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

[Darrin]

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.

[Darrin]

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.

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.

[Darrin]

I figured most people who use 500's use them mainly because they are the most compatible with old games.
 
If you use it for more advanced purposes, I imagine you'd better off with something else (built-in IDE or SCSI, more expansions available etc)

Exactly.

If you want a souped up ECS experience then you're going to use an A2000 or A3000.

[Darrin]

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.

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

[Darrin]

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).

Yep, the A500 is a sort of fogotten machine and there must be tens of thousands of them hibernating in deep, dark places.

Strangely enough, the A500 is one of the few Amigas I've never actually owned (along with the A600 - lack of keypad and the CDTV - lack of funds at the time).  The reason for that was that I jumped straight in to the A2000 because of the lack of easy expansion at the time.

For me to use an A500 on a regular basis I would need the CPU card to be OS3.9 friendly, have some extra RAM and some sort of IDE connector.  A clockport for a Subway would be icing on the cake.

[Darrin]

: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;)

LOL.  Now THAT would be impressive.  

[Darrin]

I gleaned these preliminary specs from the A1k thread about ACA520.

Yum!

Well there's the clockport, so USB via Subway!  

I wish it used an overclocked 28MHz 68020 though.

All in all, I think Jens has a winner on his hands there.