A500/2000 accelerator cards: still unfeasible to create new ones?

[Lockon_15]

Jens has allready announced (on a1k.org) that he has solid plans for doing a 020-based card for the A500.

Proposed features:
- 020 at 14MHz
- 8MB of RAM (maybe 16Bit maybe 32Bit wide)
- A600-compatible IDE-controller
- A1200-trapdoor  connector to use A1200 style accels !!

He also briefly mentioned on doing "something better" for the A2000, but no details yet.

Hmm, those specs are pretty low (insluting is too strong word, but you get the picture)  compared to ones found on ACA630.

I've read complete threads at EAB & A1K and there were tons of posts dealing with space/thermal management in A600. Actually, one of them had ACA630, Indivision ECS, Subway USB alltogether with modified floppy drive crammed into poor A600 case.

A500 should be left free of those constrains and for that reason it's weird that Jens plan to build something pretty unconvincing, at least from performance aspect.
Option to use A1200 trapdoor accelerators is limited only to present ACA1230 series, so it seems ACA520 is just a gateway for securing that stock of current and perhaps future ACA1230 accelerators would remain low at preferred times.
The other reason for favoring 020 might be affordable target price; new accelerator for A500 could attract quite a bit of a Amiga crowd, far more than A600 and A1200 altogether since A500 itself is still more available for purchase and a hell lot easier for maintenance. That include people owning AGA boxes with new ACA stuff which still own one of older OCS machines; then there is significant demand from present A500 audience already owning a functional A500 accelator/storage solution which could be repalced with more common and relaible HW. I find myself in that category. but only of the final product offer a decent substitution compared to present level of...satisfaction (GVP A530).

IMHO, that new A500 stuff should (like ACA630 & ACA1230 did, for sure) include most if not all best features of earlier designs (A530, Derringer, Viper A530) as:

- full blown 68030 with at least 25Mhz
- true 32-bit FastRAM set out of Z2 address space
- buffered IDE for fast solide state (CF) storage (>5MByte persec)
- IDE & RAM enabled in fallback mode, Kick1.3 compatible
- KickFlash like features are more tha welcome, but for an any price
- clockport :roflmao:



Or maybe it's too early to see where all this A500 stuff goes...man already said Indy AGA MK2 is currently top priority...

[Lockon_15]

Problem with the A500 is that simply not going to be used the way we use A1200's.
A500/A600/A2000/A3000 are still all OCS/ECS Amiga's.
 
I would already be happy with a 020 with 8MB and IDE, of course being auto configured and booted up.
 
Sure I would like a full blown 030 @ 50Mhz and 32 or 64MB with a full IDE port, so 44 pins and 40 pins.
But would we use it ?
 
If I want to WHDLoad, I'm better off with one of the A1200's.

I don't think it's a question how do we use our Amigas. You use what you have at your disposal. For instance, looking at the content of your signature I can only concur that A1200 is by far best model for overall usage - for you, ins pite of a fact you do own a lot of A500s (repsect . On other side, some other people might look at A500 doing a fraction of A1200 job as a challenge and thus consider A500 expansion as priority over other options.
Don't get me wrong, for a while it's pretty common to see a lot of think-tank volumes suggesting something like 'forget A500, get a A1200'; now, with a clear opportunity to make a change for A500 we're confronted with same suggestion.

Back in late '80s, I don't recollect the time Amiga users were driving HW development by such biased or perhaps limited standpoint.

[Lockon_15]

Well a cheap 68020 with Fast RAM will allow OS3.9 to be installed and to run WHDLoad.

My first CPU card for my A1200 was an overclocked 68020 (28MHz) with an extra 4MB of RAM and that thing satisfied me for years.

A530 with 030@40, 8Mb FAST.
OS3.9 with all eye-candy (considering ECS) still pretty slow. Add there Poseidon USB stack for Subway and you end up with even slower machine.
OS3.1 helps a lot, but is pain-in-the a$$ to achieve stability trying to reach OS3.9 look&feel.

For WHDLoad, 68010 with vintage 4MB Fast/HDD and 0,5MB Ranger will cover 99% games. Verified.

[Lockon_15]

Don't forget that with regards to a target audience, the A500 really is a games orientated machine.  If all you want to do is play games and use WHDload then the CPU card has to fight off the Minimig and FPGA Arcade (or even UAE).

A fairly basic Minimig already gives you an "A500+" with a turbo CPU, 4 "floppies", scan doubler, 1.5MB or 3.5MB of RAM and a nice big hard drive.

Jens can't aford to make this card too expensive or many people will either by a Minimig or pick up a second hand A1200 instead.

That's a fair assumption.
But then A600 is also games orienated machine, sharing same pro's and con's like A500. Somehow I really fail to see what would justify success on A600 and stray A500 in same time. With respect to Minimig or A1200, I don't think there are many users waiting in line for Minimig or A1200 either. The fact is that bunch of A500s are sitting in the attic and closets surviving annoual clearouts just because they are missing some 15-16 years of new HW support.

Otherwise we can all trash our 'true HW' and join WinUAE beta testing thread at EAB (respect to TW).

[Lockon_15]

68030 @ 40MHz slow with OS3.1?  My expectations must be low.  

:lol:

Well, I did make AWeb working on Subway/genesis combo pretty well.
Shapeshifter-based RTG driver for Indivision ECS is aslo being developed from Oliver@IndividualComputers, we might see WB in 256 colors on A500.

I hope this helps figuring out where this could lead;)

[Lockon_15]

The 600 is hard drive "ready", as well as the PCMCIA slot, so it is more readily expandable. That might have something to do with it.
Also comes with ECS and 2.x kickstart, so might play nicer with some hardware too.
 
Im sure if someone made it for the 500, people would buy it, just because it was there, but I can see why the 600s and 1200s were first in line.

Could be.
There's also one more possible reason, a story about horror Jens experienced while supporting his HW peripherals working (or better said, when not working) with Appollo accelerators and also failed A600 030 accelerator which failed to met both stability and ROHS  compliance standards. I read somewhere that he has bought every Apollo which appeared on eBay for last 5 years or so (unverified).

[Lockon_15]

Sure he does.
Just like he already said that ACA520 will not work with CBM A570 & A590 drive units.

[Lockon_15]

Now that I did not know! No need for Poseidon or Trident? That's awesome. Thanks for that info Cammy!
 
I've been really wanting to put an Indivision ECS and MiniMegi in the A500 & and with a Subway USB I would have exactly what I want! BTW,Is Indivision coming out with a new version of their scandoubler? I see that AmigaKit is out of them but Versalia still has them I think.... should I wait?

Jens is finishing work on Indivision AGA Mk2 which will add DVI support and few other image enhacements like 75Hz PAL mode etc. You want Indivision ECS which is available from Vesalia and will be available from AmigaKit. This SD/FF will remain the most advanced SD/FF since it's planned to include basic/acceptable mini-RTG features which ***might*** put OCS/ECS machines closer to AGA look&feel (WB only).
 
Few days ago I ordered a second IndyECS since I want to check dual monitor/extended desktop support in my A500. That's right, you can have 2 IndyECS stacked together spanning WB in 2 screens.

[Lockon_15]

AGA ?
Of course NOT.
 
In BEST case you might have WB3.1 or WB3.9 with pretty colorful icons thrown across 800*600 area with maybe a nice background picture. That's a maximum you'll ever get on non-AGA machine. Games wont use that WB mode, we all know taht WHDLoad games discard OS already.
 
This is a remarkable attempt since you'll actually have something almost impossible on those bandwidth limited OCS/ECS machines.

[Lockon_15]

Which is why less and less appear, in the old days you couldn't move for unboxed A500s on ebay. Now it is single figures, obviously it's not worth the messing about boxing up and going to the post office for £10 sale on ebay (so £8 by the time PayPal and ebay have taken their cut)
 
If I really wanted one I would ask here, but they're not cheap on forums!

You can always check on www.amibay.com
Prices are pretty reasonable.
Half a year ago I got well-cared A500+ for appx. $35, you can get plain A500 starting with 20-25, in some cases people are offering for free if local pickup can be arranged.
 
For users in Europe, especially UK, you can always count at 'airey' aka Amiga Retro Experience shop at eBay (just for reference, he's moving his Amiga business to eBID.uk). He has a very large stock of 2nd hand A500s of all revisions (total unit count is close to 90) and is generally very reliable seller.

[Lockon_15]

Sure it will, even in dual Indivision ECS setup.
Together with Subway USB and USB-to-Ethernet bridge, if you have some of those.
As added bonus, you can keep floppy where it's supposed to be.

It's A500.