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Author Topic: cyberstorm mk iii quality issues ??? info appreciated.  (Read 5181 times)

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Offline da9000

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Re: cyberstorm mk iii quality issues.
« on: January 13, 2009, 02:37:10 AM »
There are two main problems with the MKIIIs:

1) DCE, the company. Somehow they cut corners or what-not, and so unlike Phase5's runs of the card (the original creators of the card), the DCE versions are more problematic.

2) The other, and most serious, problem is that they didn't use a through-hole design for the main CPU (68060), and thus the CPU and/or socket is soldered on the top surface. This tends to create problems due to mechanical and heat stress, and so the card becomes flaky and eventually stops working. MKIIs are through-hole on the other hand, thus not as problematic.

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Offline da9000

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Re: cyberstorm mk iii quality issues.
« Reply #1 on: January 13, 2009, 04:52:53 AM »
Yes there were as Phase5 was the original designer/creator for them cards. However, the major problem (#2 above) holds true for both DCE and Phase5 cards.

A couple of things you might possibly want to consider:
if you want to go high end for your A3000/A4000 Amigas, then you might as well get a PPC card. Then you'll also be able to run AmigaOS 4.x and MorphOS. If you don't want or need the PPC however, then of course there's the MKI (the cheapest, although it's a funky card, made up of 3-4 pieces), the MKII (much more reliable) and of course the MKIII. I'd say these are the most common. Then there are a few more, like the Quikpak and some Apollos, but those aren't so common.

Other than that, I'd say 060s are good for a demo machine, or for high end applications (ex: video editing, sound processing, modeling and 3d graphics). But then again a modern computer is way better for those types of applications... so you might want to take that into consideration. Also, most classic Amiga games do not need, nor utilize, nor will be very compatible with an 060. The only ones that might are the absolutely last games made for Amigas, which will also require a graphics card, and preferably one that's good with 3D.

If you don't need an 060, then there are plenty of other choices for big box Amigas. In other words if all you need is something better than what's on the motherboard, but not necessarily an 060, there are a ton of 040 based CPU cards which are cheaper and very reliable. And for classic gaming 030s work very very well.

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Offline da9000

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Re: cyberstorm mk iii quality issues.
« Reply #2 on: January 20, 2009, 01:03:50 AM »
Quote

keropi wrote:
Having owned all 060 CS versions (mk1, mk2 and csppc) I have found that the most stable/compatible is the CSPPC (MK3) and then the MK1.


Just to clarify my statements: I was speaking strictly from a standalone physical/hardware perspective, not software (firmware). That is another matter altogether. Not just what Keropi mentions, but also what patches and whatnot your Amiga's startup-sequence has, etc.