Ultra RARE! X-Calibur accelerator for Amiga 4000, pre-production unit #5!

[JimDrew]

For all which ask, how fast is this compo, here are my test results:

http://www.a1k.org/forum/showthread.php?t=6971&highlight=x-calibur

But my card only works to 27,5MHZ, 33MHZ not possible with my card.

With the addition of the X-Calibur boards we were able to help a couple of Hollywood production studios (Amblin Entertainment being one of them) blaze through post production using our Mac emulation with the Avid hardware/software.  We could run the editing suite about 4 times faster than a real Mac, thanks to our replacement floating point math packages and the X-Calibur's super fast memory access.

[JimDrew]

My Mk1 CS (which is an 060) looks exactly like the one in your pictures, ROM included.

Ok, thanks for confirming that.  It's been a lot of years since I bought this, but there is no way I would ever need an 040 version of anything... we had the X-Calibur, Warp Engine, PPI, etc. 040 boards already in our development machines.  We needed the magical 060 to continue development.  

[magnetic]

Wow Jim Drew

Thats a blast from the past. An Amiga Legend!  What are you up to now programming wise?

[JimDrew]

LOL!  I am doing a variety of things, but I mostly design flight and guidance control systems for UAVs, ROVs, R/C aircraft, etc.  Earlier this year I designed and built the flight control system for James Cameron's ROV used on the Mariana Trench dive.

I have been getting back into the Commodore thing though.  I attended in the 8th annual CommVex convention in Las Vegas a couple of months ago.  That was fun.  I brought my wife and son to see how real computers worked and played.  

I am developing a few little products for the C64, and a hardware disk duplicator that uses PC 8", 5.25" or 3.5" disk drives to duplicate all disk formats ever created.  Somewhat like KryoFlux and Catweasel, but much higher resolution and it can operate as a stand alone unit or be driven by anything that has a CPU (C64, Mac, PC, or even a simple microcontroller).

I am just now really digging out my Amiga stuff.  I still have my last development machine (A3000/040, Picasso IV, EMPLANT, etc.)  It fired right up.  All of the source code to everything I ever made is still there.  Kind of fun to see that old stuff.  I have been selling off all of the various extra boards I had on eBay, and will continue to do so until they are all gone.

[hishamk]

LOL!  I am doing a variety of things, but I mostly design flight and guidance control systems for UAVs, ROVs, R/C aircraft, etc.  Earlier this year I designed and built the flight control system for James Cameron's ROV used on the Mariana Trench dive.

Wow! Good to see an Amiga legend still keeping busy (and seems to be having tons of fun!).

If you don't mind me asking, what do you think of the new fangled Amiga stuff, the X1000 for instance? Anything that piques your interest?

[JimDrew]

Wow! Good to see an Amiga legend still keeping busy (and seems to be having tons of fun!).

If you don't mind me asking, what do you think of the new fangled Amiga stuff, the X1000 for instance? Anything that piques your interest?

Well, it's good to see something carrying on, but I miss the 68K and original Amiga OS.   I miss fast booting and small programs!

[Jeff]

Great to here from you again after many years!  I was a big fan of your Amiga work "back in the day".  If you haven't already done so, please backup all of your source code and contents on the old machines while they are still working!  It sounds like you have done quite well for yourself, congrats!

 

LOL!  I am doing a variety of things, but I mostly design flight and guidance control systems for UAVs, ROVs, R/C aircraft, etc.  Earlier this year I designed and built the flight control system for James Cameron's ROV used on the Mariana Trench dive.

I have been getting back into the Commodore thing though.  I attended in the 8th annual CommVex convention in Las Vegas a couple of months ago.  That was fun.  I brought my wife and son to see how real computers worked and played.  

I am developing a few little products for the C64, and a hardware disk duplicator that uses PC 8", 5.25" or 3.5" disk drives to duplicate all disk formats ever created.  Somewhat like KryoFlux and Catweasel, but much higher resolution and it can operate as a stand alone unit or be driven by anything that has a CPU (C64, Mac, PC, or even a simple microcontroller).

I am just now really digging out my Amiga stuff.  I still have my last development machine (A3000/040, Picasso IV, EMPLANT, etc.)  It fired right up.  All of the source code to everything I ever made is still there.  Kind of fun to see that old stuff.  I have been selling off all of the various extra boards I had on eBay, and will continue to do so until they are all gone.

[Jeff]

Great to here from you again after many years!  I was a big fan of your Amiga work "back in the day".  If you haven't already done so, please backup all of your source code and contents on the old machines while they are still working!  It sounds like you have done quite well for yourself, congrats!

 

LOL!  I am doing a variety of things, but I mostly design flight and guidance control systems for UAVs, ROVs, R/C aircraft, etc.  Earlier this year I designed and built the flight control system for James Cameron's ROV used on the Mariana Trench dive.

I have been getting back into the Commodore thing though.  I attended in the 8th annual CommVex convention in Las Vegas a couple of months ago.  That was fun.  I brought my wife and son to see how real computers worked and played.  

I am developing a few little products for the C64, and a hardware disk duplicator that uses PC 8", 5.25" or 3.5" disk drives to duplicate all disk formats ever created.  Somewhat like KryoFlux and Catweasel, but much higher resolution and it can operate as a stand alone unit or be driven by anything that has a CPU (C64, Mac, PC, or even a simple microcontroller).

I am just now really digging out my Amiga stuff.  I still have my last development machine (A3000/040, Picasso IV, EMPLANT, etc.)  It fired right up.  All of the source code to everything I ever made is still there.  Kind of fun to see that old stuff.  I have been selling off all of the various extra boards I had on eBay, and will continue to do so until they are all gone.

[JimDrew]

I have everything backed up and fully operational in WinUAE!

[esc]

Dude!  I'd love to see some of the stuff you made demo'd either in UAE or on real hardware...screencaps/vids maybe?  

Also - I was the first bidder on the x-calibur, and I'm kicking myself for not doing the buy-it-now...oops...

[JimDrew]

I thought about making a mini history movie for Wiki.

Yeah, I thought it was odd that nobody used the buy it now option for all of my items.

[esc]

Well put the buy-it-now back on there and I'll click on it, dangit!!!  

[JimDrew]

Well, good thing eBay won't let me!  

[hishamk]

Just came across this ancient interview... http://emaculation.com/jim1.shtml

It's a shame about that thing with Christian Bauer stealing your Emplant code for ShapeShifter. Really pathetic behavior. Bad karma points to him I guess.

[JimDrew]

Of course, most Europeans don't believe it.  When it happened I had several respected Amiga programmers take a look at the Resource dumps of the code for comparison and post their findings on Aminet and other places.  When things like deliberately placed EOR'd text strings appeared in some of the Mac patches, it was pretty obvious what was going on.  I had already sued (and won) a company in England for ripping off my disk copier, SuperCard Ami II.  But that cost me over $10,000 and yielded me a box of ripped off product and no awarded damages or attorney fees.  I didn't want to go through that whole thing again.  Now days, it is much easier to sue companies overseas as the U.S. government has a department setup just to handle those issues.

[Crumb]

@JimDrew

You are right, I thought it didn't inlcude any eeprom chip because I didn't notice the black eeprom so I assumed it was the 040 model, my fault, sorry!

PS:*even the voltage regulator can be observed in the daughterboard, I must check my glasses ;-)

BTW, CSMK1 is a great board :-)