Amiga Accelerator

TechnoFreek

Hey guys,

Bought an Amiga 1200 a while back fron amibay but only really got around to checking it out yesterday. It has a compact flash drive with whdload installed plus it has some sort of accelerator in the expansion slot.

Just wondering what these accelerators do? My one has 4mb available and the previous owner wired a physical switch to it to quickly disable or enable it.

So what are the pros and cons of these accelerators?

KeRbDoG

Looks like its either missing a FPU chip - prob by design.

The benefit of an accelerator is kinda obvious - to speed up the performance of the Amiga. Some games like 'Doom AGA' benefited greatly from them, the same as some rendering applications. Basically anything written to take advantage of them.
The main reason if I remember right from my poor Amiga days is you would want to disable the accelerator is compatibility with certain software/games.

Some of them also had various types of memory upgrades with them.

o1s1n

You also need 4MB of RAM for WHDLoad. Amiga 1200s only come with 2MB stock.

Not sure why there's a switch for it though.

TechnoFreek

The accelerator has 4mb on it.

o1s1n

TechnoFreek wrote: »

The accelerator has 4mb on it.

Yep I know, that's why it's there - for WHDLoad

TechnoFreek

Hmm. Maybe by switching the accelerator off it offers better compatability for disk based games

KeRbDoG

TechnoFreek wrote: »

Hmm. Maybe by switching the accelerator off it offers better compatability for disk based games

KeRbDoG wrote: »

The main reason if I remember right from my poor Amiga days is you would want to disable the accelerator is compatibility with certain software/games.

Yup, one of the main reasons - not due to too much memory but because of the acceleration itself

TechnoFreek

How would I go about finding out the make of accelerator I have? Can't see any obvious brand label

KeRbDoG

Its a Blizzard 1220/4;
http://www.bigbookofamigahardware.com/bboah/product.aspx?id=147

Your board doesn't have the FPU installed. Looks like the name of the board should be underneeth no?

KeRbDoG

Pic of the additional addon card for that accelerator for an additional 4MB

TechnoFreek

What's the fpu kerbdog?

Ill take another look at that card. Must have overlooked some sort of markings.

o1s1n

Floating Point Unit. See the big empty square? would go in there.

shleedance

The switch is most likely to change from the 020 CPU to whatever is on the card, probably to avoid any possible compatibility problems with older games/software. WHDLoad pretty much bypasses all of those issues though (at least with games), so no need to disable it.

I'm using an ACA 1220 accelerator for my Amiga 1200. Gives me 128mb of RAM and double the CPU speed. Only issue is that my motherboard needed to be modified to use it without freezing, though.

TechnoFreek

Anyone know how to save games running off whdload?

Tried cannon fodder (one of my all time faves) and when I tried to save I got booted to the Amiga os and some error message appeared.

With the original disks you'd get asked to insert a blank disk but not in this case.

shleedance

Probably an issue with the patching of the game to make it play without asking for multiple floppies etc.

There is probably some command line you can add in to the WHDLoad file properties to make it work.

shleedance

http://eab.abime.net/project-whdload/64818-save-game-feature-needed-badly-whdload.html

TechnoFreek

shleedance wrote: »

http://eab.abime.net/project-whdload/64818-save-game-feature-needed-badly-whdload.html

Thanks dude. Its not quite clear from the thread but saving cant be done?
Or willeditingg the cache line help me?

shleedance

I haven't tried it yet myself, don't play many games that require a save so it wasn't an issue that I had to face.

The thread says it's possible, but it depends on how the game saves.

TechnoFreek

Yeah, obviously many games just had passwords etc so those not any issue. Just the ones hat require a physical save.

Amiga at my brothers now but I'll investigate further and report back.

shleedance

You should look into the HxC floppy emulator for such games, basically can convert ADFs and load them straight from an SD card. However, your games only work depending on your CPU, kickstart and chipset.

TechnoFreek

shleedance wrote: »

You should look into the HxC floppy emulator for such games, basically can convert ADFs and load them straight from an SD card. However, your games only work depending on your CPU, kickstart and chipset.

That sounds familiar. Think Steve_Si has this setup

Steve X2

TechnoFreek wrote: »

That sounds familiar. Think Steve_Si has this setup

Indeed I do
Works really well and you dont need the LCD screen if you want to keep the Amiga looking mostly stock.

Here's a link to how I did my Amiga 600:
http://www.retrovia.ie/showthread.php/15916-Amiga-600-Floppy-Emulator-Mod-(with-LCD)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uUwS6KxAgJ8

shleedance

Awesome job. I've mine sticking out from the top, bit of a hack job but I plan to integrate it in a similar manner to yours someday. :P