Individual Computers - New accelerator cards for A600 & A1200

[Schoenfeld]

CD32 may be on the list "much later", but for now, I'd like to sort out the problems that people have with the ACA1230. So far, not a single person got back to me with information about their Budgie chip. If you expect me to do support, you should at least answer my questions. I can't possibly guess from a distance what kind of chips your boards have - work with me!

Further, we have to do a new production run of A603 cards, as they are sold out here, and only available at Alinea for the recommended retail price. This will also take up some time - I doubt that I'll have spare time for a CD32 expansion anytime soon.

Jens

[Mr B]

I would have asked in a PM, but that wasn't possible. Any idea when the availability of Indivision AGA MK2 will be happening? Should one pick up a ACA 1230/28, and sit on while i wait, or is it "unlikely" to run out?

*cries* So much to want, so little available to actually buy.
B!

[PulsatingQuasar]

Good to hear that the demand for the A603 was so high that they have sold out.

[kipper2k]

Originally Posted by Schoenfeld

CD32 may be on the list "much later", but for now, I'd like to sort out the problems that people have with the ACA1230. So far, not a single person got back to me with information about their Budgie chip. If you expect me to do support, you should at least answer my questions. I can't possibly guess from a distance what kind of chips your boards have - work with me!

Further, we have to do a new production run of A603 cards, as they are sold out here, and only available at Alinea for the recommended retail price. This will also take up some time - I doubt that I'll have spare time for a CD32 expansion anytime soon.

Jens

Hi Jens,

Is there any way you can reduce the height of the 48 pin socket to allow a little more head clearance. The round pins that protrude between the board and the socket itself adds up when you also add the ECS indivision which also has the same gaps. A cheap adapter could easily be made for those people that wish to keep their floppy drives in if these extra gaps were removed. As it is i can make an adapter with very little clearance so mounting the 48 pin sockets flush with the boards would make this a lot easier.

[Schoenfeld]

Originally Posted by kipper2k

Hi Jens,

Is there any way you can reduce the height of the 48 pin socket to allow a little more head clearance. The round pins that protrude between the board and the socket itself adds up when you also add the ECS indivision which also has the same gaps.

Indivision ECS comes with an additional socket mounted to the bottom of the unit. If you remove that, it will still fit in the A603, but you're even lower than with a lower-mounted socket in the A603, so the solution you're suggesting is practically already there.

Further, changing the design would cost quite a bit, and I have a hard time believing that enough units of these will be sold to justify a design change. The current design is known-good, and the units have been sold out since early january. It's now march, but some resellers still have stock, which shows me that the market is almost saturated. That said, this new production run is not too high on my list. It's just something that was added today, as I talked to Alinea to find out what their stock situation is. It'll be a few more months until I really *have* to make new ones I guess.

Jens

[AmigaDave]

Originally Posted by mfilos

Do you think that there are so many CD32 owners out there that would purchase this if existed?
IIRC hundreds required to make a board profitable or at least worth the investment and time.

Yes, I think that there are at least as many CD32 owners as there are A600 owners. Actually, I think there are more, and many people were still able to find brand new CD32's for sale on eBay as recently as last year. Maybe there are not as many users in the EU, as IIRC those new CD32's were NTSC models, not PAL units.

You only have to look at the frenzy that occurs every time a SX32Pro goes up for sale or auction to gauge the interest that any CD32 accelerator would create. Also, the design for the ACA030 for the A1200 is already completed and should be able to be modified to fit the CD32 much more easily than designing a completely new accelerator board, like for the A500. From what I have heard/read, the connector inside the CD32 is very similar to the A1200's trap door edge connector.

@Jens,

I understand you are busy with other projects and concerns and hope that you will start getting the feedback you need regarding the version of the Budgie chips on the A1200's from the buyers of the ACA030/A1200 boards. I hope that you will look into the possibility of doing an ACA030 for the CD32 in the future though.

[Retrofan]

Yes, ok, I understand you, but as long as he hears you, he's been hearing for a long time the needing of the new Indivision, and later a good replacement for the Idefix Express. Those IMHO are the best sellers right now.

And I want to take the oportunity to tell how good this ACA are that I'm running one working at Pio 5 at 9,5mb/s of speed using a Fast Ata with a supossed "bad" rev. 2b mb.

[NovaCoder]

Sorry but I don't personally see a big market for CD32 accelerators, yes SX32's go for a lot on eBay but that's just the usual supply and demand thing.

People generally like to upgrade their 600's to make them a better WB machine and to play the more demanding WHDLOAD's (to skip the pain of using floppy discs).

A CD32 as standard can already play lots of original game rips easily straight from CDROM. I think even the market for a new 500 accelerator would be quite small.

On my personal 'most wanted' list is of course the IndivisionAGA Mrk2 and an updated SATA/FPGA based Ide-Fix express

Looking much further to the future, a 100 MIPS FPGA based accelerator (using the 020 softcore already in development) with a nice fat wedge of RAM would be very handy

[AmigaDave]

Originally Posted by NovaCoder

Sorry but I don't personally see a big market for CD32 accelerators, yes SX32's go for a lot on eBay but that's just the usual supply and demand thing.

People generally like to upgrade their 600's to make them a better WB machine and to play the more demanding WHDLOAD's (to skip the pain of using floppy discs).

A CD32 as standard can already play lots of original game rips easily straight from CDROM. I think even the market for a new 500 accelerator would be quite small.

On my personal 'most wanted' list is of course the IndivisionAGA Mrk2 and an updated SATA/FPGA based Ide-Fix express

Looking much further to the future, a 100 MIPS FPGA based accelerator (using the 020 softcore already in development) with a nice fat wedge of RAM would be very handy

You are probably right about the CD32 and I agree with you that the IndivisionAGA Mk2 and an updated IDE-Fix Express should be a higher priority to get produced first.

Perhaps Jens will have some competition in creating accelerators if MikeJ, the creator of the FPGA Replay Board finishes that project and sees the potential in making an FPGA accelerator board for certain Amiga models. The performance results he is seeing with the 68k softcore w/020 extensions in a FPGA are very impressive, with the possibility of exceeding an 060 in real silicone at some time in the future. MikeJ already has the experience of integrating lots of RAM, so if he (or Jens) could design a FPGA based 68k softcore accelerator with a good amount of RAM and a CF card, or SD card storage controller to replace the need for an IDE hard drive, they would have a good seller. If it also had a USB controller built-in, that would be an even better all-in-one add-on for Classic Amiga models.

Amazing that there is still so much hardware development for a "Dead" 25+ year old platform!

[alexh]

All the CD32 needs is a RAM card... 4-8Mbytes. Should be very cheap (except the connector) and I bet every CD32 owner would want one.

[cv643d]

I would like IDE/CF port in the CD32 also, besides 8MB RAM. A 030 in it would be luxury.

Market is always difficult to estimate, but I think if the price was right many would get one and if the price was not right but not stupid (like 500e) I would still get one

Off course I understand lots of stuff are in the pipeline I am happy it is still not scrapped as an idea!

Originally Posted by NovaCoder

Sorry but I don't personally see a big market for CD32 accelerators, yes SX32's go for a lot on eBay but that's just the usual supply and demand thing.

People generally like to upgrade their 600's to make them a better WB machine and to play the more demanding WHDLOAD's (to skip the pain of using floppy discs).

A CD32 as standard can already play lots of original game rips easily straight from CDROM. I think even the market for a new 500 accelerator would be quite small.

I think that is the idea behind ACA for the CD32 also. To make the CD32 into a better WB machine and play more demanding WHDload games. A turbo card without IDE-interface would not be that interesting though.

[bitman]

Originally Posted by Schoenfeld

So far, not a single person got back to me with information about their Budgie chip. If you expect me to do support, you should at least answer my questions. I can't possibly guess from a distance what kind of chips your boards have - work with me!

You have my information about the Budgie, isn't that enough?

[FOL]

Originally Posted by bitman

You have my information about the Budgie, isn't that enough?

No, you cant just go by one set of info, when trying to find solutions.
As you know, there are many many differences between boards even with same REV boards.

I have some more tests I want to try next week, I will report my findings to jens, hopefully that will help.

[ndial]

Well I've sold my Commodore A1200 rev 1D.4 (the one that I had problems previously described here with the ACA 1230/28 although I removed the two caps E123C,E125C) and bought an Amiga Technologies A1200 (that's of course a newer version than the original A1200 I've sold). The new mobo is still an 1D.4 rev but surprise-surprise, everything worked fine now with the 1230/28 ! The card runs fine, no more crashes or graphic corrucptions on the screen. Both happy now (the other guy that bought my A1200 with the ACA incompatibility, is using it with a Blizzard MK4 and works great too!)

[Schoenfeld]

bitman,
if you're the one who let me know through Vesalia that you don't want to send your board, then it won't help me. I've seen the Rev.1 Budgie on your pictures for the first time and I need such a failing board here to measure things. I'm happy to swap your board for one out of my collection if that's the only way for me to get hold of a failing board.

About the A603, it wasn't entirely correct that only Alinea has a few left in stock - GGS Data in Sweden also has a few left, so I guess it's no big deal that it'll be another few weeks until I can start a new production run. Before you truly believe that something is sold out, I recommend to contact the full list of dealers on my website - including the smaller ones from Sweden, Finland, Switzerland and Spain.

Jens

[FOL]

Originally Posted by Schoenfeld

bitman,
if you're the one who let me know through Vesalia that you don't want to send your board, then it won't help me. I've seen the Rev.1 Budgie on your pictures for the first time and I need such a failing board here to measure things. I'm happy to swap your board for one out of my collection if that's the only way for me to get hold of a failing board.

About the A603, it wasn't entirely correct that only Alinea has a few left in stock - GGS Data in Sweden also has a few left, so I guess it's no big deal that it'll be another few weeks until I can start a new production run. Before you truly believe that something is sold out, I recommend to contact the full list of dealers on my website - including the smaller ones from Sweden, Finland, Switzerland and Spain.

Jens

Hi Jens,

We have loads of boards with different Budgie's.
I honestly thought you knew there were 3 revs of it.

Ill take a look and dig out some Rev.1's if it helps.
I also have some Rev.0's here that give GFX curruption too.

[Schoenfeld]

Originally Posted by FOL

Ill take a look and dig out some Rev.1's if it helps.
I also have some Rev.0's here that give GFX curruption too.

Interesting - my last information was that all your GFX-corrupted boards were fixed with the caps. I've been calling out for "bad boards" for quite some time now...

Jens

[zipper]

Originally Posted by Schoenfeld

bitman,
About the A603, it wasn't entirely correct that only Alinea has a few left in stock - GGS Data in Sweden also has a few left, so I guess it's no big deal that it'll be another few weeks until I can start a new production run. Before you truly believe that something is sold out, I recommend to contact the full list of dealers on my website - including the smaller ones from Sweden, Finland, Switzerland and Spain.

Jens

Gentle eye in Finland has it listed - he might have it still in stock.

[Mr B]

I see some places list ACA 1230 with a MMU. with respect of having it to run a WHDload system would it be any difference? I remeber there being a bit of back and forth on the MMU earlier in the thread, but i cant seam to find a conclusion as to what would be best / most bang for once buck. (Ok, so most the MMU units i see are refurbs, offered at the same price as the original 28MHz units. So price seams to be of very little importance.)

Sorry for diverting from the topic of the support issues. This should only be a short sidetrack.
Jens... Thank you for your extremly fast email response. Not exactly what i wanted to hear, but i'll guess i'll have to pick one up, and sit on it.
B!

[FOL]

Originally Posted by Schoenfeld

Interesting - my last information was that all your GFX-corrupted boards were fixed with the caps. I've been calling out for "bad boards" for quite some time now...

Jens

I never once said caps fixed GFX corruption.
The caps only ever fixed the freezing / guru / reset issues.

I only found it corrupts on 28MHz, other speeds seem fine.