Furia Amiga 600 real world experience questions

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hayesey

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I'm thinking of buying a Furia accelerator for my A600 so I can play games such as Frontier: Elite II in high detail mode at a good speed.

But I have a couple of questions I don't seem to be able to find answers for & would like opinions from people who own these cards.

To use the card, I think a driver is needed, does this mean that booting games from floppy will not work and WHDLoad must always be used?

When playing Frontier on an emulator, it performs very well with a 68030 CPU but is still laggy with a 14mhz 68020, but I know the 020 on the Furia runs a lot faster than in the A1200 (33mhz instead of 14mhz). So does anyone know if Frontier runs fast in high detail mode with this card? I can't see any way of setting the 020 to 33mhz in the emulator I'm using (fs-uae on mac or linux), I'd question how accurate that would be anyway.

There's a version with passive cooling & one with active cooling, is active really needed? Has anyone had overheating issues with the passive version? Do both fit nicely into an A600 with just removing the top of the rf shield, no hacking of cutting needed to make them fit?

Any help appreciated!
 
I have an A600 with a Furia and it's working very well with Kickstart 3.1.4 and WB 3.2. The latest firmware of the Furia should iron out the issues it had with KS 3.2.x. I haven't had time to update my Furia to the latest firmware (you'll need a special programmer to do that).

I'll try Frontier: Elite 2 in high detail mode and let you know how it performs.

Edit: it runs fine in high detail mode. I have a passive cooled Furia but I would suggest buying an active cooled one.
The Furia is an accelerator and does not need a driver. You can still boot from floppy or use WHDLoad. I tested the game with the WHDLoad version. The active or passive cooled versions should fit nicely in your A600 with the top shield removed.

I never played Frontier: Elite II (nor the older version). I can make a video on how well it runs on my A600 with the Furia.

The A630 is better but more expensive and currently unobtanium in the EU.
 
Last edited:
HomeLate said:
I have an A600 with a Furia and it's working very well with Kickstart 3.1.4 and WB 3.2. The latest firmware of the Furia should iron out the issues it had with KS 3.2.x. I haven't had time to update my Furia to the latest firmware (you'll need a special programmer to do that).

I'll try Frontier: Elite 2 in high detail mode and let you know how it performs.

Edit: it runs fine in high detail mode. I have a passive cooled Furia but I would suggest buying an active cooled one.
The Furia is an accelerator and does not need a driver. You can still boot from floppy are use WHDLoad. I tested the game with the WHDLoad version. The active or passive cooled versions should fit nicely in your A600 with the top shield removed.

I never played Frontier: Elite II (nor the older version). I can make a video on how well it runs on my A600 with the Furia.

The A630 is better but more expensive and currently unobtanium in the EU.
Click to expand...
that's really good thanks. I do wonder how many of the issues people have had are really down to earlier firmware versions or SD/CF card incompatibility. I think I'll try a furia and see how I get on.
 
I had the Furia back in the day. My advice Run! They are not worth the hassle……
As others have mentioned, they are picky about CF cards, they are picky in Kickstart versions. To program them for firmware updates, then you have to invest in a programmer and also possibly make up the programmer header using a soldering iron on the Furia.

The 68020 @20mhz is similar to the A1200 speed at stock, but obviously without the AGA. It’s not bad, but ain’t something you write home about.

If you want something similar which works. Then look out for something like the ACA accelerators from Individual Computers. Or what others have recommended.

 
Last edited:
hayesey said:
that's really good thanks. I do wonder how many of the issues people have had are really down to earlier firmware versions or SD/CF card incompatibility. I think I'll try a furia and see how I get on.
Click to expand...
I have good luck with Samsung SD-cards, Lotharek's SD2IDE44 adapter and AMSider. If you decide to buy a Furia, make sure you get the latest revision.

You'll notice the AMSider & SD2IDE44 on the left. It's a perfect fit and works great!

IMG_2243.jpg
 
Boing-ball said:
I had the Furia back in the day. My advice Run! They are not worth the hassle……
As others have mentioned, they are picky about CF cards, they are picky in Kickstart versions. To program them for firmware updates, then you have to invest in a programmer and also possibly make up the programmer header using a soldering iron on the Furia.

The 68020 @20mhz is similar to the A1200 speed at stock, but obviously without the AGA. It’s not bad, but ain’t something you write home about.

If you want something similar which works. Then look out for something like the ACA accelerators from Individual Computers. Or what others have recommended.

Click to expand...

There aren't any ACA-accelerators for Amiga 600. Only the Furia, A630 and Pistorm are available to my knowledge.
 
HomeLate said:
There aren't any ACA-accelerators for Amiga 600. Only the Furia, A630 and Pistorm are available to my knowledge.
Click to expand...
You can still pickup pre-owned ACA 600 accelerator cards. They do sometimes appear on here for sale or the other bay 👍🏻
 
I still have a furia in my 2nd a600, I have only had positive experiences with it. Using verbatim and SanDisk CF cards, os3.9 and 3.2.2 no issues. For me they are great cards . My other a600 has the a630 v2 Accelerator, also no issues with it... :)
 
Boing-ball said:
You can still pickup pre-owned ACA 600 accelerator cards. They do sometimes appear on here for sale or the other bay 👍🏻
Click to expand...

I forgot about these. The ACA630 would be a good option if you can find one (y) If I were the OP, I would pay extra and get the A630. I've been looking for one for a long time (in the EU).
 
I have a compatibility issue with SanDisk Ultra 16 GB CF cards. The IDE light stays on and does not boot further. Using a SanDisk Extreme 16 GB card works. I also had this similar issue with my Kipper2K 508 expansion board for my A500.
 
My A600 has the white Furia board with a 16GB Sandisk card. It has worked flawlessly on all Kickstart versions, as is currently on 3.2.3. It seems to be the red Furia cards that have problems, so I call those the Red Devils ;)
 
well I went with a Furia in the end. It's at home waiting for me. I'll give it a go either over the weekend or next week depending on time.

I did consider the A630 which is clearly the better card but I couldn't justify the double cost of it for the amount of use it'll get!

I checked that the furia has the latest firmware on it before buying and I am prepared to have to change my ancient CF Card for an SD card and having to try different SD cards until I find a working one, i'm OK with that.

I'll update or start a new thread with how I get on and will do some gameplay comparisons with Frontier both with and without the Furia, which is really all I want an accelerator for. Not really interested in how long I can make the red line in sysinfo go :)
 
Let us know how you get on, I have a red one and it runs no issues on a 16gb Sandisk with KS 3.1.4 and WB3.1.4. Could not get it to go any higher. It's a Red one 40mhz with Fan
 
I have Furia with my A600 and also had major issues stopping it from crashing when using WB using HD. The key to resolving it was by installing a version of WB that was higher than the kickstart. Currently I run it using only KS 3.1 but with a later version of Workbench (40.068 I believe) and it resolved all the issues with crashing when using it with SD based IDE. I suspect running it with KS 3.1.4 and WB 3.2.2 would be fine although I’ve not tried
 
KS 3.1.4 / WB3.14 was the best I could get out of mine ,only a Sandisk 8gb worked for me
 
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