68060 Accelerators

[XDelusion]

CMQ060

& a Blizkick patched rom will give an Amiga to be proud of, you be hard pushed to find a better set up than this...

I'll need to post some benchmarks to show the difference this makes...

What is a Blizkick patched rom? How do I go about doing/getting this?

[stefcep2]

TBH a 68060 is just icing on the cake these days.  Most Amiga owners I knew back in the day had '030's or slower A1200's.  And on that hardware-and anything else without a graphics card-the bottleneck is the native chipset graphics speed.

If you want to run Amiga productivity software quickly, then that software usually needs an RTG card to do it justice eg rendering, image processing, DTP.  Believe me, I know, I spent a small fortune upgrading my A1200 with an Apollo 68060, only to realise that AGA was still as slow as ever in 256 colors dblscan, which is what ImageFX, Photogenics, Cinema 4D and Pagestream need as  a minimum to be used comfortably

In short, the sensible thing would be to get an 030 ( 50 mhz if you can).  And if you need to run any of the above-mentioned apps, then do it in Winuae: its cheaper, faster, morecompatible and easier to set up than a big box amiga with an 68060 and a RTG card.

Ofcourse a true Amigan will ignore this sensible advice and buy an A4000, get that 68060, plus the picasso 4/cv64 with scan doubler/indivision.  I did.

[ChaosLord]

I spent a small fortune upgrading my A1200 with an Apollo 68060, only to realise that AGA was still as slow as ever in 256 colors dblscan, which is what ImageFX, Photogenics, Cinema 4D and Pagestream need as  a minimum to be used comfortably

Sorry but you did it wrong.

If you had purchased a hardware flickerfixer then your gfx speed would have quadrupled.

You are never ever ever ever supposed to use dblscan modes.  They are ridiculously slow.

[Franko]

TBH a 68060 is just icing on the cake these days.  Most Amiga owners I knew back in the day had '030's or slower A1200's.  And on that hardware-and anything else without a graphics card-the bottleneck is the native chipset graphics speed.

If you want to run Amiga productivity software quickly, then that software usually needs an RTG card to do it justice eg rendering, image processing, DTP.  Believe me, I know, I spent a small fortune upgrading my A1200 with an Apollo 68060, only to realise that AGA was still as slow as ever in 256 colors dblscan, which is what ImageFX, Photogenics, Cinema 4D and Pagestream need as  a minimum to be used comfortably

In short, the sensible thing would be to get an 030 ( 50 mhz if you can).  And if you need to run any of the above-mentioned apps, then do it in Winuae: its cheaper, faster, morecompatible and easier to set up than a big box amiga with an 68060 and a RTG card.

Ofcourse a true Amigan will ignore this sensible advice and buy an A4000, get that 68060, plus the picasso 4/cv64 with scan doubler/indivision.  I did.

Disagree with you totally here on my Blizz060/PPC under both OS3.1 & OS 3.5 PageStream, ImageFX, FinalWriter, and lots more besides run perfectly well WITHOUT AN RTG BOARD...

From a few threads that's running here tonight it looks like a lot of folk using 060 boards don't have them set up to take full advantage and squeeze every bit of speed out of their set ups...

Of course it could be because your using an Apollo and not a Blizzard as the Blizzard boards are way better than the Apollo ones...

[stefcep2]

@Chaoslord: the hardware FF/SD was next on the list,  but after buying the Apollo 68060, NEC 3D monitor, 32 MB RAM, 4 way ide splitter, external minitower, 3.5" HD CD burner, I said "enough!"....Also a guy offered me an A4000, with CS II 68060, 128 MB RAM, cyberscsi, 4gig scsi HD, CV64 (no need for SD/FF with the NEC 3D monitor for AGA) for $800 Aus ($450 US at the time).  ImageFX, Photogenics, C4D, Art Effect in 16 bit 1024x768, plus Mac emulation (photoshop, MS Office, Netscape) and I had the perfect computer, and the A1200 sat in the corner.

Funny thing is, its the other way around today..

[stefcep2]

Disagree with you totally here on my Blizz060/PPC under both OS3.1 & OS 3.5 PageStream, ImageFX, FinalWriter, and lots more besides run perfectly well WITHOUT AN RTG BOARD...

But on RTG board they really *shine*.  Seriuosly that software list loves a high-res high color screens.

From a few threads that's running here tonight it looks like a lot of folk using 060 boards don't have them set up to take full advantage and squeeze every bit of speed out of their set ups...

oh I did every speed hack I knew about:ftext, fblit, map kickstart into RAM, fastexec etc, 256 color AGA 640x480 ran like a dog

Of course it could be because your using an Apollo and not a Blizzard as the Blizzard boards are way better than the Apollo ones...

I've read that before and I would agree in terms of build quality P5 boards were better, the biggest issue is the stupid idea not to solder the timing crystal on the Apollo, so it would work its way loose when powered up, and damage the 68060.  But in terms of performance AIBB benchmarks I did, the Apollo outperformed the P5 boards in a lot of tests, ram speed being one big difference.

[Franko]

What is a Blizkick patched rom? How do I go about doing/getting this?

Well to start with you'll need a Blizzard060 board and download Blizkick from Aminet. A BlizKick rom is just the Kickstart ROM remapped from ROM into your Blizzards fastrom this introduces a vast overall increase in almost every aspect of the Amigas performance straight away...

A Blizkick patched ROM is a copy of the ROM image again, which BlickKick remaps to your fast ram but this time you have patched it with any amount of the so called modules that come with BlizKick which provide various patches and bugfixes and again more speed increases for your 060 Amiga...

That along with things like FBlit etc... and using blizkick to remap stuff like the latest versions of FastfileSytem and lots of other goodies give you an Amiga that works like a dream...

Now that I think about it, this could be one of the main reasons why I come across as such a rabid defender of OS3.x and my old A1200s, I just took it for granted that everyone had also set their 060 miggies up to run this way and couldn't understand why some folk think such a machine is not up to everyday use...

Seems like a quite a number of you guys out there have been using your 060 Amigas all this time and not getting the best out of them, think I'm gonna have to start a tutorial on getting the best out of a Blizzard 060... :lol:

[Retro_71]

Seems like a quite a number of you guys out there have been using your 060 Amigas all this time and not getting the best out of them, think I'm gonna have to start a tutorial on getting the best out of a Blizzard 060... :lol:

Well go ahead but i hope you can make it more a general 060 one since i don't have a Blizzard.. ... unless someone want to donate one to me..
But seriously maybe not a bad idea.

[Franko]

But on RTG board they really *shine*.  Seriuosly that software list loves a high-res high color screens.

I do agree that an RTG board would make things even better but how many folk actually own one

oh I did every speed hack I knew about:ftext, fblit, map kickstart into RAM, fastexec etc, 256 color AGA 640x480 ran like a dog

Well I did say somewhere else I'd post some SysSpeed benchmarks for various setups and let folk judge for themselves, as I've never had a slow problem like you describe, I'll do it tomorrow though it's 4:35am here just now and It's time for me 3 hourly sleep...

I've read that before and I would agree in terms of build quality P5 boards were better, the biggest issue is the stupid idea not to solder the timing crystal on the Apollo, so it would work its way loose when powered up, and damage the 68060.  But in terms of performance AIBB benchmarks I did, the Apollo outperformed the P5 boards in a lot of tests, ram speed being one big difference.

I've only ever owned an Apollo040 board but I've downloaded some Apollo060 SysSpeed test result from the net and comparing both the Blizzard and the Apollo there were no significant differences.

Find it rather odd that you manged to get AIBB running on an 060 board as AIBB is not compatible with an 060 board, just launched it right now to check and am sitting here staring at the old bright orange software failure message ERROR 8000 000B... :confused:

Do you have a special version of AIBB

[the_leander]

I do agree that an RTG board would make things even better but how many folk actually own one

You could probably count them in the tens these days.

I've only ever owned an Apollo040 board but I've downloaded some Apollo060 SysSpeed test result from the net and comparing both the Blizzard and the Apollo there were no significant differences.

There weren't any in mine either. The major troubles were due to timing issues with some Apollos and things like the mediator PCI expansion board on some models of A1200. Also the scsi was a bit hinky for those half dozen people ever who bought that expansion for the Apollo.

But on it's own, the Apollo was a fine card.

Find it rather odd that you manged to get AIBB running on an 060 board as AIBB is not compatible with an 060 board, just launched it right now to check and am sitting here staring at the old bright orange software failure message ERROR 8000 000B... :confused:

Do you have a special version of AIBB

Lulz. Owned.

Also, aga in 8bit will always be slow, knock it down to 64 and it'll purr along nicely, even with an 040.

[Franko]

You could probably count them in the tens these days.

I thought Karlos was the only one left with an RTG board, and I cant get the bugger to sell me it... :lol:

There weren't any in mine either. The major troubles were due to timing issues with some Apollos and things like the mediator PCI expansion board on some models of A1200. Also the scsi was a bit hinky for those half dozen people ever who bought that expansion for the Apollo.

But on it's own, the Apollo was a fine card.

Have to agree with that the Apollo cards were good quality, I never got round to buying the SCSI kits though for either the Apollo or my Blizzards, bought the FastATA MKII and was quite happy with that...

Lulz. Owned.

Also, aga in 8bit will always be slow, knock it down to 64 and it'll purr along nicely, even with an 040.

I tend to stick with 128 colours on my Blizzards and it does the job nicely for my uses...

[stefcep2]

I do agree that an RTG board would make things even better but how many folk actually own one



Well I did say somewhere else I'd post some SysSpeed benchmarks for various setups and let folk judge for themselves, as I've never had a slow problem like you describe, I'll do it tomorrow though it's 4:35am here just now and It's time for me 3 hourly sleep...



I've only ever owned an Apollo040 board but I've downloaded some Apollo060 SysSpeed test result from the net and comparing both the Blizzard and the Apollo there were no significant differences.

Find it rather odd that you manged to get AIBB running on an 060 board as AIBB is not compatible with an 060 board, just launched it right now to check and am sitting here staring at the old bright orange software failure message ERROR 8000 000B... :confused:

Do you have a special version of AIBB

1. syspeed AFAIR isn't as good as AIBB.  Can't remember why.

2. To run AIBB on a 68060, you use the 68000 cpu, and a 68882 fpu option, just click the cycle gadget.  AIBB then works.  It probably underestimates how quick the 68060 is to relative to 68040 and lower cpu (still outperforms them on AIBB benchmarks), but for (at least) the purpose of comparing 68060 boards from differing manufacturers its useful.

eg http://aminet.net/package/util/moni/AIBB_1260, http://aminet.net/package/util/moni/Module68060, http://aminet.net/package/util/moni/p4_A4060

[mechy]

Sorry but you did it wrong.

If you had purchased a hardware flickerfixer then your gfx speed would have quadrupled.

You are never ever ever ever supposed to use dblscan modes.  They are ridiculously slow.

Uhh no,your wrong, i don't care what flickerfixer you add to A1200 aga is dog dick slow in any amount of reasonable colors(256) or res. you never had a gfx card on an amiga have you?
Aga is fine for games and with a flicker fixer its tolerable to stare at with some apps.

I second the A4000 with 060(csppc even better) and a gfx card.I bought a PIV in 95 and it was the next best thing i could of bought other than the 060 MKII back then.

@franko : sorry mate,get off that mac you are using and go load a 1024x768 24 bit picture on the AGA and see if u can do much with it in decent time or better yet load piles of 24bit pics into a big document in pagestream. I guarantee it will bring that machine to a crawl(yes it can be done though). could This perhaps why you haven't ever browsed on the 1200 matey?

[Franko]

1. syspeed AFAIR isn't as good as AIBB.  Can't remember why.

2. To run AIBB on a 68060, you use the 68000 cpu, and a 68882 fpu option, just click the cycle gadget.  AIBB then works.  It probably underestimates how quick the 68060 is to relative to 68040 and lower cpu (still outperforms them), but for the purpose of comparing 68060 boards from differing manufacturers its useful.

1: they both have their differences but both perform the said task in slighlty  different manor...

2: You can't run AIBB on an 060 and you don't even get to the option screen it crashes as soon as the checking system text appears, look it's just did it again, you must be using a hacked version

[zipper]

I thought Karlos was the only one left with an RTG board, and I cant get the bugger to sell me it... :lol:

Neither me, having 5 different in 2 towers - sick?

[stefcep2]

Lulz. Owned.

See above

Also, aga in 8bit will always be slow, knock it down to 64 and it'll purr along nicely, even with an 040.

 
Sure if all you want to run is workbench,  register paint program, or a WP or text editor.

For software like ImageFX, Photogenics, Arte Effect, any 24 bit renderer, you can't compare AGA with a 24 bit board.