Any chance of seeing ACA 1240 ou 1260 one day ?

Hi there

Sorry if it has been covered before but a quick search didn't bring anything.

I bought a Blizzard 1230 IV back in 1995-96, I was very happy with it.
I recently discovered some accelerators were still produced (ACA 1230), but they are still based on 68030 CPUs. (Don't get me wrong: It's fantastic news to be able to buy those in 2011)

Would it be possible to get new 68040 or even 60 cards at a descent price ?
Or even better, would it be possible to have CPU free cards and let people plug their own CPU ? (like with a PC motherboard for example)

[Djay]

I like would a very high accelerator to be released, one for A1200D and one for A1200T
price range £300 at a push £400

don't think it would be worth doing an A4000D/T accelerator nor an A600 one

What is the best (highest) accelerator ever released for the Amiga?

as i understand it 68060@75mhz 1Gb Ram(?) with BPPC@266Mhz

i could be completely wrong, it must work for classic Amiga (ie kickstart 3.1 and workbench 3.1)

[mfilos]

Production of high-end accelerators like 060s have proven to be not a good investment for any hardware vendor (especially if it requires R&D and not just a reproduction of an old trusted design).
For example... reproduction of A4000/A2000 accelerators from GVP went at 445$-480$ (without memory) and the design existed! A "from-scratch" design for an A1200 version won't be near the money figure you imagined for sure

I think you can forget about any production of high-end accelerators for your classic A1200. Your best bet is either grab an ACA1230 while it lasts, or find Apollo 1260/Blizzard 1260 or BlizzardPPC accelerator from Amibay/Amiga forums/eBay.
Apart from that, I think that most people are just fine with the 030's while others that require more power, can find 060's at ok prices from time to time.

One other thing you can do is to just wait for the "FPGA-Arcade with the 060 daughterboard" or the "Natami".

[alexh]

Originally Posted by papazark

Would it be possible to get new 68040 or even 60 cards at a descent price ?

AFAIK the reason Individual Computers never made an 060 card was because he had a job lot of 030's at a very good price. You cannot buy 68040 or 060's in any large quantities from anyone at a reasonable price.

Originally Posted by papazark

Or even better, would it be possible to have CPU free cards and let people plug their own CPU ? (like with a PC motherboard for example)

Just like a PC motherboard you need the right one for the right CPU. An 040/060 CPU would not fit in an 030 accelerator.

If you are asking why not make an 060 accelerator and let people buy their own CPU's? Might work. But I'm not sure there would be enough people prepared to upgrade from one 060 card to another to make it worth while.

[roy bates]

it wouldent be impossible but unfeasable mainly due to research.and production.

whoever did the card would have to do them in numbers.

imagine doing 25-50(first run)of these cards they would probably have to sell them for about 500-600 pounds each!!.i mean how many peaple would deffinitly buy one(on pre-order) even with 512 mb of pc100- pc133 ram and 060 at 100mhz?that would ramp the price up even further.
plus you would have to make it with an adjustable oscilator so it would work with slower 060 and earlier masks(on baords with no cpu just socket)to make it compatible/adjustable for overclocking between masks.
and it wouldent be feasible(in my opinion)to make it work with an 040 there would be more logic=more cost for developement.

not many id say.

although everyone can live in hope

but then again strange things do happen look at the bugatti veyron(built to make a point that it was possible)

[Lord Aga]

060 acc is not very likely.
But we might see something done about the 040. Much strength that chip has. And I feel it hasn't quite released its full potential. It just needs some really good cooling.

Well, price is definitely the most important factor here. I remember back in the Blizzard days... Phase 5 got hold of some recycled CPUs, and made the 040 TERC card. If Jens can strike some similar deal I'd say there is hope yet

[alexh]

We're not going to see any new 040 designs. The 040 chip prices are too close to 060 and the performance and compatibility in AmigaOS is much lower than 060. Plus with a voltage regulator in place an 040 board could take an 060 chip.

The problem I envisage with looking for recycled 040/060 chips is the equipment it's probably too late? Everything with them in was scrapped many years ago?

[SpeedGeek]

If you read some of the very early posts on the ACA thread you will see that it was primarly designed as "low cost memory expansion" for the A1200/A600 and with a low cost 68EC030 it gives you the bonus of a CPU upgrade. This makes very good sense from design, manufacturing and marketing points of view.

My only disapointment with the ACA cards is the lack of FPU support and that the small cost of a PGA or PLCC socket and very minor changes to the address decoding logic were not included so as to allow users to perform this very simple upgrade. I don't think it's fair to generalize all A1200 and A600 owners as "Gamers" who would not be likely to benefit from FPU support.

[alexh]

Originally Posted by SpeedGeek

My only disapointment with the ACA cards is the lack of FPU support and that the small cost of a PGA or PLCC socket and very minor changes to the address decoding logic were not included so as to allow users to perform this very simple upgrade.

Simple upgrade yes, simple board layout no. Over and over again Jens has said that the FPU timing of existing cards is borderline / terrible.

Originally Posted by SpeedGeek

I don't think it's fair to generalize all A1200 and A600 owners as "Gamers" who would not be likely to benefit from FPU support.

I'd be curious to know what FPU software you think would be a benefit?

For me, I want an FPU so that I can run scene demos. Thing is an 030 is not powerful enough to run most demos which require an FPU

[SpeedGeek]

Originally Posted by alexh

Simple upgrade yes, simple board layout no. Over and over again Jens has said that the FPU timing of existing cards is borderline / terrible.

I'd be curious to know what FPU software you think would be a benefit?

For me, I want an FPU so that I can run scene demos. Thing is an 030 is not powerful enough to run most demos which require an FPU

The is just a rationalization by Jens (much like your conclusion it's not worth replacing A3640 GAL's to get a performance boost). First most SDRAM's are rated to run at > 100 Mhz and yes you have to pay careful attention to capacitance specs. at these clock speeds. However, his fastest ACA card is only running at 1/2 this clock speed and the specs. can be relaxed enough to allow light loading on the address and/or data buses. The 68882 is a three state device and places no significant load on the data bus until it's chip select is enabled. It may place a light load on some of the address lines but thats not likely to cause a major timing problem. In the unlikely worst case scenario he might need to add one more wait stait to ACA memory cycles.

ImagineFP, CinneMorphFP, DistantSunsFP, Lightwave, mpega.library (FPU versions) AREXX and some OS3.x datatypes, etc.

[Thorham]

Originally Posted by alexh

I'd be curious to know what FPU software you think would be a benefit?

Probably everything that uses floating point through the system's math libraries will benefit from an FPU with the FPU versions of these libraries (aminet).

[alexh]

Originally Posted by SpeedGeek

(much like your conclusion it's not worth replacing A3640 GAL's to get a performance boost)

Being quoted out of context here I said "for me" it wasn't worth it (as I had just replaced them once for the standard 3.0->3.2 upgrade). Had I know about it before I started, rather than when I had finished, then I would have almost certainly done it. If I was doing another then I would.

Originally Posted by alexh

If you are asking why not make an 060 accelerator and let people buy their own CPU's? Might work. But I'm not sure there would be enough people prepared to upgrade from one 060 card to another to make it worth while.

That's what I meant yes.
From what people are saying, getting a 68040 wouldn't be that usefull, so why not jump directly to an 'empty' 68060 card.
It might help to reduce the price of design / manufacturing of the card and we could get our CPU from ebay or other online sellers.

(I'm not even talking about PowerPC cards )

[SpeedGeek]

Originally Posted by alexh

Being quoted out of context here I said "for me" it wasn't worth it (as I had just replaced them once for the standard 3.0->3.2 upgrade). Had I know about it before I started, rather than when I had finished, then I would have almost certainly done it. If I was doing another then I would.

Please don't take this comment personally, it was just a comparison example of how we each do our own cost/benefit analysis and yes hind sight is always 20/20. I made a similar decision in deciding it wasn't worth it for me to sell upgrade kits and ship them worldwide. Unfortunately, the fine young chap who would be willing to sell such a kit is not at technical level to fully understand and support it. But like I said hind sight is 20/20!

[delshay]

Originally Posted by Djay

I like would a very high accelerator to be released, one for A1200D and one for A1200T
price range £300 at a push £400

don't think it would be worth doing an A4000D/T accelerator nor an A600 one

What is the best (highest) accelerator ever released for the Amiga?

as i understand it 68060@75mhz 1Gb Ram(?) with BPPC@266Mhz

i could be completely wrong, it must work for classic Amiga (ie kickstart 3.1 and workbench 3.1)

there are Blizzard PPC cards out there with real 250,275 & 300Mhz processor no overclocking,but this may change from anything from 350 to 600Mhz with L2 cache.

[Photon]

Agree with everything Alexh said, but I think there's a market for an SDRAM (or other fast) RAM provide your own 060 mainly for improved memory speed and compatibility, and as a combo expansion (clockport, HDD interface). That market is likely as lucrative as for the 1230, the price can be about 330 EUR without CPU and the whole batch would be sold. No, I don't know this, I'm projecting this from how many people like me there are left

There's a few problems. 060 requires nonstandard PSU, and > 50 MHz may require expensive RAM or make 1:1 memory cycles difficult to achieve. But even 2:1 memory cycle, I would buy an equally performing 060-80 MHz with 512MB RAM for 300-400 EUR, just to have a newly made modern component that I can rely on and can follow into the future.

The other way (to get out of relying on CPU supplies) is 'any MMU M680x0 in "FPGA"' at extreme speeds, but that will raise the price.

[Mr B]

Originally Posted by SpeedGeek

First most SDRAM's are rated to run at > 100 Mhz and yes you have to pay careful attention to capacitance specs. at these clock speeds. However, his fastest ACA card is only running at 1/2 this clock speed and the specs. can be relaxed enough to allow light loading on the address and/or data buses.

Give Jens a call. I think he'd be happy to hire you if you could get him to get away with slower (cheaper parts) for the same performance, which is basically what your saying is possible. I'm pretty sure i saw a thread where he explained how he was pushing the ram already.

Originally Posted by SpeedGeek

In the unlikely worst case scenario he might need to add one more wait stait to ACA memory cycles.

Your solution to adding something that rarely makes your system faster, is to make it slower all the rest of the time? Revolutionary thinking.
B!

[roy bates]

to be honest i think the "actual" problem with 040 and 060 cards is supply and demand.

most peaple who get back in the amiga are only interested in playing the games they had in there youth.so you would not need any more then a 030 at best.

but then again if you want more power for raytracing and rendering thats something else.

jens is a business man so it will probably never happen.

[Photon]

Originally Posted by roy bates

to be honest i think the "actual" problem with 040 and 060 cards is supply and demand.

most peaple who get back in the amiga are only interested in playing the games they had in there youth.

Yes, but that crowd's demand was filled easily before, and even more easily now and with the ACA1231. The new boards certainly make healthy boosts cheaply.

But this is about those who want the best. For me, I'm in it for the same reason I would like to see an Amiga mobo remade in modern components - one day my 060 card will die, and I would not like to go back to 68020 or 030 card.

A 68060 card with performance equal to or even surpassing all earlier cards is certainly something to drool over

[Mr B]

You do realize that the holy grail would cost a fortune to make, and that fortune must at least have potential to be regained by sales of copies of the darn cursed , sorry, holy grail.
Putting down a large amount of cash to develop a card that will sell in a 5 figure units is one thing, putting down the same, or in the case of a 68060/PPC card, more, and try to regain the RnD from the much smaller amount of sales... Well, it would be hard, to say the least. And i suspect i'm a bit to optimistic when i say 5 figures for the amount of units trying to repay RnD costs. Do we have any idea how many ACA123X Jens have had made?