best expansion card for A1200

[ahhyes]

Hi Guys,

Just wondering what the best bet would be for this? I'm not after a PPC CPU. Something with an 060 would be nice. I'd like to try the amiga port of NetBSD on it, and be able to revert back to Workbench/OS3.9 if I wanted to (hence why I am not interested in the PPC).

Am I going to need a better PSU than the stock A1200 PSU? I plan on ripping out the IDE hard disks and replacing it with a flash drive, so hopefully that will help with reducing power consumption.

Feel free to chime in with suggestions/do's/dont's

[NovaCoder]

Hiya,

You live just up the road from me

As to which is the best card, it all depends of what you want to do with your 1200. I don't know anything about running NetBSD so I can't help you there.

If you want an 060 you only really have a choice between an Apollo and a Blizzard which are both very expensive.

You should get away with a standard PSU with just an expansion card and a CF HD.

[ahhyes]

Originally Posted by NovaCoder

Hiya,

You live just up the road from me

As to which is the best card, it all depends of what you want to do with your 1200. I don't know anything about running NetBSD so I can't help you there.

If you want an 060 you only really have a choice between an Apollo and a Blizzard which are both very expensive.

You should get away with a standard PSU with just an expansion card and a CF HD.

Hi Mate

Which are the better of the two brands or are they much alike? By better I mean, ease of installation, stability/reliability + support?

I've heard about the Blizzard's, any model numbers to suggest? I've only been able to dig up rather dated threads/results so far by searching.

[NovaCoder]

Apollo's have a bad reputation for stability and you can also have issues if your MB needs timing fixes. My 80Mhz is fine though, no issues at all and very stable. The other issue with Apollo's is that they can only take 32MB in a desktop case (Blizzards can go up to 128M).

All this means that Blizzard's are more expensive to buy than Apollo's.

http://www.amibay.com/index.php

[DDNI]

Best (speed simplicity compatibility) accelerator that I have owned is the Blizzard 1230 mk IV.

[ahhyes]

Originally Posted by DDNI

Best (speed simplicity compatibility) accelerator that I have owned is the Blizzard 1230 mk IV.

I gather the Blizzard 1260 is what I want if I want to go down the 060 route?

[ahhyes]

http://www.vesalia.de/e_aca1231-42.htm

Looks ok for a 030 solution. Any thoughts on these boards?

[strim]

Originally Posted by ahhyes

http://www.vesalia.de/e_aca1231-42.htm

Looks ok for a 030 solution. Any thoughts on these boards?

It should work fine with the NetBSD, although as far as I know nobody tested it yet . However... if you'd like to run NetBSD/amiga in graphics mode with X then 68030 is not enough (68030 is low end for NetBSD, like 68000 for AmigaOS). It's just too slow.

For example:

• On Amiga 600 equipped with ACA630/25MHz + 32MB RAM installing the NetBSD from network (using PCMCIA ethernet card) takes around 4 hours.
• Boot of a clean installed system on the above mentioned A600: ~4 minutes (from power on to login prompt).
• Creating keys for SSH server takes: ~15 minutes.
• Logging on to this A600 with SSH: ~2 minutes.
• Starting X11 (with startx, default configuration): ~8 minutes. And it's barely usable once it starts.

So... 68060 is much faster and allows using the NetBSD comfortably.

[ahhyes]

Originally Posted by strim

It should work fine with the NetBSD, although as far as I know nobody tested it yet . However... if you'd like to run NetBSD/amiga in graphics mode with X then 68030 is not enough (68030 is low end for NetBSD, like 68000 for AmigaOS). It's just too slow.

For example:

• On Amiga 600 equipped with ACA630/25MHz + 32MB RAM installing the NetBSD from network (using PCMCIA ethernet card) takes around 4 hours.
• Boot of a clean installed system on the above mentioned A600: ~4 minutes (from power on to login prompt).
• Creating keys for SSH server takes: ~15 minutes.
• Logging on to this A600 with SSH: ~2 minutes.
• Starting X11 (with startx, default configuration): ~8 minutes. And it's barely usable once it starts.

So... 68060 is much faster and allows using the NetBSD comfortably.

Excellent post. Thank you! This is exactly what I wanted to know, I had a feeling that without at least an 060 it would run like an absolute dog. Looks like I will have to start looking for a Blizzard 1260.

[ahhyes]

1260 on the way.... Took the plunge... The board has cost me a small fortune.... I understand these boards are very hard to come by these days so I had to just wear the cost.

[NovaCoder]

Cool, welcome to the 1260 club....I could recommend so software to push your new card to the limits

What did you go for, an Apollo or Blizz?

[ahhyes]

Originally Posted by NovaCoder

Cool, welcome to the 1260 club....I could recommend so software to push your new card to the limits

What did you go for, an Apollo or Blizz?

Blizzard Cost me a fortune. lol. I had to mull over the decision to buy the card for days. The Amiga has a special place in my heart, it was one of the first computers I owned (A500), first was the c64, so I decided to shell out.

[Hewitson]

How did this turn out? I tried Debian/m68k on my 060 and the console was far too slow to be usable, let alone X. I would be interested to know if NetBSD performs any better.

[ahhyes]

Originally Posted by Hewitson

How did this turn out? I tried Debian/m68k on my 060 and the console was far too slow to be usable, let alone X. I would be interested to know if NetBSD performs any better.

This thread might interest you:

http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=65386

See the video in the first post, it's NetBSD being loaded on an A1200 with an '060. I've put my A1200 aside for the moment. I've got some weird things happening with it, I suspect it might be bad ram on the expansion board. Though the video in the thread will give you an idea what to expect, the guy loads "X" and it seems usable.