Amiga newbie, accelerator assistance required

[Snoozy]

Here is a picture of a fully exposed mobo (with metal shielding removed)

Note the Kickstart roms as 2 MX chips next to each other mounted horizontally.

The Motherboard rev is written in white writing near the gold tipped expansion port area. Written under CHANNEL..This is a 1A version.

To see the mother board revision with the metal shielding in place - is to use a torch and shine from side from the expansion area.

 

[Spaffy]

I have a 4+1mb expansion with a 50mhz fpu thats pcmcia friendly (as i use a 2mb sram card too) thats spot on for whdload as the A1200 has a total of 9mb ram (2 chip / 7 fast) but im now finding myself wishing i had got an accelerator after redescovering rendering.
Dont just look at the cost of the ram board but also considder the cost of an sram card as you will undoubtedly want one for that "little bit extra"

 

[Snoozy]

I have a 4+1mb expansion with a 50mhz fpu thats pcmcia friendly (as i use a 2mb sram card too) thats spot on for whdload as the A1200 has a total of 9mb ram (2 chip / 7 fast) but im now finding myself wishing i had got an accelerator after redescovering rendering.
Dont just look at the cost of the ram board but also considder the cost of an sram card as you will undoubtedly want one for that "little bit extra"

Hi spaffy what you say is true but adding sram (via pcmcia) will slow down an a1200 as pcmcia sram is 16 bit addressing and a1200 is 32 bit addressing.
Best to use pcmcia sram as a means of expanding an a600.

The optimum a1200 expansion for utility and value for money is a 68030 accelerator, and of these 68030 i think the best value for money is the aca1230 (for performance, amount of ram and "newness") but everyone has their own opinion

Or better still the aca1231 if you want to push the boat out

Of course the blizzard 1230 IV school will be along soon enough but bare in mind these accelerators are often over 15 years old

 

[Spaffy]

I know about the addressing. But in that scenario more ram is better than less in my oppinion. Btw ive just scured a blizzy 030

 

[Snoozy]

I know about the addressing. But in that scenario more ram is better than less in my oppinion. Btw ive just scured a blizzy 030

ok that seems strange to use sram on a1200 with a ram expansion aswell and recommend others to do that icard

Yeah there's quite a few blizzard 1230 about at the moment.

The problem with getting hold of used aca cards is that they are few and far between and i noticed the ones that come up for sale here are sold in minutes.

 

[Spaffy]

For playing games on whdload my preference is more ram.
I wouldnt recomend sram for rendering and other processing intensive opperations due to the speed. Thats where an accelerator is needed.

 

[fitzsteve]

The ACA1231 is a touch faster than the blizzard 1230 IV (according to jens) ie mips.

The ACA1231 has 100% compatability for whdload and has no timing issues that i was aware (i thought this was confined to the aca1230) If you have ks 3.1 it is 100% plug and play. Even booting with custom roms will only take 2 minutes of editing your s:start-up sequence.

And of course the aca1231 will be brand new (if you can source an aca1230 second hand you will find better value for money than the blizzard 1230 IV)

I wasn't slating the ACA they are great cards but Jens has stated in the EAB support thread that the ACA1231 needs the same timing fixes as the ACA1230 so could end up costing more if you need to get someone to this work for you.

Some people have reported all sorts of issues and even my ACA1230 with a 1D4 Mobo with Eyetech fixes applied does not work with a FastATA and some CF cards don't work in PCMCIA or IDE. Of course everything works perfect with a Blizzard 1230 on all boards I tested, therefore this is why I would suggest the Blizzy as the better buy.

The other thing is the Blizzy has support for SCSI & FPU plus the Ram can be upgraded

Steve.

 

[4am]

Having taken all your comments on board, I decided to go with a RAM board in the end (whilst picking up another A500 in the meantime, but that's another story entirely...)

Thanks again to everyone who contributed to the thread for all the invaluable advice given. Hopefully I'll be able to return the favour in some way one day.

 

[matt020]

You know, you are obliged to take pics when the memory board arrives and post pics up on Amibay. Its an unwritten rule

 

[4am]

I can do that, Matt... it will have to wait a few days mind, the kids have grabbed it as they want to give it to me as a birthday present this weekend!

Having said that there's pictures of it already on here as I bought it from a fellow Amibayer. The link's on page one of this thread.