A1200 accelerator cards: A buyer's guide

ah i see,but dont expect it to be playable though in aga.
i have quake 2 and run it in minigl on a voodoo on an 060 at 100mhz,and i only get about 13fps.:)

I see, you're right I don't need it.
But what about linux? If I'd like to run it on Amiga then more memory better.
Anyway I prefer 128 to 64 ;)



so do i,more memory is better.

i dont know about linux though,i have never used it on an amiga.
 
Is it true that SCSI controller for apollo cards (at least for A1200) doesn't work very good or doesn't work at all? I don't remember now, but maybe it just doesn't exist...
 
ah i see,but dont expect it to be playable though in aga.
i have quake 2 and run it in minigl on a voodoo on an 060 at 100mhz,and i only get about 13fps.:)

I see, you're right I don't need it.
But what about linux? If I'd like to run it on Amiga then more memory better.
Anyway I prefer 128 to 64 ;)

"I like bigger numbers" is a perfectly valid reason for faster CPUs and more RAM. It's nothing to be ashamed of! :LOL:
 
Is it true that SCSI controller for apollo cards (at least for A1200) doesn't work very good or doesn't work at all? I don't remember now, but maybe it just doesn't exist...



it does work if you can find one these days:LOL:

theres just some incompatiblity with cd roms,just be aware the scsi on apollo's are not dma so the scsi drives will be slow at around 3mb's to 4.5mbs a second,so not really worth it if you ask me.(yes you can boot from a scsi drive connected to one)
 
Noob question here (and yes I did some research in advance :)):

Are there differences between old/original and new accelerator cards?
I just bought my first 1200 and I need an acceleratorcard for WHDLoad.
I see lots of Apollo's, Blizzards,...passing by but on some sites I stumbled on for example an ACA-1232 with 128MB RAM
 
If you ae just planning on WHDLoad and nothing else, then an accelerator card is quite a bit more power than is necessary.
A 4MB memory expansion, a lite version of Classic WB, and AGLaunch is all you need. Cheap, cool, light and fast. A 1200 with these components is a perfect gaming rig.
 
As these are my first steps in the Miggyworld, I'm not planning to do much more than retrogaming for now (also due to a lack of time to do more and find out the whole potential of the 1200).
Guess I'll start with a simple memory expansion for now and see if I want to go further in the future which I probably will.

Thanks for the great info but i'm still curious about the differences between the old school and new school cards ;)
 
Thanks for the great info but i'm still curious about the differences between the old school and new school cards ;)

Functionally, there's not a lot of difference between old and new cards. Both will provide you with a faster CPU and a bunch of FastRAM. What matters is what else you want out of your accelerator.

The new ACA models have their FastRAM soldered to the card, rather than via a SIMM socket, but given how much you get, this is hardly a constraint. The RAM on the newer cards is also faster, so you should get more performance clock-for-clock. The new cards don't have provision for SCSI or FPUs however. In many cases, that doesn't matter, but if it does to you, you'll need to find something else.

Basically, just treat them as yet another brand of accelerator. Compare their specs directly with older cards and figure out what's a fair price for the performance and features on offer. Bare in mind that SIMMs are fairly inexpensive, so a Blizzard 1230IV with a 4MB SIMM can easily be upgraded to 32, 64 or even 128MB.
 
Thanks for clearing that up.
I don't have a direct need for FPU or SCSI so I might go for an ACA model then (or maybe a simple memory expansion).
Seems I'll need to post a wanted thread soon :)
 
That was Excellent A1200 accelerator cards: A buyer's guide (y)
 
Are the Blizzard 1220/4 cards any good? Someone is selling one locally and I might be interested.
 
Are the Blizzard 1220/4 cards any good? Someone is selling one locally and I might be interested.

Blizzard is a very good make, the 28MHz '020 will give your A1200 a nice performance-boost and 4MB FastRAM, whilst quite modest, is enough to do the majority of things. If it's reasonably-priced (and only you can be the judge of that!) then it would well be worth grabbing. Certainly it's a decent step up from a standard RAM card. Do you know if it has an FPU? (Such things don't make a huge difference, but it's still worth knowing)
 
FPU 68882 running at 25MHz and the card runs at 30MHz. At the moment I just have an added 8mg of FastRam.
 
FPU 68882 running at 25MHz and the card runs at 30MHz. At the moment I just have an added 8mg of FastRam.

Sounds like a sweet little accelerator. The only downside is that you'll be going from 8MB of FastRAM to 4MB. Still, if you're not doing anything particularly RAM-intensive, you'll probably never notice.
 
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