New A500 68030 accelerator from Elbox

[Loedown]

Originally Posted by tin

Have to agree. Struggle to fill 16mb.

Burning CD / DVD buffer.

[tin]

give you that one

[BarryB]

Originally Posted by Loedown

Burning CD / DVD buffer.

Right, like we all do that on a regular basis on our miggys I have a PC to do that sort of thing, but isn't BURNPROOF supposed to cope with buffer underruns

[lukassid]

So why bother at all? I got PC that emulates Amiga. I can play this games on PC. If you only use Amiga to play some old games perhaps you don't need 030 in there at all. You'll be ok with ACA500 or HxC.
I recon if you doing 030 accelerator it should have 64mb ram. It's 2013 ffs.

[desiv]

Originally Posted by lukassid

If you only use Amiga to play some old games perhaps you don't need 030 in there at all.

Gloom runs much better on an 030 than an 020.. ;-)

desiv

[hansel75]

Originally Posted by lukassid

If you only use Amiga to play some old games perhaps you don't need 030 in there at all. You'll be ok with ACA500 or HxC..

The problem with the ACA500 is that it only has 2mb of fast ram(even less if you use the maprom feature), and large whdload games will not fit into that, you will most likely get black screen loading pauses.

16mb is a nice amount of ram and you will be able to smoothly run any whdload game in that.

I also have a hxc and while it's good, it's still fiddly to use compared to whdload games, especially on multi disc games that need swapping all the time.
If you do use a hxc exclusively for classic games though, an accelerator isn't really needed at all.

Also an 030 will make workbench, whdload game launchers etc much faster and more enjoyable to use.
And 3d polygon games will be more fun to play on an 030 compared to an 020, games like Frontier, F1GP...

This new A500 accelerator from elbox seems to cover all the needs for A500 users and you shouldn't be limited anywhere, it would make a fine A500 whdload machine.

[Bamiga2002]

There's some new code in WHDLoad 17.2 that helps coping with 2mb ram on ACA500.

[lukassid]

I forgot 8mb kipper expansion board, that is enough for a500. To spend 300 euros to speed up PC clone games doesn't make sense at all. You can play them on PC where they belong. If you go high end than 64-128mb should be there.

[duga]

Originally Posted by Bamiga2002

There's some new code in WHDLoad 17.2 that helps coping with 2mb ram on ACA500.

And you actually have 3 MB including the 1 MB chip ram.

How many games actually needs more than 3 MB (with or without preload)?

[hansel75]

Originally Posted by duga

And you actually have 3 MB including the 1 MB chip ram.

How many games actually needs more than 3 MB (with or without preload)?

If you use the maprom feature on the ACA500 you will also lose 512k, leaving 1.5mb spare.

The 1mb chipram that most A500 users have would need to be used for the actual game itself to run in and is of no real use for preloading, so this leaves a max of 2mb fast ram for the ACA500 to preload whdload games in, 1.5mb if maprom is used.

As for whdload games needing more then 2mb fast, with preload pretty much any game that's on 2 floppies or more will need more ram then that.

Without preload i don't know, but i presume it wouldn't be a smooth experience with it needing to load chunks in throughout the game instead of preloading everything.

As for this new ACA500 feature in whdload 17.2 to help out on ACA500 amigas, i have no idea how this works it magic on an amiga when there is not enough physical ram to fully preload a large game in, maybe someone else would care to explain.

I would be interested to see how a whdload game like Mortal Kombat 2 plays on the ACA500, as it's a 4 disc game and needs a reasonable amount of fast ram to preload in when running the whdload version.

On my A600 i used to have 2mb chip ram and 2mb pcmcia fast ram, and when playing MK2 on that i had lots of black screen loading pauses!
Same goes for any of the larger whdload games like multi disk adventure games etc.

Now that i have plenty of ram in both my A600 and A1200, all whdload games run like a dream.

In saying that the ACA500 does let you use your existing ram expansions if you have any.

But this elbox A500 accelerator simply looks like the full package and gives you everything you need in one product.

"lukassid"
I have an intel 4930k cpu plus 32gb ram and sli 780's as my main pc, it's a monster, yet when playing amiga games, i still prefer the real thing, emulation just aint the same.
And some of us still like to play the old amiga 3d games on a real amiga

[DDNI]

Hansel, 32mb RAM in your PC? There's your problem

[hansel75]

Originally Posted by DDNI

Hansel, 32mb RAM in your PC? There's your problem

Yer lol! It's called future proofing, a bit of overkill though i guess

Edit- So any more news about the Elbox A500 accelerator anyone?

[demolition]

Originally Posted by hansel75

Yer lol! It's called future proofing, a bit of overkill though i guess

Read it again. Sure you don't mean GB? (mb = millibit)

[hansel75]

Originally Posted by demolition

Read it again. Sure you don't mean GB? (mb = millibit)

Sigh, mistype, fixed now lol!

Edit- Better get back on track with this topic, otherwise we might get in trouble

[Lockon]

@Hansel
v17.2 WHDLoad brings support for quitkey feature which require presence of HW instruction not provided in ACA500's onboard CPU. Let's say it puts ACA500 close to stock A1200 from HW preconditions of speed, instruction and part of chipset. It won't help preload case study you brought up. Vanilla, unmodded A500 Rev6-7 comes with 0,5M chip and 0,5M trapdoor which can be translated to 1M chip and that leaves some 1,5M fast for preload if you practice MAPROM. That amount is enough for 2-disk games. If you omitt MAPROM, there's space for 3rd disk. Effectively, you get scope narrowed down to 4-disk game installs and that put your personal preference above the device/platform general functionality. In plain words, your needs surpass targeted market segment for ACA500.
Elbox 68030 might be solution for your case, if they commit and build one for sale. Personally, I wouldn't hold my breath for this one; ACA500 was delayed for at least one year after announcement and that comes with alongside upfront and detailed communications between IC and community. I don't expect any more details outside already published ones, including price without VAT. If you have no critical preference towards internal/external implementation, I'd advise to check ACA1232 33/40 versions which can attach to ACA500 and are selling.

[TCD]

No more WHDLoad memory discussions here please. If people are interested in the topic they can start a dedicated thread. Thank you in advance.

[Bamiga2002]

The WHD-memory discussion is IMHO closely tied to the hardware discussed here, is interesting and for many, an important matter. Besides are there any users here NOT using WHDLoad and NOT interested how these accels fare using WHDLoad?

[TCD]

The WHDLoad memory discussion is surely interesting, but it is hidden for most users that don't follow this thread. It's (when it comes to comparing the different options for A500s) also OT here. This is a news thread and they should (at least to a certain degree) just be about updates of the the topic at hand and the discussion about it.

By all means start a thread about WHDLoad memory and the new accelerators I think that way it will reach all people that consider any of the new accelerators and give them an overview which option might be best suited for their needs.

[meckert]

One of Elbox resellers, guy, who owns retroami.com.pl confirmed that turbo flyer works with CDTV (info from Elbox), although there may be problems with closing the case.

[Exit]

Maybe its the start of Elbox new line of turbocards? maybe the next one will be for the amiga 1200/4000? we shall see..