Why do you accelerate your Amiga?

[daxb]

Simple because it is/was much more usable for several known/mentioned reasons. A stock Amiga is quite limited. It is more or less the same with any computer.

[pandy71]

Originally Posted by amiman99

The 68020 is equivalent to Intel 386SX, the 68040 is close to 486.

I would say that on many tasks MC68000 was quite close to 386SX with 16MHz no cache... for sure it was better than 286 12.5MHz .
68040 is same class as 486.

[Michael Sykes]

For me it was the free version of Cinema4D.
First I bought a HDD(600Mb) ,a CD-rom drive and finally the 030@50Mhz with 16Mb ram.blizzard1230mk3

A year or two later I got a cheap 040@25 card with amazing 32Mb of ram.blizzard1260(got only the 040 model clocked at 25Mhz )

Friends that have been with me in the computershop told me I'm nuts to buy such an expensive(~200€) crap for a dead and outdated system.
Lucky for me that I gave a shit on that.
Because looking back it was worth every cent...

Workbench was running like a charm. Many games where loading faster or even running faster(e.g.F1GP,Frontier) and Hdd access(even IDE) was much better.
Well - and WHDLoad on a stock amiga. Without me...

Today I thend to use an emulator for a quick game or two. Just because I'm a lazy old fart now.

[Supamax]

Hmmm...

The thread title is "Why do you accelerate your Amiga?", not "Why did you accelerate your Amiga?"...

[Michael Sykes]

I should have written that I did not miss anything without all the fancy upgrades.
Plug in the disk and play a game.That was it...
But once I got them I would not want to use the Amiga without it anymore...
And I still "do accelerate my Amiga". I just don't use it as often as in the past.
The 040 is till running fine.The hdd and the battery for the clock had to be replaced over the years.

[NovaCoder]

I'm currently running an 80Mhz 1260, the main reason for buying one is because I wanted to see what a really fast AGA machine could do

You also need a good 060 to run the latest AGA demos which are very impressive

[Predseda]

The thread question doesn't make sense to me.

[Kola]

Supermax - Thank you for correcting my spellings and grammar.

Im dyslexic so stick around. You can correct me daily if it bloats your Ego.


Guys thats for all your views on why. I now get it but its apparent that this is a unique niche area of amiga commuting that will not be for everyone. My original question was to work out if I needed this or not. After reading the many replies I know I do not.

Keep em coming though. Its always nice to know how others use their amiga. For me its all about trackers and 8 bit sampling.

[Jope]

Because: data transfer, lha archiving / unarchiving, crunching/decrunching.

[Michael Sykes]

Originally Posted by Kola

For me its all about trackers and 8 bit sampling.

If you want to use an up to date tracker you can try DigiBooster.
http://www.digibooster.de/en/index.php
But beware:

DigiBooster 3.1 system requirements:


AmigaOS 3:
Minimum: 68020, Harddrive, 8 MByte Fast-RAM, Workbench 3.0, MUI 3.8, AHI 4.x, screenmode 640x480. Recommended: AmigaOS 3.x, 68060/50 MHz, 16 MByte Fast-RAM, graphics card, soundcard. Supports: WinUAE (JIT enabled) with Picasso96 and dedicated AHI drivers.

Also working with larger samples needs more RAM and it would be faster.

[demolition]

Because I can.

[Kola]

Hi Michael, thanks for the info. I had not heard of it previously.


What exactly does it do that Octamed sound studio couldn't do on my standard Amiga 1200 though? It used too sequence all of my hardware and allow my 4 x 8 bit samples at once.

[Supamax]

Originally Posted by Kola

Supermax

Hi Kola, I'm Supamax, not Supermax .

- Thank you for correcting my spellings and grammar.

Im dyslexic so stick around. You can correct me daily if it bloats your Ego.

Perhaps I wasn't clear or you misunderstood me: I wasn't correcting you.
I obviously supposed that the thread title was correct and related to the reason why we users do accelerate our Amiga now (not in the past).
So - I repeat - I was not correcting you, I was remembering to others that the question was about acceleration in the past (when Amiga was still marketed) and not now.

My original question was to work out if I needed this or not. After reading the many replies I know I do not.

Oh... this seems in contrast with your previous answer. So, were you asking why do we accelerate or why did (in the past)?

P.S. no need to feel offended. I didn't know you're dyslexic (but, as I wrote, I wasn't correcting you) and what I wrote has nothing to do with my ego.

[Predseda]

Originally Posted by Kola

My original question was to work out if I needed this or not. After reading the many replies I know I do not.

Try this: play Formula One Grand Prix, Frontier or for example Gunship 2000 on Amiga 1200, 14MHz.

And now try those games on Amiga 1200, Blizzard 1230 50MHz, 8MB Fast.

And you already do not need any additional answer.

[daxb]

@Kola:
If you just want 8bit 4channel tracking then a stock A1200 maybe + some fastram is enough. However, I would recomment a 030 accelrator + 8MB (or more) and HD or CF at IDE port.

If you like multichannel tracking and/or just play such tracks on your Amiga then additional a 060 is a must and for 16 bit a sound card.

A faster filesystem like PFS or SFS is good for better file (samples) access. SCSI, Fast-ATA or a IDE card make this more better.

You know OctamedSoundStudio can do up to 64? channels and it profit from a large screen solution. Btw. using monitor MULTISCAN:Productivity (60Hz 30kHz) might work on any TFT monitor without extra hardware (flickerfixer, gfx card, ...). Needs just a proper cable.

[Kola]

Supamax - Ok my bad.

Predseda - No its really not enough. Im not going to play a 20 year old game and think wow I'm blown away no matter how smooth and fast it is. Compared to modern day it far from remarkable even accelerated. Maybe back in the day when accelerating gave you the best speeds maybe. But a few hundred quid to get the speed of a 486?

Id rather just not play the 5% of games that are enhanced by accelerating and save myself £200. £200 to speed up three games to me is nuts. But each to there own.

Daxb - Thanks for the info mate. Thing is my standards 1200 running sound studio did it all for me back in 95. I cant see why I would need more today. I certainly don't want a 16 bit sound card. Part of the fun for me is the low res 8 bit sound. I have a few hardware samplers all of which are 16 bit bar my 12 bit s900.

[watsonfmly]

Koala, yes todays PCs can do amazing things. So much so, I am not shocked or giddy at what they can do.

Now get a 20 year old computer to do something amazing...... that is cool.

[Michael Sykes]

Originally Posted by Kola

Hi Michael, thanks for the info. I had not heard of it previously.


What exactly does it do that Octamed sound studio couldn't do on my standard Amiga 1200 though? It used too sequence all of my hardware and allow my 4 x 8 bit samples at once.

with better hardware you can do much more in both tools...
Render in 14 bit in realtime with more chanels,more samples,higer sample res(16bit).
DigiBooster could not do that much more but to use all the effects and possibilities of both octamed and db it's never a bad idea to upgrade the hardware.

Edit: I used to play around with Musicline Editor in the past. Trust me I got the "you need more cpu power" requester quiet often... ^^

Edit2:For more infos just try the demo: http://www.amigafuture.de/downloads....ail&df_id=5110

[Zetr0]

Q: Why do we accelerate our Amiga's

A: In a nut shell, it is to get better performance.

_____________________________________________________________

It is true to say that 95% of Games don't need it, however the Amiga was more than just games, it was art, music, productivity, development - for a lot of us, games were just the icing of a very tasty cake.

You don't have to go crazy to get a veritable system, the ACA1220 is a bargain in my opinion, it gives you a 50% Faster CPU crunching with 128MB of Fast RAM - it sports 3.5 MIPS which is over 300% faster than a stock A1200. Add a hard drive and you are certainly going to be loving your life if you are into Music / Tracking / Graphics and general productivity.

I should point out that a lot of Games really do benefit with additional fast RAM and a faster CPU -

Just to name a few -
Elite
Frontier
Gloom
No Second Prize
Hard Drivin'
Hard Drivin' 2
Wing Commander (you can even run the most tasty Wing Commander CD32 version)
Fears
Wolfenstein
SCUMM VM Games
Alien Breed 3D
Formula One GP

In fact Most Polygon Based and 3D Games using 3D geometry will get a massive speed increase from just Fast RAM let alone a CPU upgrade.

And that is just the tip of the iceberg, with the additional memory you can really make a powerfull workbench and a highly productive machine. Just think of what you can do in regards to Med SS and 128MB of RAM with over 3 times the power of a stock A1200.

Not to mention the new music / sound development software that has been trickling out over the last 12 months (just as Akira about some pretty impressive mixing software!)

Here is a hot link for the ACA1220 - from www.vesalia.de

Over 300% better performance for the princely sum of £83.40 (+postage)


Sadly, www.AmigaKit.co.uk is out of stock at the moment, but it wouldn't hurt to send them an email to ask when they might be back in =)


My first Amiga upgrade was an 8MB RAM board with 33MHz FPU..... 8 months later I bought an 060@50 with 32MB..... when you get used to a more powerful Amiga, it really does fundamentally change the system and more so the experience from it.

[Michael Sykes]

Originally Posted by watsonfmly

Koala, yes todays PCs can do amazing things. So much so, I am not shocked or giddy at what they can do.

Now get a 20 year old computer to do something amazing...... that is cool.

Now find someone who is still coding on 20 years old PC soft- and hardware.