ACA630 Review (well, first impressions in my A600 portable)

[Photon]

Final verdict:

OK, after over a week of real use, I can find no compatibility issues. There were a total of two older programs that didn't handle the accelerator: AsmOne 1.02 and the command fixed above. (AsmOne 1.02 works with my 68040 accel, except some functions in the Debugger. On ACA630, everything works except Debugger and 'j' :P)

Software used:
Workbench, DOpus, WHDLoad+probably 60 games so far, Dpaint 3.25 & 4, Protracker 2.3D & 3.15, Kefrens IFFConv 1.35, AsmOne 1.20, PowerPacker, lha, DiskMaster 1.4, and some more WB and CLI programs.

I've confirmed for myself that I can use this 24/7 reliably, and I'm pretty picky... And more than that, it's more compatible than my top of the line 68040 accelerator for A500 and it feels faster than my 68040! (An A4000/40 might be a different thing of course )

Especially, it just blazes through the startup-sequence and the disk access for small files and copying is MUCH faster (even compared to my top of the line GVP HC8+ interface with DMA transfer!) On the same CF card.

The loss of fastram and DF1-to-DF0-tunneling when accelerator is switched off has been mentioned. The first means you need to remove any SD-adapter from PCMCIA if you want fastram in '68000 mode'. The second means that you must keep your internal floppy if you need to boot disk games or demos, period (or put in your own DF1-to-DF0-hardware on the motherboard).

But for me those are problems worth solving to have this great accelerator, because ACA630 is problem-free and wonderful to use!

I especially love that the usual semi-old utilities worked right away

Was happy to see that, because as a coder I have a need to test in 68000 mode and don't want a lot of utility versions.

(On my 68040 I had to fiddle with caches and on my 68060 I had to use later versions of those utilities (but a big part could be AGA-fixing, of course).)


I'm very happy about buying the ACA630 and recommend it to everyone without hesitation. The speed really surprised me, I knew roughly what to expect, but I think even those with 50-MHz 68030s will feel it's faster with 2-3 MIPS less...

[AlfaRomeo]

Hi Photon,
I have a joytech LCD same as your´s and I liked to connect it to my A600 too but I had lost his remote so I can´t give any instructions to the LCD.
Maybe you can help me.. If I connect the LCD by RGB, when power it, he recognise the signal or I must select the input?

[Photon]

Originally Posted by AlfaRomeo

Hi Photon,
I have a joytech LCD same as your´s and I liked to connect it to my A600 too but I had lost his remote so I can´t give any instructions to the LCD.
Maybe you can help me.. If I connect the LCD by RGB, when power it, he recognise the signal or I must select the input?

You don't need the remote, I don't even use mine It detects input automatically, and also - the buttons under the screen are the same as the buttons on the remote. So no problem

If you have more questions, please make a thread about the screen, I'd like to keep this thread about the ACA630 accelerator.

[Eriond]

I'm happy to join the growing crowd of ACA630 owners, and have nothing but praise about this marvellous piece of fresh hardware from Jens.

Finally this smallest member of the Amiga family can compete with the big dragons right out of its modest box... I will now go ahead to mount a WiFi card to see the web for the first time from my laptop-sized A600HD.

/Eriond

[Cammy]

The A600 isn't the smallest member of the Amiga family, the CD32 is smaller.

[nixxjsteve]

Whats with the keys? Black keys would be better

[Photon]

Keyboard was only slightly yellowed, in pretty good nick. Except the space bar, which apparently was made from another type of plastic.

The touchpad was brand new and porcelain-white, there was no way the case would match that whiteness. So I matched them with the screen using matte car bumper spray which is excellent, and matched the yellowed spacebar to that.

Non-black keyboard is fine.

[Photon]

OK, since the ACA630 quickboot jumper (NoDisk) and use-DF1-as-DF0 jumper (BootSel) will 'kill' PCMCIA if both enabled, I made a simple DF1 floppy terminator.

Same method as for the DF0 terminator, same pins but different pin numbers. Put a normal low-power diode like 1N4148 between pin 11 and 21, black stripe towards 21. Done!

I made a dongle for it, because I'll probably remove the BootSel jumper. Just a temporary test. Booted 4.9 seconds faster.


So now those who use the BootSel jumper know that they add 4.9 seconds to their boot-time. - until they have a DF1 Terminator. The jumper is not very useful anyway, so.