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Amiga computer related discussion => General chat about Amiga topics => Topic started by: x56h34 on April 27, 2004, 06:42:30 PM
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What is everyone's favorite classic Amiga expansion hardware?
I'll start:
Amiga 1200D:
Blizzard 1230-IV with SCSI-IV kit.
It is the best upgrade one could get for a non-towerised original desktop unit, as it provides you with a decent accelerator, DMA SCSI, and ram upgrade, and it runs cooler than the bigger brothers, when used in desktop case (B1240/B1260). It provides a nice speed-up compared to stock units, and since you will be stuck with AGA, I don't think one should go with B1240/B1260 in this case as it will provide little improvement over 030 (speed wise) when using AGA and OS3.x, and they definitely generate more heat. OK, there will be some noticeable improvement of course, but the real power of 040 and 060 comes to light when using them with a graphics card. That's when you notice some significant difference. ;-)
Amiga 3000/4000:
Cyberstorm MK2 and above.
You have Zorro slots. You can install a graphics card, so why not complement your big box Amiga with a nice 040/060 accelerator. I would say that Cyberstorm MK2 would be a good place to start, as it is very reliable and much better than its predecessor MK1, and if you want SCSI you can attach it, and of course the later models MK3 and PPC only add more spice to an already established well made design.
The second pick for A3000/A4000 would be various PCI busboards (they are all very good, IMO), but the crown of course goes to the Mediator, as far as elegance and software support go.
Well, I could name plenty of more stuff, but I will leave that to other posters. :-)
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A1000. Not used in many many years of course. But you never forget your first love.
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I meant to say favorite "expansion" hardware, and not an actual Amiga system. Let me update the topic subject.
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Well... I really like my mediator. :-D
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BlizzardPPC was my best buy ever. :-D
Other favorite expansions are (were! :-)) BVisionPPC, Blizzard 1230-IV and of course almighty 512kB RAM expansion for my Amiga 500.
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Well, there are 3 things that can make an amiga fly!
1st: A blizzard 1230IV with 16 MB ram (i will never forget that day i put one on my a1200....)
2nd: A hard drive (I'll never forget that day either...)
3rd: A cd-rom. This one reaaly makes things better, not only because you can have a backup of your system in 1 and only cd (and not 100s of disks :P )but also because you can transfer files from a pc/mac with ease without worrying about filesizes anymore!
P.S. If you also connect a multiscan monitor on your amiga, you will really start to see thing better :P
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One of the best things I ever did when I had my A2000 was...
Add a Dataflyer IDE controller and 540 meg hard drive..
A3000:
Added a Cybervision 64 4meg and a A3640 accelerator.
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The Blizzard 1230IV with SCSI controller...no problems ever, probably the most reliable and best equipment I have ever owned. Lots of THANK YOU'S!! to Phase5 for that one...
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I think my favourite expansions were (in no particular order)
1) My first hard disk. Segate Medallist 1.28Gb slimline IDE. Got that back in late 1994. Totally changed my usage.
2) First accelerator/ram upgrade. Apollo 1240/25 + 16Mb. Got that back in early 1996.
3) BlizzardPPC - got that in 1998 to replace dying (now restored) Apollo. Really wanted the PPC to see what it could do.
4) BVisionPPC - got that in 2000. The difference it made was astonishing :-D
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DKB3128... Need I say more? :)
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The SX32 Pro for the CD32, a fantastic piece of kit!
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Hi
My favorite classic Amiga expansion hardware were:
A1000
my first HD bought 1989, a 40 MB (!) IDE-disk -- booaah lots of space and faaast :-D
A3000T:
1. Cybervision 64/3D bought 2002, what a step from 728x566 8 colors to 1024x768 256 colors WB
(now using 1280x1024 and searching for a CybervisionPPC, the RAMDAC of the CV64/3D is too slow for 1600x1200 :-()
2. CyberstormPPC 060/50 604e/200 with 128MB RAM - had have the luck to get this for lousy 256 EUR incl. shipping via eBay in summer 2002 :-D
Now I'm living in anxious that it might die, these cards are breaking down very often, I think, how long is the average livetime ?
Noster
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1. CV64 gfx card , so I could finally stop using my A4000 on a 1084 monitor.
2. Cyberstorm MkII with CyberSCSI, so I could finally stop using slow IDE drives.
3. MAS Player, to keep the old A1200 busy as a jukebox..
4. InfraJoy (the CU Amiga kit) for keeping me busy for 10 minutes on a cold day, and to control the A1200.
5. Highway USB card, cos my PC kept crashing whenever I plugged my camera in ! On the Amiga, never had a single problem with it.
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A500 gear:
C=1084S, A590 w/ 2 megs, A570, A501 w/ Chip RAM conversion, trac-ball
A1200D gear:
40X CDROM, SurfSquirrel, C=1950, Blizzard 1240/040/40 W/ scsi, Viper 1260/50, external steel-towered hard drive cabinets, Intuous serial graphics tablet (thru the surfsquirrel serial port)
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Hmmmm... Tough one.
1. GVP A530 Turbo - what a difference this made back in 1991! Good accelerator, and GVP SCSI. What more do you need?
2. I think I'd die without my Blizzard 1260 on my A1200.
3. And my Delfina Lite! I'm extremely reliant on the MPEG decoder driver.
4. Kickstart 3.1!
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Arrgh! Double post.
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Whohaha! Looks like Blizzard 12x0IV has taken the lead! And that is well deserved :-)
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Whohaha! Looks like Blizzard 12x0IV has taken the lead! And that is well deserved
Yeah... damn fine piece of hardware it was. It was the only accelerator that I thought was better than my GVP 1230+ JAWS (G-Force 030). I kind of miss my old 1200 rig. Wonder if the guy I sold it to still has it. hehehe
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:roll: I own oodles of Amiga expansion hardware, perhaps more than is really good for me, but in terms of altering the Amiga experience my favorite would have to be the add-on SCSI port/harddrive/memory expansion unit on my Amiga 500.
;-) Now all of my old software would load in seconds, when previously the operating system itself took minutes to load from floppy.
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piccasso 4 video card
cyberstorm mk3 060
My A4000 was a dream machine after I added these two fine expansions :-D
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I'd have to go with my Phoenix expansion box for my A1000. This gave me 2 ZorroII slots on my A1000. First I plugged in a 2058 Ram card - that let me install my bootup stuff to RAD for quick rebooting even before I got a hard drive... Then I added a Trumpcard with a surplus 52MB Quantum drive... wow! such space. :-)
The Video Toaster gets the nod on the 2000 end. It's just too cool, even though I don't have much use for it myself..
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It used to be my Apollo Turbo accelerator, but now its my Mediator.....
Mike... :-P
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A500: My MegaAChip 2MB Agnus board. I was into music, and heavily used OctaMED 4. I went from 512k Chip (usable for samples) and 512k fast to 2MB all Chip (all for samples!!!) That was also when I installed Kickstart 2.04
A1200: Jetfire (?) 030/40 It was a cheapie accelerator, but it let me introduce myself to the Internet, because Miami would not let me use any internet apps at the same time on a stock 2MB A1200 lol On that note I guess I should mention the SupraExpress 56e modem from Diamond. Miami even had drivers for it! Unfortunately due to limitations in AGA bandwidth I had to run the serial port at 38400 baud and browse in a maximum of 128 colors lol
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1, GVP A530 (my old A500 system)
2, DKB 3128 Memory maxed out 128M
3, Warpengine 3040 Memory also maxed out 64M
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Video Toaster (4000)
Although I never had one, I think it's one of the greatest software/hardware bundles ever.
Mediator PCI
All around excellent piece of hardware.
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What is everyone's favorite classic Amiga expansion hardware?
The A1000 Rejuvenator board. See specs below for how well it (alongs with a CSA Derringer accelerator) kept my first Amiga up to date for several years (compared to stock Amiga systems it was about equal to a fast A3000.)
The only thing it really lacked was slots.
Paul
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If I could only say one item then that would have to
be my CV64 gfx card. It brought my A3k into the real
world.
And then if you add my WarpEngine 3040 @40mhz and
80 megs ram and this A3k is One Fine Machine :-D
Now if the ColdFusion hits the market uuuuummmm 'WOW'
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Blizzard 1260 w/ scsi-iv.
Mediator PCI
Playstation Joypad converter
Voodoo 3000!
PixelView TV-Card
Most promising:
Delfina Flipper :)
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My favourite expansion hardware was the Vortex ATOnce286 classic for my trusty old A500.
It enabled me to run MS-DOS up to v6.2 and MS-WINDOWS in monochrome mode up to v3.1 and all related PC-apps on my A500 with just an 68000 CPU, 10.3 mB Ram (8mB at the expansion port and 2.3 mB internally) and a self-built 130mB 5 1/4" harddrive station (2 x 65 mB RLL-HD's via OMTI RLL controller fitted to the so called "ct-interface", which was conncted to the expansion port and provided one PC/XT slot for the OMTI controller), which included an PC- PSU as well...
:-o
In those days (1991) I paid 161 DM for it (aproximatly 80 € nowadays).
I really wish there will be a similar cheap solution for A1/OS4 to become compatible...
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Mine were the Blizzard 1230IV and Apollo1240 which made such an improvement to my A1200.
I really wanted a new gfx card, but the cost was too much to justify it (New Tower, IDE Adapter, new CDROM, Zip etc) and not enough s/w to make use of it... :(
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My first 80 megabyte 2,5" Conner hard disk for use in my A1200. I paid a whopping 600 HFL (~275EUR) for it back then (94? 95?).
But oh....the difference it made. Combined with a 28MHz 030 I actually could start using Workbench :-).
The worst? KCS PowerPC XT emulator board I bought for my A500. All of my friends had PeeCee's and I wanted to be 'compatible' so badly. In the end the XT emulation was useless (this was in the days of 386's). What a waste of precious money that was :-/.
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The biggest improvement was as I moved from A500+Apollo50@25MHz+RocHard 170MB to A500 Micronik tower, Blizzard2060@50MHz (later 57-64 MHz), PicassoIV with enabled FliFi, 8xCD-Rom, HD-floppy, 3-4 SCSI HDs, Megachip2 and OS 3.1. It took about 6 months to build up to the spec, and the speed difference was impressing - at least tenfold. And about 100x compared to plain A500.
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I had an Amiga 500 way back with one of those GVP SCSI boxes hanging off the side of it. I loved that thing. One of my best investments ever. :-D
The only thing that I can complain about is that it made the A500, which was already not very "desk friendly", really, really long. I had a hard time finding a stable place to put it with that box hanging off the side.
- Mike
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drwho wrote:
The only thing that I can complain about is that it made the A500, which was already not very "desk friendly", really, really long. I had a hard time finding a stable place to put it with that box hanging off the side.
- Mike
You should have seen my A1000 with the Phoenix expansion box attached. It made the beast about 8" wider. I had a desk with a hutch which included a monitor stand just wide enough for the 1000 under it. I took out the center piece and cut off the bottom 3" to allow the connection to work. Some extra metal bracing kept the monitor shelf in place. Ugly, but it worked.
-Jim
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I can relate to that as I ripped out the inards of an old 486 desktop, filled it full of hardrives and a cd-burner, and added it to my A530. Thank god for printer stands...
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Datel Action Replay MkIII - those were the days...
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jjans wrote:
I can relate to that as I ripped out the inards of an old 486 desktop, filled it full of hardrives and a cd-burner, and added it to my A530. Thank god for printer stands...
Back in the Elder Days, a guy at the local user group had a Bill's boards expander for the A1000. This beast was essentially a passive Zorro & ISA backplane that hooked up to the A1000's side bus. It lived in a PC desktop case of it's own. Talk about an awkward arrangement.
-Jim
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[d]Romantic Robot Multiface2 combined with an external 3" disk drive[/d] :-D
CV64, when combined with the neat built-in scan doubler, was an excellent upgrade to my A3000D. Always thought the A530 was a really trick upgrade, possibly the best ever for any computer!
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512kB trapdoormemory and the Chipram hack.
2 external DD-diskdrives, reduced floppy swaping greatly.
Wow, I feel old!!!
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First up would be my BlizzardPPC accelerator for the A1200. Following very closely behind, the MediatorPCI expansion board, which has completely transformed my Amiga giving it modern capabilties.
Thanks to the Mediator my miggy now has USB2.0, a fast 3D accelerated graphics card, a lovely sound card, reliable 10/100 ethernet, a TV card, and hopefully soon a hardware MPEG decoder for DVD!
Brian
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The coolest thing I've actually owned was a GVP Impact II drive for my A500, ages ago.
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That's the great thing about the Amiga, there are untold ways of spending cash to upgrade your machine ;-)
Has to be the Mediator. It's probably the most innovative piece of hardware we've seen on this platform and has changed the way most of us use our machines at a stroke. The difference even a 4Mb Virge makes to your Amiga is incredible.
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Change is flying (tossing in my 2cents).
As many others I would vote for the turboboard to be the greatest uppgrade to an Amiga. There are alot of different boards out there and of cause CSPPC060 and BPPC060e+ hit the highest next to the different 060 solusions but even a 030/50 card with SCSI is a good uppgrade. 040 don't hit high enough due to the difficulties it's heatproblem brings along.
After turboboards the different PCI solusions out there are the most significant uppgrade to the classic Amiga allowing for newer, easier to get and faster gfx cards, netcards, soundcards and tvcards to name a few. Zorro is just outdated and full set of hardware for Zorro usually runs higher than the cost of a PCI solusion fully set (which is also better).
Third I would like to add harddrive expansion for the early classic models. When it came it was so hot one didn't dare of touching it... never less pay for it but hay it was hot! Mmmm... Thinking back to the times I drewled over my friends sweet sweet GVP530... ahhh...
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Favourite ever:
A500 512k expansion RAM
it let me play all those great games!
Other favourite:
External Disk Drive for my A1200
yes is useless now, but i wanted it so much back in the days of my A500 that i didn't resisted to buy it now! :lol:
Future favourites:
A Blizzard 1230/IV that i bought on e-bay (i didn't receive it yet!) and a 2.5" HDD for my A1200
:-P
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In my A2000 it was the Megachip.
a PicassoII made my 3000D like a new machine.
In my 3000Tower it the DPS Personal Animation Recorder and Sunrize Industries AD516 combo.
not to mention the Video Toaster
if I had the cash it would be the Video Toaster Flyer system.
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Hi everyone,
Eversince I got my ROM 3.1 on both A1200 and A500, things has opened up for me. Specially on A1200. The whole thing became more modern, faster, smarter(hardware wise).
I got 2 Accelerator cards for my A1200 and 16Mb ram made the difference. IDEFix so I could use those 3'5 4GB HDD. My fave expansion to date.
A CDRW(who can live w/o it?). I could never be able to backup my (dozens) of disk backup piling up my desk. Now I got CDROMS piling up my desk(he he he). The best expansion for me so far.
Good days to all Amigans! :-D
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For me it was my first Hard drive for my A600..it was a damaged Hitachi 345Mb laptop superslim HD which was extrememly expensive in those days but I got it free cuz the guy said it didnt work for his PC. But I knew that meant that it didnt necessarily mean it didnt work on my Amiga.
Boy that practically changed my life!
Second place would definitely have to be The Full Motion Video Card for the CD32. What a feeling that was when I showed my PC owning friends the peices of crap they owned, when even a 2 megabyte Commodore console blew their Pointless Contraptions (PC) to smitherines! I did it with one of the Highest quality VideoCD's ever made........FORREST GUMP! super excellent compression made by PHILIPS.
Third is of course My SX32 Freakin Pro....what a system.
and forth I think its gonna be when I add USB to my A600
Fifth will be when I add a DVD RW internally to my A600 or CD32
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not that easy :
in these "modem days" i really liked my MFC3.
atm its the hydracom and xsurf (which make no sense w/o my CS060) - the FLZ3 is a very nice thing, too.
ALL IN ALL you can say the whole miggy itself is my favorite HW expansion ;-)
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In order of preference (and in order of purchasing):
Hard drive (Got me a 1.4GB 2.5" Hitachi from Wizard all those years ago!)
Blizzard 1260/50 +32MB (Now at 66MHz and 64MB for 2 years solid. Most stupendous speed increase ever, and the ability to play MP3s at full quality was/is fantastic, though only with older versions of SongPlayer)
CD-ROM & CD-RW... Boy, what a difference. All those cover CDs, Mmmm...
Mediator + Voodoo3 (Even though it's been finnecky and doesn't give nearly the performance it's capable of) Was the single biggest increase in speed since the 060
3.1 ROMs and OS3.9, for all that good, system-legal hacking :-)
After that, the various things I love in their own little way: Catweasel, HyperCom 3+, internal scandoubler (all bought), and LCD screen for the tower, clockport splitter and keyboard adaptor (all home-made).
Mmm... Amiga... You don't get that kinda feeling for PC hardware, do you??
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Os3.9 , 3.1 roms
Os4 , AmigaOne
Blizzard 060
Blizzard ppc 060
mEDIATOR
thats basically my top list :)
looking forward to getting an Micro A1 now :)
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has yo be my PPC + Bvision combo on my A1200 ....tooo cool
but I guess if I had a Shark G4 and a Mediator + VooDoo3 I would feel different......... :lol:
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GVP TbcPlus with 2 megs of FrameBuffer, CombFilter and SMPTE chip (rare). . . without esitation :-)