Advice on 8mb fast ram
 

Hi all

I have setup cf hdd and plan to play whdload games.

I want to buy 8mb fast ram but would like your advice.

Compatibility with games is the most important. Pcmia support is not critical, but a bonus (I'm using rom v3.1)

Is it best to buy new or older models?

Is fpu options important?

Can you recommend the best options out there and where to get these.

The prices for second hand ram boards doesn't seem to be much different to new ones. I guess it is a question of whether you prefer a new, modern solution with a warranty vs an genuine contemporary card with an unknown history. I would probably also suggest looking at the prices of a blizzard 1220 or the ACA1221LC as they are not much more expensive and will give a wee speed boost.

The FPU makes no difference with games, only with certain math intensive applications.

Most 8MB boards have a jumper setting to configure the Ram to make them PCMCIA friendly, you can even hook up a toggle switch to the jumper and set it when you want to use the PCMCIA slot. (Powercycle will be needed)

I highly recommend the ACA cards, good value vs performance and nice new hardware. I also have a fondness for the blizzard 1230 but just for WHDLOAD you'll be fine with an 8mb Ram board.

So no benefit to using old fast ram cards then? Are the new ones better?

Where is best to buy any of the items suggested? I cant seem to find them.

I suppose You have A1200?
There's no benefit for using old card... except price (in some cases). About new ones, there are few options:

Amiga 1200 8MB Fast RAM Expansion
other offer of same card

Memory Expansion 8 MB for Amiga 1200

A1208 Amiga 1200 8MB Fast RAM Memory Trapdoor Expansion
other offer of same card

ACA1211

ACA1221lc (light turbo card)

You can buy the ACA cards directly from Individual Computers and also Amigskit resell these but don't always have stock.

A new card will obviously just that and have a warranty (if bought new) however the old Ram Boards are quite straightforward and don't tend to have a lot of issues, it's the high end accelerators that are more prone to failure due to heat or leaking capacitors.

For some reason it's always been quite a challenge to find a basic 8mb ram card, must be thousands of them out there but always hard to find.

Quite often can find these items on eBay, here on EAB or other Amiga sites such as Amibay.

https://icomp.de/shop-icomp/en/shop.html
https://amigakit.amiga.store/
http://www.amibay.com/forum.php

There are quite a few other Amiga shops around Europe too but these are the main places I buy from along with eBay.

We are shortly going to release a brand new A1200 8MB Fast Memory Expansion with socket for an optional FPU, extra clock port and optional real time clock.

The price will be lower than any other expansion on the market at the moment.

We demoed the new expansion at Amiga Ireland show this weekend and had good feedback.

That's great guys, thank you for all the really helpful replies. Ill go take a look.

When will this new card be available Amigakit?

The new card is due in a few weeks after Chinese New Year. Target price will be around £59 without an FPU (excluding postage).

The extra clockport and FPU capability should help bring more expansion possibilities at a budget price.

We hope it will redress the problem of many hobbyist RAM expansions being sold at high prices of £80 or over

Hi Amigakit

Sorry about the blank message, I literally cant work out how to reply to a pm or quote in a thread, lol. I see the buttons but don't know where to type replies.

I was letting you know that I'm going to wait until your 8mb solution hits the market before deciding on which way to go. Please feel free to pm me when its available and I will keep an eye out for it.

Hi

Thanks very much. Ill keep this thread updated.

There's a few math-intensive games that do benefit from FPU like TFX. Also there are ports of more modern games that use floating point math.

The real benefit comes when you start pushing around scaled graphics and such in advanced paint programs, JPEG encoding/decoding, audio, etc.. or stuff that renders composite pages (web browsing, desktop publishing). All of these often have fallback integer routines but they are either slower (integer emulation of floating point) or less-accurate (32-bit integer vs. 80-bit floating point). Also a number of modern pretty Workbench setups use FPU for fancy text/icon handling. Some of the fancier scene demos require an FPU or run slow without one.

But yeah if the only thing you're going to be doing is playing classic 2D games and pre-bankruptcy 3D games, then an FPU will do nothing for you.

(Example of something that needs an FPU: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pw9bRm9zfvs )

Thank you AmigaHope, this confirms what I believed to be the case

For this machine I only plan on playing old school retro games, predominantly via whdload. I may in the future put together a more impressive build, and I would likely go the accelerator route.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/New-A1208-R....c100752.m1982

Why is it so expensive?

Is it any better then this card?
https://amigastore.eu/en/698-amiga-1...expansion.html

I havn't tried any of them but from the info on the sites they seem pretty similar.

No problem. If and when you do go the accelerator route (say an 060) then you *will* want an FPU and MMU if you want to do Classic Mac gaming as there are a number of Mac games that either require or work better with an FPU, and Mac emulation works better with an MMU.

Presume the release of this has been delayed due to coronavirus?

Yes, that's correct, we have been told it will land here in the next two weeks from China.

Thanks for getting back to us.