Most powerful PPC that can be put in an A1200?

[AmigaClassicRule]

Not too sound overly pessimistic, but an MMORPG (as in Massively Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Game) would be an utter joke on any non-mainstream platform. In the case of an Amiga MMO, it would probably be less than a hundred people playing at the same time.
 
Perhaps something like The Realm running on some sort of old and outdated low-end server would be feasible, but that's that.

Will, the MMORPG I am thinking of and I may be dreaming here but it is used in mainstream platform such as Windows, Mac and heck even Linux but also for OS 4 and OS 3.x with RTG card. It does not need TO BE HEAVY 3D rendering MMORPG, in fact a good looking 2D MMORPG would suffice. Perhaps if it WAS feasible and people can see MMORPG is possible on an classic RTG Amiga (giving RTG Amiga another new life into it) then perhaps more MMORPG would come up. Hence, JUST FOR THAT ALONE perhaps, getting an A4000 to upgrade it to RTG would make RTG at least worth that, than to say it is not worth it.

[rvo_nl]

something like http://aminet.net/package/comm/net/AmiMUD ?

[Blinx123]

Quick question:
Is there any benefit to an Apollo over a Blizzard?

I've been offered an Apollo 1240 with one SIMM slot. Would it be hard to upgrade it to a 060 CPU and a second RAM slot?

How much do Blizzard 1260s usually go for these days?

I'd very much like to upgrade my Amiga 1200 to an 80 MHz 68060 (AFAIK, something that works with both brands, Apollo and Blizzard) but am a bit concerned that an Apollo might not be as good as a Blizzard due to having much less RAM.

[AmigaClassicRule]

Quick question:
Is there any benefit to an Apollo over a Blizzard?
 
I've been offered an Apollo 1240 with one SIMM slot. Would it be hard to upgrade it to a 060 CPU and a second RAM slot?
 
How much do Blizzard 1260s usually go for these days?
 
I'd very much like to upgrade my Amiga 1200 to an 80 MHz 68060 (AFAIK, something that works with both brands, Apollo and Blizzard) but am a bit concerned that an Apollo might not be as good as a Blizzard due to having much less RAM.

64 MB of RAM is EVERYTHING you ever need for all your Amiga classic usage. UNless you want 128 MB specific use.

[ChaosLord]

Quick question:
Is there any benefit to an Apollo over a Blizzard?

There are some small benefits to having either one.

Maximum RAM goes to Blizzard and is big benefit.

Maximum chipram access speed goes to Apollo.

Blizzard has some special utils for it written by Piru the Megacoder.
But that probably won't matter to u.

Maximum Mhz goes to Apollo.  They can do 100Mhz or 105Mhz.

Either one can load your kickstart ROM into highspeed 32-bit FASTram.

I think, not sure, that u can soft disable the Blizzard 060 but still use the RAM for your 020.  Hafta ask someone who has one or has read the docs.  I haven't read about it for over 10 years.

I think, not sure, that when u soft disable Apollo 060 the cpu and RAM disappear from the system.

The thing is I have had my 060 card and I never once disabled it or wanted to.  I luvz my 060 card. :knuddel:

I've been offered an Apollo 1240 with one SIMM slot. Would it be hard to upgrade it to a 060 CPU and a second RAM slot?

Do u mean hard for u?
Or hard for Cosmos?

I donno what level of Hardware Wizard u r.

Personally I would just pay Cosmos to do it since he has done it a zillion times and knows what's what.

How much do Blizzard 1260s usually go for these days?

I donno but $500.00 last I checked.  But that was a long long time ago.
They are worth every penny.

I'd very much like to upgrade my Amiga 1200 to an 80 MHz 68060 (AFAIK, something that works with both brands, Apollo and Blizzard) but am a bit concerned that an Apollo might not be as good as a Blizzard due to having much less RAM.

You don't actually get to choose what accelarator you get when it comes to 060.  u grab it and run before someone else buys it.

They have not made new ones since 1990s.  So u only can get one when someone dies or goes insane and sells theirs.  Or when u manufacture one out of an old 040 card with the help of Cosmos Industrial Enterprises International Inc.


If u chant "Cosmos" 3 times in a row, then cross ur arms and blink your eyes (like I Dream of Jeannie) then click your heels 3 times and offer him a virgin houri then Cosmos the Mighty will magically appear and tell u how much he charges to upgrade an Apollo040 to an Apollo060 and add the 2nd SIMM slot with memory that actually works.  (both SIMMS must match).

Then u can have an 80Mhz or more 060 card with 64MB and be kewl :cool:
like the rest of us

If the Apollo 040 is cheap then I will buy it and hire cosmos to upgrade the hell out of it and give it to a friend of mine who can make use of it.

[Blinx123]

There are some small benefits to having either one.

Maximum RAM goes to Blizzard and is big benefit.

Maximum chipram access speed goes to Apollo.

Blizzard has some special utils for it written by Piru the Megacoder.
But that probably won't matter to u.

Maximum Mhz goes to Apollo.  They can do 100Mhz or 105Mhz.

Either one can load your kickstart ROM into highspeed 32-bit FASTram.

I think, not sure, that u can soft disable the Blizzard 060 but still use the RAM for your 020.  Hafta ask someone who has one or has read the docs.  I haven't read about it for over 10 years.

I think, not sure, that when u soft disable Apollo 060 the cpu and RAM disappear from the system.

The thing is I have had my 060 card and I never once disabled it or wanted to.  I luvz my 060 card. :knuddel:




Do u mean hard for u?
Or hard for Cosmos?

I donno what level of Hardware Wizard u r.

Personally I would just pay Cosmos to do it since he has done it a zillion times and knows what's what.



I donno but $500.00 last I checked.  But that was a long long time ago.
They are worth every penny.


You don't actually get to choose what accelarator you get when it comes to 060.  u grab it and run before someone else buys it.

They have not made new ones since 1990s.  So u only can get one when someone dies or goes insane and sells theirs.  Or when u manufacture one out of an old 040 card with the help of Cosmos Industrial Enterprises International Inc.


If u chant "Cosmos" 3 times in a row, then cross ur arms and blink your eyes (like I Dream of Jeannie) then click your heels 3 times and offer him a virgin houri then Cosmos the Mighty will magically appear and tell u how much he charges to upgrade an Apollo040 to an Apollo060 and add the 2nd SIMM slot with memory that actually works.  (both SIMMS must match).

Then u can have an 80Mhz or more 060 card with 64MB and be kewl :cool:
like the rest of us

If the Apollo 040 is cheap then I will buy it and hire cosmos to upgrade the hell out of it and give it to a friend of mine who can make use of it.

Ok.

I guess I'm going with that Apollo then.
The RAM would probably be hindering anyways. Nothing worse than coding and testing apps on a machine that has more RAM than the average person's machine.

When I said hard, I meant hard for my former boss (whose an electronics geek). If I tried to modify it myself, I'd probably destroy it in less than 5 minutes.

Cosmos is probably located in the US, right? Don't think I'd want to send a piece of hardware over the pond.

Edit: As for disabling the CPU and still retaining the fast RAM: That's pretty non-sensical, isn't it? I don't think any 68020 programm requires that much RAM.

Furthermore, I could always add one (multiple, even?) Radeon 9xxx series cards for an additional 256+MB, right?

[NovaCoder]

Quick question:
Is there any benefit to an Apollo over a Blizzard?

I've been offered an Apollo 1240 with one SIMM slot. Would it be hard to upgrade it to a 060 CPU and a second RAM slot?

How much do Blizzard 1260s usually go for these days?

I'd very much like to upgrade my Amiga 1200 to an 80 MHz 68060 (AFAIK, something that works with both brands, Apollo and Blizzard) but am a bit concerned that an Apollo might not be as good as a Blizzard due to having much less RAM.

Apollo's are cheaper which is the main benefit....you can also clock them higher (usually, not always true).  This appears to be because an Apollo only accesses it's FASTRAM at 50% of the CPU speed whereas a Blizzard does it 1:1.  That means an Apollo can (sometimes) be clocked right up to 100Mhz with a decent CPU and RAM (depends on the MACH chips) whereas a Blizzard can normally only go to about 80Mhz (even with fast memory).  This means that a Blizzard should produce more MIPS at the same clock speed as an Apollo (in theory).

Another thing to consider is that (I believe) Blizzards are 'buffered' across the Zorro bus when (in theory) means that they do not access CHIPRAM as fast as Apollo cards.   This may have been changed/improved with the latest official 060 libraries but I'm not sure.

The main downside with the Apollos is the lack of memory, only 32mb can be used if you still want to use your desktop case.   While 32mb is fine for most things, things like web browsing are obviously going to need more.

Some people say Apollos are less reliable or less compatible than Blizzards but so far I've been 100% happy with my overclocked Apollo (which has it's MACH chip soldered on to improve stability).

Apollo @ 80Mhz

[AmigaClassicRule]

Apollo's are cheaper which is the main benefit....you can also clock them higher (usually, not always true). This appears to be because an Apollo only accesses it's FASTRAM at 50% of the CPU speed whereas a Blizzard does it 1:1. That means an Apollo can (sometimes) be clocked right up to 100Mhz with a decent CPU and RAM (depends on the MACH chips) whereas a Blizzard can normally only go to about 80Mhz (even with fast memory). This means that a Blizzard should produce more MIPS at the same clock speed as an Apollo (in theory).
 
Another thing to consider is that (I believe) Blizzards are 'buffered' across the Zorro bus when (in theory) means that they do not access CHIPRAM as fast as Apollo cards. This may have been changed/improved with the latest official 060 libraries but I'm not sure.
 
The main downside with the Apollos is the lack of memory, only 32mb can be used if you still want to use your desktop case. While 32mb is fine for most things, things like web browsing are obviously going to need more.
 
Some people say Apollos are less reliable or less compatible than Blizzards but so far I've been 100% happy with my overclocked Apollo (which has it's MACH chip soldered on to improve stability).
 
Apollo @ 80Mhz

BBBEEEAUTIFULL!! Makes me want to get Apollo big time hehe!!!
 
By the way I have seeing your ScummVM AGA v1.4.1 - The Curse of Monkey Island on youtube and you showed a climpse of your A1200D HD LED flashing as it is reading...that was beautiful * sigh * Made my eyes tears :biglaugh:... Isn't A1200D just SEXY OR WHAT? :biglaugh::biglaugh:
 
That is why I want to work SO HARD into squeezing as MUCH AS juice from it as possible to make it the most entertaining media centre. NovaCoder, even if you couldn't manage to get DOSBoxAGA a reality I want to thank YOU SO MUCH for trying and working hard on attempting it. Also I want to thank you for ScummVMAga!!
 
By any chance in the future are you considering C64AGA?

[Blinx123]

BBBEEEAUTIFULL!! Makes me want to get Apollo big time hehe!!!
 
By the way I have seeing your ScummVM AGA v1.4.1 - The Curse of Monkey Island on youtube and you showed a climpse of your A1200D HD LED flashing as it is reading...that was beautiful * sigh * Made my eyes tears :biglaugh:... Isn't A1200D just SEXY OR WHAT? :biglaugh::biglaugh:
 
That is why I want to work SO HARD into squeezing as MUCH AS juice from it as possible to make it the most entertaining media centre. NovaCoder, even if you couldn't manage to get DOSBoxAGA a reality I want to thank YOU SO MUCH for trying and working hard on attempting it. Also I want to thank you for ScummVMAga!!
 
By any chance in the future are you considering C64AGA?

What would be the point of an C64AGA? C64 games (C64DTV and Super CPU exclusive stuff excluded) offer less colours than were possible on even a plain Amiga 1000.

BTW: I just found about another 060 board. A so called Falcon.
Specs seem pretty much on par with the Blizzard, except for the SCSI.

[AmigaClassicRule]

What would be the point of an C64AGA? C64 games (C64DTV and Super CPU exclusive stuff excluded) offer less colours than were possible on even a plain Amiga 1000.
 
BTW: I just found about another 060 board. A so called Falcon.
Specs seem pretty much on par with the Blizzard, except for the SCSI.

There is no point, but since we already emulated MSX and it is worse specs than C64, and we emulated lots of consoles, including NES, and we are trying to bring x86 into the Amiga through software and we have ScummVM why not have a real working C64AGA that works on AGA and not RTG and use real 1541 disk drive to load/save stuff?
 
IT WOULD BE SUPER COOL.

[ChaosLord]

Apollo's are cheaper which is the main benefit....

+1

you can also clock them higher (usually, not always true).

+1


 

Another thing to consider is that (I believe) Blizzards are 'buffered' across the Zorro bus when (in theory) means that they do not access CHIPRAM as fast as Apollo cards.   This may have been changed/improved with the latest official 060 libraries but I'm not sure.

All I know is Team Chaos used to conduct a lot of timing tests on a lot of different hardware and the Apollo 040 always had the fastest chipram access.  It was always with 3% of the theoretical maximum.  The Apollo 040 was even faster than the Apollo 060 at writing to chipmem which doesn't even make sense.  But that's how it is.

Basically every accelerator made always has different weird inefficienies when accessing memory.

The main downside with the Apollos is the lack of memory, only 32mb can be used if you still want to use your desktop case.   While 32mb is fine for most things, things like web browsing are obviously going to need more.

Yeah it does suck that its absolute maximum is 64MB.  But oh well... most ppl are happy with 64MB.  You can always sell it later if/when u can get something better.

Some people say Apollos are less reliable or less compatible than Blizzards

Bah humbug!

[ChaosLord]

BTW: I just found about another 060 board. A so called Falcon.
Specs seem pretty much on par with the Blizzard, except for the SCSI.

Sounds like an Atari.

[Blinx123]

Sounds like an Atari.

That's what I thought.

But they appear to be real (produced in Germany and the US by MacroSystem)

http://www.amiga-hardware.com/showhardware.cgi?HARDID=137

[ChaosLord]

That's what I thought.

But they appear to be real (produced in Germany and the US by MacroSystem)

http://www.amiga-hardware.com/showhardware.cgi?HARDID=137

Wow, crazy!  Is someone offering to sell u one?  U should get it and write a review because I never heard of it.

[Blinx123]

Wow, crazy!  Is someone offering to sell u one?  U should get it and write a review because I never heard of it.

No.
Unfortunately not.

Never heard of it before either.

Was a random find in another forum.

The guy already sold it, unfortunately (back in September, I think). Went for 197 quid + shipping.

What bugs me about this card is the plain misuse of the MMU, however.

EDIT: I've now been offered a Blizzard 1240 for just slightly more than the Apollo (like 50 euros more).
To bite or not to bite, that's the question.

[NovaCoder]

Just got myself a Blizzard 1260 and wanted to do a speed comparison with an Apollo 1260 as there is so much conflicting bullsh*t written about this subject.


Ok, I spent the day yesterday setting up my new Blizzard and can now do some speed comparisons between the two.

My Blizz is currently running at 75 MHz vs my Apollo that runs at 80 Mhz so keep that in mind.

I'll be uploading both SysSpeed modules to AmiNet soon for people to compare (I might whack the Blizzard up to 80 Mhz first though if my other 128Mb SIM fits in it ok).

With a standard BB2 3.9 system the fast-ram access speed it is roughly 30% quicker than the Apollo, it surprising matches the chip-ram speed of the Apollo in most cases but for a couple of the test the Apollo beats the Blizz by about 20% (you'll need to download the modules to get the exact ratings).

The HD transfer rate was terrible with just BB2 (about 1 MB/s) but the excellent BlizKick got that up to a more respectable 3 MB/s (this is with an IdeFixExpress). My Apollo managed about 3.5 MB/s with the same setup so that's where it's faster chip-ram access is helping. I've got a brand-new FAST-ATA sitting in a box next to my 1200 which should help boost that speed a little

The MIPS are also interesting, the Blizz is running at 99.5 MIPS vs the 104.5 of the Apollo (remember that the Apollo is running 5 MHz faster).

As for real world game testing:

BOOM 060 runs 'Return to Saturn' much better than on the Apollo, it's now as smooth as butter and can even run full-screen without any slow-down. AmiQuake AGA is a bit strange, the FPS in the time-demo has gone up from 12.9 to 13.4 but it doesn't actually feel quite as fast to play (maybe this is just in my head).

I'm not sure if it's the hardware that is really making the difference, I think a large part of it may be down to the superior 060 library and the excellent BlizKick utility.

New Blizzard 1260 in action

I'll try and remember to update this thread with the names of the SysSpeed modules.