New products for C64 and Amiga from Individual Computers

[roy bates]

any chance of a ide header as well as the cf port,i dont really like using cf's as a storage method.

[Schoenfeld]

Originally Posted by roy bates

any chance of a ide header as well as the cf port,i dont really like using cf's as a storage method.

No chance, sorry. The CF card slots are on the same data bus as the A500, and a cable on that could make the computer instable. That would be about as bad a design as the A1200, where Commodore created a necessity for buffered IDE adapters.

If you don't like CF cards, then the ACA500 is probably not your product. I have elaborated on the advantages of CF cards in this thread, but if you have personal feelings, that's nothing I can change.

Jens

[Retro-Nerd]

Originally Posted by john1979

Loading games with preload off is a horrible experience. All that screen flashing everytime something loads. It's really slow and irritating. When I had my plain A1200, I would prefer to use floppies instead for these games. I dare say loading speed was comparable from the floppy.

I can't see many A500 users wanting to use WHDload without being able to preload.

100% true. Preload is THE essential tooltype for smooth/fast loading, as you would expect from normal Amiga HD installable games. Disable it should be only a temporary solution till you get some (enough) fastram.

[Crumb]

Originally Posted by Retro-Nerd

100% true. Preload is THE essential tooltype for smooth/fast loading, as you would expect from normal Amiga HD instable games. Disable it should be only a temporary solution till you get some (enough) fastram.

Without preloading some games (e.g. Defenders of the Crown) stopped playing music while HD was accessed. Not a big problem but slightly annoying. I guess the user can install an ACA12xx to fix that.

Any plans for ACA1240 or ACA1260?

[desiv]

Originally Posted by Retro-Nerd

100% true. Preload is THE essential tooltype for smooth/fast loading, as you would expect from normal Amiga HD installable games. Disable it should be only a temporary solution till you get some (enough) fastram.

50% agree! ;-)

I did run with Preload OFF for a while, and it is NOT essential.
Yes, the flashing was annoying, but compared to floppy swapping on those games... It was worth it..
(Which is funny, because I like using floppies on my Amiga 1000, for the full experience. But my 1200, I want no swapping.)

So, on my 1200, I did not prefer to use floppies. The screen flashing was annoying but it wasn't so persistent that I stopped.

It was persistent enough that I decided I needed more RAM. ;-)
So, it wasn't a killer, but it was a motivating factor. ;-)

Is more RAM required, probably not. Is more RAM VERY VERY NICE.. ;-)

Also, I think WHDLOAD 17 handles preload differently (automatically or something). I had more RAM already when it was released, but I thought I read that..

desiv

[Retro-Nerd]

And you also tried multidisk games with 3-X disks. Sorry, this black flickering and sound stutter is more than annoying. It destroys the whole gaming experience. Running old Amiga games from hd. Just like it would have been possible from the beginning for all Amiga games.

[desiv]

Originally Posted by Retro-Nerd

And you also tried multidisk games with 3-X disks.

Of course i did.. This is an Amiga after all!!!

Originally Posted by Retro-Nerd

Sorry, this black flickering and sound stutter is more than annoying. It destroys the whole gaming experience.

Sorry, it didn't for me..

Originally Posted by Retro-Nerd

Running old Amiga games from hd. Just like it would have been possible from the beginning for all Amiga games.

er.. yeah.. I had an Amiga back in the day with a HD, and many of those games didn't support it..
So it wasn't possible from the beginning.

desiv

[Retro-Nerd]

So it wasn't possible from the beginning.

Of course, that's the point. Would have been possible. I now have the illusion they always had a HD installer, which loads the game fast and smooth. Well some people like the pain, when it comes to the Amiga. PRELOAD ftw.

[lukassid]

Jens are you planing another run of ACA630?

[Schoenfeld]

Originally Posted by lukassid

Jens are you planing another run of ACA630?

No, I don't (as mentioned multiple times before). The spirit of this news item (published in august 2012) is "I want to keep the cost of our hobby as low as possible". High-cost products have been selling extremely slow lately, and low-cost products can only make so much margin, keeping my employees and me alive. There's only a small range of products that hit the sweet spot between "affordable" and "feeds me", and the ACA630 is not in that range.

The ACA630 was a very expensive card, and it sold too slow to justify another production run. The ACA620 sells a lot better, and even if it sold as slow as the ACA630, it wouldn't hurt that much. This teaches me not to look into high-price projects unless I have a contractor with very deep pockets.

Jens

[roy bates]

Originally Posted by Schoenfeld

No chance, sorry. The CF card slots are on the same data bus as the A500, and a cable on that could make the computer instable. That would be about as bad a design as the A1200, where Commodore created a necessity for buffered IDE adapters.

If you don't like CF cards, then the ACA500 is probably not your product. I have elaborated on the advantages of CF cards in this thread, but if you have personal feelings, that's nothing I can change.

Jens

why would putting an ide port on it make it unstable?

are you powering this just from the 500,why is there a need for 2 cf cards?

sorry im very curios

[demolition]

He would need a buffer on the IDE port for it to be able to drive a cable (it has an inherent capacitance). More components would obviously increase cost so it's a trade off that fell against the IDE port.

[desiv]

Originally Posted by roy bates

why is there a need for 2 cf cards?

Not speaking for Jens or this card, but I have a dual CF card setup on my Amiga 1000.
The first card is my OS and Data.
The second card is FAT and I use it for transferring files to/from the PC.
No, it's not hot swap, but still.. Nice to have..

desiv
(p.s. I generally don't leave the FAT card mounted in the A1000 to save memory. These large drives eat up more memory when mounted..)

[roy bates]

Originally Posted by demolition

He would need a buffer on the IDE port for it to be able to drive a cable (it has an inherent capacitance). More components would obviously increase cost so it's a trade off that fell against the IDE port.

i understand that,but why two cf ports?

Originally Posted by desiv

Not speaking for Jens or this card, but I have a dual CF card setup on my Amiga 1000.
The first card is my OS and Data.
The second card is FAT and I use it for transferring files to/from the PC.
No, it's not hot swap, but still.. Nice to have..

desiv
(p.s. I generally don't leave the FAT card mounted in the A1000 to save memory. These large drives eat up more memory when mounted..)

if its not hotswappable it makes having two a bit pointless if you have to power down to remove one anyway.

[desiv]

Originally Posted by roy bates

if its not hotswappable it makes having two a bit pointless if you have to power down to remove one anyway.

Not as all, as I use it all the time in reality, not in theory. ;-)
The "point" is that you don't have to unplug your OS CF and then mount it in the PC under WinUAE so you can transfer files
You just plop them on the other CF card.

Powering down is no biggie. This is an Amiga after all.
We're used to power downs between games and it reboots nice and fast. :-)

Now, if you don't like it, that's OK. But that doesn't make it pointless.

To be honest, I wasn't sure about the need when I got mine, but I use it all the time to transfer files. It actually works very well.

desiv

[roy bates]

Originally Posted by desiv

Not as all, as I use it all the time in reality, not in theory. ;-)
The "point" is that you don't have to unplug your OS CF and then mount it in the PC under WinUAE so you can transfer files
You just plop them on the other CF card.

Powering down is no biggie. This is an Amiga after all.
We're used to power downs between games and it reboots nice and fast. :-)

Now, if you don't like it, that's OK. But that doesn't make it pointless.

To be honest, I wasn't sure about the need when I got mine, but I use it all the time to transfer files. It actually works very well.

desiv

the point is not a theary but reality,you can just move the main drive to a pc as well if its a cf card or even any other drive.(going by the picture you can do it on both as its on the front)
as youre only swapping files to a and from a medium.thats a fair point isent it?


surely if i dont like the idea of using a cf card as drive,thats my opinion and i stick by that.
but having two cfs in the front where it can be accesed and having to power it down,when you can do it with one is pointless even more so when it doesent support hotswapping.

[desiv]

Originally Posted by roy bates

the point is not a theary but reality,you can just move the main drive to a pc as well if its a cf card or even any other drive.

Not if you want to read those files in the PC, as that CF card is formatted in for one of the Amiga filesystems.
Which is why you have to use something like WinUAE to read it.
With a separate card that is just FAT, you don't have to worry about that.

Originally Posted by roy bates

surely if i dont like the idea of using a cf card as drive,thats my opinion and i stick by that.

Totally OK!

Originally Posted by roy bates

but having two cfs in the front where it can be accesed and having to power it down,when you can do it with one is pointless even more so when it doesent support hotswapping.

Again, no it's not....
Would it be nicer if there was hot swap? Yep. That doesn't make it pointless.
There is a very obvious point. You can use it without having to use something like WinUAE to swap files to/from the PC.

Now, is that enough of a point? Individual call. But it's far from pointless.

desiv

[roy bates]

is it really that difficult to use a cf card in winuae?

[desiv]

Originally Posted by roy bates

is it really that difficult to use a cf card in winuae?

Difficult? Nope.. Done it a lot.

But it's much easier to just drag/drop files onto the card from the main OS which (for me) is the point. ;-)

Remember, if you are doing it in WinUAE, you have to copy files back and forth from inside WinUAE.
So, steps:

Plug in the card.
Start WinUAE
Within WinUAE, copy files to/from a shared directory on your PC.
Shutdown WinUAE
Unplug Card

or

Plug in card
Drag/drop files
Unplug card

I actively have done both methods, and I prefer the 2nd, even tho the first isn't that tough. If you can make it a bit easier, why wouldn't you want that?

desiv
Offended? :-) Nope.. I just disagree with your use of the word "pointless." Don't see how any offence could be taken.

[lukassid]

Originally Posted by Schoenfeld

No, I don't (as mentioned multiple times before). The spirit of this news item (published in august 2012) is "I want to keep the cost of our hobby as low as possible". High-cost products have been selling extremely slow lately, and low-cost products can only make so much margin, keeping my employees and me alive. There's only a small range of products that hit the sweet spot between "affordable" and "feeds me", and the ACA630 is not in that range.

The ACA630 was a very expensive card, and it sold too slow to justify another production run. The ACA620 sells a lot better, and even if it sold as slow as the ACA630, it wouldn't hurt that much. This teaches me not to look into high-price projects unless I have a contractor with very deep pockets.

Jens

Thanks for the reply. I enjoy my ACA 620, Indivision ECS and A604.

If you released ACA620 first than ACA630 would sell faster for more.
New users like me don't wanna spend much at first, but then all you want is SPEED. I would pay £250 for something to speed up my baby Amiga now.
Anyway I think future is in FGPA for Amiga 600 as size won't permit 040 or 060 and new CPU are non existent (crazy expensive)