New products for C64 and Amiga from Individual Computers

[lukassid]

Aca2000 looks very good. I imagine possibility of plugging a1200 accelerators must be exciting for A2000 owners.

[Turran]

No, just the cheap harddrive =)

[Schoenfeld]

Kickstart unpacking is now *a*lot*faster* with a new decruncher: Instead of LZX, the ACA500 now uses "Nibbler", a decompression software by bitBrain Studios (Sweden). While it's a tiny bit less efficient in compression, it's a good 2x faster than decompression with LZX, taking startup time with "just a 14MHz 68000" to a respectable 3.5 seconds. With a 68030-33, you barely have the time to read the "decrunching..." message: Kickstart 3.1 decrunching is done after just over one second.

Jens

[roy bates]

does the kickstart need to be crunched jens?

[Amiga1992]

Originally Posted by roy bates

thats a thought,theres nothing for the cd32 at the moment.

I so wish that would happen, as already said, a simple expansion with memory and IDE would be all that's necessary, in my opinion an accelerator is pointless.

[Schoenfeld]

Originally Posted by roy bates

does the kickstart need to be crunched jens?

Yes - the hardware o f the ACA500 has 512k flash, and the two included Kickstarts are already 768k uncrunched. Further, there's the startup menu, the scsi.device patches, a no-click feature, the FAT95 filesystem for PC-formatted CF card availability even if you boot from a WB floppy... crunching is the way to go. More flash would mean higher cost.

Originally Posted by Akira

I so wish that would happen, as already said, a simple expansion with memory and IDE would be all that's necessary, in my opinion an accelerator is pointless.

A CD32 expansion without real CIA chips is also pointless.

Jens

[Mr B]

Originally Posted by Schoenfeld

More flash would mean higher cost.

I'm not pretending to have the answer, but at some point, slapping 1MB flash on the thingy rather then 512K might mean time savings, and your not working for free.... However, the higher flash cost stays the same for every unit made, the cost of the time spent gets less for every unit sold. Win some, lose some. It's all about picking your battle, and at this point you got "some" practice at that, i think.
:- )

[Amiga1992]

Originally Posted by Schoenfeld

A CD32 expansion without real CIA chips is also pointless.

Have in mind I know nothing technical: why is this?

[Schoenfeld]

Originally Posted by Akira

Have in mind I know nothing technical: why is this?

The CD32 does not have CIA chips. Only parts of the CIAs are implemented in the support chips, but some timers and shift registers are not there. If you want to make the CD32 a real A1200-like computer, you need real CIA chips. Otherwise lots of programs that access the CIA chips directly won't work.

Jens

[Amiga1992]

OK, understood.
I don't really want to make the CD32 into a computer, might as well use my A1200. I just want an expansion to make WHDLoad easier to operate in a console form factor. With a hard drive and memory, it's all set. Now, if any WHDLoad installs also need the CIA stuff, then yeah, you could be ruined, I guess.

[wmsteele]

A CD32 expansion is being developed (with CIA support), test boards have already been produced, have a look on A1K... http://translate.google.com/translat...hp%3Ft%3D32822

[FOL]

Originally Posted by Schoenfeld

The CD32 does not have CIA chips. Only parts of the CIAs are implemented in the support chips, but some timers and shift registers are not there. If you want to make the CD32 a real A1200-like computer, you need real CIA chips. Otherwise lots of programs that access the CIA chips directly won't work.

Jens

What about FPGA'ing the CIA's? bit over the top, but its the Amiga, .

[Amiga1992]

Originally Posted by wmsteele

A CD32 expansion is being developed (with CIA support), test boards have already been produced, have a look on A1K... http://translate.google.com/translat...hp%3Ft%3D32822

Floppy, clockport, rtc... all that stuff is pointless for the gaming device the CD32 should be. And what are those sockets? and a 28MHz clock generator? If this is an accelerator, again, it beats the point for me. Then again it ONLY has 8MB of RAM, a sub-par amount by today's standards. Would prefer a design boasting at least 32MB of Jens' superfast access RAM.

[roy bates]

Originally Posted by Akira

Floppy, clockport, rtc... all that stuff is pointless for the gaming device the CD32 should be. And what are those sockets? and a 28MHz clock generator? If this is an accelerator, again, it beats the point for me. Then again it ONLY has 8MB of RAM, a sub-par amount by today's standards. Would prefer a design boasting at least 32MB of Jens' superfast access RAM.

yeah but,how much memory do you need for gaming?

[Amiga1992]

8MB would be enough for a lot of games but if you want to load something big, like those adventure games, we're looking at a minimum of 16/32MB I'd say.

[roy bates]

Originally Posted by Akira

8MB would be enough for a lot of games but if you want to load something big, like those adventure games, we're looking at a minimum of 16/32MB I'd say.

true.

[AmiDog]

Originally Posted by Akira

8MB would be enough for a lot of games but if you want to load something big, like those adventure games, we're looking at a minimum of 16/32MB I'd say.

The CD32, just as the A1200, has an EC-processor with 24-bit address bus. That is, it can only address 16MB, and some of those 16MB are already in use by CHIP-RAM, Kickstart, etc, which is why you can't have more than 8MB without creating an accelerator with a full 020 or a 030.

[Amiga1992]

I didn't know that. Thanks AmiDog!
But it would still be better to max it out as much as you can, like in the ACA620. So I guess 10MB. Then again big games won't run with that config.
It's a minor nitpicking though.

is there any release date for this A1k development? Price? Sucks that the information isn't widely available in english.

[wmsteele]

Probably looking at next year now for the CD32 expansion. Its true that lots of good dev projects get missed due to the A1K lingo barrier. I almost missed a rerun of SCSI boards for the CDTV, can you imagine!

[b0lt-thrower]

Question for you Jens: Will the A1200-to-A2000 accelerator adapter board only work with your accelerators, or just primarily - that is, a different board (DCE, GVP, Blizzard, etc.) may work but no guarantees or support?

'cause I know it'd be like putting a jet engine in a model-T but I could see some crazy person wanting to put an BPPC in an A2000