What do you use your accelerated Amiga(s) for?

[tygre]

To impress my Ph.D. students

[mcgeezer]

It looks like we have a few camps here...

The first camp is those who have real Amiga's that have some sort of expansion

The second are those who run WinUAE

The third are those that run some sort of emulation, maybe an FPGA or Pi.

It's therefore pretty clear that hardly anyone in the Amiga scene runs a stock Amiga anymore making the scene incredibly niche from it's heydey.

oh well.

[roondar]

All the more reason to aim at whatever spec you like

[dreadnought]

I have an expansion (A500 + ACA500Plus) but I only got it so WHDLoad works with no fuss. And I guess it's nice that WB works a bit faster, plus it has soem nifty other functions. But all the games I play are in fact "stock", and that's pretty much the only config I care about. Suppose there's more people in similar position.

[amipal]

I gradually upgraded my A1200 in the late 90s/early 2000s to play the latest Amiga games. Initially started with an 8Mb RAM board, then onto a Blizzard 1230/IV.

As things became more complicated, and 3D raytracing in Cinema4D became one of the main uses for my machine, I looked for more upgrade routes. And so a BlizzardPPC '040 went in with 96Mb fast RAM, then a BlizzardVision. The graphics card was replaced a couple of years later with a MediatorPCI/Voodoo3 combo.

I still own this Power Tower'd A1200, which now has an '060-equiped BlizzardPPC and also 256Mb fast RAM in it. I can play nearly any Amiga game via WHDload, yet also play the late-era 68K games (such as Genetic Species/OnEscapee/Shadow of the Third Moon) and PPC games.

[grond]

Originally Posted by mcgeezer

The first camp is those who have real Amiga's that have some sort of expansion

The second are those who run WinUAE

The third are those that run some sort of emulation, maybe an FPGA or Pi.

It's therefore pretty clear that hardly anyone in the Amiga scene runs a stock Amiga anymore

Many amigans fall in more than one group. A lot of those that have an accelerated Amiga also have a stock Amiga with no accelerators.

[Seiya]

i have no more accelerated Amiga, but in the past i played only for 3D videogames

[Daedalus]

Originally Posted by DamienD

...but seriously, without WHDLoad then how many native games actually require an accelerator?

Probably much less than 100.

Does that include games that don't require an accelerator, but are better with one? It's probably still not a huge number, but if they make up a significant proportion of what you play, then the absolute number compared to the entire Amiga collection doesn't matter. For example, Syndicate is one of my favourite classics, but I wouldn't dream of playing it on a stock A500 when I enjoy it so much more on an 030 or 060 powered A1200.

[gulliver]

I have seen one option heavilly promoted these days which is missing in the poll:

* Just to boot the machine and run SysInfo like it was the ultimate thing.

[khph_re]

NOW:

Games that require a faster processor/RAM
Emulating a few older game systems
Faster DPaint/Brilliance
030 Demo's
Faster WB/more colours

1990's:

All the above plus:
Running MAC photoshop and illustrator for uni. Running soft windows in the MAC to do office stuff.
3D rendering in Lightwave, and Imagine.
Vista stuff.

[stevelord]

I use my Amiga with an 060/50 for a load of different things. I play games (and it's nice to not have to worry about speed for games generally). I play a lot of music (90% of the time I'm running Eagleplayer, Dopus and AmiTradeCenter) and I try to do as much productivity stuff as I can. I particularly enjoy using Lightwave, Vista and running Final Writer 97 at speed. My Amiga is even quick enough to run IBrowse... just about.

[YouKnowWho]

I bought one of these ACA 1221ec used for ram expansion mostly, and that thing is just lovely. Checked icomp and they had some newer version. Faster 68020 only plus RAM on those cards. Every 1200 I put that into now - it has been more than sufficient. Considering the price, it's a no brainer.

I wanted a 68060 - but then I asked the very question the OP here posted - WHY? Why do I even need this 060 thing? For what? To play Doom? Spend a grand for that? It's pointless. Same really applies to 68040, and after having the 1221 - that I really got for RAM, but boosted my system - it's really more than sufficient.

And so, I go 68030 fancy in a system or two, but 68020 is more than enough for my needs, which is gaming and productivity apps. I completely gave up on 060 because it is pointless.

If you want an 060 you may as well get the Vampire - and if you get the Vampire it's FPGA - so not even a Motorola CPU. If you want FPGA why not go DE10 Nano - and get all those other lovely vintage retro core capabilities? And at this point you're so far down the rabbit hole, just get a PI and emulate an Amiga.

And so...we're back to square one. Amiga and 68020 or maybe 68030 at most - it just sounds right.

[khph_re]

I agree with you..but that's right for us. If other people get fun out of 060/ vampire that's fine too.


For myself, if a cheap FPGA/Arm CPU replacement became available for the 1200 with 060 speed, I'd be on it like a tramp on chips, just because I've never seen 060 demo scene stuff on a classic Amiga.

[Dunny]

Originally Posted by mcgeezer

I was having a think earlier on today about my next game and had the thought about making additional improvements if the game is running on accelerated Amigas.

I think that if you could take advantage of the 1MB expanded Amigas then that would be lovely. Maybe cut down on floppy accessing by caching to RAM?

[dschallock]

I use my 060 Amiga 3000T for pixel art and animation. Use Brillance 2 alot for the pixel art and animation.
I use Take2 for quick pencil tests to see how the animation is moving, then I use an epson scanner and scan the pencil drawing into the Amiga and color them using ImageFX, ArtEffect, and Photogenics.
I use ImageFX4.5 to compositing between background and foregrounds using pancanvas and layer hand drawn animations that I output to my Personal Animation Recorder (PAR) card. I then use the AD516 sound card and sound studio to sync with the PAR card since they both use SMTP time code to add sound tracks and sound effects. I play it all back through an upscaler which takes the broadcast NTSC signal and upscales it to my HDTV.

What I want to do next is pump that signal back into the PC to make videos I can share on youtube and the like.

I can do all this with my modern PC too of course, but it is great fun to do it on my Amiga and I find the experience inspires me to creat more.

[nogginthenog]

Back in the day (1996?) my A4000/060 was my main computer. I was living with my parents and started my first job. I had loads of disposable cash so splashed out on a CSMKII. Still have it.

AmigaOS is a great operating system and even better with a fast CPU. 256+16Mb fast ram.

[Mathesar]

Originally Posted by nogginthenog

Back in the day (1996?) my A4000/060 was my main computer. I was living with my parents and started my first job. I had loads of disposable cash so splashed out on a CSMKII. Still have it.

AmigaOS is a great operating system and even better with a fast CPU. 256+16Mb fast ram.

This! Back in the day, when the Amiga was my main computer a 68060 made perfect sense. It was also the pinnacle of Amiga computing. Afaik, no other platform used the 68060 extensively.

[DMWCashy]

True story..

[YouKnowWho]

Originally Posted by Mathesar

This! Back in the day, when the Amiga was my main computer a 68060 made perfect sense. It was also the pinnacle of Amiga computing. Afaik, no other platform used the 68060 extensively.

This whole accelerator question goes even further for me for the desktop Amigas. Obviously we want best available graphics so AGA 4000 is the only choice. 2000 seems pointless. 3000 is not AGA so for broadest compatibility and gaming software not ideal. Plus you can have the 3000 looks with a Checkmate and 1200 AGA Mobo.

As much of a hard time as I have justifying 040+ acceleration on the 1200, I have even harder time justifying the desktop Amigas today. They're crazy expensive compared to 1200s. The benefit really is only Zorro slots, and those cards are expensive and relatively useless today - good Graphics card cost as much as 3060s today. For what? Such a huge pool of hardware for 1200s as well for IO. Unless someone still wants to TOAST, desktop Amiga is hard to justify.

Amiga 1200. Slightly sped up with 68020 or 68030 - more than sufficient. You can do nearly everything on it. It is slightly bigger than a keyboard. 1200 is just SO RIGHT! If you want more or rather different - to each is own. But I hardly see any logic in terms of feature-for-cost coming in favour of a desktop Amiga today. I'd rather have a few 1200 instead - as backup.

[Paulee_Bow]

I use a lot of music applications, some of the synth ones render quicker with a better CPU