08.Nov.2022
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Video interview: Jens Schönfeld talked about acceletator board projects
At this year's AmiWest among other things an interview between Bill Borsari and Jens Schönfeld was planned, which couldn't take place due to technical difficulties. This has now been made up for via Jitsi and published on YouTube. The two mainly talked about the ACA1240/1260 turbo cards first announced by Individual Computers at the end of December 2018, of which the first pictures of the cooling system were shown a year later.
As Schoenfeld reports, 18 boards of the fifth prototype "release candidate" status of the ACA1240 have currently been built and are now undergoing various tests again. This version has 256MB SD-RAM and does not need a separate power supply, but is designed to work with the standard power supply of the A1200. Schoenfeld explained that despite the higher clock speed, DDR memory would bring more disadvantages than advantages for this processor, and the apparently slower SD-RAM would have noticeable advantages that would make a 68040-40 faster in some (albeit few) disciplines than a 68060-50 on a 1990s board.
The fan would be barely audible due to the generously sized heatsink and temperature control. One thing would still have to be checked before serial production could start: the correct functionality of the MicroSD card slot.
His announcement at Amiga37 that the delivery could be done by Christmas seems unlikely at the moment, because the responsible employee was sick first and now has to take care of family matters. However, he hopes to be able to start production this year. The price for the smallest version with a 68040/25MHz CPU should be around 500 Euros. Versions with other CPUs may greatly increase the price. The capacity of the FPGA has been chosen so that there is room for future extensions. The circuit has already been checked so far that access to all signals is possible, which are necessary for planned (but not yet publicly known) extensions. The technology is similar to the Flickerfixer products from iComp: New features can be easily added via software update. Among other things, this was the reason why there were so many different prototypes: The interface for communication with the Amiga 1200 was completely new developed and contains a "quite sophisticated logic". So even theoretical maximum values (seven megabytes per second) can be reached when accessing the Chip RAM, independent of the processor's speed.
There would likewise be considerations to develop a dedicated graphics card that fits equally for different processors on the ACA1240/1260. Only a "proof of concept" circuit exists here so far, which has confirmed the stability of the memory while using the "fast GFX" port. When asked by Bill Borsari, Schönfeld confirmed that the specifications for this port can also be opened to other companies. Schönfeld spontaneously mentioned the name Lukas Hartmann, owner of the company mntmn, known for the graphics card ZZ9000.
Schönfeld described the ACA1240/1260 as "hackable" when asked because it is always equipped with a socket for the processor. However, a sale without a processor is not planned for warranty reasons. He advises customers who want to use their own 68060 processor to buy the cheapest version with 68040/25MHz.
Finally, he showed a very early prototype of the ACA600: This should fit into the case of the Amiga 600 including connected Amiga1200 turbo card and floppy drive. It should be developed as inexpensive as possible (50-60 Euro) and bring 8 MB RAM. Two use cases are planned:
- the usage with ACA12xx acceletator board to build a very powerful ECS Amiga
- the usage as ROM/RAM extension without an A1200 turbo card
The motivation for this new board is that the A600 is not fully A500 compatible and changes to the memory layout and Kickstart version are necessary to run certain (mostly older) A500 titles on the A600. Not only different Kickstart versions are included in the flash of the ACA600, but also other software. Schönfeld mentions the software equipment of the ACA1234, which brings the essential tools for the data transfer between other computers and the Amiga, as a comparison. According to Schönfeld, this has already had a lot of positive feedback from customers. The feature set of the ACA500plus should not be replicated with the ACA600, because many features of the ACA500plus are already included in the A600: The computer can boot from the internal IDE port, for which a CF card adapter is available. The PCMCIA slot can be equipped with another CF card adapter, for which the ACA600 only comes with the drivers, which can be used without further installation. According to Schönfeld, this also works if the floppy drive is defective and there is no other way to exchange data with other computers. (dr)
[News message: 08. Nov. 2022, 03:42] [Comments: 0]
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