Will there be an ACA1240 or ACA1260?

[Blinx123]

Its a capacitor and it looks like it might have leaked.

Urgh.

So no buy then?

[Iggy]

See if he's willing to warrant that it works and is willing to accept payment through Paypal.
Otherwise, pass.

[donpalmera]

The Natami guys tested them, they're exactly what they seem to be, someone just needs to make a board to test them with a regular Amiga. They seem to be a Chinese knockoff, i.e. a replica.

So basically, even the people that have supposedly "tested" them have no idea what they are. If they do work I doubt they are "replicas". There is no profit in reverse engineering the 68060 for the amount of units you could sell. I'm not sure how insane you have to be to imagine anyone in China spending years reverse engineering the 68060 to produce "replicas" of something they might sell a few tens of units of.. but it's pretty high up on the scale.

It is much more likely that one guy in Shenzhen got some other QFP 68060s (rejected parts, recycled parts from telecoms hardware..) and relabelled them and told all the brokers about them... and this is why if you google that part number you get 3 posts from Amiga forums about how great these chips are from people with no evidence than "my friend's mate's sister's dad's mate's next door neighbor's dog's friend apparently used them and said they are ok". Who are the Natami "guys" anyhow? There seemed to be loads of team members when only one person was doing any work and that guy decided to go it alone.. shame not one of all of those team members actually posted anything showing those chips working..

[Iggy]

Thanks Don,
Its nice having some backup on this.
After all, as I've said repeatedly, Freescale says there is no such thing as an FE133.

[donpalmera]

If they didn't work then Thomas would have told me.  It would be a really big deal.  That is my view.

Great.. a view.. I'm looking for evidence here. If they do work where are all of the posts showing them off? If you google this part number there are only about 3 results that aren't Chinese brokers and those results are all threads like this.. not a single result about one of these things working. Strange for something so amazing eh?

The way I remember it is that Thomas plugged one into his 060 card and it worked and it did not have MMU or FPU.  

You could try datamining the Natami forum.
.

There is no evidence there either... more he said she said. No one has posted "They work, they clock up to xyz, the mask revision according the the register in the chip is...". For something people are so sure about there is so little evidence it's laughable.

Supposedly some Atari guys are using them.  You could search Atari forums if u want.

Of if they are really $20.00 why not just buy one and see what happens?

And we're back to "my mate Dave down the pub said they work, so they must work". There's nothing about these chips in the Atari forums either.
Having actually ordered parts like these from brokers I can tell you that the unit cost might be $20 but it will cost a lot more than that to actually have something in your hands.
You need to order 5 parts at least and tell the broker you want n hundred in the future to get those prices. You will then pay $30 or so to have them Fedex them... and then you'll pay a fee for daring to pay with something traceable like Paypal. So we're talking about at least $100 at the end of the day... then I would need to put together a little board to test them. I can get a 4 layer 10cmx10cm board made up for about $100 shipped.
So we're now talking $200 to test some chips that are "100% working according to Dave!!1!1!!!". Yeah, I think I'll pass on that. My barter still stands but the way you just side stepped it with more "someone down the road out of their head on smack said they worked" makes me think you don't have the confidence in these parts to put your money where your mouth is..

[Blinx123]

See if he's willing to warrant that it works and is willing to accept payment through Paypal.
Otherwise, pass.

Done.


Shame there's no one creating new 1260 accelerators. Life could be so much easier.

[mongo]

Its a capacitor and it looks like it might have leaked.

It's the crystal for the clock.

[donpalmera]

Thanks Don,
Its nice having some backup on this.
After all, as I've said repeatedly, Freescale says there is no such thing as an FE133.

I would love to be proved wrong. It would save me so much time to have a 3.3v 68040 or 68060 vs having to wire up a mass of level convertors to a 5v 68040..
The only way anyone will know what they are is to buy some, test them (and publish better results than "some guy somewhere on the internet said they worked, I just can't actually give you a link to it..") and take some fuming nitric acid to the chip package to see what is inside.
Until someone does that all this harping on about Jens being a bad guy for not making a turbo card out of these parts is basically just rude. I'm not sure why Jens bothers doing anything for this "community" to be totally honest.

[glitch]

Mongo beat me to it!  Yes, a crystal.  Looks like a bunch of solder resin around it to me - not that bad...

[glitch]

Geez, I don't think anyone is being made out be be a bad guy here.  I 1000% appreciate the work Jens has done.  What I said is that I would LOVE a 68060 accelerator card - and think that any manufacturer could make a few $ in the process.  I can't speak for the others here though.

[donpalmera]

Its a capacitor and it looks like it might have leaked.

It's a clock crystal with it's can soldered down to the board (very normal) with some flux residue left over that has probably collected some dirt over the years...

[Iggy]

Until someone does that all this harping on about Jens being a bad guy for not making a turbo card out of these parts is basically just rude. I'm not sure why Jens bothers doing anything for this "community" to be totally honest.

True, I regret bringing that up.
And the fact that LC or EC parts are still available isn't a reason to call for their use either.
After all, a $220 part without an FPU or MMU isn't that useful.

[glitch]

By the way Don, thanks for commenting.  The more opinions and facts here - the better!  I wonder how many other long time lurkers we can flush out in the next while!

[Blinx123]

Ok.

So let's see

The card is fine after all.
I can upgrade it to 128MB, assuming I can find RAM that is slim enough
It can be upgraded to a 060, although I'll need to buy (a) buy a socket and CPU and (b) find someone to solder/desolder some parts.
265 + shipping isn't too princely a sum.

A good buy then?

[donpalmera]

and think that any manufacturer could make a few $ in the process.  I can't speak for the others here though.

- If it was easy Jens or someone else would have done it.. it's not easy and wouldn't turn a profit. So no one has done it. Sourcing the parts, putting together a schematic, laying out a board with a ton of layers, creating all of the glue logic and software etc is not a weekend job in the shed at the bottom of the garden.

- The Apolo design is a dead end. This is according to Jens, someone who has built similar products .. knows what he's talking about. A "reliable source".

- 68060s that aren't very very suspect are very very expensive if you can get them at all.

The best you could hope for is that a tray of 68060s finds it's way into Jens hands from a reliable surplus dealer (i.e. not Alibaba) and he decides to have a go for ****s and giggles. I suspect there are enough 060 cards already floating around in the market for the people that really want them though.

[donpalmera]

True, I regret bringing that up.
And the fact that LC or EC parts are still available isn't a reason to call for their use either.
After all, a $220 part without an FPU or MMU isn't that useful.

The problem with using LC or EC parts would be that basically all Amiga software is frozen in time and when that freeze happened it was assumed that all machines with an 060 had a working FPU. So LC and EC parts are basically useless for the Amiga..
If you want a super fast Amiga on the cheap then your best bet is to wait for the FPGAReplay and hope that their 68K core kicks ass... or lower your expectations with regards to this dead technology and just have some fun with it instead.