Upgrading an A1200...

[Ishikodzume]

Hi, uhh... sorry because this is going to be kind of a n00bish ask-for-advice post :\

Anyway, though i've moved to Linux/x86 for all my serious computing work for a while now, i still use my old Amiga 1200 (not upgraded, except for having a HDD). Mainly for watching old demoscene prods, D-Paint pixelling, and as a serial console to one of my BSD boxes.

I've decided i want to upgrade it finally, but i don't know as much about the hardware as i'd like to.

Here is what i want to do with the Amiga:
 - Keep it inside the desktop case!
 - The same stuff i mentioned above. Demo compatibility i still want, so for example, still having usage of the standard AGA video output is a must.
 - Run newer demos at a decent speed.
 - Get it on my lan so i don't have to use 720k floppies to transfer files, can SSH into other boxes, etc etc.
 - Have a nice VGA out and decent res so i am not getting headaches with 640x512 interlaced , and possibly 24bit in D-Paint.

The easy part is i know i need a PCMCIA NIC. If i was to get this first, would my 020 + 2mb ram be enough for the TCP/IP stack and apps like SSH/FTP/etc? This part is probably the cheapest, so it'd be nice to buy it first.

Then more generally, i'd need more RAM and a faster processor... the only problem with that is, the only solution for having a graphics card in a desktop A1200 i have heard of, is the BVision + Blizzard PPC combo, so i am somewhat restricted, *unless* someone knows of another graphics card solution? I mean, i know i want an 060 (or at least an 040) for a lot of demos, but i don't really want a PPC card for any reason... so if i can just get an 060 + GFX card that'd be great. If not, the cheapest Blizzard PPC card with the best 68k chip would be best, i guess.

But then again, if there is a graphics card + 060 accel solution, is just an 060 enough to run most apps nicely? I have a P75 that will run most stuff just fine under Linux, so i assuming a 60mhz Motarola chip would do fine for comparable tasks? How sluggish does workbench (loaded down with MUI etc) get when you move into a high res with just an 060?

Eh, sorry for all the questions. I'm interested to hear what stuff other people who don't want to tower their A1200s have done...
As i said, this isn't my main machine, so it doesn't have to be blazingly fast particularly...

[Kronos]

Sorry,but why areyou useing 640x512i

Get yourselfa VGA-adapter (instructions can even be found on Aminet),
move DbPAL/DbNTSC,VGAOnly, MUTISCAN,EURO72 from storage/monitors
to devs:monitors, and choose a better res.

If that still ain't good enough (or you want really-old games/demos on the VGA),
get a Flickerfixer.....

Far from being as good as a real GFX-card, but also far cheaper and compatible.

[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.

[fragment]

Ishikodzume wrote:
Here is what i want to do with the Amiga:
 - Keep it inside the desktop case!

Good choice! IMO towers are not that nice :-)

 - The same stuff i mentioned above. Demo compatibility i still want, so for example, still having usage of the standard AGA video output is a must.
 - Run newer demos at a decent speed.

Buy yourself an accelerator. Used 030's and 040s can be found quite cheap around. But many wont fit with the trapdoor. I have Viper 060 from Vesalia and it fits nicely even when the trapdoor is closed.

 - Get it on my lan so i don't have to use 720k floppies to transfer files, can SSH into other boxes, etc etc.

Old 16bit pcmcia NICs are quite cheap too. Either a NE2000 compatible or a 3Com one will do (not all models tho)

 - Have a nice VGA out and decent res so i am not getting headaches with 640x512 interlaced , and possibly 24bit in D-Paint.

Get yourself an internal scandoubler. I have DCEs FlickerMagick which is a scandoubler and a flickerfixer.

The easy part is i know i need a PCMCIA NIC. If i was to get this first, would my 020 + 2mb ram be enough for the TCP/IP stack and apps like SSH/FTP/etc? This part is probably the cheapest, so it'd be nice to buy it first.

I had 4mb fast with a pcmcia nic for some time. It was ok for IRC, SSH and some very light web browsing. Propably 2mb chip is not enough.. Get the accelerator board first :-D

Then more generally, i'd need more RAM and a faster processor... the only problem with that is, the only solution for having a graphics card in a desktop A1200 i have heard of, is the BVision + Blizzard PPC combo, so i am somewhat restricted, *unless* someone knows of another graphics card solution? I mean, i know i want an 060 (or at least an 040) for a lot of demos, but i don't really want a PPC card for any reason... so if i can just get an 060 + GFX card that'd be great. If not, the cheapest Blizzard PPC card with the best 68k chip would be best, i guess.

A 060 board should be enough for you for demos etc and PPC will produce a nice amount of heat so it cannot be stuffed inside a desktop box. Most 060 boards support up to 32, 64 or 128mb RAM, which should be enough.

How sluggish does workbench (loaded down with MUI etc) get when you move into a high res with just an 060?

Not sluggish at all :-)

Eh, sorry for all the questions. I'm interested to hear what stuff other people who don't want to tower their A1200s have done...
As i said, this isn't my main machine, so it doesn't have to be blazingly fast particularly...

Fight the pow.. uh TOWER!  :-D

[fragment]

One more thing, as Karlos pointed out, is the power. Original A1200 PSU is not powerful enough to juice up all your hardware. Either buy a heavyduty powersupply or hack one from old AT power, IF and only if you ha ve the skills.

[amiga1260]

To use VGA out, you need a flickerfixer like DCE SCANDO FF. To use a NIC card with TCP/IP you need at least 4 MB of RAM. The only solution to have a graphics card is buying an BlizzardPPC and a BVision. A 060 is very fast with Workbench operations.

Do not forget to buy a CD-ROM for your Amiga, because  you can run AmigaOS 3.5 or 3.9. In these OSes, there are tools you need for TCP/IP, AHI and Graphics card.

[Kronos]

@Amiga1260

No you don't really need a FF/SD  ....

Only if you need the old 15khz-modes,used for the early-startup-menu,
and most self-booting games/demos.

[Jiffy]

You're now at the point I was a while ago: having a vanilla A1200 and wanting some more.

I now have an A1200 with DCE internal flickerfixer (I use highres interlace, with overlay as my standard WB setting), OS 3.9, a PCMCIA nic and a Blizzard 1260 with SCSI card and 128 MB ram.

The Blizzard 1230 & 1260 are very nice turbocards: fast, reliable, can be switched off by pressing the '2' key while booting (great for compatibility) and the optional SCSI card gives you great expandability while keeping your original A1200 housing intact.

I have connected four drives in an external SCSI-tower to my A1200 and having great fun with it.

Like you, I don't like the A1200 tower solutions. Yes, they are great for expansion, but somewhere along the way, I loose my Amiga-feeling...

Oh, a reasonably sized (2-4 GB) internal 2.5" harddisk is nice to have. The internal IDE-controller isn't the worlds greatest performer, but it does what I expect it to do, and in combination with a reasonable turbocard (68030 and up), it does so at a very acceptable speed. Well, that is, acceptable for me... :-)

[Ishikodzume]

Thanks for the replies

> Far from being as good as a real GFX-card, but also far cheaper and compatible [flickerfixer]

Yeah, i considered that. Though i was kind of looking forward to nice 1024x768 on my Amiga, i guess as the BVision solution isn't that good... so at least i can run the old res but without the flicker.
I think i'd go with an external one though, so i can still put the amiga through my old monitor or TV through a SCART.

> 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...

> 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!

> Used 030's and 040s can be found quite cheap around.

Not seen too many 060s though... :\

> a Blizzard 1260 with SCSI card and 128 MB ram

Is the SCSI controller on the 1260 board, or do you mean separate?
Do i really need a SCSI controller/CD-ROM? I was thinking it'd be cheaper and better just to mount any CD-ROMs i might need to use over NFS, or if there is no NFS client for AmigaOS, just FTP the files across onto the hard drive and do any installing from there. Is there any reason why that isn't feasible? It's what i do with all my other boxes, there is 1 DVD-ROM shared between several other computers.

Anyway, thanks for all the replies!
My current thinking is this:
 - 060 accelorator card with somewhere around 32 or 64mb RAM
 - NE2k PCMCIA NIC
 - External flickerfixer/scandoubler

Off to Amibench and eBay i guess!

[Amigadude]

For network card:

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=177&item=3434390358

I got one from the same guy/shop for £7.50 including P&P, the 3com driver on aminet works fine with it

I have one in the machine I use as a webserver http://johnn.is-a-geek.net:85/sysstat.xgi

Netgear FA410 works as well but the FA411 doesn't

JohnN

[Damion]

A gfx card is almost useless anyway for most
demos which are mainly AGA.

My advice for watching demos and obtaining an
acceptable workbench speed:

Blizzard 1260, 64 meg FPM SIMM can be found
for under $20 at oempcworld.com (there are a
million good demos which take advantage of an
'060)

SD/FF (you want an internal for best video
quality)

A couple of hacks to speed up video performance
under AGA: FBlit, FText and BlazeWCP (aminet)
They make a *huge* difference.

[Jiffy]

> a Blizzard 1260 with SCSI card and 128 MB ram
Is the SCSI controller on the 1260 board, or do you mean separate?

The SCSI controller is optional and can be fitted afterward. Both the Blizzard 1230 & 1260 have a connector which can be used for the controller. A nice extra is the fact that the SCSI controller gives you the chance to add an extra simm. In my case this gives me 2x 64 MB fastram. Which is a lot.

Do i really need a SCSI controller/CD-ROM?

Well, you need a cd-rom for OS3.9 to install (this comes on CD-ROM, that's why). After that a CD-ROM is not absolutely necessary. Apart from that, it is possible to use IDE drives with your A1200. The SCSI solution is much more professional, though. No flatcables peeking out of your A1200, a maximum of 7 external devices which you can add, such as cd-rom, cd-rw, scanner, tapestreamer and zipdisk. Reliable and fast, that's what it is. All in all, I think both the Blizzard 1230 and the 1260, especially when hooked up to the Blizzard SCSI option pack (which is the same for both the 1230 and the 1260) are by far the most desirable turboboards for the A1200.

> 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?

Yup. The PPC produces quite a lot of heat, which is almost impossible to get rid of in a standard A1200 desktopcase.

External flickerfixer/scandoubler

Are you sure about the external one? The internal FF is a nicer fit and normally gives a better picture.

[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 ;-)

[lempkee]

to the dood who started this thread:

if you want DEMO and game support , get a system that can do both, the best thing you can find is a blizzardppc with 060 cpu and a ppc at 240 mhz , about 100 demos has to this date been made for PPC amiga's , most of em needs RTG (gfx card) and with the blizzardppc you can get a bvision which is "OK" enough for both Workbench usage in high'r resulutions + watching demos , why?  well because of thats the base system most of the demos was made on/for .

secondly you will need a scandoubler/flickerfixer, choose from either internal or external...both will do for the time.

or instead of that, get a monitor capable of showing 15khz modes and up..., in theese days LCD is very popular and guess what...many of them has 15khz as a standard ...

if a lcd is too expensive, then you can buy an microvitek multisync monitor which will handle both your gfx card + your aga/ecs modes.
(amiga technologies liscensed theese monitors years ago...(95?)..)

if you need memory ... talk to haystack (haymigga) on this forum, he sells cheap simms (128mb).

dont buy Apollo boards unless its impossibe to find a blizzard , why? they only take 32mb by default! .. you can add a second simslot but it require alot of work to do so and will cost u extra.

i wont recomend a 030 nor a 040 , the only viable system for demos theese days is a 060, and as we know 060 can be abit harsh on older demos , but that is why we have stuff like "WHDLOAD" etc, and also you can disable the blizzard boards with "2" on the keyboard , if its a ppc board , then you can also keep the cpu's active and disable memory , or the otherway around.

anyway i would say...DONT go for a desktop unless u are prepared to waste a lot of money, i have blown far too many cards on desktops...heat ruins em.. and you also get problems like.... you dont know how it looks inside.., and if you are abit untidy....smoke will arise ....has happened here... ;(


good luck and welcome to the board.

[Ishikodzume]

> http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=177&item=3434390358
[...]
> Netgear FA410

Thanks, i'll make a note of those two cards for when i get it.

Well, there is a Blizzard 1260 on eBay right now i am keeping my eyes on... hopefully it wont be too expensive . Any idea what is a decent price to pay for one? I can't seem to find that many examples...
I saw an 060 (Cyberstorm MKII i think) on Amibench for about £180, but that was with a load of RAM too.
Do you think it's realistic to be able to get an 060 for about £150 or somewhere around there?

> A gfx card is almost useless anyway for most demos

Yeah i know, but i was thinking the GFX card would be nice for hi-res desktop, and also maybe for graphics work... Amiga art packages tend to be so much nicer than everything else for my uses
But this isn't something i desparately need, and i am on kind of a tight budget... so...

> (you want an internal for best video quality)

Ah... but then doesn't the option of using my old monitor or a TV go out the window? I want to be able to use a VGA monitor, yes... but i'd still like to use the old graphics modes too. I was thinking with the external, all i do is unplug it, and it's back to normal...

> Well, you need a cd-rom for OS3.9 to install

I'm assuming it doesn't actually care about the media itself, though? I mean couldn't i copy the install files to the HDD and then ask it to use them there? It seems a waste to get a CD drive and controller etc, when i'm never going to need it.

> about 100 demos has to this date been made for PPC amiga's

Yeah, but... well, i'm more impressed with the demos that use the original hardware, really. If i want to watch a demo that has a crapload of processing power available to it, i might as well go watch one of the PC demos in my 15 GB collection
The plain 68k AGA/ECS demos impress the pants off of me just because of the amazing stuff they do on that older hardware, and remind me how much better it is than 'equivilent' x86 hardware for graphics work.