ACA 1221 accelerator: Who's got one?

[Djole]

Render time will depend on sw used, number of objects (number of polygons), textures, details used (reflections, transparency, refraction etc.), number of lights etc.... Having a FPU will speed up your render time with most 3d packages. So if you are planning to get an accelerator and use it for 3d rendering, try to find one with a FPU and a fastest CPU as possible. I would still recommend to start with LW 5 since you can find a lot of tutorials and learn from them. Real3d, Imagine, Cinema4d etc... are also ok but there are not that many tutorials around....LW has the best features also and is still around (not on Amiga of course....).


Ps.

The biggest problem with long (overnight) rendering is that you will in the morning see the mistake you have made in modeling or scene setup and have to start the render process all over again.... finding your Amiga has crashed the next morning

[Faerytale]

Rendering on the Amiga 68xxx is like cleaning New York city with a tooth brush! Its possible, but i wouldnt recommend it!

[jj]

OK, so now we're getting somewhere! Although there's no way of knowing whether or not my particular A1200 would require a timing fix, for some reason still unknown to me, a 1990's accelerator wouldn't require this fix.

Apart from that, if I can find a copy of "3D Master", and if I'm happy with a resolution of 320x400 original HAM mode, then although I doubt I can still register it, this might be able to render one frame overnight in about 10 hours, because your 320x400 HAM pics took 20 hours.

 
 Not all 1990 accelerators are safe either.  If you want to be sure then your only real bet is one of the blizzard accelerators.  These had a buffered interface, I believe, which means that any timing issues would be taken care of by the card.  The Apollo's and these new accelerators do not have this, which makes them faster but less stable

[amiga1260]

Years ago I bought a Blizzard 1230IV card, but in my A1200 crashes every time. I traveled 3 hours to the Amiga Store to swap for another card and that one still works to day with other A1200's in my collection.

@Bruno: you could look for a friend with solder skills or repair shop in the neighbourhood to do the timing fix.

[AmigaBruno]

I bought one and I unlocked everything. I had some issue with resetting my Amiga 1200 with the ACA 1221. I solved the problem with using other Amiga 1200 with timing fix.

You can do some raytracing, Image processing, Word processing with this card.

You have to buy the the license codes for overclocking 28 MHz and 64 MB for the first two things, but will be slow. The best option to have more fun is  getting a Blizzard 1230 IV with FPU.

Maprom will help you to use other ROM. You could softkick 3.1 when you have 3.0.

I have since heard from Amigakit that this accelerator has an Async mode which reduces but doesn't completely overcome problems which would otherwise require a timing fix. Please will you try that in your other A1200 and report back to me?

Some good news is that, after lots of error messages from WHDload telling me that my kick40068 image was invalid, I managed to grab the ROM image from WinUAE and found out that it worked! Not all games I've installed so far will run, but it's difficult to work out which ones need more than 4Mb RAM. A common error message is "Can't allocate ExpMem", while some games where the readme file says they require more than 4Mb will actually run in 4Mb. The first game I ran with the new ROM image was "Der Clou"/The Clue, but the screen kept going black, while on later attempts it didn't run at all.

I'm disappointed that lots of features are disabled and require more money to unlock. This practice was criticised on PCs with certain CPUs and I think some people were claiming it was against the law.

[paul1981]

You could buy an 8mb fast ram card with fpu from ebay or something, but they tend to be just as expensive as a the ACA1220. If you do go that route, double check there's an fpu and oscillator installed as those types of cards usually sold without fpu. It's going to be slow though, but if speed is not an issue then that's nice for you. People are so impatient these days.
Also, you can't use the pcmcia card slot without jumpering the ram to 4mb on the trapdoor card. This isn't an issue on real accelerator cards (with cpu, such as any of the Blizzards/Apollo's/ACA etc.).

[amiga1260]

On the website http://whdload.de/ you could search the game and read the readme of the game which will stated how much memory it needed.

[AmigaBruno]

On the website http://whdload.de/ you could search the game and read the readme of the game which will stated how much memory it needed.

That's great! There was no other list of the RAM requirements which I could find.

I'm still interested in hearing more about the ACA 1221 accelerator, and not how I should buy a Blizzard accelerator I can't afford. I've got enough expenses already.

BTW, after visiting http://www.whdload.de  I somehow ended up on Hall of Light http://hol.abime.net/ which I'd heard of before, but this time I noticed they have scans of games manuals. I searched for strategy games, then I downloaded and read the manual for the German language "Hanse: Die Expedition", which is about trading under the medieval Hanseatic League. I had already installed the game, but didn't understand all the controls. Has anyone on here played it?

[jj]

That's great! There was no other list of the RAM requirements which I could find.

I'm still interested in hearing more about the ACA 1221 accelerator, and not how I should buy a Blizzard accelerator I can't afford. I've got enough expenses already.

BTW, after visiting www.whdload.de I somehow ended up on Hall of Light http://hol.abime.net/ which I'd heard of before, but this time I noticed they have scans of games manuals. I searched for strategy games, then I downloaded and read the manual for the German language "Hanse: Die Expedition", which is about trading under the medieval Hanseatic League. I had already installed the game, but didn't understand all the controls. Has anyone on here played it?

 But I thought you had already worked out that you could not either afford the timing fixes or be able to do them yourself so that rules out the ACA accelerator

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

But I thought you had already worked out that you could not either afford the timing fixes or be able to do them yourself so that rules out the ACA accelerator

ROFL.  Sounds to me like OP needs to get a second job if he wants to do it right.  Amiga is not a cheap hobby... unless you're lucky like that guy a few years back who was walking down an alley and tripped over a bunch of 4000T's!  :lol:

[paul1981]

ROFL.  Sounds to me like OP needs to get a second job if he wants to do it right.  Amiga is not a cheap hobby... unless you're lucky like that guy a few years back who was walking down an alley and tripped over a bunch of 4000T's!  :lol:

There was an even luckier chap who walked right past them.

[gary2000]

BTW, is the aca2000 dead?

[amiga1260]

I found a list of memory usage of  WHDLOAD games:

http://www.amigang.fr/whdload-memory-usage.html

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

BTW, is the aca2000 dead?

If Jens is focused on the Amiga Reloaded now, probably.  

[gary2000]

A2000s need love, too.

[klx300r]

A2000s need love, too.

sure right after Jens promised ACA1000