Making use of a PowerPC accelerator in an A4000 (or A1200 tower)

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ColourWheel64

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I'm certainly looking forward to getting a PowerPC board for my A4000 when the time comes, after I've worked my way through the 040 and 060 boards.

In the meantime I'm curious to find out the different benefits of getting such a board, and most interesting will be a favourite use for the extra power.

Even if its simply something that you always wanted, you finally got it and the only benefit is that feeling of owning one.

I'd really love to know.​
 
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I had a powerpc on my towered up A1200 back in the day. Was probably the most expensive mp3 player I ever bought! :)
 
os 4.x is literally the only "extra" thing so can do with PPC

quake, doom, duke, wipeout etc all have 68k versions, i am not sure if things like image etc can use your extra power.

the main benefit of PPC is the "because i can" factor
 
If you are into developing software then a PPC IMHO is a great opportunity to write code that going to execute extremely fast compared to the Amiga CPU.

I cannot wait until I get some more time for my ppc setup and dev work for OS3.9 and maybe OS4.x

In regards to exsiting apps, mostly you will find some games that use the PPC - but in truth a Playstation 1 does a better job out of the box - but it does open up some emulation posibilities with DosBOX and SCUMM games - as well as megadrive / NES and Spectrum to name a few.

Its a shame that "Shifter" doesn't support PPC chips - that would make a really fast MAC emulator / interpreter.

Personally I wont stop until I have StarCraft running on my 200MHz PPC ;)
 
There are actually quite a few noteworthy benefits to PPC on a Classic Amiga beside the ability to run the latest OS you can use WarpDT which are Power PC data-types for loading in all well know image formats, jpg, gif, bmp, etc. This really speeds up web browsing, loading backdrops and loading any image file obviously.

The PPC ports of Games run a hell of a lot faster then the 68k versions obviously although not IMHO to their full potential maybe due to bottlenecks in the Ram or poor coding. This is less noticeable however on the A4000 with CSPPC due to the 64bit Ram :cool:

There is quite a lot of PPC software out there that will run on a Classic Amiga if you look for it but again with various degrees of success, one of the main problems is much is coded for the faster Sam/AmigaOne so is too slow on the Classic's.

You will probably want to add a PCI Busboard in conjunction as this will let you use Warp3D via a Voodoo Graphics card or even just the BVision/CVisionPPC cards. This will realise the full potential of your extra Power, PPC isn't really much of an extra benefit in AGA. Even basic RTG would be an improvement however. This is an extra expense to consider as by now you could easily be into a 4 figure spend.

As a useful computer today obviously you can do everything on a £50 PC much faster so really it's more about wanting to own it for your own pleasure or bragging rights, you wouldn't use it a daily machine.

In the past I've compared this vintage hardware to a Classic Car as being something to enjoy occasionally.

Be prepared however that much of the PPC software is difficult to use, documentation is poor, being quite rare you wont get a lot of support if you have an issue. The few classic users will try to help but most problems are solved with trial and error.

They run very hot so consider cooling very carefully as it's easy to end up with a very expensive paper weight, trust me I have lost a CSPPC due to overheating of CPLD :(

I have one Classic PPC left, my Blizzard PPC I bought from Marc on these boards, one upgraded by Stachu. It's a Rev2 board so I use it with my GREX PCI, this is the best setup I have had, overall I rate it over my prior CSPPC even thought the Blizzard isn't as responsive the PCI via the GREX is much faster. The GREX however does not support OS4.x but this don't bother me as I have an AmigaOne for OS4.1 :cool:

To enjoy OS4.1 Classic you will need a Mediator PCI and Radeon Graphics card, but as previously mentioned be prepared for disappointment when it comes to running software and apps as many need the power of the NG systems.
 
steve thats a very good write up for the ppc maybe you should have that as a guide to buying 1
 
I have a Cyberstorm 060 / 50 Mhz and 200Mhz PPC, but I rarely use the PPC side.

I use it because it's like a Cyberstorm MKIII which I also have, but like Boom says, an expensive mp3 player :-D

I haven't even tried OS4.1, I think like Steve here, an NG system will do that way better.
If the new Cyrus is out and about, who knows.

And like Steve also said, it's a real b**ch if you want to set it up with other things, even with a Mediator kit it's not going to be tha bomb :wink:
Trust me, I tried it too also, it's great in OS3.9 and super fast.

But seriously internet on my Amiga ?
No way, my PC does it better, and maybe in a few days I will get my first smartphone, I'm going for the Samsung Galaxy S4.

At it's core I enjoy Amiga for gaming, and yeah if I want to brag at meetings or events, a 060 is handy for showing the best demo's, but that is all I will do with the Amiga.

I'm already tempted to sell it for my God like new pc, because the amount of 060's I have is more than enough, which is 7.
 
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