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Amiga computer related discussion => Amiga Hardware Issues and discussion => Topic started by: AmigaBruno on September 13, 2015, 03:14:21 PM
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This new accelerator for the A1200 (and A500 with adaptor) was only released on September 3, but it was possible to pre order it. I was considering getting one, but I was worried about how long it might take to arrive, especially due to all the pre orders, as well as the release date being delayed from September 1.
I eventually got some games installed under WHDload, then I was desperate to get a RAM upgrade from 2Mb to 4Mb, so I got a 2Mb MELcard, which enables most WHDload games I've installed to run.
I'm still considering buying an ACA 1221 accelerator. I'd like to know first of all, if anyone on here has actually received one of these, when they ordered it, when it arrived, and what they've done with it since then. I'm not interested in comments such as "everything's much faster now!"
One of my ambitions with the Amiga right from the beginning was to create some raytraced scenes, but unfortunately I found out it was so complicated that I never managed it. Apart from raytracing, what can you do with the ACA 1221 accelerator? I'm not really interested in first person shooters, or using OS 4.1. IMHO any AmigaOS later than 3.9 or even 3.5 doesn't look or feel like the Amiga. Of course I know that AmigaOS 4.X requires a PPC CPU, which this accelerator hasn't got. As for Digita Office, why would I need to use it? A possible use might be photo editing, where if a pic taken on a modern is 5Mb or more, then obviously I couldn't even load it onto an Amiga with only 4Mb. Obviously, Photoshop, the GIMP, and Paint Shop Pro are crap. Give me Deluxe Paint or Personal Paint any day!
BTW, if someone could recommend an easy to understand tutorial about getting started with raytracing, then that would be great!
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Raytracing with any 68k (even 060) is a very slow process. On Amiga, in my opinion, Lightwave 3d is the most user friendly and most powerful 3d sw. There are a lot of LW tutorials on YT which will help you start with modelling and setting up scenes. But again, rendering anything on a 020 will take very,very long time even at very low resolutions. Back in the 1995 (with Appolo 060 66mhz) or so it took me weeks to render a few seconds at today's preview resolutions :).
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You can try Real3D for start and move to Lightwave.
Real3D is more primitive but also much easier to use.That said it takes
about 2 days to render full picture in super high res laced (:P) on 020
28Mhz so you can try and make scenes on Amiga and use WinUAE for
rendering.
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I ordered one and it took a day and a half to arrive. As default it arrived with just 1mb accessable, I used te addmem prog to access the other 8mb. I have not paid anymore for any extra features. I have had not problems with the card but I have only been using it for Whdload games. It's nice to have a new card at a good price with a warranty.
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I bought one and I unlocked everything. I had some issue with resetting my Amiga 1200 with the ACA 1221. I solved the problem with using other Amiga 1200 with timing fix.
You can do some raytracing, Image processing, Word processing with this card.
You have to buy the the license codes for overclocking 28 MHz and 64 MB for the first two things, but will be slow. The best option to have more fun is getting a Blizzard 1230 IV with FPU.
Maprom will help you to use other ROM. You could softkick 3.1 when you have 3.0.
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Raytracing with any 68k (even 060) is a very slow process. On Amiga, in my opinion, Lightwave 3d is the most user friendly and most powerful 3d sw. There are a lot of LW tutorials on YT which will help you start with modelling and setting up scenes. But again, rendering anything on a 020 will take very,very long time even at very low resolutions. Back in the 1995 (with Appolo 060 66mhz) or so it took me weeks to render a few seconds at today's preview resolutions :).
Obviously people managed to do raytracing even on an A500 with a 68000 and 1Mb. What is YT? It took you weeks "to render a few seconds"? Where do the seconds come in? It sounds like you mean some kind of animation. I never asked anything about an animation. I meant raytracing a single picture. This could be 320x200 in 4,096 colour HAM mode.
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You can try Real3D for start and move to Lightwave.
Real3D is more primitive but also much easier to use.That said it takes
about 2 days to render full picture in super high res laced (:P) on 020
28Mhz so you can try and make scenes on Amiga and use WinUAE for
rendering.
I'd still need a tutorial to use it. I never said anything about super hires laced pictures. I'd like to produce any raytraced picture at all. This could be 320x200 in 4,096 colour HAM mode.
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I bought one and I unlocked everything. I had some issue with resetting my Amiga 1200 with the ACA 1221. I solved the problem with using other Amiga 1200 with timing fix.
You can do some raytracing, Image processing, Word processing with this card.
You have to buy the the license codes for overclocking 28 MHz and 64 MB for the first two things, but will be slow. The best option to have more fun is getting a Blizzard 1230 IV with FPU.
Maprom will help you to use other ROM. You could softkick 3.1 when you have 3.0.
Oh dear! The timing fix which I've heard of before. What exactly is this? Is there any way I can find out if my A1200 needs a timing fix before I buy the ACA 1221 accelerator? Unfortunately, there's no way I can afford a Blizzard 1230 IV with FPU.
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Obviously people managed to do raytracing even on an A500 with a 68000 and 1Mb. What is YT? It took you weeks "to render a few seconds"? Where do the seconds come in? It sounds like you mean some kind of animation. I never asked anything about an animation. I meant raytracing a single picture. This could be 320x200 in 4,096 colour HAM mode.
YT-Youtube....
I never said it cant be done, its just painfully slow. If you want to render single frames with not too much polygons and low resolution, sure you can do it on almost any machine.
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I'd still need a tutorial to use it.
I never said anything about super hires laced pictures. I'd like
to produce any raytraced picture at all. This could be
320x200 in 4,096 colour HAM mode.
Real3D and Imagine are pretty easy to use.Maybe like DPaints of
Raytracing , just draw shapes , play around with texture a bit and
it's there.Problem is getting fast preview , if you had 060 it wouldn't
be.And yes , single pictures take a lot of time too.
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It's impossible to know if your Amiga 1200 needs a timing fix. The only way to know if you need a timing fix, is buy the ACA 1221 and test it.
If the Amiga 1200 crashinig the whole time with the ACA 1221, then you need to the timing fix.
Here is the link about Timing fix and read about ACA 1230.
http://www.ianstedman.co.uk/Amiga/amiga_hacks/A1200_Mobo_fix/a1200_mobo_fix.html
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It's impossible to know if your Amiga 1200 needs a timing fix. The only way to know if you need a timing fix, is buy the ACA 1221 and test it.
If the Amiga 1200 crashinig the whole time with the ACA 1221, then you need to the timing fix.
Here is the link about Timing fix and read about ACA 1230.
http://www.ianstedman.co.uk/Amiga/amiga_hacks/A1200_Mobo_fix/a1200_mobo_fix.html
It's sounding more and more like a bad idea getting the ACA 1221 accelerator. I certainly couldn't perform those modifications myself. I don't want to be without my A1200 for any length of time while Amigakit fix it either.
I suppose any accelerator with extra RAM would enable me to create long animations, but then again I haven't created many animations at all. As for connecting my A1200 to the Internet, I don't need to connect it to the Internet, because that's about communications, not about computing, meaning working things out and creating things by working them out. Years ago, I used to connect to BBSs using Amigas and a dial up modem, but there aren't any BBSs left which you can connect to like that, only simulated BBSs on the Internet.
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Any of the ACA accelerators will most likely require the timing fixes. If you don't want to do them your better bet would be to acquire a 1990's-era accelerator from ebay or Amibay. SMDH. :(
I used to do 3D modeling in the early 1990's with a 1MB A500 and the shareware "3D Master" program, which I liked so much I registered. It would take 20 hours to render one frame at 320x400xHAM. Totally worth it to me, back then! :D
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Any of the ACA accelerators will most likely require the timing fixes. If you don't want to do them your better bet would be to acquire a 1990's-era accelerator from ebay or Amibay. SMDH. :(
I used to do 3D modeling in the early 1990's with a 1MB A500 and the shareware "3D Master" program, which I liked so much I registered. It would take 20 hours to render one frame at 320x400xHAM. Totally worth it to me, back then! :D
OK, so now we're getting somewhere! Although there's no way of knowing whether or not my particular A1200 would require a timing fix, for some reason still unknown to me, a 1990's accelerator wouldn't require this fix.
Apart from that, if I can find a copy of "3D Master", and if I'm happy with a resolution of 320x400 original HAM mode, then although I doubt I can still register it, this might be able to render one frame overnight in about 10 hours, because your 320x400 HAM pics took 20 hours.
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Render time will depend on sw used, number of objects (number of polygons), textures, details used (reflections, transparency, refraction etc.), number of lights etc.... Having a FPU will speed up your render time with most 3d packages. So if you are planning to get an accelerator and use it for 3d rendering, try to find one with a FPU and a fastest CPU as possible. I would still recommend to start with LW 5 since you can find a lot of tutorials and learn from them. Real3d, Imagine, Cinema4d etc... are also ok but there are not that many tutorials around....LW has the best features also and is still around (not on Amiga of course....).
Ps.
The biggest problem with long (overnight) rendering is that you will in the morning see the mistake you have made in modeling or scene setup and have to start the render process all over again.... finding your Amiga has crashed the next morning :)
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Rendering on the Amiga 68xxx is like cleaning New York city with a tooth brush! Its possible, but i wouldnt recommend it!
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OK, so now we're getting somewhere! Although there's no way of knowing whether or not my particular A1200 would require a timing fix, for some reason still unknown to me, a 1990's accelerator wouldn't require this fix.
Apart from that, if I can find a copy of "3D Master", and if I'm happy with a resolution of 320x400 original HAM mode, then although I doubt I can still register it, this might be able to render one frame overnight in about 10 hours, because your 320x400 HAM pics took 20 hours.
Not all 1990 accelerators are safe either. If you want to be sure then your only real bet is one of the blizzard accelerators. These had a buffered interface, I believe, which means that any timing issues would be taken care of by the card. The Apollo's and these new accelerators do not have this, which makes them faster but less stable
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Years ago I bought a Blizzard 1230IV card, but in my A1200 crashes every time. I traveled 3 hours to the Amiga Store to swap for another card and that one still works to day with other A1200's in my collection.
@Bruno: you could look for a friend with solder skills or repair shop in the neighbourhood to do the timing fix.
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I bought one and I unlocked everything. I had some issue with resetting my Amiga 1200 with the ACA 1221. I solved the problem with using other Amiga 1200 with timing fix.
You can do some raytracing, Image processing, Word processing with this card.
You have to buy the the license codes for overclocking 28 MHz and 64 MB for the first two things, but will be slow. The best option to have more fun is getting a Blizzard 1230 IV with FPU.
Maprom will help you to use other ROM. You could softkick 3.1 when you have 3.0.
I have since heard from Amigakit that this accelerator has an Async mode which reduces but doesn't completely overcome problems which would otherwise require a timing fix. Please will you try that in your other A1200 and report back to me?
Some good news is that, after lots of error messages from WHDload telling me that my kick40068 image was invalid, I managed to grab the ROM image from WinUAE and found out that it worked! Not all games I've installed so far will run, but it's difficult to work out which ones need more than 4Mb RAM. A common error message is "Can't allocate ExpMem", while some games where the readme file says they require more than 4Mb will actually run in 4Mb. The first game I ran with the new ROM image was "Der Clou"/The Clue, but the screen kept going black, while on later attempts it didn't run at all.
I'm disappointed that lots of features are disabled and require more money to unlock. This practice was criticised on PCs with certain CPUs and I think some people were claiming it was against the law.
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You could buy an 8mb fast ram card with fpu from ebay or something, but they tend to be just as expensive as a the ACA1220. If you do go that route, double check there's an fpu and oscillator installed as those types of cards usually sold without fpu. It's going to be slow though, but if speed is not an issue then that's nice for you. People are so impatient these days.
Also, you can't use the pcmcia card slot without jumpering the ram to 4mb on the trapdoor card. This isn't an issue on real accelerator cards (with cpu, such as any of the Blizzards/Apollo's/ACA etc.).
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On the website http://whdload.de/ you could search the game and read the readme of the game which will stated how much memory it needed.
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On the website http://whdload.de/ you could search the game and read the readme of the game which will stated how much memory it needed.
That's great! There was no other list of the RAM requirements which I could find.
I'm still interested in hearing more about the ACA 1221 accelerator, and not how I should buy a Blizzard accelerator I can't afford. I've got enough expenses already.
BTW, after visiting http://www.whdload.de I somehow ended up on Hall of Light http://hol.abime.net/ which I'd heard of before, but this time I noticed they have scans of games manuals. I searched for strategy games, then I downloaded and read the manual for the German language "Hanse: Die Expedition", which is about trading under the medieval Hanseatic League. I had already installed the game, but didn't understand all the controls. Has anyone on here played it?
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That's great! There was no other list of the RAM requirements which I could find.
I'm still interested in hearing more about the ACA 1221 accelerator, and not how I should buy a Blizzard accelerator I can't afford. I've got enough expenses already.
BTW, after visiting www.whdload.de (http://www.whdload.de) I somehow ended up on Hall of Light http://hol.abime.net/ which I'd heard of before, but this time I noticed they have scans of games manuals. I searched for strategy games, then I downloaded and read the manual for the German language "Hanse: Die Expedition", which is about trading under the medieval Hanseatic League. I had already installed the game, but didn't understand all the controls. Has anyone on here played it?
But I thought you had already worked out that you could not either afford the timing fixes or be able to do them yourself so that rules out the ACA accelerator ???
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But I thought you had already worked out that you could not either afford the timing fixes or be able to do them yourself so that rules out the ACA accelerator ???
ROFL. Sounds to me like OP needs to get a second job if he wants to do it right. Amiga is not a cheap hobby... unless you're lucky like that guy a few years back who was walking down an alley and tripped over a bunch of 4000T's! :lol:
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ROFL. Sounds to me like OP needs to get a second job if he wants to do it right. Amiga is not a cheap hobby... unless you're lucky like that guy a few years back who was walking down an alley and tripped over a bunch of 4000T's! :lol:
There was an even luckier chap who walked right past them.
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BTW, is the aca2000 dead?
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I found a list of memory usage of WHDLOAD games:
http://www.amigang.fr/whdload-memory-usage.html
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BTW, is the aca2000 dead?
If Jens is focused on the Amiga Reloaded now, probably. :(
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A2000s need love, too. :(
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A2000s need love, too. :(
sure right after Jens promised ACA1000 ;)
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Just FYI... if anyone's interested, I would say this is the official Jens ACA1221 informational thread over at EAB. :) The fun starts here on page 14. Geeeez, I feel sorry for anyone looking for an accelerator these days. :(
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Geeeez, I feel sorry for anyone looking for an accelerator these days. :(
You ready to sell me that '060 board of yours, yet? ;)
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You ready to sell me that '060 board of yours, yet? ;)
(https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/d0/6e/c8/d06ec8f226be14c64ef9158a1f635a49.jpg)
:lol::lol::lol::lol::lol::lol:
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Understood. I'll ask you again next week. ;)
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If Jens is focused on the Amiga Reloaded now, probably. :(
Nooo!!! Maybe we should start some kind of petition.
'C'mon Jens, seriously. The ACA2000 is the most important piece of hardware you will ever produce.'
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Nooo!!! Maybe we should start some kind of petition.
'C'mon Jens, seriously. The ACA2000 is the most important piece of hardware you will ever produce.'
Not to sound too negative, but read some of his comments on the other forums. You really think he'd care about a petition? Old saying, "money talks, bs walks". Try writing him a sizable check? Even then I don't know if he'd care. *sigh*
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no, true. I was only joking about the petition part. It is a shame, but the world keeps on turning.
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sure right after Jens promised ACA1000 ;)
Yup, I say these ACA boards should be released in the same order the Amiga models were released :D. I have an A1000 and A2000 and could care less about an ACA2000, lots of ways to expand one already, not much available for the A1000. I also figured these are probably dead after reading about his latest project so not holding out hope.