Getting back into Amiga - What way to go?
 

Hi all, as a total new person to this forum I'm going to begin with something probably asked already by others in the past so forgive me if I'm dragging up old ground once again.


So I used to have a 500 years ago, it was my brothers but I used it as much as he did when he was out (for games of course). I eventually inherited my brothers machine probably about 1994 and I ran it right up until about 1997 surviving on PD games in those last few years.


Well now the time has come to resurrect my interest in the old Amiga and I've been doing my research.


I've stumbled upon some of the great accerators that have recently come out over the last few years and I have decided the Wicher 500i is the one I should get for an Amiga 500 (because I am interested in running WHD load).


However I have some questions regarding chosing to go A500 as opposed to A1200 so please leave your thoughts on the matter.


If I was to get an A500 and kit it out, can I use 70ns ram? Anyone ever try SIMM 72 PIN 70ns? I have a choice of either 6ons or 70ns so assumed 70ns would allow for faster over clocking of a MC68HC000FN20 using the Wicher.


Could the Wicher 500i run Doom? Has anyone tried this?


Can the A500 with a Wicher 500i run A1200 games like Gloom or Fears or anything else that was AGA?


Is there any benefit in getting the Wicher 500i Rev2.c? Does the possibility of more fast ram benefit anything really OR would the older Wichers that allow 8mb fast ram be sufficient?


All thoughts and opinions welcome :great

The only way to get compatibility with software that requires AGA, on an A500, is by using Vampire card and a so called "gold 3" core, that currently is in beta state.

For Doom to be playable on an Amiga you need at least a 68040/25MHz which will give occasional choppiness if you want a decent frame rate with audio. A 40MHz 68040 will be plenty good enough for Doom.

In other words, not cheap. If you want the scratch the Doom itch cost effectively, a PS1 or PS2 with a copy of Doom will more than suffice, it's a great version and a lot cheaper than sourcing a 68040, 060 or PowerPC for any Amiga :)

A Vampire would also do the trick.

Depends how much you want to play it on an Amiga I guess :)

Whdload solves a lot of compatability problems and so for me the best gaming setup is an a1200 with low\mid level accelerator or I think I saw an interesting expansion by kipper2k recently. That way you get aga as well.


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I would go the A1200 route. I have both the A500 (ACA500plus) and an A1200 (ACA1233N) set up. The A1200 gets far more use than the A500.

I completed all the Dooms on a PS1 :lol

So you have the ACA500+ what is the use in this accelerator then if you can't run things like Doom on it? What are the benfits? I was thinking about this accelerator also but internal option seemed better.

Reason against A1200 for me is the expense. There aint any in UK going for less than £150 these days. In fact on ebay there are some going for the same price they were new. Pretty shocking actually. The A500's are a lot more expensive than I expected also. You can get one if you are lucky for under £100.



But I guess I just wanted to see Doom working well on an Amiga500. I could drop the itch. I guess I would like to see some of the other clones working well on the A500.


Otherwise why the hell for accelerators that can potentially clock up to 50khz if you can't really use them for anything that demands those speeds?

Anyone know about the 70ns ram? Would it work ok/be beneficial using a Wicher card?

Not everyone use computers for just games, you know...

Yeah, I sometimes actually use my computer for... Half-Life

About those 70ns Simms. You seem to think that 70ns is better than 60ns. It is actually the other way around: 60ns rams are _capable_ of faster memory access, IF the accelerator card is able to utilize that.

WRT Doom: it is playable on a A1200 with a fast 030 accelerator card - but you still may have to cut down on detail and window size.
I don’t believe it’ll be fun to play on the A500 Wicher, but someone with actual first hand experience should report. I have seen videos running Doom on the A500 Vampire buttery smooth - maybe that’s an option for you?
It really depends on what you want to achieve. Are you after playing Doom or is the goal to run it on your childhood Amiga...

Yes I'm sure they don't. I don't use my pc for games at all.

That's fair enough


Form some reason Australian guy (modern vintage gamer) who did the pimping my Amiga video on youtube in his review of the Wicher I thought he mentioned he was using 50ns ram and said even greater over clocking might be possible with 60ns ram modules and a faster processor. I obviously imagined this as I checked the video again and there is no mention of this. I'm not familiar with the older ram spec and what it all really means. So I want a 50ns then? That's quicker than 60ns and 70ns?


I would love to do the Vampire option but £320 before I even have an Amiga is out of my price range. Not saying it's not good value, just I can't afford that right now.

Correct 50ns allows for even faster memory access than 60ns. It might give some more headroom for overclocking.

From what I've read from you, it seems that Vampire is the best choice for you. Doom would fly there.
But buying an A500 to just play Doom, or 3D games in general... what's the point?

You can't run Doom on them because, Doom was not designed to work on Amiga at that time, or on accelerators that will be made in 20+ years. :)
But for other 3D games for Amiga (Wing Commander, Frontier, or various flight simulations)... they run pretty well. I've also tried Doom clone for A500 Cytadela, and it runs very fast compared to the stock A500.
I have Aca 500+ btw.

What's the benefit?
Well, apart from mentioned speed, it gives you HD for A500, and that is a BIG thing. Now I can transfer many games from PC to Amiga with CF card, in a matter of few minutes. It gives you additional Ram, that many games uses.
Also (specifically for ACA500+) it has workbench on ROM, so you don't need WB on floppies, or trying to setup a system on Winuae, you do it straightly from A500, in a matter of minutes.
Now I have A500 with HD of 8GB, 14Mhz (at default (could go up to 42Mhz), 8MB Ram that I can easely connect to my PC to transfer whatever I want.

I was also, like you, searching for options year a go, and when I saw what hassle is to just transfer 1 game from PC to Amiga, I realized how accelerators are great.

I wouldn't play DOOM on a real Amiga with anything less than a 060.

It was 'playable' on an 040 at 40Mhz but not PC smooth until I'd moved up to a full fat 060, I also tried it on my 56Mhz 030 once and it wasn't that great.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vTnz4snCIcA

I must admit my recollections are from pretty much 20 years ago, so they may be a bit faint!

But I definitely remember enjoying Doom full screen with audio very happily on my Apollo 1240/40, maybe I wouldn't these days as I'd see the frame rate differences!

It definitely ran smooth on the PPC 603e/160 I eventually had (where I could test it on the 040/25 and 603e/160).

It speeds the whole machine up when either playing games or using workbench, It allows me to boot kickstarts higher than 1.3, it allows a CF card to be used as a HD, it also has a hot shoe port for a CF card and it emulates Action replay cards. I am sure there is other functions I have missed. My A500 is my original A500. I have cleaned it up, fitted an external Gotek drive, refurbed the internal disk drive and I like having it set up. The price of the A500+ was not too much, so why not.


Fortunatly many games were released on the Amiga which I enjoy playing. Doom is not one of them, so I am not too concerned Doom will not work on an A500.

Guys Doom is playable on my A1200 with Blizzard IV 030.Its not lighting fast but it's playable at 320x200 res.

How playable Doom is on Amiga, depends entirely on what substance the player is under influence of.

None.

I played the Citadel game back in the day (awful experience unless the size of a postage stamp which of course is to small) and also on the PC (I have the PC port) and I think it's great.


I thought the videos on youtube looked fairly good to me (of Doom on the 500). Perhaps not.
Doom isn't the be all and end all for me, but I initially figured that the new accelerators roided the A500 up into that category. At least to the point of being able to play the A1200 games. I guess I got that wrong too.
For me I want to be able to play it all. All the 500 stuff and 1200 stuff. I'd kinda like to play the 1200 stuff as I never got a chance to back in the day. So why don't you get a A1200 then? Well because I over estimated those recent accelerators to hit the market in the last few years.
I might have to think about getting a 1200 now, which still works out more expensive after I bag an accelerator.


Vampire seems too expensive also. And I think I read it uses barely any of the machine, itself, I like the idea of breaking the boundaries using the old machine to outperform what it initially could do back in the day. Obviously there seems to be a limit to that right now despite seeing the videos of Doom on the 500.


I also don't just want to run the 500 for 3d games. I just liked the idea that the new hardware could bring into new territory never once thought to be possible.


F1GP and a lot of other games are also reasons for me to want to get back into the Amiga (yes sorry just for games).

If you want to play all stuff on one machine, then a "real" Amiga may not be the best solution at all. The real difference between an A500 and an A1200 is not in CPU, but in the chipset architecture.