Individual Computers - New accelerator cards for A600 & A1200

[Schoenfeld]

Originally Posted by cosmicfrog

jens have we an idea on price point for these accles yet ??

A1200, EC030, 64MB = 99,- EUR
A600, full-030, 32MB, all mechanical parts included and pre-assembled = 159,- EUR

Jens

[phipscube]

Originally Posted by Schoenfeld

That was no "production run" - it was part of the safety stock. That's the units we keep in stock in order to serve warranty claims where the unit cannot be repaired for whatever reason. We reduced this safety stock to a minimum and shipped a few units to Vesalia and AmigaKit - merely to serve waiting customers. I did't expect that advertising such a small quantity would even make sense.

Back to accelerators: I don't like the PPC, and Hyperion, the Friedens and Trevor know that by now. I like my classic with a 68k, and if there's ever going to be something "next generation" from my side, it's going to be totally different. So different, that it requires quite some money to be developed, so if there's the mystical investor out there who is willing to spend some serious money - the Individual Computers team is first in line :-)

Jens

I thought it was rather small an amount, anyways, i'm very grateful you let some go otherwise i'd not have mine

And the totally different idea seems to be something you have had in mind for some time by the way you speak... I wonder what that is...

[RMK]

Originally Posted by Schoenfeld

A1200, EC030, 64MB = 99,- EUR
A600, full-030, 32MB, all mechanical parts included and pre-assembled = 159,- EUR

Jens

Is the faster A1200 price of 199Euro set in stone? Is this going to be the last one released?

Thanks,

[Schoenfeld]

Originally Posted by RMK

Is the faster A1200 price of 199Euro set in stone? Is this going to be the last one released?

Nothing is set in stone about a faster A1200 version. I don't know if I'll release the faster version, what speed it'll be and what the price will be. I focus on Xmas business and that consists of the two cards I just mentioned.

Jens

[amigakit.com]

We are very happy to have these in stock for Christmas. The prototype cards looked great when we viewed them recently at Amiwest Show.

[kolla]

Originally Posted by Schoenfeld

A600, full-030, 32MB, all mechanical parts included and pre-assembled = 159,- EUR

Yay - full blown 030 - I'll get two!

[DonAmiga]

Great news,, in time for Christmas, A600 upgrade for please santa

Originally Posted by amigakit.com

We are very happy to have these in stock for Christmas. The prototype cards looked great when we viewed them recently at Amiwest Show.

[TronPlayer]

just out of curiosity, what percentage speed increase will be seen with this new 030 card over a stock 1200?

[mihcael]

Originally Posted by TronPlayer

just out of curiosity, what percentage speed increase will be seen with this new 030 card over a stock 1200?

Read back through this thread, there are Sysinfo screenshots which give a decent comparison of the speed.

[Fabie]

Originally Posted by TronPlayer

just out of curiosity, what percentage speed increase will be seen with this new 030 card over a stock 1200?

according to sysinfo posted results
I calculate that this new 030 card is 2.5 times faster than an A1200 + fastram
or 5 times faster than an A1200 without fast ram

[Paul_s]

In non-technical terms: Like $h*t off a shovel

[DyLucke]

Definitelly, i'll buy one A1200 accelerator. ^^

I can't wait to speed up my A600

[cv643d]

I will buy one A600 version, thanks for making this!

(Perhaps next December, a CD32 version could be released? :-) )

[rockersuke]

Sorry if I missed an answer for this before:

-Removing the Amiga 600 internal floppy drive is going to be an option or a requirement? I'm not planning to use the Indivision ECS at this point and I would like to keep the disk unit at its place.

-If the floppy unit is not taken away, could there be heat issues when using the Amiga 600 for a long time? As I mentioned a few pages ago, I pretend to carry my Amiga 600 to local retro-gaming parties where It could be expected to be turned on for a whole evening or even a whole day.

Thanks!

--

[Schoenfeld]

Originally Posted by rockersuke

-Removing the Amiga 600 internal floppy drive is going to be an option or a requirement? I'm not planning to use the Indivision ECS at this point and I would like to keep the disk unit at its place.

-If the floppy unit is not taken away, could there be heat issues when using the Amiga 600 for a long time? As I mentioned a few pages ago, I pretend to carry my Amiga 600 to local retro-gaming parties where It could be expected to be turned on for a whole evening or even a whole day.

Without Indivision ECS, the floppy drive still fits. We still need to wait for the final black-anodized heatsinks to make the final tests. The blank heatsink heats up a lot, but does not radiate enough heat for "completely closed operation" at the moment. Please wait for the final tests, probably happening late next week.

Jens

[Schoenfeld]

As I mentioned earlier in this already-fairly-long-thread, the memory controller wasn't perfect yet. The 68030 can fill a cache line using a "burst" mechanism, where it takes advantage of the fact that reading consecutive memory locations is much faster than reading random locations.

I had implemented this "burst transfer" at a fairly early stage, but did not optimize it "to the max". A cache line of the 68030 consists of four longwords (32-bit words). If a memory location is not available in the cache, the CPU will try to read the whole cache line, starting from the location where it needs the next word. If the first access is at the start of a cache line, then words 0-1-2-3 are fetched at top speed from memory. If word #2 is required first, then the burst order is 2-3-0-1. Notice the wrap-around in the middle of the burst - this is essentially "going backwards in memory". Here's where statistics come into play: Usually, a program is executed "forward", so the previous words (in this case words #0 and #1) are "most probably" not required.

I have now managed to abort the burst transfer at the wrap-around stage, which gained roughly 1.5% speed. The ACA630-25 now cracks the 6-Mips-barrier, and if you want to examine the speed of the final 1230 cards, I have also attached AIBB modules of the two 1230 models.

We'll set up and program the assembly machines tomorrow, assembly is planned for monday. This is SMT assembly only - the THT assembly will have to wait until the PGA sockets have been delivered. After I got "way too many" offers with delivery time "A", and got a different delivery time "B" with B >> A, I was fed up with tricks like that and ordered my own tooling for PGA sockets. The good side about this is that we won't only have white PCBs and white A1200 connectors, but also white PGA sockets. Since the ACA630 will be "all black", I'll use my stock of black PGA sockets for those.

Jens

[Lord Aga]

This is so cool and inspiring that I just have to open up and clean/wash my Amigas today so that I can enjoy the hardware

[Oliver_A]

Would you guys like some real-life practical comparisons?

Here is ADOOM Shareware running on my A1200 in 320x200 AGA. The accelerator is a Blizzard 1240, which means an 68040 with 25Mhz:



As you can see, the game is running with 10fps. Pretty impressive! How can a 68030 CPU compete against a 68040?

ADOOM Shareware running on the upcoming ACA1230-56, 68030 with 56Mhz:



WHAT??? 15fps??? Our 68030 design yields 5 fps MORE than a 68040???

Yes, thanks to a high speed SDRAM memory interface and optimal access to the Amiga chip bus!

For complete humiliation, I'm going to post a comparision with the Blizzard 1230 later...

[Cosmos]

Hum... And with a 040@40 ??