Welcome, Guest. Please login or register.

Author Topic: Blizzard A1230 IV questions  (Read 2374 times)

Description:

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Offline srg86Topic starter

  • Full Member
  • ***
  • Join Date: Aug 2004
  • Posts: 211
    • Show all replies
    • http://www.aopp12.dsl.pipex.com
Blizzard A1230 IV questions
« on: January 08, 2005, 11:07:20 PM »
Hi

I've just bought an awaiting delivery of a Blizzard A1230 IV board for my A1200.

The board is comming with a 16MB SIMM but I also have a 32MB EDO 60ns double sided SIMM that I would like to use in it instead. Will this work and will it take advantage of it.

Also, with more than 4MB RAM installed, is the 1230 IV PCMCIA friendly?

thanks
srg
 

Offline srg86Topic starter

  • Full Member
  • ***
  • Join Date: Aug 2004
  • Posts: 211
    • Show all replies
    • http://www.aopp12.dsl.pipex.com
Re: Blizzard A1230 IV questions
« Reply #1 on: January 08, 2005, 11:19:32 PM »
For my uses the 030 is the best, it has internal MMU and full 68882 FPU (on the card).

I had one of these boards on my old amiga and it flew. On my current expansion card (no CPU, just RAM expansion) the 32MB SIMM causes aexplorer to crash but I expect that's because Amiga's like FPM RAM. Still if this card uses EDO then great! What sport of speed boost is there in using EDO?

It'll be interesting to see where the 32-bit memory from the SIMM is mapped into the 030's address space.

srg
 

Offline srg86Topic starter

  • Full Member
  • ***
  • Join Date: Aug 2004
  • Posts: 211
    • Show all replies
    • http://www.aopp12.dsl.pipex.com
Re: Blizzard A1230 IV questions
« Reply #2 on: January 09, 2005, 10:13:27 AM »
Thanks for the useful comments.

I know how good this card is because I had one with 8MB SIMM and FPU on my old amiga before going to the PC, quality card.

The card I've bought now does come with the 50MHz 68882 FPU and the lot cost me £94 from ebay (it was "buy it now"). At the moment I've no interest in SCSI, the 512MB internal IDE hard drive in this does everything I need (I have a PC for scanners etc).

If the SIMM I have doesn't fit then I'll just use the 16MB one it came with, it's enough for my uses.

At the moment I have no need of the power of a Blizzard 1260. I want an 030+68882 because they are the closest to the hardware feature set of the i386+i387. As what I have so far of my hobby os kernel (it's really just a paged memory manager at the moment until I get arround to doing some more to it) I want to port to the m68K Amiga. The FPU on the 040 and 060 are half software (hence the libraries). Also the 030's MMU is a subset of the 68851 MMU. AFAIK the MMU in the 040 is programmed slightly differently and in the 060 it's slightly different again. After getting somewhere with the 030, I'd like to add kernel supprt for the 040 and 060. So eventually I will get a Blizzard 040 and Blizzard 060 cards.

BTW A lot of Amiga stuff seems to hold a lot of value. I would love an A3000 but as these things on ebay go for about £250 each, I can't afford one. Not bad for a computer that came out 15 years ago.

srg
 

Offline srg86Topic starter

  • Full Member
  • ***
  • Join Date: Aug 2004
  • Posts: 211
    • Show all replies
    • http://www.aopp12.dsl.pipex.com
Re: Blizzard A1230 IV questions
« Reply #3 on: January 11, 2005, 02:10:12 PM »
I got the card this morning and all is well.

I did try it with the double sided 32MB SIMM and you're right, it did start to mark the plasic of the trap door, so I'm using it with the 16MB single sided SIMM that came with the card.

I never used the maprom feature on my old Amiga but I have it turned on with this one and wow does the machine boot faster.

srg