Upgrading an A1200...

[Karlos]

Whatever you plam, dont run a BvisionPPC/BlizzPPC combo in an A1200 desktop case.

The power drawn by those two expansions alone puts a strain on the motherboard's 5V lines (assuming no other power feeds into the machine other than the standard power plug at the back), and the heat generated is considerable - the permedia 2 itself runs very hot.

As for not wanting a PPC, having a PPC card isnt such a bad thing, especially with a gfx card. You get PPC optimised datatypes (and also the main picture.datatype od os3.9) and things are pretty sweet.

As for speed, workbench 3.5 on my BlizzPPC using only a 25MHz 040 is fast and responsive. An 060 is considerably faster again!

A gfx card makes an enormous difference to workbench usage since once you hit a fast 030, it is the native chipset that actually slows the thing down.

Assuming you absolutely dont want PPC (having used ppc datatypes and apps I personally wouldnt want to go back to pure 680x0), a decent 060 card, with a PCI bus expansion and gfx card will do you a treat....but you'll need a tower to put it in.

[Karlos]

Ishikodzume wrote:

> dont run a BvisionPPC/BlizzPPC combo in an A1200 desktop case

So, it's still going to be flakey even if i get a decent PSU? I guess i'll be going for the plain 060 then...

Well, what I was trying to get at is that a heavily expanded 1200D can have problems with large currents being drawn on the motherboard 5V rails, no matter how beefy your PSU is.

A friend of mine actually damaged his motherboard due to the current load through the standard A1200 power connector. The combined power usage of his accelerator, HD, floppy and various other bits and pieces was simply too much current for some tracks on the motherboard and they literally melted :-o

Prior to towering my main A1200, I decided to reduce the risk of the same thing happening to me by adding a second power feed into the back of it (using a couple of spare molex connectors and a spare A1200 power cable). Both power cables were attached to the PC PSU I was using.

The secondary power line was used to power the drives, a case cooling fan I hacked in.
This left the normal power connector to power just the motherboard and accelerator/ram.

Later I also decided to feed power into the motherboard from the old floppy connector (from the second power feed that was powering the drives).

This dual feed into the motherboard is still used in my tower (whereas all the drives and case fan are powered straight from the PSU as per normal).

> but you'll need a tower to put it in

Like someone else said, this is out of the question because i really want to keep my old amiga feeling. My room is absolutely filled with towers, and i don't want Just Another Tower to have my Amiga in - the existing case is just so cute!

I hear that :-) I recently ressurected a second A1200 in a wedge from spares and using my old HD and accelerator (an old 040 card). These are the only expansions it has so I'm comfortable it wont pull too much current through the motherboard so I left it this time ;-)