ACA 1221 accelerator: Who's got one?

[AmigaBruno]

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!

[AmigaBruno]

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.

[AmigaBruno]

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 () 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.

[AmigaBruno]

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.

[AmigaBruno]

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.

[AmigaBruno]

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!  

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.

[AmigaBruno]

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.

[AmigaBruno]

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?