Apollo 040 or Blizzard 1230-IV... what is the best for my A1200?

[starf81]

Great!

So, if the seller will accept my offer for the Apollo, I'll change the fan.

Regarding the compatibility, I've checked the requirements of softwares I need... they should work.

Last question (sorry but I was out from Amiga world for too years...): I've visited the WHDload site. It looks a very nice program. Can you sure me that it work with Apollo?


THANKS!
Alex

[Karlos]

Plenty of games I had that were a bit ropey on the apollo directly worked fine with WHDLoad, but I guess your mileage will always vary.

The WHDLoad idea is that there is a central library/framework and then there are seperate installers/patchers for each game/application that try to correct known incompatibilities. You can generally configure each installed game so that if needed, caches etc can be deactivated when the game is launched.

-edit-

Anyway, if you have some old game that refuses to run, you could always fire up that A500 :-D

[amiga1260]

An Apollo can only use upto 32 mb of fast mem en de Blizzard 1230IV without SCSI-kit upto 128 MB of Fastmem. And if you could find a SCSI-kit for the Blizzard 1230IV, you can have 256 MB of Fastmem.  :banana:

Another thing a SCSI-kit for the Blizzard has an Fast SCSI-2 DMA controller. It leaves you more CPU cycles to use for other things like watching video's. Go for the Blizzard, it's the best card you can get.

When you could find a Blizzard 1260 for cheap, you could use the SCSI-kit with it.

 

[Karlos]

To expand on that,

If you can get a Blizzard 1240, 1260 then sure, go for it. On the other hand, I wouldn't reccomend an 030 card unless CPU performance is not an issue.

The SCSI controller is a consideration too. If you want to use SCSI drives, the apollo card is poorly implemented, using PIO. Blizzard cards use a proper SCSI script processor capable of DMA, so transfers to/from disk use a lot less CPU time.

This reminds me, I must find a SCSI HD for my 1200T at some point ;-)

[starf81]

I don't need SCSI controller, I've already the Elbox Power Flyer FastATA Mk.II with very fast IDE devices...

Thanks again...
Alex

[Karlos]

I dare say the 040 won't be a bad choice for you then. Of course, the IDE expansions you have still use PIO which is naturally quite CPU intensive.

-edit-

If you do get the Apollo, be sure to check a tool on aminet called 'RemApollo' which can give you quite some performance boost, especially if your apollo card, like mine, was an earlier model.

There are also replacement math libraries for the 040 which can give any applications that use these math libraries a healthy boost.

[Tahoe]

Karlos wrote:
This reminds me, I must find a SCSI HD for my 1200T at some point ;-)

I have a Seagate 4,3GB 7K2 RPM drive laying around... Want it? You only pay shipping, or you can pick it up if you are ever in Amsterdam  :-D

[Karlos]

@Tahoe

There is a chance I might be around there in the not too distant actually (depends on a few other factors not im my control however) :-)

What would be your preferred payment method for shipping, anyway?