Blizzard 030/50 Accelerators

[Parsec]

See this auction. The guy started bidding at 80 UKP and buy now 120. And someone bought it :eek

I bought one of these last summer for 56 quid. Have they suddenly shot up in value or is it another case of crackheads on eBay?

[rattus]

...yeah, but this one comes with 32Mb and an FPU chip (which are extremely hard to find)

I payed around £60 for my blizzard 1230-IV (can't remember exactly), it only came with 16Mb and no FPU - bah, it's good enough for me!

but if anyone has a 1230-IV SCSI module they want to sell - PM me

[RetroMan]

Boy, I should REALLY sell some of my Amiga Stuff on Ebay in the UK I will get more than twice the money that I get here in germany

[jmmijo]

or sell it on eBay USA and get 10x the amount, sheesh

[RetroMan]

Originally posted by jmmijo
or sell it on eBay USA and get 10x the amount, sheesh

Never thought of that Nice idea

[Parsec]

Originally posted by rattus
...yeah, but this one comes with 32Mb and an FPU chip (which are extremely hard to find)

Are the FPU ones really that rare? Was sure mine had the FPU, but you've got me wondering now! Will have to check when I get home.



The reason I saw this was that I was valuing my machine. It's an Amiga Technologies A1200, not yellowed at all with 6Gb disk (using SFS) and Blizzard 1230-IV 50 with 32Mb. By the sounds if it, it's probably worth quite a bit of money and I haven't been using it at all in the last 3-4 months. But thinking about it there's no way I can part with it Especially after all the work that went into setting it up.

Think I just need something to spark my interest again. Have I missed anything in the last couple of months - haven't been on the forum much Those eDonkey WHDLoad files look good

[Unknown_K]

The FPU is rare because it was optional. My 030/50 was factory sealed and had the FPU seperate and had to be installed. I think the speed of the chip is uncommon also. Its just like finding a 40mhz FPU for a 386/40 AMD system (Yes I have an FPU on mine) compared to the more common 386/33 FPU chip.


The FPU does spead up zipping and unzipping large archives on the amiga, not sure if games use it for anything.

[rattus]

nah - hardly any games use an FPU, it's only really useful for new demos... if you like that stuff

errrm... I would'nt try putting a x86 FPU on there! since its a 680xx CPU system! :rollseyes

on second thoughts, try it out - I could do with a laugh

EDIT before post: hehe, I should try *reading* what you say before making smart-assed posts... but I'll leave it here just for fun

[RetroMan]

Originally posted by Unknown_K
The FPU does spead up zipping and unzipping large archives on the amiga, not sure if games use it for anything.

Archive processing on the Amiga does not use any maths library and therefor does not use the FPU

Only use is for image processing or 3D Rendering

[Unknown_K]

Originally posted by rattus
nah - hardly any games use an FPU, it's only really useful for new demos... if you like that stuff

errrm... I would'nt try putting a x86 FPU on there! since its a 680xx CPU system! :rollseyes

on second thoughts, try it out - I could do with a laugh

EDIT before post: hehe, I should try *reading* what you say before making smart-assed posts... but I'll leave it here just for fun

Reading the post before commenting would be smart

The 40mhz 386 fpu was pretty rare, I originally purchased one for my state of the art 386 and it was a few hundred dollars at the time and sped up EXCEL spreadsheets quite a bit. I was lucky enough to find a 386/40 amd motherboard with FPU last year for my retro PC game box. I think the FALCON series of games were the only ones that even used the FPU for anything just like it was the first to use dual cpu's.

Of course I dont think it would fit in a 68030/50 board unless you use a hammer and dont mind smoke when powerd up. The fastest 68030 used on the mac was 40mhz (on the IIfx) so finding a 50mhz fpu there wont happen.

[Parsec]

Have just had the Blizzard out for a closer look. What a surprise, an empty socket next to the '030 where the FPU is supposed to go

Still, if had've been worth 120 quid I'd have been tempted to sell it to put the money towards the sub I just bought for the AV setup

[Unknown_K]

I purchased a nice 64mb simm for my 030/50 and found out its just a bit too big to fit on the board. The ram will fit on the SCSI-II board that comes with it but the setup is flackey and I get a screwed up DMA screen on boot 9/10 times. Which sucks because I could really use scsi for adding a cdrom on my A1200.

I could probably sell the SCSI option board for the blizzard on ebay "as is" for a few bucks but I would rather get it working and use it (it must have a bad connection somewhere or a piece of lint)

BTW why wouldnt a program for zipping files not be designed to use a FPU to spead things up? Is that some Amiga logic I cant follow?

[Frog]

you can find math libraries that use FPU on aminet (to replace old commodore ones). So if zip/unzip use them you should gain some speed up aswell any other program using math libs.

[rattus]

Does anyone elses Blizzard 1230-IV stick out slightly? I remember I had to get my dad to use 'good old brute force' (and much swearing) to get the damn thing in the connector and the trapdoor shut. now there's a rather unnerving bulge...

works 100% fine though - I just hope the RAM doesn't get too hot and melt the plastic :S

Oh yeah and since my ultraslim HDD wouldn't fit in the cradle I had to get some electricians tape and stick it to the internal metal plate

yeah, my A1200 is a fire hazard

[Parsec]

Originally posted by rattus
Does anyone elses Blizzard 1230-IV stick out slightly? I remember I had to get my dad to use 'good old brute force' (and much swearing) to get the damn thing in the connector and the trapdoor shut. now there's a rather unnerving bulge...

works 100% fine though - I just hope the RAM doesn't get too hot and melt the plastic :S

Oh yeah and since my ultraslim HDD wouldn't fit in the cradle I had to get some electricians tape and stick it to the internal metal plate

yeah, my A1200 is a fire hazard

Spooky I could have posted that myself. After taking the Blizzard out earlier tonight it was a bugger to re-fit. Swearing too.

Also, even though it grips like it's got pitbull jaws it seems to drop slightly when the machine is turned the right way round. So I make sure I use the trapdoor to keep it in place. And yes it bulges.

And yes I also have electricians tape holding my 6Gb drive in the cradle. The 2Gb I had in originally had screwholes in the right place, but the bloody awkward IBM laptop I have (a really old one) wouldn't work with the 6Gb drive (even though that's IBM too) so I had to put the 2Gb back in the laptop and put the 6Gb in the A1200

[Unknown_K]

I had to use a couple or rubberbands to get my 3.2gb IDE 2.5" HD to stay in its cradle since the holes didnt line up (unlike the 1.2gb and original 80gb drives which had perfect alignment).

My trapdoor doesnt bulge too badly but the desktop does get a bit warm after running a few hours

[Amiga1992]

I never tilt my A1200 in fear my superslim drive will move and fry a component. I secured it well but still...

My XA1230 makes the trapdoor a bit bumpy as well...

And regarding FPUs, I think you can use a Mac FPU, as long as it is the same type (FPGA or something like that?)

[Bad Mr Frosty]

Originally posted by Akira
I never tilt my A1200 in fear my superslim drive will move and fry a component. I secured it well but still...

My XA1230 makes the trapdoor a bit bumpy as well...

And regarding FPUs, I think you can use a Mac FPU, as long as it is the same type (FPGA or something like that?)

I doub`t it`s a FPGA (field programmable gate array) unless theres a way to reprogram the chip in VHDL or verilog.

[SilentBob]

Well, in my A1200, fitting anything in the trapdoor has always been a mighty struggle.

I spent 25 minutes fitting the 1230-IV the first time back in the days. My fingers were sore in the end, but it finally went in. Taken it out once after that, but don't want to do it again

[cv643d]

A Blizzard 1230IV went for almost the same amount of cash on an auction site here in Sweden.

I was a bit shocked of this and have since then thought of selling off my Amiga stuff.. .

Another hot items are mices. The Amiga technologies mices mint in box is a hot seller and in hot demand.

so:

My 1200 = 100 dollars
1230IV = 150 dollars
AT mouse = 20 dollars
Oldschool 3 button mouse = 30 dollars
The rest = 50 bucks

= 350 dollars. . will almost buy me a new 21 inch TFT