New products for C64 and Amiga from Individual Computers - Page 38

TCD · 11 March 2013, 12:50

I did and you did, but maybe we read it in a different way

Jens played with ideas at the start and never said what will eventually happen. He explained often enough how he came to the current design (I understand if people aren't happy with it). dJOS constantly provokes Jens and was told a lot of times already that it's no use to voice your opinion in this way. To put it not 100% polite: He's trolling since he doesn't get 'his' ACA500. This has to stop. I'm myself interested in an ACA500, but of course it depends on the costs and the ease of installing it.

Mr B · 11 March 2013, 12:59

I just don't get it. There IS a piece of kit in the works for dJOS as well, just not from Jens. Something aimed at the A500, and NOT meant as a low entry product.
Jens will sell ACA500's to newcomers of the retro amiga, and hardcore enthusiasts that wants to run a A1200 accelerator "in" the A500. Yes, there is a huge gap between these, a gap that is filled by someone else. Which probably counts for a bit of the reasons why the gap is there in the first place. There is no sense in designing a product that could compete with this other product, and try to sell it to "everyone" as it would be a bit more expensive, and, include yet a new redesign. All for something that most his costumers wont even use anyway.

paulo_becas · 11 March 2013, 13:40

I think competition is not an issue here, the way i see it there will be two kinds of products soon for the A500, ACA500 and Zeus. The ACA500 is for those newcomers or for those who want to give new life to the 500 but don't intend to spend a lot of money and still it applies to those who want to Give a significant boost to it by adding a 1200 acelerator.
On the other hand Zeus is for those enthusiasts where money is not an issue and don't mind to spend 200 or 300€ on it for all those features.
Finishing up i hope Jens finds the patience he needs to deal with all this and presents us with a top product the way he usually do.

Turran · 11 March 2013, 15:08

2MB is not enough for WHDload IMO. Preload is essential if you dont want to watch your game hang and sound clip out while it loads. Try loading moonstone for example, without preload. Absolute mess trying to get through the intro =)

desiv · 11 March 2013, 15:43

Yes, but the point is that 2M is enough for "most" games.
This is an entry level product.
Now, you can add to it if you want, or there are other products you can get if you know you need more initially.

Frankly, I ran whdload with a 2M A1200 for quite a while, until I got more RAM.

More RAM would be better, but it was great for most games.

And, I always had the option (if the pausing bothered me too much) to burn floppies and run it from there....

More is always better, but 2M isn't that bad.

Not saying it's perfect, but I'm not designing it and selling it.. ;-)

Entry level isn't supposed to be everything for all people.

I remember people complaining about the first ACA when it was coming out.
No MMU and no FPU? How could he!!!!
(There were even people saying it had "too much" RAM!!!) ;-)
I love my ACA1230/28. Yes, it's entry level and there are things it won't do..
That's fine..

desiv

Lobotomika · 11 March 2013, 16:03

Because people prefer to to respond to posts they could easily ignore, this thread is now impossible to follow so excuse me if this was asked before:

Will I be able to use the RAM on the 1230-IV? If so, isn't ACA500 suddenly an amazing expansion opportunity even with 2MB RAM on board?

Also unexpanded 2MB by itself is pretty bad, sorry

desiv · 11 March 2013, 16:14

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lobotomika

Will I be able to use the RAM on the 1230-IV? If so, isn't ACA500 suddenly an amazing expansion opportunity even with 2MB RAM on board?

It won't be supported, but that doesn't mean it's not possible:
http://eab.abime.net/showpost.php?p=...&postcount=648

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lobotomika

Also unexpanded 2MB by itself is pretty bad, sorry

Not compared to an unexpanded 512k. ;-)

desiv

Amiga1992 · 11 March 2013, 16:29

The problem is diskettes are crap and phasing out and WHDLoad on 2MB certainly is quite annoying, I usually find no game that I can run without annoying OS flashes. Particularly annoying in my CD32 (here's hoping that CD32 expansion gets finished).

I think the best option for newcomers to the Amiga who want to use the machine they found in the attic or stuff like that, is to get the HxC floppy emulator. It's the best of both worlds: you don't have to deal with floppy disks and you don't need extra RAM to play stuff on an A500. Yeah, loading times, but we used to endure them, didn't we?

I don't really see the point of kickstart switching in the A500 though, specially if you have no accelerator.

tribe · 11 March 2013, 17:06

Wouldn't the 512K+512K I already have in my A500 make the total 3M. Why is everyone so hung up on the 2M? What have I misunderstood?

Also I'm interested in how possible read speed increases provided by using CF cards will fit into the equation?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Akira

I don't really see the point of kickstart switching in the A500 though, specially if you have no accelerator.

WHDLoad needs KS2.0+. Plenty of other software too that doesn't need an accelerator, Deluxe Paint V for example. Also this board does have an accelerator?

roy bates · 11 March 2013, 18:00

personaly i couldent care less how much ram the base unit has,i plan on having one for the possibility of using an accelorator on it anyway.(at least an 030)

the fact it has a port for a cf card means instant harddrive on board,im not even bothered about the ability to have kickstarts resident as i'll just add 3.1 straight off the bat.

so in conclusion im only interested in an ability to add an accelorator and a harddrive.with those two alone it should make the 500 a much more usable machine.

elpiloto · 11 March 2013, 18:13

i run whdload games in a a500 1.5mb chipram and 8 in the 86 pin slot, some test that i made says taht in a 68000 you need 4mb of ram to run the games

desiv · 11 March 2013, 18:23

Quote:

Originally Posted by elpiloto

i, some test that i made says taht in a 68000 you need 4mb of ram to run the games

A very few of the games require lots of RAM, unless you disable the preload (disk caching).
On my 1200 when I had only the 2M, there were some games I couldn't run, even with preload disabled. Not many tho....
(On some games, I found I could boot to CLI (no WB) and run some of them, trying to get the most free memory possible.)

Basically consider the number of disks. 2M Fast plus the RAM in the A500 would probably be fine for all 1 disk and most 2 disk games.
You add disks, you add the RAM requirement to cache them. Each disk is at least half a MEG for cache.. (more or less, I'm not sure if they do any compression or it's a full 880k or ??)

You can disable the preload, but you'll get pausing/screen flashes when there is disk activity. For some games, it's not much more annoying that normal.
For other games, that do a lot of disk thrashing, it can be a pain.
I had a few like that, and I just ran those from floppy until I got more RAM.

desiv

elpiloto · 11 March 2013, 19:53

may be yes, i couldnt try with 3mb, i only tryed with 1mb baseboard, and 2, 4 and 8 on the expansion

prowler · 11 March 2013, 22:32

Quote:

Originally Posted by Schoenfeld

The memory chip on that unit is operated outside it's specifications, which you can download here:
http://documentation.renesas.com/doc...1wv6416rds.pdf

A 3.3V part, which is not specified to be 5V tolerant, will fail sooner or later. I do proper designs that stand the test of time, not such tinkering as the board you're referring to here.

Once again, stop the discussion. I know you're not a customer for the ACA500. If you want a custom design, I'm willing to negotiate a contract.

Jens

Quote:

Originally Posted by dJOS

4mb ram would be Good enuf IMO but Jens wants 30€ for the extra 2mb which is simply insane - yes it costs more to put it on the bottom of the board but that's only due to him not designing it with 4 mb in the 1st place!

@dJOS,

This is Jens' thread. He has stated his position on this and requested more than once that this discussion be stopped.

If you really want a custom design, then open negotiations by all means, as Jens has suggested, but not in this thread, please.

utri007 · 11 March 2013, 23:21

Sorry my ignorance and lazyness, but I have some questions? And seems that things are changed severall times.

what are current specs?
And wich A1200 accelerator "can" work with it, also those without guarantee? or wich woun't work, if that easier?
It will fit side slot of A500? Will it have stylish case?
I also noticed that you have licensed kick roms, wich is really nice feature, but will it have preinstalled OS also? Maybe some games?

fitzsteve · 11 March 2013, 23:32