Another upgrade arrives!

[MGAmiga90]

My Blizzard 1230/50 has just arrived!

Time for some more nostalgia, although I never got past 25Mhz back in the day so this is new territory!

[Seiya]

And it is è very nice upgrade

[MGAmiga90]

Well it's installed and working, nothing is on fire yet so looks good.

Now I just need some software besides sysinfo to prove it's faster than my Apollo A1220/28....

Frontier looks identical, if not a touch slower...

Looks like I'll have to hunt down Lightwave 5 to give it a test...

[ant512]

You have a SIMM in it, right? Without the RAM expansion the speed is seriously crippled.

[coder76]

It's a great card, also PCMCIA cards like ethernet work with it without problems. There is also a jumper for 60 ms ram, and for mapping ROM into RAM, when enabled gives slightly better performance. Should be around 10 MIPS with Sysinfo for Blizzard IV - 50 MHz and 60 ms FAST ram.

[MGAmiga90]

Originally Posted by ant512

You have a SIMM in it, right? Without the RAM expansion the speed is seriously crippled.

Yes, 32Mb.

[redblade]

Nice, did it come with a 68882 fpu?. I have a Viper MK 1230/28mhz but the RAM space conflicts with the PCMCIA, not that I used the PCMCIA, IBrowse 2 worked well with it and being able to view jpgs with ppshow was great.

Good luck with the rendering

[MGAmiga90]

Originally Posted by redblade

Nice, did it come with a 68882 fpu?. I have a Viper MK 1230/28mhz but the RAM space conflicts with the PCMCIA, not that I used the PCMCIA, IBrowse 2 worked well with it and being able to view jpgs with ppshow was great.

Good luck with the rendering

Thanks - not done much in the way of rendering yet, I forgot how much more time it took on the old software even building simple things!

Yes, came with FPU and PCMCIA works fine alongside it luckily (as I have no other easy way of transferring files at present) - network access is next on my list, once I find the cheapest way of doing it...so annoyed I threw out several old PCMCIA network adapters many years ago that I rescued from work...

Also regretting not rescuing all the '040 based MACs that we threw out too...although my wife may not have been too happy

[patrik]

Make sure you have the maprom feature enabled (jumper). When enabled, the blizzard will copy the kickstart to its much faster fastram and execute it from there, all os component in the kickstart (including exec) will benefit greatly.

On that topic, as the blizzard memory isn’t added by regular autoconfig, it is added too late, so exec.library’s library base will be allocated from really slow chip ram. As this memory is used a lot, it makes a difference to os performance. Tools like fastexec, blizkick, mufastzero etc can fix it.

[MGAmiga90]

Originally Posted by patrik

Make sure you have the maprom feature enabled (jumper). When enabled, the blizzard will copy the kickstart to its much faster fastram and execute it from there, all os component in the kickstart (including exec) will benefit greatly.

On that topic, as the blizzard memory isn’t added by regular autoconfig, it is added too late, so exec.library’s library base will be allocated from really slow chip ram. As this memory is used a lot, it makes a difference to os performance. Tools like fastexec, blizkick, mufastzero etc can fix it.

Thanks for the tip, I have maprom enabled, but did notice exec was in chip ram. I'll have a look at that and see if I can sort it out.

[Jpor]

Originally Posted by MGAmiga90

Thanks for the tip, I have maprom enabled, but did notice exec was in chip ram. I'll have a look at that and see if I can sort it out.

If the 32MB Fast RAM Simm is 60ns then also plug the jumper for The FAST setting on the card to utilise it

[MGAmiga90]

I have a mk3 board, unfortunately it doesn't have a jumper for the fast mem setting (my RAM is 70ns anyway).

Thanks, and keep the tips coming!

[jcgeuze]

Nice, i have the same card, its really stable

To give you upgrade ideas : My A1200 has

- Indy AGA mk3
- Blizzard 030@50mhz + FPU
- 64mb ram (you should be able to upgrade your memory very cheaply)
- Parallel sd card reader
- PCMCIA network card
- kickstart and os 3.2
- pcmcia fix
- external floppy drive
- more powerful powersupply.

[MGAmiga90]

I was looking at the indy AGA - bit expensive though. Just missed out on a Mk2 on ebay...not sure what the differences are between Mk2 and 3.

My TV is working at 1280x512 via Scart at present and is bearable and games are fine, so may put up with it. Not as nice as my 500 with RTG and RGB2HDMI though...

Anyone know how to get lightwave 3.5 to work on RTG screens?
My interface is ok, but the 3d displays draw squashed up on the left of the screen...regardless of resolution picked..

[Lisko]

For putting exec in fastmem on my 1200 I use a custom 3.2 kickstart with mumove4k module and some other goodies rekicked with blizkick and mufastzero, with fastexec and fastssp options, from mmulib. I got a nice little boost on I/O ops

[MGAmiga90]

Originally Posted by Lisko

For putting exec in fastmem on my 1200 I use a custom 3.2 kickstart with mumove4k module and some other goodies rekicked with blizkick and mufastzero, with fastexec and fastssp options, from mmulib. I got a nice little boost on I/O ops

I have exec in fast ram now using fastexec, I'll look at those other bits too. Cheers.

[jcgeuze]

Originally Posted by MGAmiga90

I was looking at the indy AGA - bit expensive though. Just missed out on a Mk2 on ebay...not sure what the differences are between Mk2 and 3.

My TV is working at 1280x512 via Scart at present and is bearable and games are fine, so may put up with it. Not as nice as my 500 with RTG and RGB2HDMI though...

Anyone know how to get lightwave 3.5 to work on RTG screens?
My interface is ok, but the 3d displays draw squashed up on the left of the screen...regardless of resolution picked..

ik think the mk3 allows you to adjust the screen using keyboard shortcuts, so you don't need to go back to WB to adjust the config.

[Jpor]

Originally Posted by jcgeuze

ik think the mk3 allows you to adjust the screen using keyboard shortcuts, so you don't need to go back to WB to adjust the config.

The MK3 also has a VGA and HDMI outputs (Only 1 of the outputs can be used at a time). There is also an Emrgency Boot disk you can download and use just in case you’ve borked your settings and can’t get a video output.