old accelerator didn't allow the cover to be on either.
Title: Re: My 1230/56 from amigakit arrived today!
Post by: B00tDisk on January 20, 2011, 04:15:22 PM
Quote from: Dwyloc;607877
Quake1 is a different matter and dose use floating point maths and so requires a CPU with an FPU but as an 030 would not be upto running quake1 if Clickbooms Quake port running on my 040 card is anything to go by.


Running Quake 1 on any 68k Amiga is an exercise in futility.  WinUAE notwithstanding, of course!

However, DoomAttack - now there's a port!
Title: Re: My 1230/56 from amigakit arrived today!
Post by: ddniUK on January 20, 2011, 06:08:13 PM
I beg to differ!

Quake I on Amiga http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ao7haFa2iQk
Quake II on Amiga http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PHWlIgvHsaE
Title: Re: My 1230/56 from amigakit arrived today!
Post by: desiv on January 20, 2011, 06:17:27 PM
Quote from: gertsy;607860
..."The internally facing side of A1200 plastic trapdoor cover will have to be slightly modified if you intend to replace it once the accelerator is installed."
It's this..

http://eab.abime.net/showpost.php?p=719911&postcount=893

Just a little bit of grinding down an edge with a dremmel..
(Haven't done this yet for my cover...)

desiv