Amiga.org
Amiga computer related discussion => Amiga Hardware Issues and discussion => Topic started by: J-Golden on March 19, 2012, 07:58:29 PM
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I vaguely remembered an Accel. for the A2000 that was so awesome I had to have it. Back in the day when I had four or five A2000s I drooled over the specs and dreamed of getting this uber card that had stuff like Networking, high end video card, etc. etc...
Looking now over the BBOAH I was starting to think I was hallucinating because I could never find it. Well, my problem was that I thought it was either a GVP or DCE/Phase-5 product when it was the...
DKB WILDFIRE!!!!
DROOL!!!!!!
So who out there has one? How well does it work? Do you have the Inferno Graphics card also? I no longer have anything with an A2000 CPU slot, but I'd love to hear how this thing works!:insane:
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Pssh. I think that prototype PPC card for the Phase5 060 A2000 accelerator is the end all be all of the 2000 accelerators. ;P
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That thing is crazy awesome! How hard would it be to make a card like this today with 128MB on the board with a 100baseT attached and, heck, no scsi but a decent IDE? Heck - throw a USB on there for good measure.
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That thing is crazy awesome! How hard would it be to make a card like this today with 128MB on the board with a 100baseT attached and, heck, no scsi but a decent IDE? Heck - throw a USB on there for good measure.
Right?!?! How cool would THAT be!!!!!!
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I do not think that the Inferno video card has been produced for real.
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Forget IDE, nowadays all drives are SATA, wouldn't it be cool to be able to use modern drives?
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Forget IDE, nowadays all drives are SATA, wouldn't it be cool to be able to use modern drives?
Oh yeah, I didn't want to set my pipe-dream TOO high :lol:
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All things are possible if you have the technical talent and LOTS of money :)
Just make that LOTS and LOTS of money which you will never get a profit return on making retro cards for vintage computers.... ah but we can dream!
I would like to see a true CHEAP zorro network card, nothing fancy just one 10/100 rj45 port that I can setup in either A3000 or A2000 !!
That is my Christmas wish :)
Az
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Getting back on topic (I tangented too :crazy: ) Does anyone have one of these? Can they give a review of it's performance?
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Getting back on topic (I tangented too :crazy: ) Does anyone have one of these? Can they give a review of it's performance?
I always kept my eyes open looking for one of these DKB WildFire cards for the A2000, when I was searching eBay every day for months and years and collecting hundreds of Amiga items and dozens of Amiga systems. I think I only ever saw one auction for one of them, but I did not win and IIRC, it sold for an outrageous amount.
They must be very rare. I would like to know if the Inferno video card for it was ever produced. I don't think it was, but there might have been one, or two prototype Inferno cards made.
I hope you find a member here who has one of these cards and can share their experiences with it and it's performance.
I agree that it would be great to see Jens Schoenfeld create something similar, but I don't know if Jens will ever produce an accelerator for the A2000 processor slot. It would be great to have a combination accelerator/USB controller/Ethernet RJ45 port/SATA controller card for the A2000 processor slot. It would be even better if it had a connector to add a custom RTG card that is comparable to some of the best Graphics cards currently supported by OS4.x, or MorphOS2.x, or AROS.
If it had all those things, it would basically be a new computer system on a card that plugged into the A2000 processor slot only to add the Custom Chipset to the card, so the A2000 is basically just a dongle to connect the Amiga's custom chips to the system on a card.
I doubt anyone will ever make such a expensive and complicated card, but it certainly is possible to do, with enough money and talent to design it.
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I agree that it would be great to see Jens Schoenfeld create something similar, but I don't know if Jens will ever produce an accelerator for the A2000 processor slot.
Jens already has plans for an A2000 cpu card! IIRC he is basing it on his new A500 cpu card design or something..
Oh and about the Wildfire, didnt it have a network port on board as well? The funny thing is the last Big US Amiga show I went to in 2000 there was a rumour that Dean K Brown was lurking around in secret! (LOL for real the GVP guy used to do that to, because if any of the Amigans knew they were there every single one of them would bug the guy about hardware)
I think I may have somewhat of a rare card in my A2000. Its a VECTOR 030 w/16mb Ram and SCSI.
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They are worth nothing. In fact if anybody has one (or more) just send it to me so that i can enjoy... errr I mean dispose of it properly :P
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I have this GVP in my 2000... It is in there.. bit dusty though. Not the one you mentioned I don't think.
http://www.commodore-amiga-retro.com/amiga/a_scuzz_nov26/a_scuzz_nov2005_249.jpg
http://www.commodore-amiga-retro.com/amiga/a_scuzz_nov26/a_scuzz_nov2005_248.jpg
It also has this...
http://www.commodore-amiga-retro.com/amiga/a_scuzz_nov26/a_scuzz_nov2005_247.jpg
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Jens already has plans for an A2000 cpu card! IIRC he is basing it on his new A500 cpu card design or something..
Oh, if this ever happened it might give me the incentive to bring my A2000 out of mothballs again (but it would have to be at least an 040 and have access to 128MB RAM and onboard SCSI or IDE to make it woth not just using the accelerators already available).
I have one of those Vectors too (hence the Jens Accelerator needing to be better than this for me to buy it). Can the Vector run with OS3.9 (I read somewhere it couldn't).
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I vaguely remembered an Accel. for the A2000 that was so awesome I had to have it. Back in the day when I had four or five A2000s I drooled over the specs and dreamed of getting this uber card that had stuff like Networking, high end video card, etc. etc...
Looking now over the BBOAH I was starting to think I was hallucinating because I could never find it. Well, my problem was that I thought it was either a GVP or DCE/Phase-5 product when it was the...
DKB WILDFIRE!!!!
DROOL!!!!!!
So who out there has one? How well does it work? Do you have the Inferno Graphics card also? I no longer have anything with an A2000 CPU slot, but I'd love to hear how this thing works!:insane:
I have a DKB Wildfire 060, its really fast. I made a Speedtest. Its as fast as the CS MKIII 060 with 64 Bit interleaved Ram. Round 20% faster than a Blizzard 2060.
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When I finally moved from my A1000 which I spent a small fortune on to upgrade it to a Spirit Insider 1.5mb RAM board, internal 105mb IDE hard drive, DKB Shuffle board which allows the first external floppy disk to be recognized as DF0:, because the internal 3.5" hard drive is placed in the space where the internal floppy was located. An AdIDE and a DKB KwikStart Kickstart ROM switcher. I think I spent over $2,000 in add-on's on that A1000. Anyway, when I moved from my A1000 to an A2000 the company where I worked offered free interest loans for computer equipment up to $3,000, as long as the computer equipment was compatible with the software used at the office. Since I did not own any Windows PC yet at that time, I submitted the application form with a Goldengate Bridgeboard, Vector 68030/33MHz accelerator, DKB MegaChip 2mb Chip RAM expansion, DCTV, VLab single frame video capture card, Video Director video recorder controller via Amiga serial port, AdPro image manipulation software, and a few more software titles that I can't remember all the names of. I maxed out the loan amount, plus some, I think the total purchase of gear and software came to $3,065 when I was done and all of it except one or two items was purchased from Creative Computers in Santa Monica, California, where I drove to the store to pick all of it up in person after ordering it by phone. All I had to do was explain that the Bridgeboard allowed me to run Windows3.11 and WordPerfect6 and they approved the rest of the Amiga stuff on the list for the loan. It was great to have all that gear at one time and only have to pay about $50 every two weeks to repay the loan.
That A2000 with the Vector accelerator was a lot of fun, but I do remember that the Vector SCSI had a couple of quirks that made it incompatible with other SCSI controllers, or drives that had been formatted by other SCSI controllers. I used that A2000 a lot before I began to get too busy with work and family and stopped using my Amiga every day, as I finally bought a Windows laptop and began using that for all of my email and web browsing, plus a little work that I would bring home.
The Vector was nice, but it was different than the GVP combo accelerator/SCSI/RAM expansion cards.
@Magnetic,
Do you have any links to information about Jens doing an A2000 accelerator slot card, or is he instead planning an A500 accelerator that plugs into the 68000 chip socket that will also fit into the A2000? The old Derringer accelerators are designed that way to work in both an A500 and A2000 by plugging into the 68000 chip socket. I even saw one person who modified his CDTV case, so that he could use his Derringer accelerator in his CDTV.
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I have a DKB Wildfire 060, its really fast. I made a Speedtest. Its as fast as the CS MKIII 060 with 64 Bit interleaved Ram. Round 20% faster than a Blizzard 2060.
I have a GVP TekMagic 060 for my A2000, but I have not used it in many months. I would like to compare benchmarks against your DKB Wildfire 060.
I know that your Wildfire is probably faster, but I would like to find out how much faster. Can you tell me where to find the benchmark test programs you used and what your results are for the Wildfire?
You can email me the benchmark programs, if that is easier than trying to remember where you downloaded them from. My email address is the same as my user name here at earthlink.net.
IIRC, I have a 10k rpm 9gb SCSI drive on my GVP TekMagic card, so you should let me know what type and speed of hard drive you are using on your Wildfire, if we are going to compare benchmarks.
Edit: Do you use the Wildfire's Ethernet connection to network your A2000, or to connect it to the Internet? You are a very lucky Amiga user to own such a rare and great performing A2000 accelerator. Did you buy it new, or did you get it used from another user? I wonder how many were made and sold. They are very rare, or appear to be, as you are the only person I know of that has one and during approx. ten years of searching for one on eBay, I have only ever seen one of them for auction or sale. It is pure gold to A2000 fanatics. I like all Amiga models, but have a special fondness for the A1000 and A2000, as those are the two models that I have used the most extensively and modified the most with extra hardware.
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SWEET!
How does it hold up with older programs? Gurus? What about the networking and the Inferno. DO you have any feel for those one way or another?
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And i have here a Blizzard 2060@50MHz. Include me in your benchmark contest :-)
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SWEET!
How does it hold up with older programs? Gurus? What about the networking and the Inferno. DO you have any feel for those one way or another?
Like one of the other members stated, I don't think the Inferno video card ever was produced, but I might be wrong. If it was produced, I would like to see one and read about it's performance compared to other Amiga RTG video cards.
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perhaps some prototype - ever seen just a coarse tiny pic of Inferno in the net.
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Dave happy reading :)
http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=57410&highlight=a500+accelerator
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I always kept my eyes open looking for one of these DKB WildFire cards for the A2000, when I was searching eBay every day for months and years and collecting hundreds of Amiga items and dozens of Amiga systems. I think I only ever saw one auction for one of them, but I did not win and IIRC, it sold for an outrageous amount.
They must be very rare. I would like to know if the Inferno video card for it was ever produced. I don't think it was, but there might have been one, or two prototype Inferno cards made.
Most of the better DKB cards are quite rare. I have a 2632 memory card for the 2630 in my A2500 and I've only seen 1 other on eBay in the last few years. The 3128 zorro III memory card is equally rare. I've never seen a Wildfire for sale ever. I've only seen ads for it in old issues of Amiga World.
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Dave happy reading :)
http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=57410&highlight=a500+accelerator
So, as I suspected, Jens design is designed to attach via the 68000 chip socket in the A500, A2000 and A1000, but will not fit on the CDTV. The design will include an adapter that will allow any A1200 accelerator, or other trap door expansion to be connected to Jens A500 020 accelerator/RAM expansion.
Jens does not appear to have any intentions to create an A2000 processor slot accelerator, unless it is something that I have not read any news about.
Maybe he has written something in German on the 1k.org forum site?
I doubt it though, as I don't think there are any card edge connectors for the A2000's processor slot anymore.
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on the 1k.org forum site?
I doubt it though, as I don't think there are any card edge connectors for the A2000's processor slot anymore.
A2000 processor slot connectors are simple flat edge connectors like ISA or PCI cards (although they may have a different number of contacts per inch). So I don't think it would be hard to make them. You could even just incorporate them into the rest of the etching done on the circuit board by the factory.
The A3000/4000 connectors are the hard to find ones, I believe.
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A2000 processor slot connectors are simple flat edge connectors like ISA or PCI cards (although they may have a different number of contacts per inch). So I don't think it would be hard to make them. You could even just incorporate them into the rest of the etching done on the circuit board by the factory.
The A3000/4000 connectors are the hard to find ones, I believe.
That's why the A2000 design is far better than the A3000/A4000. Vertical boards that hold in place fine, and no false contact and badly inserted cards.
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Yeah A2000s are the easiest amiga to work on by far. I hate working on a3000s. The 4000D can be a PITA too if you have to service the Floppy.