Will there be an ACA1240 or ACA1260?

[ChaosLord]

if you are talking about highly optimized assembly routines and programs for 040/060 then I guess you have a point, esp when coupled w/ some of the overclocked 060s I'm hearing about.  

Amiga community is filled with guys who sit around all day writing highly optimized asm routines.

Only Amiga makes it possible.

[ChaosLord]

Check this thread out.

http://boardreader.com/thread/My_68EC060_has_an_FPU_Will_it_have_a_MMU_1jo99Xuiw.html

Apparently LC and EC CPUs don't always have non-functioning FPUs and MMUs.

Although the chips might not run at 75MHz or more while using this parts.

Apparently there are CyberstormPPC cards and Apollo 1260s with EC components installed on them.

Now we know why some of these overclock well.

The part number on my Apollo 1260 indicates that it is lacking an MMU and/or FPU.  I thought I had been ripped off!
But the MMU an FPU are both in there and they work.

You can't completely trust the markings.

[ChaosLord]

How much do those 060s cost that you are looking at?

[ChaosLord]

Claims the Apollo design is unstable  when users have some running @ 80MHz

I know a friend who has had his Apollo 060 running at  100Mhz+ for many years.  Never had a problem.

I would say there are a lot of ppl with them running at 80Mhz+

There is nothing wrong with Apollo 060 cards in and of themselves.

The problems are with the SCSI addon cards.  A lot of ppl complain about the SCSI addon card.  But that in no way means that the Apollo 060 card cannot be used a great accelerator.


It is possible that there was some kind of problem in the first batch of Apollos or something like that and maybe that has him confused?

Or maybe all Apollos were perfect, except for the last batch?

I am not saying any Apollos are bad, I am just throwing out ideas.

All I know is mine seems to work ok at 50Mhz for 13+ years

Maybe Jens got stuck with a giant stockpile of 030s that he is trying to clear out?

Maybe if we wait 5 years for him to sell them all then he will make us an 060 card?

Who knows?

[ChaosLord]

$220.00 for just the cpu in 2012 is quite ridiculous.

How much are the FE133s?

[ChaosLord]

The problems with Apollo cards are that they stupidly did not solder the timing crystal.  The crystal moves, if the computer is powered, you can fry parts of it.  The card may not die altogether right away, but it will be flaky.  One day you'll power up and get a black screen.  BTW this happens with 68040' cards as well.

Very interesting!  Thanx 4 da info.

This happened to my Apollo 1240.

I did get it repaired, and had an 68060 installed, but it runs at 40 mhz, still better than any 68040 out there and cooler with no fan needed.  So yeah I have the slowest 68060 card in the world..

:roflmao:  I am sorry to laff at ur misfortune.  But an underclocked 060 is funny

So I hope u r not wasting a 100Mhz at 40Mhz?

I hope u r using one of the old original 50Mhz 060s at 40Mhz?

Is the 40Mhz limit typical for A1240 cards?
Or is that specific to your A1240?

I have a friend with an A1240 that he has not used for years and I am thinking of buying it from him and sending it to cosmos for an upgrade then send that to a friend of mine to use.

I am wondering what to expect.

p.s. Yes a 40Mhz 060 still blows away any 040.

[ChaosLord]

Different 040/25 cards for A1200 are quite similar in performance. The greatest factor may be the speed to the native chips, where Apollo beats Blizzards but if it is significant overall it depends on the use.

Modern Amiga games, (loosely defined as games from 1995+ that require fastram and render their animations from fastram to chipram) and also any animation software, all have 1 bottleneck which is how fast the cpu can copy data from fastram to chipram.  So it is really important to have a good bus interface so the cpu can access chipram as fast as possible.

Also Desktop Publishing software needs fast cpu-access-to-chipram for screen updates.

And if you are running Fblit/Ftext then you need fast chipram access 100% of the time for everything.

So the chipram access speed is really important.

If your chipram access speed is only 50% of theoretical maximum then your maximum framerate is only 50% of what it could be.

[ChaosLord]

EDIT: I've been offered a Blizzard 1240 for 280 euros.

:eek:  DAM!

 It's without packaging and without any RAM. Is this one of much greater value than the Apollo 1240 with 32MB I've been offered for 260 euros?

These guys really charge top dollar!  I didn't know they cost that much!

WTF doesn't it have RAM?
Will it even run that way?
Maybe its broken?

If its broken, cosmos can likely fix it.  But your seller should charge a lot less.

I hope this stuff isn't from ripoffEbay.

Furthermore, do most accelerators on the used market today come without packaging? I'm kind of reluctant to buy something that isn't in it's original box anymore.

I don't have original packaging for mine and all my 060s were obtained used without packaging.  But they worked.

I used to keep all my original Amiga computer boxes and Monitor boxes but my beloved boxes got lost when I moved. ((((((((((((((((((((((

[ChaosLord]

Way to rain on my parade. Lol.

Now I'm, once again, unsettled.

Gee. I guess I'll need to look up benchmarks to see just how bad Blizzard's chipram access is compared to Apollo.

You are talking about buying an A1240 and upgrading it to 060.

I have no data on such a card.  I never did any timing tests on a card like that.

So it could have rocking hot performance at chipram access or really horrible performance.  I have no clue.

You could ask Cosmos to run Bustest on one of his cards like that.  Make sure he tells u the exact screenmode that the screen was in when running the test.  It makes all the difference.

I prefer tests done in 640x512x8bitplanes.  As I still have all my timing test results for that mode from various cards stashed on my HD somewhere.
(My games run in that mode so that is the mode we normally test.)

In any case, no matter what, u will get fantastic CPU calculation performance.  
Anything that happens inside the 060 (remember it has 2 8K L1 Caches) will be zoooming fast.

So any 060 card will be an upgrade, its just a question of how much of an upgrade.

[ChaosLord]

N
Furthermore, it's not a Blizzard 1240 but a Blizzard 1260 with a socketed 40MHz 68040

Sounds really weird.

Does he have an explanation for how that happened?

[ChaosLord]

Has anyone ever heard of a Blizzard 1260 with a socketed 040 CPU?

I haven't.  But I guess anyone could downgrade an A1260 like that.  I just don't know why anyone would do that.

Considering the intended use (software development for the most part, ScummVM/Quake/Quake II/Feeble Files

The only way to run Quake in a reasonable manner is to have a fast 060 + a gfx card.

 when I'm bored or need inspiration or simply want to programm a game in the SCI Engine or on top of id Tech) and me being somewhat of a RAM whore (I have 16GB in my Windows rig and even that isn't entirely enough yet), Blizzard is probably the better choice.

How did u use u 16GB in windoze?

I just bought a 10GB windoze7 rig, thinking 10GB would be enuff.
I am typing this on my old 1GB XP box.

[ChaosLord]

This stuff gets more and more confusing by the hour. I just found out that some of those cards actually have jumpers  to go from 040 to 060 and back? What gives?

Maybe Apollo made them like that to save money?

That's an easy one.
Just create a RAM-Disk of 12-14GB. Fills up rather quickly. Especially if you run games like Skyrim off your Ramdisk.

Woah!  When did windoze invent a ram disk?

[ChaosLord]

Where the Blizzard is supposed to shine is with HD access speeds and SCSI.

Ok, but that is only if you buy the SCSI addon card.

A proper SCSI DMA controller, such as the one in the 1990 A3000 uses 20x less cpu power and is 2x to 4x the transfer speed.  So its 80x better than the lame A1200/A4000 IDE PIO controller.

Is he still a member of this community?

Didn't u see him pop up in a thread recently?  Where I said u could get an 80Mhz 060 and he popped in to say 80Mhz was way to slow and he runs at 105Mhz.  Donno how u missed it.

It has two L1 caches? Wow. I wasn't even aware of this.
I think I'm more excited for this than any CPU before (including Bulldozer and Sandy Bridge/Ivy Bridge)

060 competed against Pentium.  IIRC Pentium only had 1 lame unified L1 cache.

060 had a much more efficient system where code gets its own cache and data gets its own cache.

Motorola used dual L1 caches since 1987 with the 68030.   Eventually, years later, Intel caught up with Motorola in this regard.

[ChaosLord]

And what is the gain of making a 68060 accelerator anyway? It's not necessary for 95% of Amiga stuff, ...

68060 accellerators are useful on 100% of all Amiga productivity software.
68060 accellerators are useful on 100% of all Amiga cli commands.

That is thousands of programs that benefit.

68060 accellerators are useful on 100% of all properly coded games.


Trying to do web browsing, DAW or DTP on 68030 is nonsense.

[ChaosLord]

@ the 68060FE133 haters

Various ppl have bought them.  They used them.  Nobody has ever reported them as being fake or defective.  So why the hate?

[ChaosLord]

040s were 5v and 060 was 3.3v.  They each have a different socket.