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Author Topic: Most powerful PPC that can be put in an A1200?  (Read 20492 times)

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Offline Blinx123

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Re: Most powerful PPC that can be put in an A1200?
« on: December 10, 2012, 09:59:31 AM »
Quote from: Karlos;718299
The most powerful PPC that you can fit to an A1200 would be a 604e 233MHz* courtesy of a CyberstormPPC. However, that also requires a busboard with an A4000 compatible CPU slot, such as the one that came with the Micronik infinitiv tower. All of which would cost an absolute arm and leg nowadays.

*or faster, if you can find a modded one.

I think I'm gonna kill myself now. :\

Could've gotten a fully functional Micronik Z3i for less than 200 bucks a year ago.
I passed, because I was unemployed and didn't have an Amiga back then.

I probably wouldn't have used a G4 (604) on it (that's probably more expensive than simply buying a SAM with very little benefit over a nice 68060 setup) but a Cyberstorm MKIII is probably still more powerful than a Apollo 060, right?
« Last Edit: December 10, 2012, 10:03:26 AM by Blinx123 »
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Offline Blinx123

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Re: Most powerful PPC that can be put in an A1200?
« Reply #1 on: December 10, 2012, 12:37:45 PM »
Quote from: Karlos;718357
I had a friend that owned a Micronik tower/Z3 board back in the day and fitted a CyberStorm MK III to it. I seem to recall it working fine. However, he later sourced an A4000 and using the card in that was a no brainer.

As the CyberStorm MK III is basically the same  board as the CyberStormPPC, sans a few component parts, I expect it ought to be possible.

As I said though, very expensive.


I wonder how hard it would be to produce fully working replicas of those.
I could totally see myself buying one and installing it with either a CyberStorm MK III or a CyberStorm PPC (do those clock to a 68060@80MHz as well?)
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Offline Blinx123

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Re: Most powerful PPC that can be put in an A1200?
« Reply #2 on: December 11, 2012, 04:33:37 PM »
Quote from: AmigaClassicRule;718532
I disagree with everyone about dishing rtg for Amiga classic. It is lack of software developers who take full advantage of it to develop modern games, mmorpg games, applications, heck even full blown 3D games and apps for classic Amiga. It is not the concept of having rtg is bad, the lack of developers to exploit it is.


I'd humbly agree.

There really is no way of shortselling the benefit of having a discrete GPU.
However, I'm pretty sure 3D (or 3D MMORPG games even) would not run well on a classic Amiga with RTG only. It would definitely need an accompanying PPC, since the 68k CPUs are too much of a bottleneck for full 3D. Heck, even a PPC G3/G4 is still a tremendous bottleneck for any 3DFX Voodoo 3/4/5.
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Offline Blinx123

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Re: Most powerful PPC that can be put in an A1200?
« Reply #3 on: December 11, 2012, 04:51:55 PM »
Quote from: AmigaClassicRule;718546
But then the true question to ask.....is it worth it? I mean even the current PPC for classic Amiga are weak: 233 Mhz or even 260 Mhz would do nothing. Requesting to manufacture new PPC card for classic Amiga with 700 Mhz comes to other complications:

  • Is it feasible?
  • Can the motherboard of classic Amiga handle such speed boost and would it run at such close speed with RTG?
  • Manufacturing cost?
  • Benefit of financial return from developing such product?
  • Cost of selling it and the amount of people willing to buy it?
  • Amount of software available to take advantage of it and compatibility issue?
  • It comes to the final question: Is it worth it?
So we end up again back to the same bottle knock of No, No, NO! But then you look at the casing of Amiga 4000D and Amiga 4000T and you use the classic Amiga and you start wishing: Oh I wish I can watch blue ray movies or HD movies on it. Oh I wish there was LOTS OF cool MMORPG games on it. Oh I WISH THERE ARE LOTS OF COOL new App and games on it...oooh I wish...and it is a NEVER ending cycle.
 
I am surprised you guys don't drink too much!


No need to. Once one has realized that good games don't need high-end 3D graphics, the world looks brighter once again ;)

BTW: I'm pretty positive that render adventures are quite feasible on a classic 68k Amiga with RTG.
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Offline Blinx123

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Re: Most powerful PPC that can be put in an A1200?
« Reply #4 on: December 11, 2012, 05:22:01 PM »
Quote from: AmigaClassicRule;718552
But I really want a single MMORPG game for classic Amiga...just one!


Not too sound overly pessimistic, but an MMORPG (as in Massively Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Game) would be an utter joke on any non-mainstream platform. In the case of an Amiga MMO, it would probably be less than a hundred people playing at the same time.

Perhaps something like The Realm running on some sort of old and outdated low-end server would be feasible, but that's that.
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Offline Blinx123

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Re: Most powerful PPC that can be put in an A1200?
« Reply #5 on: December 12, 2012, 09:54:16 PM »
Quick question:
Is there any benefit to an Apollo over a Blizzard?

I've been offered an Apollo 1240 with one SIMM slot. Would it be hard to upgrade it to a 060 CPU and a second RAM slot?

How much do Blizzard 1260s usually go for these days?

I'd very much like to upgrade my Amiga 1200 to an 80 MHz 68060 (AFAIK, something that works with both brands, Apollo and Blizzard) but am a bit concerned that an Apollo might not be as good as a Blizzard due to having much less RAM.
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Offline Blinx123

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Re: Most powerful PPC that can be put in an A1200?
« Reply #6 on: December 12, 2012, 11:09:55 PM »
Quote from: ChaosLord;718802
There are some small benefits to having either one.

Maximum RAM goes to Blizzard and is big benefit.

Maximum chipram access speed goes to Apollo.

Blizzard has some special utils for it written by Piru the Megacoder.
But that probably won't matter to u.

Maximum Mhz goes to Apollo.  They can do 100Mhz or 105Mhz.

Either one can load your kickstart ROM into highspeed 32-bit FASTram.

I think, not sure, that u can soft disable the Blizzard 060 but still use the RAM for your 020.  Hafta ask someone who has one or has read the docs.  I haven't read about it for over 10 years.

I think, not sure, that when u soft disable Apollo 060 the cpu and RAM disappear from the system.

The thing is I have had my 060 card and I never once disabled it or wanted to.  I luvz my 060 card. :knuddel:




Do u mean hard for u?
Or hard for Cosmos?

I donno what level of Hardware Wizard u r.

Personally I would just pay Cosmos to do it since he has done it a zillion times and knows what's what.



I donno but $500.00 last I checked.  But that was a long long time ago.
They are worth every penny.


You don't actually get to choose what accelarator you get when it comes to 060.  u grab it and run before someone else buys it.

They have not made new ones since 1990s.  So u only can get one when someone dies or goes insane and sells theirs.  Or when u manufacture one out of an old 040 card with the help of Cosmos Industrial Enterprises International Inc.


If u chant "Cosmos" 3 times in a row, then cross ur arms and blink your eyes (like I Dream of Jeannie) then click your heels 3 times and offer him a virgin houri then Cosmos the Mighty will magically appear and tell u how much he charges to upgrade an Apollo040 to an Apollo060 and add the 2nd SIMM slot with memory that actually works.  (both SIMMS must match).

Then u can have an 80Mhz or more 060 card with 64MB and be kewl :cool:
like the rest of us :)

If the Apollo 040 is cheap then I will buy it and hire cosmos to upgrade the hell out of it and give it to a friend of mine who can make use of it.

Ok.

I guess I'm going with that Apollo then.
The RAM would probably be hindering anyways. Nothing worse than coding and testing apps on a machine that has more RAM than the average person's machine.

When I said hard, I meant hard for my former boss (whose an electronics geek). If I tried to modify it myself, I'd probably destroy it in less than 5 minutes.

Cosmos is probably located in the US, right? Don't think I'd want to send a piece of hardware over the pond.

Edit: As for disabling the CPU and still retaining the fast RAM: That's pretty non-sensical, isn't it? I don't think any 68020 programm requires that much RAM.

Furthermore, I could always add one (multiple, even?) Radeon 9xxx series cards for an additional 256+MB, right?
« Last Edit: December 12, 2012, 11:12:43 PM by Blinx123 »
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Offline Blinx123

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Re: Most powerful PPC that can be put in an A1200?
« Reply #7 on: December 12, 2012, 11:57:56 PM »
Quote from: AmigaClassicRule;718809
BBBEEEAUTIFULL!! Makes me want to get Apollo big time hehe!!!
 
By the way I have seeing your ScummVM AGA v1.4.1 - The Curse of Monkey Island on youtube and you showed a climpse of your A1200D HD LED flashing as it is reading...that was beautiful * sigh * Made my eyes tears :biglaugh:... Isn't A1200D just SEXY OR WHAT? :biglaugh::biglaugh:
 
That is why I want to work SO HARD into squeezing as MUCH AS juice from it as possible to make it the most entertaining media centre. NovaCoder, even if you couldn't manage to get DOSBoxAGA a reality I want to thank YOU SO MUCH for trying and working hard on attempting it. Also I want to thank you for ScummVMAga!!
 
By any chance in the future are you considering C64AGA?


What would be the point of an C64AGA? C64 games (C64DTV and Super CPU exclusive stuff excluded) offer less colours than were possible on even a plain Amiga 1000.

BTW: I just found about another 060 board. A so called Falcon.
Specs seem pretty much on par with the Blizzard, except for the SCSI.
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Offline Blinx123

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Re: Most powerful PPC that can be put in an A1200?
« Reply #8 on: December 13, 2012, 12:29:09 AM »
Quote from: ChaosLord;718816
Sounds like an Atari.


That's what I thought.

But they appear to be real (produced in Germany and the US by MacroSystem)

http://www.amiga-hardware.com/showhardware.cgi?HARDID=137
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Offline Blinx123

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Re: Most powerful PPC that can be put in an A1200?
« Reply #9 on: December 13, 2012, 01:09:24 AM »
Quote from: ChaosLord;718820
Wow, crazy!  Is someone offering to sell u one?  U should get it and write a review because I never heard of it.

No.
Unfortunately not.

Never heard of it before either.

Was a random find in another forum.

The guy already sold it, unfortunately (back in September, I think). Went for 197 quid + shipping.

What bugs me about this card is the plain misuse of the MMU, however.

EDIT: I've now been offered a Blizzard 1240 for just slightly more than the Apollo (like 50 euros more).
To bite or not to bite, that's the question.
« Last Edit: December 13, 2012, 10:22:27 AM by Blinx123 »
Sam: \\"You crack me up little buddy\\"
Max: \\"I love you Sam\\"