CD32 upgrades?

[Marchie]

Hey folks,

Just acquired a CD32 and I'm wondering what the best upgrade path is (if any).

The TF328 seems to be aimed mostly at WHDload, but I'm just wondering if the extra fast RAM offers any noticable speed increase for slow-running games? Eg: Gloom, or SSFIITurbo comes to mind - gorgeous sprites but really slow frame rate, also I know Zool suffers quite a lot of slowdown on my stock A1200...

TF328 owners chime-in, is it worth it?

Are there any other options to consider for a CD32?

[jotd]

TF328 is excellent to add fastmem & make your console a A1200 (without keyboard). you can use the CF to read & write, and it allowed my CD32 to keep on working after the CD drive died.

TF328 - CD32 RAM + IDE Board (8Mb 32 bit DRAM + Gayle Emulated IDE).

=> no extra CPU power. Probably not fast enough for 3D, but better than chip-only.

[xArtx]

i thought fast RAM offers the ability for some old games to ..um... work at all!

[Marchie]

Sounds like a ringing endorsement.

To labour the speed point a little - the addition of Fast RAM alone will speed up an A500/A1200 (at least in benchmarks) and so I was just curious as to whether this was noticable in the CD32 in any real-world scenario (I'm assuming not).

Originally Posted by jotd

TF328 is excellent to add fastmem & make your console a A1200 (without keyboard). you can use the CF to read & write, and it allowed my CD32 to keep on working after the CD drive died.

TF328 - CD32 RAM + IDE Board (8Mb 32 bit DRAM + Gayle Emulated IDE).

=> no extra CPU power. Probably not fast enough for 3D, but better than chip-only.

[xArtx]

It should be faster. CD32 is essentially a cut down A1200.
I understand some of the reasons, such as Paula can be
playing a sample from chip RAM at the same time the
68020 is using Fast RAM, without having to wait.

[Lord Aga]

It is noticeable. AB3D goes from unplayable to playable, for instance.
All 3D stuff will get a boost. Of course, if it is too low to begin with (AB3DII) then it won't help much (1 FPS x 2 = 2FPS = still unplayable.)
But the ol' 020 definitely gets a breath of air when you add some fast RAM.

[Amiga1992]

It will only be (marginally) faster if the software uses it.
So for the most part, it will make no speed difference.

Examples where it will can be counted in one hand maybe.
I would like to see side-by-side comparisons to make the case stronger, though. If I had a capture card, I'd do it, as I have a TF328 I can easily disable in a game like Frontier.

Also the TF328 is engineered for maximum compatibility. There is faster RAM speed out there, but not on the TF328.
So by no means expect it to give you any kind of performance boost.
What you can expect is to enlarge your CD32 usability and games library by many orders of magnitude!

[Bprepared]

As Akira said, the TF328 gets you going with respect to WHDload very nicely, whilst maintaining as much compatibility as possible.
Some of us are looking at an 030 accelerator design for the future, but i think they're a little way off at the moment...mine won't be prototyped until Q2 2018 as i have other projects currently on the go that i want to finish first.

[Daedalus]

The speed of the RAM in itself isn't that big a deal, it's the fact that fast RAM is exclusive to the CPU that gives the speed boost. It's very noticeable in a lot of games - any game where you notice slowdowns due to the CPU load will get a significant boost. A game doesn't have to be specifically programmed for the fast RAM to take advantage of it. Any games with a 3D element will most likely have a large increase in speed - Frontier, Gloom, AB3D, Birds of Prey, Zeewolf etc. And busy games too will benefit, such as Theme Park, Syndicate etc. It's certainly nothing compared to a faster CPU, but the stock 020 spends half its time twiddling its thumbs in a CD32, and fast RAM lets it get on with other things while the custom chips have the chip RAM locked. The speed-up experienced will be similar to that of an A1200 with a RAM-only expansion.

Games that don't have any slowdown however and are framerate locked won't show any speed increase - the calculations per frame may be finished quicker but the whole system still waits for the next frame before continuing, thus hiding any difference in speed.

[Amiga1992]

So what exactly is that makes the Fast RAM make the CPU be less busy? I don't really understand from your post.
I thought this Fast RAM difference was really not much of a boost. I never really noticed it but as I said I never did an A/B test and usually I also have an upgraded CPU along with Fast RAM.

[Daedalus]

It's not that it makes the CPU less busy, it's basically because without fast RAM, the CPU must use chip RAM for everything, and it needs to share access to that with the custom chips. This means that it spends about half its time waiting for the chip RAM to be available so it can store results, grab the next instruction and so on. With fast RAM fitted, it's able to store that information in fast RAM instead, and is free to access that when the chip RAM is busy, in theory doubling its speed in purely CPU tasks. Obviously games aren't purely CPU driven so there still needs to be a lot of chip RAM access, but the CPU portions of the game can run in parallel with the blitter instead of taking turns with it, which makes a large difference.

[Amiga1992]

I see! So the system is made so if Fast RAM is present, anything that isn't graphics or sample data automatically gets put in Fast RAM, without the coder needing to do a thing?

I thought you had to program it that way for it to work. Damn clever. I see the huge difference now! Thanks for the explanation.

[Daedalus]

Yeah, that's part of the Exec initialisation process - each chunk of RAM that's found is given a priority, and when the system allocates RAM it works from the highest priority down. It's something like this: CPU-local fast RAM is highest, then motherboard, then Zorro-III, then Zorro-II, then chip RAM. Of course there are probably badly behaved programs that ignore that system, but they're the kind of thing that requires KS 1.2 to work. Almost everything goes by the normal rules, so chip RAM is only used for things that need it (graphics, sound, I/O...), or when there's no fast RAM left to allocate.

[Marchie]

Thanks for the advice all. So many answers and so many new questions:

1) I'm new to WHDload - what happens to games with CD audio? Do you just lose the music altogether?

2) In people's experience are games such as Superfrog and Zool significantly better on the CD32 simply by virtue of having a button to jump? Would this be a preferred gaming platform to an A1200 for that reason alone?

3) Once you're using WHDload on a CF card can you run A1200 games on the CD32?

[alexh]

Originally Posted by Marchie

1) I'm new to WHDload - what happens to games with CD audio? Do you just lose the music altogether?

You would if you ran the WHDload versions. But why would you? You just play the CD32 versions from CD.

Originally Posted by Marchie

2) In people's experience are games such as Superfrog and Zool significantly better on the CD32 simply by virtue of having a button to jump? Would this be a preferred gaming platform to an A1200 for that reason alone?

The A1200 versions you mention have patches to support a jump button.

Originally Posted by Marchie

Once you're using WHDload on a CF card can you run A1200 games on the CD32?

Yes. But you should understand that *some* WHDload/CD32Load games will run from CD without any CD32 hardware upgrades. Earok, AmiJay and others have been doing lots of nice unofficial CD32 compilations.

http://eab.abime.net/forumdisplay.php?f=127

[Amiga1992]

I'm confused as to why you want to upgrade it as soon as you got it anyway. You can play tons of games already, just burn them and go. No need for upgrades.

[Glen M]

A bit late to the thread but just thought I'd share my experiences of the TF328 so far and its been very positive. So far I've only used it as a memory expansion but I'll be adding a CF card or 2.5" IDE soon.


Games wise from my collection....

Gloom and Alien Breed 3D are fully playable. Gloom runs at full speed full screen with absolutely no slow down at any time. Alien Breed 3D is also full speed and only suffers slow down when when barrels explode.

Fears is very playable but does drop frames throughout.

Frontier runs better but is still a slide show around planets (I prefer to play this on my 030 A1200 anyway)

My favorite CD32 game 'Guardian' is mostly just the same. Its a bit faster but not much. (YES I can play this far faster on my A1200 but I prefer the CD audio and would rather have that with lower frame rates)

The Doom port works but isn't really playable. Interesting though at the CD32 doom Akikko optimized is maybe half the speed of my 40mhz 030 A1200. Regardless 5fps or whatever its getting isn't playable (not that the 10-15fps on the 030 is). The Doom port I'd just take as a "becuase why not tech demo". IF you really need to play doom just use dosbox.

Other games, 2D games, just run the same. That is of course if they work at all. Quick the Thunder Rabbit has graphic glitches and Chaos Engine won't load. There are fixed version of these on the EAB server but I note the Chaos Engine fixed version is missing the audio tracks?


My conclusion as a CD32 owner since 1994 is that this expansion breaths new life into the console and goes some what, in my opinion, to making it the best amiga gaming experience. I really want to get testing with the HDD as I want to see how Gloom 3 and Alien Breed 3D 2 run.

[Amigajay]

Originally Posted by Glen M

The Doom port works but isn't really playable. Interesting though at the CD32 doom Akikko optimized is maybe half the speed of my 40mhz 030 A1200. Regardless 5fps or whatever its getting isn't playable (not that the 10-15fps on the 030 is). The Doom port I'd just take as a "becuase why not tech demo". IF you really need to play doom just use dosbox.

Chaos Engine won't load. There are fixed version of these on the EAB server but I note the Chaos Engine fixed version is missing the audio tracks?

I really want to get testing with the HDD as I want to see how Gloom 3 and Alien Breed 3D 2 run.

Doom for sure won’t win any prizes, but if you reduce the screen size and put In low res it’s comparable to Alien Breed 3D without fastram, not brilliant but fun for a quick play, playable to some degree.

The Chaos Engine fixed version is missing the audio tracks because there was no point uploading them, just replace the iso file and burn with the original cue file.

AB 3D II is on my Team 17 Collection, whilst Gloom 3 I’m sure Earok had a version on one of his discs too if you want to try before adding a hdd.

[jotd]

I'm cooking a JST version with CD32 pad support like CD32load but with fastram loading: so virtually every whdload game (even AGA) will run, with direct joypad support.

[Amigajay]

Originally Posted by jotd

I'm cooking a JST version with CD32 pad support like CD32load but with fastram loading: so virtually every whdload game (even AGA) will run, with direct joypad support.

Woah..wa what!? My brain is reading this too quick, a JST version of what?
How did you implement joypad control, is this redefinable?