Which accelerator/expansion?

[Greenman]

Hello!

I got my A1200 at launch 20+ years ago, loved it for years then put it in the loft and have only just retrieved it. I'm going to add a CF card, WBClassic and WHDLoad but I've got a question about expansion cards/accelerators. I've been searching around and seen lots of different opinions around what is required for WHDLoad. Apparently most games won't run on stock hardware due to CWB and WHD using some of the memory. I am very keen to have the games run as they would have back in the day (loading times aside, happy for them to load faster). I don't want them to run faster than they would have and I'm not interested in running ports of games such as Doom (I think it's very cool people port things like that though!). Basically I want to have it as original as possible but with the convenience and reliability of WHDLoad (so far 95% of the disks I've tried that were in the loft with my Amiga don't work and make a rubbing/screeching sound like when a car fan belt is loose, as an aside I assume they are done or is there anything that can be done, they look totally clean and visually fine).

Thanks so much in advance for anyone who can help me out.

G

[cypher007]

a basic trap door ram expansion would be cheapest and give you as close to the same speed as you would have had originally.

it might be possible to get your floppies reading again. it could be the drive heads and or mould on the discs. pull the shield back on a floppy and look in the light for patches on the brown disk.

[Greenman]

Thank you for the quick response! I've done a quick search and this seems to be the only option on UK eBay, is this the type of expansion you were referring to, if you know of anywhere else I could get one cheaper please let me know

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Amiga-A120...8AAOSwB09YRaJm

Thanks again for responding.

[cypher007]

no prob,

yes that type of expansion, though not sure id buy from them as they seem to have there fingers in a lot of different systems. not sure they know what there selling.

I would maybe get the base config of this:

http://www.vesalia.de/e_aca1221.htm

you can upgrade using license keys.

[Greenman]

Excellent thanks again, I'll try and give them a call as it seems like it's out of stock. Looks like a good option and possibly cheaper.

[cypher007]

or this:

http://amigastore.eu/en/423-aca-1221...mb-of-ram.html

this is the new version, but it will probably give your 1200 a bit of a speed boost.

[cypher007]

and here:

http://amigakit.leamancomputing.com/...oducts_id=1296

[cypher007]

to be honest having a quick look adding any fast ram to a a1200 boosts the speed by a factor of 2x.

[Greenman]

Thanks again for the links. Do you know if doing this will make games run faster, I am hoping to maintain the performance level of the Amiga so that everything plays as the developers would have expected but maybe I'm just being too fussy.

[cypher007]

difficult to say. certainly vector stuff like elite will run slightly faster, well smoother I should say. I would think more graphic based stuff like platformers etc. would still run at the same speed.

[Daedalus]

The vast majority of games are synchronised to the video updates, so having a faster machine won't make the game "run away" as such. This is normally done so that graphics can be updated without flickering, and the side effect is that more CPU power doesn't really affect the game at all - the CPU just spends more time in between frames idle.

Where you will notice the improvement is in CPU-intensive games - flight simulators, Frontier and other 3D games benefit massively from a speed boost, becoming much smoother and more playable. But even then, they generally don't run away with the higher CPU speed - the action still happens at the same pace, you just see more frames in between the ones you used to. The same applies for strategy games where a lot can happen at once, things like Dune II, Theme Park, Syndicate etc. will run more smoothly without running away uncontrollably.

If you think about lots of games that run basically identically on the A500 and A1200 - Turrican, Cannon Fodder, Lemmings etc., even though the stock A1200 runs rings around the A500, those games are unaffected by CPU speed and will still run the same with an accelerator. So I don't think you've got much to worry about.

[cypher007]

what he said

[Greenman]

Awesome thanks so much to both of you for your help!