DKB Cobra 030@28 - any good?

[rockstar]

I'm considering buying one of those for my A1200 since the Blizzard 1230's are so expensive.

The primary reason I want a 030 is that I want to run OS 3.9.

Should I go for the Blizzard 1230 or the Cobra? What is a reasonable price for the Cobra?

[Argus]

There's a reason for the price difference, other than MHz.  The DKB boards needed a firmware update to run OS3.1.  So with the Cobra, unless you are lucky to find one with the update, will have you stuck in OS3.0.  Then you'd need to figure out some clever way of soft-kicking into 3.1 so you could install 3.9.  I've never done it, maybe someone here has found a way?  My advice, bite the bullet and get a Blizzard MarkIV (or better yet a Blizz1260).  btw, since BlizzardPPCs with 68060s seem to be fetching only around $350-400US right now on eBay, you might want to bite a little harder, pay roughly double what you'd pay for a 68030 and have a real monster A1200 (provided your not limiting yourself to just an A1200 desktop original).

[prowler]

I was probably unlucky but I bought a DKB Cobra years ago for my A1200 (around the mod 90's). I found it to be extremely flaky and particular with it's seating in the trap door slot. I would get a lot yellow screens on power on/reboot as well as random lock ups. Take the card out, all worked well (except I was stuck with a 020/2Meg 1200).

It eventually stopped working about 1-2 years ago so I recently bought a Blizzard 1230 off EBay and have had no problems at all, which was a realief since I always had a nigling worry that there was something wrong with the 1200 causing the problems. I am now planning on getting hold of some 3.1 ROMs to get 3.9 onto the machine now.

[spihunter]

I had one of these in my A1200 for years. I never had a problem with it. It was the scsi ad-on board that was really flaky.

[kevh100]

My 030@33Mhz with 68882 FPU and 64mb SIMM are still going strong today, god knows how many years after buying it. I'd buy one again

Kev

[Brian]

I'm a real Phase5 fan, first turbo was a Blizzard1230MK3. But between that and my BlizzardPPC040 (later sold and now currently own a Blizzard1260 and a Blizzard1230MK4) I owned a rubbish Apollo1230/50 that would never work well (often lockup and guru for no apparent reason no matter hom much I tinkered with it) and a Cobra1230/33.

I belive the Cobra is a very nice card as long as you get a 3.1 compatible card and stick to the 33Mhz version (none EC CPU / Overclocked). Mine ran fine and was only replaced cause I involved myself in a maximum uppgrade mission for the A1200 and for that needed a PPC and GFX card solution. :-D

If you find a 33Mhz version that is 3.1 compatible and negotiate right you'll probably be able to get it for about 25$... but stay away from the overclocked 28Mhz version and the only EC 40Mhz version.

[motrucker]

Odd mix of answers here. I have always had very good luck with all DKB stuff. I still use an '030 (40MHz I believe) with a 32 Mb simm that runs OS 3.5 with no trouble at all in my A1200. (I may upgrade to 3.9 some day) I even use the DKB SCSI with good luck (it is a pain to connected correctly, but once it is, it works well).
Good luck filtering through all this......

[soyeb]

20 years late, but you may still be interested.  The DKB Cobra 030 was my first accelerator.  I'm not sure if it was a 28MHz or 33MHz, but whichever it was, it worked well for me.  I later went through many other accelerators, but the DKB was the most reliable along with an Apollo 1240.

[AmigaSource]

  Yup..  20 yrs late too.   My first accelerator too although I first started with their DKB 1202 board.  (https://amiga.resource.cx/exp/dkb1202).  Simple memory, FPU and RTC upgrade.  Ahh those were the days.  8MB and you though you were a KING!

 FWIW I had nothing but good times with mine!  I had the accompanying Ferret SCSI board (https://amiga.resource.cx/exp/ferret) and it always worked GREAT! I used it with my external SCSI CD-ROM, Connor DAT drive (used AMI-Back, Diavolo and Quarterback) and a random SCSI flatbed or two.

  I seem to remember at some point having some technical issues, mailing it back to DKB, and corresponded with Dean Brown during the repair process.

[PlatformerZ]

started with a 1202 around 2016 then a DKB Cobra 40Mhz card. Bought locally it was a good solid card with FPU. Luckily it was the updated rom version.

Around 2020 I was interested in the icomp ACA cards for their SYSInfo CPU and RAM performance. Mainly because that was the trend in forums at the time.

IDEFix scsi patch rapidly enhanced IDE = HDD CF transfer times and also the Cobra rom has a serious bottleneck in that department, giving around 800kbs IDE speed while ACA cards were 2.2Mbs up to 4.4Mbs with IDEFix. The IDEFix hardware shows even greater figures up to 6-8Mbs.

It's hype though and I was caught up in the culture of it.

   

[Boing-ball]

Holy Thread resurrection Batman! 

The one and only 030 classic accelerator was and still is the Phase 5 1230. 50mhz 030 upto 128MB RAM. Then buy and add a SCSI 2 add on with DMA and another 128MB RAM. Maprom functionality etc..