Possible ACA for A500/500+/2000 etc thread.

[Amigafanboi]

It's being discussed deeply in other forums but not here so i thought i would start this thread.

Would you buy one if Jens does indeed develop it and what sort of specs would you like to see in place on the board?

Myself i would like to see at least an 030@25mhz and 32bit fast ram outside the zorro 2 address space, this for me coupled with an IndyECS will make my 500+ a very capable machine in Amiga respect.
I will almost definately buy one if produced and that's even if it is an 020 as discussed on other forums.

[duga]

<€100 / SEK1000 (same as ACA1230/28)
020
Fastmem
IDE

Possibly:
Clock port
Some Ethernet card/expansion port


Will the older A500 PSU with 2,5A@5V be enough?

[Amigafanboi]

Originally Posted by duga

<€100 / SEK1000 (same as ACA1230/28)
020
Fastmem
IDE

Possibly:
Clock port
Some Ethernet card/expansion port


Will the older A500 PSU with 2,5A@5V be enough?

A clockport leads to Subway expansion which leads to cheap USB to Ethernet adapters amongst many others

[FOL]

Dont forget;

Needs to fit CDTV, .

[chiark]

I'd be interested to see how it'd fit a CDTV without some form of tardis attachment; if Jens can do it I'd be impressed!

Clockport or, better still, integrated Subway controller and integrated IDE are the real demands from me

[Photon]

Harddisk interface on board? Is this confirmed? It's a super-logical necessity of course, just not seen a post by Jens confirming it.

And yes, I have no doubt a normal brick PSU can handle A500+accelerator, since the A600 PSU can.

[frank_b]

Sidecar. 8 meg 16 bit fast RAM with twin SD card slots for storage.
No accelerator required for me

Frank

[Amigafanboi]

A lot of a500 bashing on the amiga.org thread, seems they forget an a2000 is basically an upgraded a500 mobo with ZorroII slots.

[Twiggy]

Out of mild curiosity, are there any plans for a CD32 accelerator? Is the CD32 similar enough to the A1200 for this to be simple?

But I guess the A500 is more popular n such.

[Zetr0]

Originally Posted by duga

<€100 / SEK1000 (same as ACA1230/28)
020
Fastmem
IDE

Possibly:
Clock port
Some Ethernet card/expansion port


Will the older A500 PSU with 2,5A@5V be enough?

^_^ +1

I will say that just the card with the 020 and RAM would easily be powered by a reasonable condition A500 Power Brick, - the use of a Hard-disk may end up with issues... by far better would be a CF socket tied to IDE? that way low power consumption CF cards / MicroDrives can be used.

Originally Posted by twiggy

Out of mild curiosity, are there any plans for a CD32 accelerator? Is the CD32 similar enough to the A1200 for this to be simple?

But I guess the A500 is more popular n such.

I would love to see a simple Board adapter that allows you to convert the 182 pin MCA socket of the CD32 to a 150pin Edge connector for an A1200 accelerator card.


/Zetr0 has wistful dreams of a 256MB Blizzard 060@50 + SCSI in his CD32

Mmmmm Happy places ROCK!

[Lord Aga]

I would go for such a card, just for IDE. I would love to have WB 1.3 set up on my A500.
RAM is not an issue. Could be as low (cheap) as possible. I don't know what is the lowest possible solution Jens has around 16, 32MB...?
Better CPU ? Not a necessity. But if it could be done with a cheap 14 MHz 020, fine.

And Zetr0's idea about getting a CF socket tied to IDE is brilliant. Would solve a bunch of possible problems.

[ajk]

If it's possible via some kind of socket mirror adapter, A1000 compatibility would be really cool.

[Photon]

Suffice to say that the DIL socket is key to Jens's solution, and that it has to have a harddisk interface if it ever hopes to sell or even compete.

Likely he doubts the market (for certain reasons), a misplaced doubt in my opinion partly due to the fact that his accelerators has sold well (no, I don't have any figures), and the _potential_ market is larger, if done right. (A500/A500+/A1000/((A2000))).

My thinking is the same as Amir expressed. A tiny card with "any" cpu, harddisk interface and 4MB fastram will be a good selling point for all the above models, if better or lower priced than the two others being developed by others now. Even all 3 developers might be needed to satisfy the demand to throw out irky old cards and side expansion, who knows?

My personal hope is a tiny card with just SMD 68000+harddisk interface to plug an ACA630 into. But very likely that solution will be discarded, sadly. Unlike A600/A1200 there are reasons for not abandoning a 68000 mode for these platforms.

[Siggy999]

I'd love to replace the GVP 030 combo in my 2000 (which sadly 'failed to proceed' after my last move). If all it had were the features on that card:

030 25mhz
Fast ram expansion
HD controller

I'd FIND the money to buy one and have it sent to the US, it would still be a huge step forward. New hardware lasts longer. Any ram solution would be better than trying to source those fiddly sims GVP chose to use, and the HD would more than likely be IDE - easier to find better, faster, more reliable drives.

It would just make more sense for me to throw him the dollars than cruise ebay looking for 20 year old parts.

Now, if he threw a clockport on it.. he'd find me cruising his website and hoarding my pocketmoney for more of his products... like his ethernet adapter.

[cv643d]

A cheap A500 turbo (< 100e) would make quite a lot of useless A500 usable again I think.

I would probably buy one if it was cheap enough, just to support IC, not that I really need one :-)

CD32 turbo (or memory expansion) + CF-slot + clock port for USB would be awesome!

[Photon]

I figured out what the card would be a few days ago and apparently got it right When I discovered the thread on a1k.org I got pleasantly surprised, because it seems to get two more features, 68000 fallback and possible support for more turbo cards than his ACA1230.

This is what I deduce as preliminary specs, Jens let me know if I read something wrong or specs have changed.

Specs:
CPU: 14 MHz 68020 (not 68EC020)
RAM: 8MB non-SDRAM asynchronous fastram

Performance:
- likely slightly under a synchronous-memory 14MHz 68020-card (conjecture by me from talk in the thread)
- chipram access speed 3,5 MB/s (no FastChip etc)

Interfaces:
- IDE non-DMA interface supporting f.ex. 1 CF card + 1 CD-ROM. Max rate is 8 MB/s, though real-world performance will likely be quite a bit lower.
- Clockport

A1200 adapter:
- Allows 68000 fallback (whole accelerator with IDE and fastram switched off)
- Plug in A1200 turbo card here (kills 68000 fallback)

Edit:
The idea for the adapter is to remove the 68020, plug in the adapter, and plug turbo card into it.

Known non-working turbo cards are Apollo 1240 and 1260 (due to their handling of 16-bit addressing). No warranty for ACA520+Turbo card "combos". (Except I presume for ACA520+ACA1230 combos.)

Side "HDD/RAM" expansions:
- "Throw them away. They are slower anyway." (abbreviated short-hand by me from Jens's posts). Known non-compatible ones are M-Tec and CBM A570/590.

Models:
A500: fits.
A1000: fits if floppydrive is removed.
A2000: fits if floppydrive bridge removed.
Edit:
CDTV: Jens posted that DMA-compatibility would make the card 40 EUR more expensive and still slow, and won't fit under the cover [plate]

(no more models were mentioned that I can see. Edit: as in - addressed by Jens, with regards to actually fitting them inside, that is.)

Availability:
- Germany: end of March 2011. (he will make Indivision AGA MK2 first)

Edit:
Price:
- under 100 EUR

Kickstart:
- no onboard ROM sockets
- MapROM possible - only if 32-bit ram possible which is awaiting testing and not known yet.


Wow!

Edit: made a crappy mock-up guess / dream ...

[Amigafanboi]

Awesome...is the apollo deliberately made non compatible? we know Jens hatred of these accelerators

[FOL]

Originally Posted by Photon

Models:
(no more models were mentioned that I can see.)

Hmmmm,

CDTV!!

[Photon]

Originally Posted by Amigafanboi

Awesome...is the apollo deliberately made non compatible? we know Jens hatred of these accelerators

I think the reason mentioned was flawed 32- to 16-bit memory interface logic in those accelerators (or something along those lines).

[rare_j]

Love the mock up photon.
Although I cant agree with you about sidecars.
The '500 with a full-on sidecar is a thing of true retro beauty.
It will always be preferred over any modern bit of fluff.