About to buy a 1200, trying out UAE & WHD

[VresiBerba]

Finally I'm about to buy an AGA-machine, used of course, and have been fiddling around with WinUAE for a while trying out all kinds of A1200 configurations with various ClassicWB's that could match my future real Amiga.

What I would like to know is which WiUAE-configuration is equivalent to a genuine stock 2-Mb chipped A1200, when the settings in A1200 'only' offer 'Fastest possible, but maintain chipset timing'. Is that really equivalent with a real stock 1200?

Using ClassicWB ADVSP, the speed with WinUAE is quite impressive, but what kind of speed is possible on a real A1200, with or without accelerator board.

I also would like to know which accelerator board you need to have in order to use practically all WHD-games, and what memory is needed before you run out. Perhaps there's one for sale from someone on this very board.

[Graham Humphrey]

You don't necessarily need an accelerator board at all but certainly some sort of RAM upgrade is recommended. But if you got an '030 accelerator with maybe 8MB of RAM onboard then you are covered for almost every game then.

[fitzsteve]

I took the below video a while back to demonstrate how CWB ADV SP runs on an A1200 020 with 8mb ram upgrade.

[ Show youtube player ]

Its a bit slow but I found it useable, but now i've upgraded to an 030 @40mhz its much zippier.

Steve.

[TCD]

Originally Posted by VresiBerba

What I would like to know is which WiUAE-configuration is equivalent to a genuine stock 2-Mb chipped A1200, when the settings in A1200 'only' offer 'Fastest possible, but maintain chipset timing'. Is that really equivalent with a real stock 1200?

When you check 'Cycle exact' on the chipset panel, you can select 'A1200' for the CPU frequency on the CPU panel. That would be closest to a real A1200.

[BrooksterMax]

Just so you know from practical experience, I have a A1200 without an accelerator but I got a 4mb ram expansion board. So 2mb chip and 4mb fast ram.

I can pretty much play nearly all WHDload games apart from the Settlers, but you can install that from disks anyway I believe.

However with a IDE Compact Flash HD and this 4mb ram, my plain A1200 does zip along real nice for gaming.

Good luck.

[fitzsteve]

As Brookster says an 020 A1200 with 4mb ram expansion is enough for most WHDLoad games.

If you want to be safe go for an 8mb upgrade especially if you want to use Classic WB Full as IIRC it uses 1.2-1.5mb of your ram. Alternatively you could use CWB Lite as it uses less resources.

Also I like to use IGame as my WHDLoad frontend and that uses another .5mb or so. So with 4mb expansion I found quite a few games swapping to load during the game which is very annoying. (i.e too big to preload)

If you want to use CWB ADV SP you really want an 030 accelerator, I used it with my 020 (8mb expansion) for a while but its a much better experience now I have an accelerator.

Hope my advice helps. Good luck with your project.

Steve.

[alexh]

Originally Posted by TheCyberDruid

When you check 'Cycle exact' on the chipset panel, you can select 'A1200' for the CPU frequency on the CPU panel. That would be closest to a real A1200.

Yes? I thought 'cycle exact' has no impact on A1200 configuration?

[TCD]

Originally Posted by alexh

Yes? I thought 'cycle exact' has no impact on A1200 configuration?

It was introduced in 2.0.0 beta 7 : http://eab.abime.net/showpost.php?p=...&postcount=109

[Leffmann]

It does since a few betas back. The 68020 emulation was far from cycle exact earlier, more specifically the emulated 68020 was very slow during the emulated frame, and would run in turbo speed during whatever time was left before the next frame, but now with cache and pipelining emulated it's getting very exact. Try running Andromeda's Nexus 7 with and without cycle exact and you'll see what I mean.

[VresiBerba]

Wow, thanks people, lots on useful information there. Appreciate it.