New GBAPII++ RTG-ZorroII graphic cards

[Matze]

Hello!

I proudly present the new RTG-graphics board for all Bigbox-Amigas and the Amiga500: The GBAPII++ is now commercially available at kryoflux. We ship worldwide and VAT applies only for EU-countries (customs fees must be paid by the customer).
The GBAPII++ is a ZorroII-card featuring the fast Cirrus GD5434 graphics chip and 2MB of video-ram. An automatic monitor-switch between an external VGA-source (e.g. flickerfixer) and the RTG-graphics is integrated. The card is developed, tested, approved and manufactured in Germany. The hardware-layout is open source at https://github.com/MHeinrichs/A500-GraKa . Compared to a PicassoII+ board this card 76% faster on a A2630 on the importaint RectFill()-function in P96-Speed. Further performance-results can be seen here. The development and support can be found in the German a1k.org-forum here and here.

The minimum system requirements are Kichstart3.1, a 68020-CPU and 4MB of FastRAM and 2MB free in the ZorroII address space. The maximum screen resolutions are 16.7M –color up to 800x600, 64k-colors up to 1024x768 and 8bit color up to 1280x1024. All modes are non-interlaced with a minimum refresh rate of 60 Hz.

The card is currently using the PiccoloSD64 driver from the P96-rtg solution. The P96-driver is shareware and not bundled with this board. A separate license for this driver should be purchased. However CybergraphiX support is in development and will be released, too.

The Amiga500 version is a bit special: First, no housing is provided. A community based 3D-printing solution is planned. Second it needs an internal >68020 turbo card and 2MB free ZorroII address space. Since only a few Amiga500 will meet this requirement, all Amiga 500-verisions are BTO (build-to-order). Any ZorroII-version can be modified to an Amiga500-version but not the other way round.

Best Regards Kryoflux & Matthias

[apex]

There are still cards available! Buy them now, not tomorrow.

[BlindGerMan]

It is a very good rtg card for ZII-Amigas, faster than a Picasso II!!

Nice card and NEW!

[Amiga4000]

Yes, buy soon if you don't have one! I love my Matze RTG card in my A2000 w/it's native passthru and autoswitch and MILLIONS of colors! WB never looked better and the HW is new!

[Kin Hell]

Just as a matter of interest, how does this card perform in real terms compared to the older ZORRO III cards like PIV, CV64 etc?

I can see limitation of 800 x 600 @ 24Bit, but are there any Benchmark results like the AIBB database thingy?

[Cylon]

BlindGerman@a1k.org did made some tests in his A4k. He probably can provide results.

[E-Penguin]

I finally got all the bits together to make this work. Unfortunately I'm seeing some graphics corruptions at anything about 800x600x8 but I hope that can be put down to a bad solder joint or something. My experiences in getting to this point...

https://amigadventures.tumblr.com/po...-the-amiga-500

[spudje]

I'm getting a bit confused, is this yet a different card than the MNT VA2000 and how do they compare?

[idrougge]

Totally different. VA2000 is an FPGA implementation from scratch while the GBAPII is a slightly updated reimplementation of the old Picasso II+.

[McTrinsic]

More of the Piccolo64

[idrougge]

You mean not the Piccolo SD 64, do you?

[wmaciv]

Great card, running in my A2000 with Indivision ECS. Can't say enough good things about it.

Wade

[McTrinsic]

Yes, PiccoloSD64 I think.

And yes - it's an awesome card especially with an Indy.

[Mark sealey]

Im guessing these are no longer available ? ;-(

[Amiga4000]

You might still be able to purchase....

https://webstore.kryoflux.com/catalo...products_id=56

I was able to add one to the cart and go to the checkout.

[Mark sealey]

Originally Posted by Amiga4000

You might still be able to purchase....

https://webstore.kryoflux.com/catalo...products_id=56

I was able to add one to the cart and go to the checkout.

Oooh seen that I hear its not compatible with a aca500+ as its 4mb card and not 2mb

[wazza]

I thought I'd just add a quick post here to document something I noticed with this card. I downloaded the drivers from Aminet and installed everything but was quite disappointed with the performance in Workbench when I used a screen mode with more than about 64 colours - screen refresh seemed very slow particularly with large text windows. I thought it might just be the limitations of my 030 system or a Zorro 2 bottleneck.

What resolved this for me was editing the tooltypes of the GBA PII++ monitor in Devs/Monitors. From install, there was a tooltype of 'NOBLITTER=YES' enabled.

Removing this option really sorted out the performance and I'm now using 1024x768 16bit colour with quite snappy performance (considering I am running this on an A500+ with TF536).

RTG games don't run amazingly, but that's just the limitations of Z2 I expect. However, for Workbench this card is just the job.

[Rontti]

Originally Posted by wazza

I thought I'd just add a quick post here to document something I noticed with this card. I downloaded the drivers from Aminet and installed everything but was quite disappointed with the performance in Workbench when I used a screen mode with more than about 64 colours - screen refresh seemed very slow particularly with large text windows. I thought it might just be the limitations of my 030 system or a Zorro 2 bottleneck.

What resolved this for me was editing the tooltypes of the GBA PII++ monitor in Devs/Monitors. From install, there was a tooltype of 'NOBLITTER=YES' enabled.

Removing this option really sorted out the performance and I'm now using 1024x768 16bit colour with quite snappy performance (considering I am running this on an A500+ with TF536).

RTG games don't run amazingly, but that's just the limitations of Z2 I expect. However, for Workbench this card is just the job.

You sir are a lifesaver!
I was having the same slow performance problems with this card in my A4000, but this did the trick. Thank you!

[vincedj]

what is the key combination to change from pal to rtg?...for example when playing with whdload

[JustPhil]

In need of rtg advice, i have a gbaII++ rtg card that i can't seem to get a display out of.
I installed the picasso 96 drivers making sure I selected the piccolo sd64 driver in particular.
I installed the gbaII++ driver software.
I went into prefs/picasso96 mode and assigned settings to the card.
The driver installers recognise the chip i have on my card.
WhichAmiga recognises the card and how much memory it has.
Sysinfo recognises the card and how much memory it has.
But when i change the screen settings i get nothing, the Denise output goes grey but the rtg never displays anything, I've tried a couple of versions of both drivers and a couple of different monitors but still, nothing.

At this point I'm stuck, I've got nothing everything should be working but it just refuses and I can't come up with a solution any help would be great and frankly a bloody relief at this point.