A630 Accelerator for the A600 - coming soon

[RetroPassionUK]

Originally Posted by ant512

Nothing back from the retailer. It seems that some of these boards ship with real 50MHz chips while others ship with overclocked 33MHz chips. On the assumption that mine is overclocked I’ve ordered a replacement MC68030RC50C gold top that in theory won’t need additional cooling.

Will report back when it turns up some time in the next month.

(As an aside, every accelerator I’ve used that had an overclocked 68k CPU was garbage. I don’t know why people keep trying to overclock 68k chips.)

Yes black tops are ones that did not make the cut for many reasons so sold at 33Mhz so the chips were not wasted. However many can run at 50Mhz fine.

[Amiga1992]

Originally Posted by ant512

Got an A630 and it’s disappointing. Dunno if it’s just my card but it appears to overheat in about 2 minutes when the 600’s case is closed.

I think this is an A600 problem, it's kind of silly doing this on such a small package.
I have an ACA620 and I can get it to overheat as well, when the room temperature reaches a certain threshold. Most of the times it's fine, but it hates the summer time.

[MigaTech]

Originally Posted by Calabazam

Golden 68030 are barely overclockable.

This is possible but not without adequate heat sink and cooling. The problems begin when you try to push it with the 68881.

Talking of gold tops, I have the blizzard 030/50 the fastest A1200 030 Accelerator back in the day. It has the gold 68030 and 68881 and 64MB Fast RAM. Its Bench, according to sysinfo is 9.31Mips. That's a whopping, 9 million 310 thoundsand instruction per second.

That's why it would be good to have some bench speeds of this A600 accelerator. Just to get and idea of its output.

[Lemaru]

My box of black plastic 030RP's that don't work at 50mhz would argue that they are good at 50mhz. I think the reason they are often used is more due to them being available for around £10 rather than the overclockability

Yet all the gold tops I had have been fine. Yeah they are all marked as RC50s, but under the microscope you can often see remnants of the original markings. Usually they likely RC33s or RC40s, but have even had what looks like it was originally an RC25. All have been stable, even running under load for a while.

I remember my original Apollo A630 I got back in 97/98. That even had an overclocked gold top on it from new (they scratched off the speed from the model number)

[breadvan]

I've had my A600 since 1993 and it's pretty standard apart from the usual 3.2 ROM upgrade, recap, gotek, 4mb RAM expansion and a 4GB CF HDD. I mainly use my A1200 these days as it has AGA. I wouldn't mind giving the A600 some love, but aside from things loading faster, what are the other real benefits of installing an A630?

[CCRider]

Originally Posted by breadvan

I've had my A600 since 1993 and it's pretty standard apart from the usual 3.2 ROM upgrade, recap, gotek, 4mb RAM expansion and a 4GB CF HDD. I mainly use my A1200 these days as it has AGA. I wouldn't mind giving the A600 some love, but aside from things loading faster, what are the other real benefits of installing an A630?

Bigger bargraphs on benchmarks?

[MigaTech]

Originally Posted by Boing-Ball

I even bespoke built a A600 into a ITX case with CD ROM with Vampire. But then sold that.

Do you have any stills of this system? Reason, I Started a club on here a while ago in reference to Amiga Retro Tower Systems. This would make good reading as I have been meaning to add more information for a while.

Need to encourage more members to join in who have towered their Amiga computers in the past.

**Sorry to thread author for going off topic!**

[breadvan]

Originally Posted by Boing-Ball

If you already own a A1200 with a 030 or better accelerator. Then the answer is quite simply, not much.

The A600 is an ideal machine if you have smaller spaces and need the smaller footprint. Or as a Test/backup machine just in case you find issue on the A1200.

I’ve had a couple of A600 machines in the past. In the end I sold them and kept my A1200 and A4000 machines. I even bespoke built a A600 into a ITX case with CD ROM with Vampire. But then sold that.

Yeah my A1200 has been upgraded and pretty much serves all my needs, but I don't mind flinging a couple of hundred £ at the A600 seeing as it holds sentimental value. I do some video editing and wouldn't mind playing around with some old style video graphics and record them to VHS. Would the A630 make any difference to the performance of a Genlock, for example?

Originally Posted by MigaTech

**Sorry to thread author for going off topic!**

No problem

[ant512]

Have now tried 3 different CPUs. They all overheat without cooling, even with the case open. One of them is significantly better at dealing with the heat than the other two, so I’ll go grab some thermal paste, reinstall the heat sink/fan, and see how I get on with that one.

The original CPU turned out to be a gold top labelled as 50MHz, but apparently the labels are meaningless now.

Still don’t know why this card would have so many problems with heat - even when exposed to the surrounding air - vs something like a Blizzard which will happily run in an A1200 with the trapdoor closed.

I suppose it’s possible that it’s a bad trace on the card adjacent to the CPU that heats up and causes problems, but I don’t know how I’d diagnose that.

[Bren McGuire]

mate theres no air flow inside an a600 like a 1200 also this geos on top of chips that get really hot the 68000 even if not in use will get pretty hot with one of these on top
the a1200 expansion goes on its own slot above nothing so it doesnt have the exposure to that extra heat you cant compare

Originally Posted by ant512

Still don’t know why this card would have so many problems with heat - even when exposed to the surrounding air - vs something like a Blizzard which will happily run in an A1200 with the trapdoor closed.

[ant512]

Yeah, cumulative heat from nearby components could definitely be a factor.

[ant512]

Kept the best CPU, added new thermal paste, reinstalled the fan. Worked for 15 minutes with the case open showing the Lotus Turbo Challenge demo loop without problems.

Put the case back together and the computer went nuts within a couple of minutes.

Case open again; back to normal in a minute or so.

My review: Stay away from this accelerator. It’s awful. Unless you have the top case removed from your A600, in which case it’ll work fine.

[Bren McGuire]

open up the a600 when its on and check the temperature on top of the part that piggybacks on the 68000 and see what i mean and there's at least another chip under there that heats up a lot.
i'd say stay away from accelerating an amiga 600 at all

Originally Posted by ant512

Yeah, cumulative heat from nearby components could definitely be a factor.

[ant512]

Added some pics: spare CPUs; Lotus going nuts; SysInfo output when the card works.

[ant512]

Originally Posted by Boing-Ball

Are you sure the Fan isn’t getting caught on the case or Keyboard cable once assembled? Have had this happen before now with a Furia.
Also what is the size of heatsink being used here? Too shallow and it won’t dissipate heat.

Fan works fine with the case closed, as far as I can tell.

Heat sink/fan combo you can see here:

https://retrorewind.ca/a630

[ant512]

Originally Posted by Boing-Ball

Out of a matter of interest. How hot do the RAM and the other 4 small ICs get without heatsinks on them?

I.e just warm to the touch? Or hot to the touch?

If the latter, then this maybe the issue rather the CPU.

Nothing else got hot. The CPU itself was hot but not so hot that I couldn’t touch it.

[Bren McGuire]

mate what about the area i told you about where the card connects to the cpu and directly to the right of it

Originally Posted by ant512

Nothing else got hot. The CPU itself was hot but not so hot that I couldn’t touch it.

[ant512]

Originally Posted by Bren McGuire

mate what about the area i told you about where the card connects to the cpu and directly to the right of it

The accelerator is back in its box on a shelf. Having already wasted hundreds of dollars on it, I’m not sinking any more time into it.

EDIT: In the interests of science, and the sunken cost fallacy, I've ordered a fan for the 600 case. I doubt it'll make any difference, but why not give it a try.

[ant512]

Final update: problem solved! Turns out the fix is to use a PiStorm 600 instead, which so far is amazing.