Will there be an ACA1240 or ACA1260?

[Blinx123]

$220.00 for just the cpu in 2012 is quite ridiculous.

How much are the FE133s?

I don't even know where he's got that quote from.

Last I looked, they charged almost $500US at a batch order of 1000.

[stefcep2]

The problems with Apollo cards are that they stupidly did not solder the timing crystal.  The crystal moves, if the computer is powered, you can fry parts of it.  The card may not die altogether right away, but it will be flaky.  One day you'll power up and get a black screen.  BTW this happens with 68040' cards as well.

This happened to my Apollo 1240.

I did get it repaired, and had an 68060 installed, but it runs at 40 mhz, still better than any 68040 out there and cooler with no fan needed.  So yeah I have the slowest 68060 card in the world..

[Iggy]

I don't even know where he's got that quote from.

Last I looked, they charged almost $500US at a batch order of 1000.

I think that might have been a quote on 10,000. I'll have to check.
In any case you virtually never have to pay an initial quote price (there's usually room for negotiation.

However, this may not be the case with the 75MHz LC as there appears to be only about a low four digit number of them left (they've long been eol'd).

And most of those are sitting at a distributor that sells a lot of product to arms manufacturers. Those companies will pay a premium to obtain something that has limited availability.

[Blinx123]

The problems with Apollo cards are that they stupidly did not solder the timing crystal.  The crystal moves, if the computer is powered, you can fry parts of it.  The card may not die altogether right away, but it will be flaky.  One day you'll power up and get a black screen.  BTW this happens with 68040' cards as well.

This happened to my Apollo 1240.

I did get it repaired, and had an 68060 installed, but it runs at 40 mhz, still better than any 68040 out there and cooler with no fan needed.  So yeah I have the slowest 68060 card in the world..

Is this true for any Apollo? Couldn't one manually solder the crystal?

@Iggy

Makes sense.

Still rather high.


EDIT: I've been offered a Blizzard 1240 for 280 euros. It's without packaging and without any RAM. Is this one of much greater value than the Apollo 1240 with 32MB I've been offered for 260 euros?
Furthermore, do most accelerators on the used market today come without packaging? I'm kind of reluctant to buy something that isn't in it's original box anymore.

[Iggy]

I.
EDIT: I've been offered a Blizzard 1240 for 280 euros. It's without packaging and without any RAM. Is this one of much greater value than the Apollo 1240 with 32MB I've been offered for 260 euros?
Furthermore, do most accelerators on the used market today come without packaging? I'm kind of reluctant to buy something that isn't in it's original box anymore.

I rarely have the original packaging for what I sell on Ebay.
The point is to make sure it still functions and that the seller warrants it as good.

BTW - I'd go with the one with the RAM.
And modify it for an '060.

[Blinx123]

Any reason you'd go for the one with RAM?

From what I've seen, RAM is still widely available and doesn't really cost that much (20 bucks, last I checked).

Assuming I want to play some games (Quake/ScummVM) as well. What would matter more? Pure raw power (Apollo) or more RAM (Blizzard)? My own applications will probably never consume more than 64MB, but it would be nice to be covered.

If someone was offering me one, I'd probably jump for a Falcon 1260, but no one seems to own one, lest sell one.

Here's a review of the Falcon, btw.





It's in Dutch, unfortunately. But the conclusion (from what little Dutch I still know) is that it's supposedly faster than any of the other cards they reviewed (though it's unclear whether this includes the Apollo or Blizzard line of accelerators).

[zipper]

Different 040/25 cards for A1200 are quite similar in performance. The greatest factor may be the speed to the native chips, where Apollo beats Blizzards but if it is significant overall it depends on the use. Don't remember if a Falcon 040/25 was tested in CU or AF.

[ChaosLord]

The problems with Apollo cards are that they stupidly did not solder the timing crystal.  The crystal moves, if the computer is powered, you can fry parts of it.  The card may not die altogether right away, but it will be flaky.  One day you'll power up and get a black screen.  BTW this happens with 68040' cards as well.

Very interesting!  Thanx 4 da info.

This happened to my Apollo 1240.

I did get it repaired, and had an 68060 installed, but it runs at 40 mhz, still better than any 68040 out there and cooler with no fan needed.  So yeah I have the slowest 68060 card in the world..

:roflmao:  I am sorry to laff at ur misfortune.  But an underclocked 060 is funny

So I hope u r not wasting a 100Mhz at 40Mhz?

I hope u r using one of the old original 50Mhz 060s at 40Mhz?

Is the 40Mhz limit typical for A1240 cards?
Or is that specific to your A1240?

I have a friend with an A1240 that he has not used for years and I am thinking of buying it from him and sending it to cosmos for an upgrade then send that to a friend of mine to use.

I am wondering what to expect.

p.s. Yes a 40Mhz 060 still blows away any 040.

[Blinx123]

Has anyone ever heard of a Blizzard 1260 with a socketed 040 CPU? Seen mention of this in at least one thread on here and someone is offering me his Blizzard 1260 with a 40MHz 68040.

So is this some sort of hybrid or did someone downgrade it to a 1240? Seller said all I'd have to do is add a 68060 socket.

Considering the intended use (software development for the most part, ScummVM/Quake/Quake II/Feeble Files when I'm bored or need inspiration or simply want to programm a game in the SCI Engine or on top of id Tech) and me being somewhat of a RAM whore (I have 16GB in my Windows rig and even that isn't entirely enough yet), Blizzard is probably the better choice.

[ChaosLord]

Different 040/25 cards for A1200 are quite similar in performance. The greatest factor may be the speed to the native chips, where Apollo beats Blizzards but if it is significant overall it depends on the use.

Modern Amiga games, (loosely defined as games from 1995+ that require fastram and render their animations from fastram to chipram) and also any animation software, all have 1 bottleneck which is how fast the cpu can copy data from fastram to chipram.  So it is really important to have a good bus interface so the cpu can access chipram as fast as possible.

Also Desktop Publishing software needs fast cpu-access-to-chipram for screen updates.

And if you are running Fblit/Ftext then you need fast chipram access 100% of the time for everything.

So the chipram access speed is really important.

If your chipram access speed is only 50% of theoretical maximum then your maximum framerate is only 50% of what it could be.

[Blinx123]

Modern Amiga games, (loosely defined as games from 1995+ that require fastram and render their animations from fastram to chipram) and also any animation software, all have 1 bottleneck which is how fast the cpu can copy data from fastram to chipram.  So it is really important to have a good bus interface so the cpu can access chipram as fast as possible.

Also Desktop Publishing software needs fast cpu-access-to-chipram for screen updates.

And if you are running Fblit/Ftext then you need fast chipram access 100% of the time for everything.

So the chipram access speed is really important.

If your chipram access speed is only 50% of theoretical maximum then your maximum framerate is only 50% of what it could be.

Way to rain on my parade. Lol.

Now I'm, once again, unsettled.

Gee. I guess I'll need to look up benchmarks to see just how bad Blizzard's chipram access is compared to Apollo.

[ChaosLord]

EDIT: I've been offered a Blizzard 1240 for 280 euros.

:eek:  DAM!

 It's without packaging and without any RAM. Is this one of much greater value than the Apollo 1240 with 32MB I've been offered for 260 euros?

These guys really charge top dollar!  I didn't know they cost that much!

WTF doesn't it have RAM?
Will it even run that way?
Maybe its broken?

If its broken, cosmos can likely fix it.  But your seller should charge a lot less.

I hope this stuff isn't from ripoffEbay.

Furthermore, do most accelerators on the used market today come without packaging? I'm kind of reluctant to buy something that isn't in it's original box anymore.

I don't have original packaging for mine and all my 060s were obtained used without packaging.  But they worked.

I used to keep all my original Amiga computer boxes and Monitor boxes but my beloved boxes got lost when I moved. ((((((((((((((((((((((

[Britelite]

So the chipram access speed is really important.

Which is why you do all the work in FastRam and then only copy the result to chipmem

If your chipram access speed is only 50% of theoretical maximum then your maximum framerate is only 50% of what it could be.

Well, that's only true if you do absolutely nothing else than copy a frame from fastram to chipram (in other words, you don't do any kind of calculations or other operations). Fortunately the differences in chipmem access on different accelerators aren't really that big.

[Blinx123]

Never mind.

It was a case of lost in translation. He's actually shipping the Blizzard with a 16MB SIMM (which I'll gladly remove upon upgrading and finding out whether this card works).

Furthermore, it's not a Blizzard 1240 but a Blizzard 1260 with a socketed 40MHz 68040 (didn't even know those existed. Wondering how I'll go about upgrading these to a 060).

As for costing much: Did they ever go much lower? I've been offered another card for the princely sum of $800 (not Ebay), so those two seem quite inexpensive.

[ChaosLord]

Way to rain on my parade. Lol.

Now I'm, once again, unsettled.

Gee. I guess I'll need to look up benchmarks to see just how bad Blizzard's chipram access is compared to Apollo.

You are talking about buying an A1240 and upgrading it to 060.

I have no data on such a card.  I never did any timing tests on a card like that.

So it could have rocking hot performance at chipram access or really horrible performance.  I have no clue.

You could ask Cosmos to run Bustest on one of his cards like that.  Make sure he tells u the exact screenmode that the screen was in when running the test.  It makes all the difference.

I prefer tests done in 640x512x8bitplanes.  As I still have all my timing test results for that mode from various cards stashed on my HD somewhere.
(My games run in that mode so that is the mode we normally test.)

In any case, no matter what, u will get fantastic CPU calculation performance.  
Anything that happens inside the 060 (remember it has 2 8K L1 Caches) will be zoooming fast.

So any 060 card will be an upgrade, its just a question of how much of an upgrade.

[ChaosLord]

N
Furthermore, it's not a Blizzard 1240 but a Blizzard 1260 with a socketed 40MHz 68040

Sounds really weird.

Does he have an explanation for how that happened?