Blizzard A1230 IV questions

[srg86]

Hi

I've just bought an awaiting delivery of a Blizzard A1230 IV board for my A1200.

The board is comming with a 16MB SIMM but I also have a 32MB EDO 60ns double sided SIMM that I would like to use in it instead. Will this work and will it take advantage of it.

Also, with more than 4MB RAM installed, is the 1230 IV PCMCIA friendly?

thanks
srg

[bloodline]

srg86 wrote:
Hi

I've just bought an awaiting delivery of a Blizzard A1230 IV board for my A1200.

The board is comming with a 16MB SIMM but I also have a 32MB EDO 60ns SIMM that I would like to use in it instead. Will this work and will it take advantage of it.

Also, with more than 4MB RAM installed, is the 1230 IV PCMCIA friendly?

thanks
srg

The 1230-IV is the best accel ever made for the A1200. Perfect in every way... except that's it's only 030 :-)

I run mine with a 60ns 32Meg EDO simm (Make sure you set the 60ns jumper :-D)

[Robert17]

Yes, The B1230IV is Pcmcia friendly with more than 4mb, not sure how high this goes but I have 32mb on mine and never had a problem.

Robert

[srg86]

For my uses the 030 is the best, it has internal MMU and full 68882 FPU (on the card).

I had one of these boards on my old amiga and it flew. On my current expansion card (no CPU, just RAM expansion) the 32MB SIMM causes aexplorer to crash but I expect that's because Amiga's like FPM RAM. Still if this card uses EDO then great! What sport of speed boost is there in using EDO?

It'll be interesting to see where the 32-bit memory from the SIMM is mapped into the 030's address space.

srg

[bloodline]

srg86 wrote:
For my uses the 030 is the best, it has internal MMU and full 68882 FPU (on the card).

I had one of these boards on my old amiga and it flew. On my current expansion card (no CPU, just RAM expansion) the 32MB SIMM causes aexplorer to crash but I expect that's because Amiga's like FPM RAM. Still if this card uses EDO then great! What sport of speed boost is there in using EDO?

It'll be interesting to see where the 32-bit memory from the SIMM is mapped into the 030's address space.

srg

EDO has no speed improvement, the card was not designed to make use of it.

[Abou27]

I have a 128Mb SIMM in one of these cards.  PCMCIA still works fine:-)  I think that the card is PCMCIA friendly regardless of RAM added.  However, I am sure that someone will point you in the right direction if my information is erroneous.  A no lose situation for you:-)

[Hyperspeed]

Yes, the Blizzard 1230-IV is the best accelerator you can buy for
A1200. It is extremely compatible and a good all-rounder.

The manual will say it can take 256Mb unlike the 192Mb a Blizzard 1260
can take.

However I wouldn't really reccomend double-sided SIMMs as they will
touch the trapdoor and transfer heat to the plastic.

Your best bet is to get a single sided 64Mb FPM SIMM. If you have a
tower then you might want to track down a double sided 128Mb FPM.

The Blizzard 1230-IV like all RAM expansions with a CPU on will
mapinto a different memory address space to the PCMCIA slot. If you
have an 8Mb RAM card with no CPU then that is where the problems
begin.

Whilst you're waiting for the 1230-IV to arrive you could look for a
50Mhz 68882 FPU and a SCSI-IV kit to allow you to use another SIMM and
have access to fast scanners etc.

Another point to note is that there are two jumpers on the 1230-IV
(Two pairs of pins which can be bridged with a little plastic-coated
connector), these allow you to switch between 60Ns/70Ns SIMMs and also
allow you to copy your entire Kickstart ROM into FastMem (which speeds
up some operations tenfold).

Good stuff, a 1230-IV also retains it's value on eBay - if not
appreciating in value due to the compatibility/quality.

[adolescent]

Hyperspeed wrote:
Yes, the Blizzard 1230-IV is the best accelerator you can buy for
A1200. It is extremely compatible and a good all-rounder.

While it's a great card, and probably the best 030 accellerator for the A1200, it doesn't come close to the performance of the Blizzard 1260.  I'd say the BlizzardPPC 060/603+ would be the very best, but since it's nearly impossible to run one of those in a standard case I'd say the 1260 is the best.

The manual will say it can take 256Mb unlike the 192Mb a Blizzard 1260
can take.

The 1260 (with SCSI IV) can take 256M just like the 1230IV.

As mentioned, the double sided memory is a tight fit.  And, the accellerator won't take advantage of EDO.  But, it should work.  (You may however find that you don't need more than the 16M).  A wonderful program to get is BlizKick.  This allows much more flexability than the normal maprom.

[Hyperspeed]

Well performance-wise the Blizzard 1230-IV is just a quarter of the
raw power of the Blizzard 1260 (SysInfo v2.6) but the '030 makes up
for this in terms of sheer compatibility, plug-n-play with no
libraries or FPU mapping needed, it's a third of the price of the 1260
too.

This is why I think it makes The Peoples accelerator.

:-D

The Blizzard 1260 is a monster of an accelerator though but is quite
imbalanced on AGA only systems, there is a bit of a graphics
bottleneck there.

I can't see the point of BlizKick to be honest, I've read the Guide
and half the modules have "Useless" or "Unreliable hack" written next
to them by the author (Piru).

If you have a Phase5 1260, 68060.library 46.7 and SCSI-IV ROM 8.5 then
I see no point in the program. It certainly is going to add to the
plethora of hacks that can destabilise the general reliability of
things.

Feel free to point out it's merits though, I have a nasty habit of
reading the AmigaGuide and arriving at rash opinions.

:-D :-D :-D

[patrik]

@Hyperspeed:

BlizKick is good as it can do lots of useful things in one reboot. The best thing IMHO is the "LocalFast" module which puts exec.library and the supervisor stack pointer into fastmem giving a tremendous speed-boost in Workbench in general plus allowing RAD-disks in fastmem. One more good thing is the ofcourse the "PrepareEmul" module to be able to run Mac-emulation. And not to forget - it rather kicks arse to also be able to kick just about every KickStart from file .


/Patrik

[srg86]

Thanks for the useful comments.

I know how good this card is because I had one with 8MB SIMM and FPU on my old amiga before going to the PC, quality card.

The card I've bought now does come with the 50MHz 68882 FPU and the lot cost me £94 from ebay (it was "buy it now"). At the moment I've no interest in SCSI, the 512MB internal IDE hard drive in this does everything I need (I have a PC for scanners etc).

If the SIMM I have doesn't fit then I'll just use the 16MB one it came with, it's enough for my uses.

At the moment I have no need of the power of a Blizzard 1260. I want an 030+68882 because they are the closest to the hardware feature set of the i386+i387. As what I have so far of my hobby os kernel (it's really just a paged memory manager at the moment until I get arround to doing some more to it) I want to port to the m68K Amiga. The FPU on the 040 and 060 are half software (hence the libraries). Also the 030's MMU is a subset of the 68851 MMU. AFAIK the MMU in the 040 is programmed slightly differently and in the 060 it's slightly different again. After getting somewhere with the 030, I'd like to add kernel supprt for the 040 and 060. So eventually I will get a Blizzard 040 and Blizzard 060 cards.

BTW A lot of Amiga stuff seems to hold a lot of value. I would love an A3000 but as these things on ebay go for about £250 each, I can't afford one. Not bad for a computer that came out 15 years ago.

srg

[srg86]

I got the card this morning and all is well.

I did try it with the double sided 32MB SIMM and you're right, it did start to mark the plasic of the trap door, so I'm using it with the 16MB single sided SIMM that came with the card.

I never used the maprom feature on my old Amiga but I have it turned on with this one and wow does the machine boot faster.

srg