Advice required - ACA 1230 accelerator card

[Pinballer]

Hello all. Hopefully I am posting this in the correct section. I'm looking to purchase an accelerator card for my A1200, so that I can run WHDLoad games from a CFCard.

I have located a 2nd hand fully working ACA1230 28MHz with 64MB RAM local to me. The seller wants almost the same as the price for a brand new ACA-1232 incl. CPU 68EC030/25 MHz and 127+1 MB RAM from Vesalia.....

http://www.vesalia.de/e_aca1232[8364].htm

...which would you choose? I'm new to these accelerator cards. Any help/advice would be appreciated.

 

[Harrison]

We can't discuss prices here as it is against our rules.

Either will run WHDLoad perfectly well. You only really need 16MB-32MB of fast ram for WHDLoad. However which you buy depends what you would be the happiest with.

Personally, for WHDLoad I would try to find a secondhand Blizzard 1230 MKIV as they are still very much the best 030 accelerator for gaming.

 

[jcarvalho]

I agree with Harrison... You should try to look for an nice Blizz or Apollo (Viper)
Regards,
Jorge

 

[Snoozy]

I would go for an ACA 1230 rather than blizzard, why? because the blizzards are getting on for 20 years old, the ACA range are just a couple of years old at most.

Of course the 1200 are 20 years old now and we have no choice about that but why add further old technology to it when newer just as good options are available - i think the aca1232 has slightly higher mips than a blizzard 1230 MK IV. If you want to hear about old blizzards going wrong ask Azhrei on here or see his ongoing thread https://www.amibay.com/showthread.p...rd-1230-MkIII-Help!&highlight=azhrei+blizzard

(I have both ACA and blizzard accelerators)

Some claim you need timing fixes for ACA range on a1200 mobo - this was not my case with either my 2b or 1d4 mother-boards.

 

[fitzsteve]

Haven't you already posted this question?

 

[jcarvalho]

Well, I think that the time fix issues are relative the accelerator card used. In my case, with an 1D4 and Apollo, the system wasn't stable before the time fix mod. Now is solid rock... A friend of mine had an ACA (old model) that was impressive... was running @56Mhz (stock). Dont know if the new ones have that kind of speed, the one that I am talking has 64MB Ram. Now I only can see ACA's running lower speeds, for that, my vote was for the old Blizz or Apollo, if MACH131 could be better to have latter fitted an 060.

I would go for an ACA 1230 rather than blizzard, why? because the blizzards are getting on for 20 years old, the ACA range are just a couple of years old at most.

Of course the 1200 are 20 years old now and we have no choice about that but why add further old technology to it when newer just as good options are available - i think the aca1232 has slightly higher mips than a blizzard 1230 MK IV. If you want to hear about old blizzards going wrong ask Azheri on here or see his ongoing thread.

(I have both ACA and blizzard accelerators)

Some claim you need timing fixes for ACA range on a1200 mobo - this was not my case with either my 2b or 1d4 mother-boards.

 

[edd_jedi]

You don't need an accelerator to run any native Amiga games, and 8mb of RAM is fine for 99.9% of games. So the honest answer is you don't really need an accelerator. My old A1200 just had an 8MB RAM board and ran every game I wanted to play, including Monkey Island 2 (12 disks) and lots of AGA games.

 

[DojoDan]

I only have 8mb and most of the games I like to play run fine. Although there are a couple which strangely exhibit slowdown, like James Pond 2: Robocod. I don't know why because the disk version works fine. I haven't tweaked any settings yet tho. I would prefer an accelerator to be able to play some of the FPS's in a bit bigger screen though. My 2 pence worth..

 

[NovaCoder]

Hello all. Hopefully I am posting this in the correct section. I'm looking to purchase an accelerator card for my A1200, so that I can run WHDLoad games from a CFCard.

I have located a 2nd hand fully working ACA1230 28MHz with 64MB RAM local to me. The seller wants almost the same as the price for a brand new ACA-1232 incl. CPU 68EC030/25 MHz and 127+1 MB RAM from Vesalia.....

http://www.vesalia.de/e_aca1232[8364].htm

...which would you choose? I'm new to these accelerator cards. Any help/advice would be appreciated.

As others have said, you only really need a memory card to play most WHDLOAD games perfectly on an A1200. If you want to play some of the more demanding WHDLOAD games at full speed you'll need an 030, either ACA is fine but I'd go for a Blizzard Mrk4 with 64MB ram and an FPU (because I like having the best!). Another option if you are very lucky is to pick up an awesome ACA 1230 @ 56 Mhz which is an 030 that thinks it's an 040

Timing fixes aren't that big a deal, you can get your MB fixed up pretty easily and also take the opportunity to replace your CAPS at the same time.

 

[snoopy77]

Go with the blizzard 1230iv unless you've had timing fixes done in which case look at the Aca's aswell.

 

[edd_jedi]

As above, it's worth considering that accelerators can cause all kinds of chaos with many old games, which is the main reason I got rid of my 040 and reverted back to the standard 030 board.

 

[NovaCoder]

As above, it's worth considering that accelerators can cause all kinds of chaos with many old games, which is the main reason I got rid of my 040 and reverted back to the standard 030 board.

WHDLOAD fixes most of these incompatibilities, I've only found one game (SubWar 2050) that refuses to run on my 1260.

 

[ajk]

Apparently the 040 is the worst CPU compatibility-wise, while 030 and 060 work very well, though I know of no concrete statistics actually proving this. "Citation needed", as Wikipedia would say

 

[edd_jedi]

Yep mine was an 040 and I had issues with quite a few games, where as most run fine with my 030.

 

[Firthy2002]

As others have already stated, you don't really need an accelerator. An ACA1220 would be sufficient for the majority of your WHDLoad gaming needs.
Unless you're playing a lot of games that benefit from a faster processor like strategy or FPS games.