Accelerators worth it?

[brianb]

I currently have a A1200 w/ 4MB Expansion and a 1960 Monitor.  I'm debating on getting an 68030 accelerator, but man is the $/MHz high.   I was wondering what will this extra horsepower allow me to do that maybe I can't now?   I'm generally happy with the performance of the system now.  Sometimes it would be nice for compression activities to be faster, or when I have a lot of apps open at one time.  I know there are a few demos that I could run that I can't now.  Would additional games be available to me with the 68030?

Part of my dilemma is I'm also thinking of getting an Indivsion AGA but probably can't swing both at this time.  In a perfect world I'd get both.  :-D

Thought I'd throw it out, and get some ideas...  Thanks.

[countzero]

If I were you I would get some muffins and play the lottery.  8-)

[save2600]

If you're unhappy with what you have now (020 & fast ram), you're going to want an 030 board for sure. Save up and get a quality model with a 40mhz or higher processor & at least 16mb ram. Be careful though... soon after that, you may get the upgrade itch again when you've had a little taste of how fast the Amiga OS can seem  :-)   If you stick mostly with games and some light Amiga desktop usage, an 030 will be just fine. If you're going to want to do some more serious desktop apps or are impatient, you may want to go full tilt and get a 1260 (060) board. My opinions:

OS 3.1 - 020 and fast ram is great, especially if you're mostly just playing games.

OS 3.9 - 030 and 32mb is the way to go for the ultra long directories of WHDload and decompression of files.

[brianb]

save2600 wrote:

OS 3.9 - 030 and 32mb is the way to go for the ultra long directories of WHDload and decompression of files.

save2600: Thanks for the comments..  I didn't know I could run 3.9 with a 030... interesting, didn't even think of that.  Of course then I need 3.1 ROMs.   Damn this amiga habit...

Who sells 3.9 now?  After workbench 3.1 everything seems to get a little "hazy"...

[Tumbleweed]

I got my copy of 3.9 from Vesalia (www.vesalia.de). You can also try eBay and Amigakit.com.

[save2600]

Amigakit, Softhut and there are a couple more in and around Europe that may have them yet. I too need a 3.9CD as mine seems to have up and disappeared on me. You need the CD in order to install the Boing Bag updates. Something you'll want to do the higher up the chain you go accelerator wise.

There was an OS 3.5 too, but most seem to jump straight to 3.9. I bet there would be advantages to running 3.5 on a lighter system, but not sure as my experience with it was pretty sparse.  

[brianb]

save2600,

Would I need a CDROM attached to my A1200?  Or could I possibly copy the CD to a CF card and install from that?  I currently use a 1GB CF card to transfer data to and from my PC & Amiga.

Adding a CDROM would be cool, but I'd like it to be integrated in the standard 1200 case.  Probably something not all too easy...

Thanks.

[klx300r]

I have a Blizzard 030@50 with 32 MB ram and I absolutely love it :-D  couldnt imagine running my 1200 without her really...the difference is astounding from stock and makes WHDLoad games a pleasure, 3d gaming and rendering as well :-)

oh and Indivision AGA is a miracle for 1200's...YOU MUST GET IT..DON'T RESIST !!  :lol:

[DoogUK]

you can copy the contents over from the cd and then run install yes.

[darksun9210]

as you already have some fast ram, i'd say it is down to what you want to get out of the system.

i did most of my most productive stuff with an A1200, a 4MB fast ram card and and 20MB hard disk.

soon as i started with accelerators, mega amounts of ram (in amiga systems), graphics cards, i kinda lost sight of what i was doing, and for why. i ended up jumping on the bigger better faster upgrade cycle with no real purpose except that i really wanted these things when i was a kid and couldn't afford them. not that i was really running any software that really needed the extra horsepower.

then i started getting into tweeking around with imageFX and photogenics. then on to extracting frames from video, deinterlacing, applying a filter or two, then re-insert the frame back into the video. all under AREXX control. overnight batch processing.

anyway, accelerators it seems these days are an easy way to boost the ram on machines, and extra ram is a bonus for WHDLoad. its not like anyone seems to use miggys for CPU intensive stuff any more.

hell, my 030 based A500 can outgun my A4000, in yet all i use it for is WHDLoad Lotus2, flight of the amazon queen, and a bit of monkey 2. populous1/2 seems to be cpu speed locked, so anything over a 7Mhz '000 is a challenge!

but if you are interested, a basic break down follows
cpu speed compaired to basic A1200
1x A1200 (14Mhz 020)
2x A1200 (14Mhz 020, fastram)
4x A1200 (25Mhz 030, fastram)
10x A1200 (50Mhz 030, fastram)
20x A1200 (25Mhz 040, fastram)
40x A1200 (40Mhz 040, fastram)
80x A1200 (50Mhz 060, fastram)
100x A1200 (66Mhz 060, fastram)

plus running something like fblit and ftext will make window/icon redraws and gui operations so much smoother/faster/responsive.

[murple]

There's more than a few demos that you couldn't run without an accelerator. That was plenty of incentive for me. Also, you do get a real performance boost on other software.

Unless you really want to use an LCD monitor or need to run your screen in a really high resolution interlaced mode, then an Indivision is a nice toy but probably not really crucial. An accelerator will probably give you much more in the way of new things you can do with the Amiga.