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"You can't really use '040 performance in an A2000"... Oh, my sweet summer child... :) My Blizzard 2060 sends its regards. :P Jokes aside, good review of an interesting card. Thanks!
Fantastic expose of a card I never heard of - except i do have a 68030-TK2 running @51MHz in an A500 with 10 MIPS that this is the clone of for the A2K. Neat.
Yes, its a brother from another mothers and Im very glad I was able to get it. Now I just need to get a decent graphics card in there, or maybe save that only for my A4000?
Not only is Z2 RAM slower than what a CPU slot accelerator can give, but Zorro cards can also stop working if that 8MB limit is reached. RTG, SCSI, and even an x86 bridgeboard all count towards that 8MB.
The default amount of chip memory on the Amiga 2000 and 500 was 512K not one meg. Most Amiga software runs fine on 512K of chip memory and 512K of fast memory (one meg total). 😃
for the c64 id like to see a drop in replacement with addition of the sid or vic to: a sound card, video card. a sound card that can drop into the 40pin dip and include the sid as a chip on the board i could select as the primary sound output device. a wave table header for wavetable synthesis, and an fm synth chip, all on the same board, running independent or all at the same time. a vic II drop in replacement video card that could display full screen, no borders; yet, display border information when called, max resolution of 1024x768x24bpp, 32,768 colors or more. and i know this might be far fetched, a small gpu. i would love to see you take on something like that and make it happen.
But why would you want that for a C64? There would be zero software to showcase it? Why not instead get a C128, put a memory expansion in it, learn 6510 assembly and write some code that makes REAL use of that machine. That WAS the ultimate C64 of its era, right? There are some projects I would certainly like to "make happen" but Im afraid I really don't have that kind of influence at all.
I would have liked to see some real world examples to gauge it's overall speed. Playing mp3 (without a prelude), some rendering, i-browse, things of this nature.
I was going to ask whether it was an NVMe or a SATA m.2 drive. Almost all today are NVMe which is PCIe and I assume not supported by that board. If it uses SATA you will have to hunt a bit for SATA m.2.
Im not sure to be honest, as I said in the review, I did not get the newer manual, so I had no mention of what type of drive it is, good point! If 8 Bit Dreams is reading these comments, maybe he can step in and answer?
Really useful video, thanks for running through the install. Could you give us a bit more info on the video output you've got setup on this machine? I think I spotted an RGB2HDMI in there?
I'm working on a video right now to show that, but also to look at a card which came with it, the Grand Slam aka the Trump Card, which is another SCSI + mem card. Should be out this week.
hrm, well, I guess in terms of actual productivity, not much. I use them, more for their historical context. In short, I like to go back and see all the things I missed, back in the day. I only had so much money and time back then, and I find it fascinating to see all the things that passed me by. I guess you can call it love of old tech. Like an old car, 1:1 its not as good as a modern car, but thats not why you drive it eh?
@@RetronautTech I had an Amiga 500 with scsi hard drive, extra memory, and a flicker-fixer. Back in the day, it was great. But today, even a cheap Windows PC with 27-inch 1440p monitor is light years better than an Amiga.
@@DerekDavis213 Yes, it is, but I think your missing the point. A modern Tesla is way better than an 80s hypercar. But wouldnt you at least like to drive an 80s Testarossa or similar? For me, I mainly like games, but I also used 3D back then, so I plan to try out somethings on these machines, my A2000 and A4000 in terms of 3D. If going back and trying out old kit and software, thats fine, if its not your thing, its not your thing...
@@RetronautTech Ok I guess the 80's Ferrari is a good analogy. I do remember lots of good games on the Amiga, but I wonder if I could tolerate the low video resolution, compared to modern standards. Amiga was maybe 640 x 400. Versus 2560 x 1440 today. So *14* *times* more pixels on a Windows PC. wow
@@DerekDavis213 some games are still surprisingly playable, some not so. Even ones that I had but never played are sometimes addictive. RTG would be the win but most games don’t support it, desktop apps how ever do seem to benefit from the extra screen real estate.
excellent video and very good presentation, but of course I don't understand the purpose of these cards anymore, when for much less money you can have a pistorm which is clearly much better in many things, if you want to work natively on the amiga you just have a 68040 that you can do everything, once again you want to work with caffeine os and take your amiga to new levels and this is also easy, it's good to move forward and not stay stuck in the old if we want to see new things in the amiga, and thinking about what was the real reason that our beloved amiga, came to the point where people gave up on it, I'll tell you just one game Wolfenstein just that.
It's to do with what we want, subjectively. Some want to move the Amiga on. For me, the Amiga ended in the 90s when Commodore went bust. Commodore for me was like a family, from the C64 onwards. So once Amiga was not owned by them, I was not interested. I know, for some that is sacrilege, but the truth is Commodore failed to update the platform in a timely manner so it could not compete with the surging rise of PC technology. To be fair, that was the same for Apple too, they nearly went under as well, until Steve Jobs took a daring step and made machines that were totally different to PCs of that era. So to be fair to Commodore it was a REALLY difficult fence to jump. Remember Amiga had PC bridge-boards so it was actually riding that wave as well, to its own detriment... Now, I LOVE my Amiga's as I did back then, but for me, its more about making machines that are true to what Commodore produced. So I like to use real hardware as much as I can. Though that is something of a losing battle, and can be expensive. I took a PiStorm2000 OUT of this machine and replaced it with this card, and for me it was a good move. A PiStorm is for me an emulator embedded in an Amiga case. If you don't mind emulators and you ONLY want to use software, then thats cool. There is WinUAE, its free and to be fair its a LOT less hassle then owning a real Amiga. But I want these old machines, to put old cards in, accelerators, new ones as well, as long as they are hardware based. Its the physical aspect of retrotech I think people miss out on. The sometimes crappy keyboards, the floppy disks, SCSI controllers, etc. For me that is what I am going back to experience. I spent days repairing this A2000 and then refurbishing it. So gutting it and putting an emulator in it felt bad. Thats just me. The PiStorm IS a good product, and if you found say a totally knackered A2000 and a PiStorm2000 gets it to be usable, then thats a good thing. But yeah, each to their own.
@@RetronautTech I really understand what you mean and how you think, many people think exactly like you, this is also a way of how each person sees things from their own side :)
Very nice video and a lot of good information. What I would be curious to see is how fast is the drive when the CPU is under heavy load. I do not know if this card has some kind of DMA. On my A1200 with a FastATA I can get around 6.5-7 MB/s but when the CPU is on heavy load that drops to 1.5 MB/s. This is a problem in real life situations, i.e. you use the IBrowse to load websites with images and that loads slowly because the image writing on the disk is slow, unless if you save them in memory. Or if you put your machine to play back some mods while you copy files, this will increase the completion time. That's why preferred to switch to a SCSI solution.
I agree, SCSI using DMA would be the trick in this situation I think. Maybe have a read up about the LIDE ROM, maybe it has some kind of DMA tricks up its sleeves?
@@walkero Im afraid this machine has no network solution as yet, though I guess I could try and get a tracker setup on it and try that out. I think in the end though, if you want autonomous data read, then you need SCSI with DMA. Not sure there are that many period correct solutions with that (Fastlane Z3) but I guess more modern accelerators might have that combo?
The Image Engine card looks like it uses the TI 340 (10 or 20) chip which is the same used in the A2410 from Commodore and DMI Resolver graphics cards. Those are interesting since that is an actual processor and software runs on them, not just a display card. So my Resolver came with a paint program that actually runs on the card itself which is why those cards have so much RAM. Have you tried to find the software for either of those? I know the software for the DMI cards is obtainable as I did download it once a while ago. I should hunt it down since I see it's not on the Amiga hardware database which would be a good place to have a resource like that. No guarantees the software is interchangeable but, there is always a chance. There, IIRC, was even an older version of Cybergraphics that supported these types of cards but I'm pretty sure if it did exist, later versions removed it once these cards were no longer a thing. They were never very common due to the high cost of them due to them being almost a complete computer in themselves. Amiga UNIX also supported the TI graphics processor cards and was the reason for the 2410.
Wow, can you email me please, via the channels email address? So, where to start.... I need to do a short video on this card, as its worth focussing on, certainly. It was intended for use in broadcast TV AFAIK, as it has a 768 x 574 24bit buffer, which supports an 8bit alpha channel. On top of this, it can scroll an image on top of that, again in hardware. So it sounds like the perfect card for sports broadcast, or maybe a weather spot? In terms of the chip, yes its a Texas Instruments 34020. There was a paint package for it, which also worked on Amiga Centre For Scotlands card, the Harlequin. I THINK the software for the Harlequin, works on this card as well, not sure about drivers. The paint app was called Imagica, and yes I have searched for that, and I cant find ANY sofware of that name archived. Same for the Harlequin, there is a game of that name, but no archived drivers. BTW the hard disk was missing from this machine when bought, and no floppies or any other packaging were provided so. Please reach out via email, and we can discuss further?
@@DerekDavis213 Because I'm a massive fan or Mr Do! and Mr Do's Castle. In fact, I own both arcade PCBs and eventually plan to get them in a cabinet or two. A couple of future projects maybe...
@@RetronautTech Mr Do's Wild Ride is fun too, and then there is the Mr Do game that many people don't know about: Do-Run-Run. I play that on MAME, and it's great!
Why do 99% reviewers have Data Burst of 030 set to off? Is it really that pointless to have it on with such (fast) Fast RAM? I remember it added some 7-8% speed on my M-Tec 030 card on A1200
@@wishusknight3009 I did try turning it on in SysInfo, and ran a speed test, and... no difference. I then ran SpeedTest and the same. In which specific benchmarks does it have an effect. Id be willing to have a look, if I knew where to test it. But if the comment above is right, and its a crash monkey, is it worth it?
@@RetronautTech From what I understand, Zorro has no provisions for snooping. Which makes data caches on Amiga very hit and miss for software compatibility. And hardware compatability as well. Basically data caches needed to be disabled for area's of ram occupied by things like x86 bridgeboards and RTG cards for example. I am not sure but I think most 030 libraries disable this feature further up the chain which makes turning them on in sysinfo etel make no difference? That is my guess. The machine I swore i used to see the difference on was an A2000 which had an A500 socket accelerator, but had no fast ram as I was missing that part of the accelerator (it was a separate clip on). So it got all its bandwidth through the zorro bus. (yeah it was pretty pokey). I swear I used to notice a few percent differences with it on and thought that is what happened with all Amiga's. As to what cpu libraries or version of sysinfo I had, I couldn't tell you, i have not had that machine for several years. It was workbench 3.1 with a few things added. I will try this out on my accelerated A500 when I get a chance. Which currently runs WB 3.2 and its default libraries. I suspect I will see no difference and be scratching my head as to why I remember things so wonky.
I always thought there was something 'off' about this channel. Shilling at the start, zero recognition that 'Diecke Olga' is a humorous play on 'Fat Agnus'. Reading out from websites with no attempt to contact the designers or do any research. Sigh. Good luck.
@markwrightrf. Not sure if you watched the video? But the content creator as far as I see it, did his research and gave the kudos deserved to those who made this card.. If you know any different? Then feel free to give constructive answers. Do you have a UA-cam channel we can watch?
Retronaut now has a dedicated Amiga Discord channel, discord.gg/8uxJa6QX where you can chat with like minded Amiga nuts (such as me). For those who JOIN my channel (hit the JOIN button above). There are exclusive Channels on the Discord where you can chat directly with me and other members. So why not jump in today and join the Amiga Discord!
Link does not work
Excellent video, you'll be needing that 2MB Chip RAM board now, plus of course an RTG card. A few options there as well 😊
I am interested in expanding the chip ram. I have a rejuvenator for my 1000’s but nothing for the 2000
@@geofftaylor8913 Amibay has a few options
"You can't really use '040 performance in an A2000"... Oh, my sweet summer child... :) My Blizzard 2060 sends its regards. :P Jokes aside, good review of an interesting card. Thanks!
Hey, no probs.
Thanks for the Disk Olge video 👍🏻
Our pleasure!
Fantastic expose of a card I never heard of - except i do have a 68030-TK2 running @51MHz in an A500 with 10 MIPS that this is the clone of for the A2K. Neat.
Yes, its a brother from another mothers and Im very glad I was able to get it. Now I just need to get a decent graphics card in there, or maybe save that only for my A4000?
@@RetronautTech maybe a ZZ-9000 for the A2K, gets you more mem and usb/ethernet too!
Cool video. DJCook is building my card now. Exciting times.
Did you get your card yet?
Not only is Z2 RAM slower than what a CPU slot accelerator can give, but Zorro cards can also stop working if that 8MB limit is reached. RTG, SCSI, and even an x86 bridgeboard all count towards that 8MB.
The default amount of chip memory on the Amiga 2000 and 500 was 512K not one meg. Most Amiga software runs fine on 512K of chip memory and 512K of fast memory (one meg total). 😃
for the c64 id like to see a drop in replacement with addition of the sid or vic to: a sound card, video card. a sound card that can drop into the 40pin dip and include the sid as a chip on the board i could select as the primary sound output device. a wave table header for wavetable synthesis, and an fm synth chip, all on the same board, running independent or all at the same time. a vic II drop in replacement video card that could display full screen, no borders; yet, display border information when called, max resolution of 1024x768x24bpp, 32,768 colors or more. and i know this might be far fetched, a small gpu. i would love to see you take on something like that and make it happen.
But why would you want that for a C64? There would be zero software to showcase it? Why not instead get a C128, put a memory expansion in it, learn 6510 assembly and write some code that makes REAL use of that machine. That WAS the ultimate C64 of its era, right?
There are some projects I would certainly like to "make happen" but Im afraid I really don't have that kind of influence at all.
Whoa really cool project!
Yep, so far its working very well, a very cool solution.
I would have liked to see some real world examples to gauge it's overall speed. Playing mp3 (without a prelude), some rendering, i-browse, things of this nature.
I was going to ask whether it was an NVMe or a SATA m.2 drive. Almost all today are NVMe which is PCIe and I assume not supported by that board. If it uses SATA you will have to hunt a bit for SATA m.2.
Im not sure to be honest, as I said in the review, I did not get the newer manual, so I had no mention of what type of drive it is, good point! If 8 Bit Dreams is reading these comments, maybe he can step in and answer?
There is a m.2 b-key text printed above the connector, that hints that its probably sata only.
@@squisherderheldjo that is right only SATA b-key...
Really useful video, thanks for running through the install. Could you give us a bit more info on the video output you've got setup on this machine? I think I spotted an RGB2HDMI in there?
I'm working on a video right now to show that, but also to look at a card which came with it, the Grand Slam aka the Trump Card, which is another SCSI + mem card. Should be out this week.
Have you tried IBrowse? How's the performance with the Dicke Olga?
The Olga card turbo charges the A2000, but what can you do with an A2000 in 2024? I mean compared to a PC or Mac.
hrm, well, I guess in terms of actual productivity, not much. I use them, more for their historical context. In short, I like to go back and see all the things I missed, back in the day. I only had so much money and time back then, and I find it fascinating to see all the things that passed me by. I guess you can call it love of old tech. Like an old car, 1:1 its not as good as a modern car, but thats not why you drive it eh?
@@RetronautTech I had an Amiga 500 with scsi hard drive, extra memory, and a flicker-fixer. Back in the day, it was great.
But today, even a cheap Windows PC with 27-inch 1440p monitor is light years better than an Amiga.
@@DerekDavis213 Yes, it is, but I think your missing the point. A modern Tesla is way better than an 80s hypercar. But wouldnt you at least like to drive an 80s Testarossa or similar? For me, I mainly like games, but I also used 3D back then, so I plan to try out somethings on these machines, my A2000 and A4000 in terms of 3D. If going back and trying out old kit and software, thats fine, if its not your thing, its not your thing...
@@RetronautTech Ok I guess the 80's Ferrari is a good analogy. I do remember lots of good games on the Amiga, but I wonder if I could tolerate the low video resolution, compared to modern standards.
Amiga was maybe 640 x 400. Versus 2560 x 1440 today. So *14* *times* more pixels on a Windows PC. wow
@@DerekDavis213 some games are still surprisingly playable, some not so. Even ones that I had but never played are sometimes addictive. RTG would be the win but most games don’t support it, desktop apps how ever do seem to benefit from the extra screen real estate.
excellent video and very good presentation, but of course I don't understand the purpose of these cards anymore, when for much less money you can have a pistorm which is clearly much better in many things, if you want to work natively on the amiga you just have a 68040 that you can do everything, once again you want to work with caffeine os and take your amiga to new levels and this is also easy, it's good to move forward and not stay stuck in the old if we want to see new things in the amiga, and thinking about what was the real reason that our beloved amiga, came to the point where people gave up on it, I'll tell you just one game Wolfenstein just that.
It's to do with what we want, subjectively. Some want to move the Amiga on. For me, the Amiga ended in the 90s when Commodore went bust. Commodore for me was like a family, from the C64 onwards. So once Amiga was not owned by them, I was not interested.
I know, for some that is sacrilege, but the truth is Commodore failed to update the platform in a timely manner so it could not compete with the surging rise of PC technology. To be fair, that was the same for Apple too, they nearly went under as well, until Steve Jobs took a daring step and made machines that were totally different to PCs of that era. So to be fair to Commodore it was a REALLY difficult fence to jump. Remember Amiga had PC bridge-boards so it was actually riding that wave as well, to its own detriment...
Now, I LOVE my Amiga's as I did back then, but for me, its more about making machines that are true to what Commodore produced. So I like to use real hardware as much as I can. Though that is something of a losing battle, and can be expensive. I took a PiStorm2000 OUT of this machine and replaced it with this card, and for me it was a good move. A PiStorm is for me an emulator embedded in an Amiga case. If you don't mind emulators and you ONLY want to use software, then thats cool. There is WinUAE, its free and to be fair its a LOT less hassle then owning a real Amiga.
But I want these old machines, to put old cards in, accelerators, new ones as well, as long as they are hardware based. Its the physical aspect of retrotech I think people miss out on. The sometimes crappy keyboards, the floppy disks, SCSI controllers, etc. For me that is what I am going back to experience.
I spent days repairing this A2000 and then refurbishing it. So gutting it and putting an emulator in it felt bad. Thats just me. The PiStorm IS a good product, and if you found say a totally knackered A2000 and a PiStorm2000 gets it to be usable, then thats a good thing. But yeah, each to their own.
@@RetronautTech I really understand what you mean and how you think, many people think exactly like you, this is also a way of how each person sees things from their own side :)
Very nice video and a lot of good information. What I would be curious to see is how fast is the drive when the CPU is under heavy load. I do not know if this card has some kind of DMA. On my A1200 with a FastATA I can get around 6.5-7 MB/s but when the CPU is on heavy load that drops to 1.5 MB/s. This is a problem in real life situations, i.e. you use the IBrowse to load websites with images and that loads slowly because the image writing on the disk is slow, unless if you save them in memory. Or if you put your machine to play back some mods while you copy files, this will increase the completion time. That's why preferred to switch to a SCSI solution.
I agree, SCSI using DMA would be the trick in this situation I think. Maybe have a read up about the LIDE ROM, maybe it has some kind of DMA tricks up its sleeves?
@@RetronautTech Thank you for your reply. It would be interesting to share how this fine card behaves under these circumstances.
@@walkero Im afraid this machine has no network solution as yet, though I guess I could try and get a tracker setup on it and try that out. I think in the end though, if you want autonomous data read, then you need SCSI with DMA. Not sure there are that many period correct solutions with that (Fastlane Z3) but I guess more modern accelerators might have that combo?
@@RetronautTech Thank you so much for your replies. It is an interesting topic and that's a insightful discussion. Thank you.
It would be cool with 040 option
The Image Engine card looks like it uses the TI 340 (10 or 20) chip which is the same used in the A2410 from Commodore and DMI Resolver graphics cards. Those are interesting since that is an actual processor and software runs on them, not just a display card. So my Resolver came with a paint program that actually runs on the card itself which is why those cards have so much RAM. Have you tried to find the software for either of those? I know the software for the DMI cards is obtainable as I did download it once a while ago. I should hunt it down since I see it's not on the Amiga hardware database which would be a good place to have a resource like that. No guarantees the software is interchangeable but, there is always a chance. There, IIRC, was even an older version of Cybergraphics that supported these types of cards but I'm pretty sure if it did exist, later versions removed it once these cards were no longer a thing. They were never very common due to the high cost of them due to them being almost a complete computer in themselves. Amiga UNIX also supported the TI graphics processor cards and was the reason for the 2410.
Wow, can you email me please, via the channels email address? So, where to start.... I need to do a short video on this card, as its worth focussing on, certainly. It was intended for use in broadcast TV AFAIK, as it has a 768 x 574 24bit buffer, which supports an 8bit alpha channel. On top of this, it can scroll an image on top of that, again in hardware. So it sounds like the perfect card for sports broadcast, or maybe a weather spot?
In terms of the chip, yes its a Texas Instruments 34020. There was a paint package for it, which also worked on Amiga Centre For Scotlands card, the Harlequin. I THINK the software for the Harlequin, works on this card as well, not sure about drivers. The paint app was called Imagica, and yes I have searched for that, and I cant find ANY sofware of that name archived. Same for the Harlequin, there is a game of that name, but no archived drivers. BTW the hard disk was missing from this machine when bought, and no floppies or any other packaging were provided so. Please reach out via email, and we can discuss further?
Why Mr Do in the background?
Because the four Mr. Do coin-op games were so much fun?
@@DerekDavis213 Because I'm a massive fan or Mr Do! and Mr Do's Castle. In fact, I own both arcade PCBs and eventually plan to get them in a cabinet or two. A couple of future projects maybe...
@@RetronautTech Mr Do's Wild Ride is fun too, and then there is the Mr Do game that many people don't know about: Do-Run-Run. I play that on MAME, and it's great!
I also love Mr Do, I have aMiSTeR just to play it
Why do 99% reviewers have Data Burst of 030 set to off? Is it really that pointless to have it on with such (fast) Fast RAM? I remember it added some 7-8% speed on my M-Tec 030 card on A1200
Most software crashes with it so it is never used anyway. Its only good to pad benchmarks.
@@wishusknight3009 I did try turning it on in SysInfo, and ran a speed test, and... no difference. I then ran SpeedTest and the same. In which specific benchmarks does it have an effect. Id be willing to have a look, if I knew where to test it. But if the comment above is right, and its a crash monkey, is it worth it?
@@RetronautTech From what I understand, Zorro has no provisions for snooping. Which makes data caches on Amiga very hit and miss for software compatibility. And hardware compatability as well. Basically data caches needed to be disabled for area's of ram occupied by things like x86 bridgeboards and RTG cards for example.
I am not sure but I think most 030 libraries disable this feature further up the chain which makes turning them on in sysinfo etel make no difference? That is my guess.
The machine I swore i used to see the difference on was an A2000 which had an A500 socket accelerator, but had no fast ram as I was missing that part of the accelerator (it was a separate clip on). So it got all its bandwidth through the zorro bus. (yeah it was pretty pokey). I swear I used to notice a few percent differences with it on and thought that is what happened with all Amiga's. As to what cpu libraries or version of sysinfo I had, I couldn't tell you, i have not had that machine for several years. It was workbench 3.1 with a few things added.
I will try this out on my accelerated A500 when I get a chance. Which currently runs WB 3.2 and its default libraries. I suspect I will see no difference and be scratching my head as to why I remember things so wonky.
jep. die fette olga
"I speak English" - I always thought that you have good grammar for a foreigner.
I speaka da eeengleesh. Well, most of the time anyway :)
I hardly know her.
oO eh, whut?
@@RetronautTech You want me to do what to Olga? We've only just met!
I always thought there was something 'off' about this channel. Shilling at the start, zero recognition that 'Diecke Olga' is a humorous play on 'Fat Agnus'. Reading out from websites with no attempt to contact the designers or do any research. Sigh. Good luck.
Sorry, really not quite sure what your issue is?
I did not do the connection with Fat Agnus, I thought it was some kind of strange German humour to name it Dicke Olga lol
@@cv643d 8 Bit Dreams said it was some kind of German stereotype, so... East German shot putters came to mind, from the soviet era...
@markwrightrf. Not sure if you watched the video? But the content creator as far as I see it, did his research and gave the kudos deserved to those who made this card.. If you know any different? Then feel free to give constructive answers. Do you have a UA-cam channel we can watch?
You could just insert a floppy with the needed libs, duuh
And where would I get those libs from?
@@RetronautTech the Workbench disks
The olga eww sounds slavic.
Olga may be Slavic but it is a Slavic adaptation of the Germanic name Helga meaning "the Holy". :)
So I have a SUPER FAT HOLY object. Carumba!