ACA1221 Amiga Accelerator Review - The Obsolete Geek

[@The8BitGuy]

I hate to admit it.. but I had a hard time telling any difference in the side-by-side views of the games between stock and accelerated. Then again, since I'm used to a stock Amiga 500, it all seemed impressive.

[@astrokidd5251]

+The 8-Bit Guy I like your videos

[@Cythil]

+The 8-Bit Guy Yeah I did not see much difference in Elite: Frontier. But the first game there was clearly a difference. I suspect it has to do with the fact that theses game where often optimized to run on the hardware. So the extra power do not do much.

[@LangyTangy]

Hello I'm one of your subscribers

[@HelloKittyFanMan.]

+The 8-Bit Guy Heh, hi, Dave Murray! It's fun to see some cross-channel commenting from your other favorite creators. :)

[@ArneSchmitz]

You can see a difference in the high poly scenes of Frontier. But yeah, for most parts it is unnoticeable

[@JetScreamer_YT]

Great stuff. I'm always happy when new projects are made for old tech.

[@ModernVintageGamer]

thanks for the shoutout Rob, great video !

[@lolboy01]

I have honestly no idea what you're talking about but i just like watching you go on and on about these old computers Keep it up!

[@SadamFlu]

I used to own 3 Amiga 500, and 1 Amiga 1200. They were awesome!

[@austingreen6042]

I recieved mine today, great card for the money. unlike the classic cards. it isn't mega money, this is a card for normal people in check with reality and their wallet !

[@austingreen6042]

+mipmipmipmipmip For the end user such as myself it's excellent value for money, and to unlock everything 'around the world' is only an extra €40/£31 making my total outlay £89.32 IMHO it's a bargain (and works perfectly too)

[@FairPlay137]

What is the first MOD file playing in the background? I've heard it once in a cracktro.

[@adamc.kooyer228]

Heya. So... I accidentally hit the subtitles link on your video at about 5:00. Your shout out to "Modern Vintage Gamer" is translated as "My Bitches Gamer." Which is pretty funny. I don't know if I would even complain about it to Google.

[@ToddsNerdCave]

Great video Rob! I personally think the lower price and unlockable upgrades is a great feature. Buy the base hardware for cheap and when/if you need more memory or higher clock speed, you can purchase a cheap license to "upgrade" the card. For those on a shoestring budget, purchasing the card for $80 and then later down the road buying the unlocks offers fantastic value for money. No need to sell the card (at most likely a loss) just to buy a different, faster model.

[@chickenlivers]

How many owners of the ACA1221 have never power cycled during 'trial mode' I wonder... or even found a way to have it 'always on'..? I really like the company though, their flickerfixers/scan doublers are amazing.

[@GroovyDrifter]

Well... compared to the ACA1220 this feels like a bit of a scam. I won't support this new marketing strategy buying anything that includes hardware licensed unlocks. I think they are not fair nor safe. Who can assure me that the card will keep performing the same in the future? Imagine some virus deleting the upgrades or loosing them after a repair? What if Individual goes out of business? I've bought 3 accelerator cards from Individual but not any more If they continue this way.

[@lorumipsum1129]

Better too just get the 68030 accelerators and be done with it

[@enigma776]

Would be interested in seeing TFX running using that board. I know its not the most stable of games to begin with but I think it would help it out no end. The 68EC020 is the economy version of the cpu which is not as good, there were variants that had the 68020 as standard also a 040/060 model as well. But expansion boards were the norm even back in the early 90s.

[@amigadude6409]

Awesome video.... well constructed and informative.

[@KieranShort]

looks good. there is clearly a difference in frame rates between 17 & 28mhz OC. I guess there should be! Easy upgrade idea tho, I like it. keeps production costs down too just having 1x hardware.

[@weirdmindofesh]

I suppose if the fully unlocked board doesn't cost as much as one of the original aftermarket accelerator boards, I guess I'm okay with it. It just seems like that business model is ripe for abuse in such a niche market.

[@JasonLijewski]

whats the song that starts at 2:39 ??

[@Antipastry]

+Jason Lijewski dubmood - WoTW the one and only

[@obsoletegeek]

+guy at desk Amiga-ized via a cracktro!

[@JasonLijewski]

guy at desk ty

[@JasonLijewski]

The Obsolete Geek ty

[@GaryKildall]

Its melody is based on Flight747 from an MSX 1 computer game from year 1985 and changed but enhanced to Amiga standards.

[@appurushido]

Is that true that i have to remove 2 Capacitors on the Board to use this Card ??

[@NapanTR]

Imagine if intel did this pay-to-overclock bullshit. That's evil.

[@tziuriky86]

+NapanTR I also find this "in-app" style of thing not fun in general, however this is my experience: since my 030 / 50mhz accelerator died, I needed something to be able to play WHDLoad games and load other programs, so I eventually bought this card at 79 euro and unlocked everything for about 40 euro more, so now I have a brand new accelerator covered by warranty, with a 28mhz cpu and 64mb of ram and I spent less than 130 euro in total. Quite nice in comparison to paying 200 euro for a crappy 4mb expansion like the ones sold on evilBay. And if one doesn't need all the expansions (say, if they just want to play most WHDload games), they are going to get a 9mb ram expansion and a 17mhz cpu (with all the benefits of the Fast ram) for as little as 79 euro, still way better than any old card being sold on eBay at crazy prices.

[@ModernVintageGamer]

+NapanTR you think they havent? this is more common than you think - www.engadget.com/2010/09/18/intel-wants-to-charge-50-to-unlock-stuff-your-cpu-can-already-d/

[@twoquickcapri]

+NapanTR No, they just make you pay more for an unlocked chip and a motherboard with a chipset that will allow overclocking.

[@umageddon]

+NapanTR They are! What do you think ht K models are all about?

[@AiOinc1]

They already have. See: 386SX See: 486SX See: Celeron-II series See: Celeron-III series

[@Geardos1]

Do the games run twice as fast? Seems the polygon based games are running 'faster' not just with a better framerate. Licensing the card this way is pretty interesting.

[@obsoletegeek]

+Geardos Some of these games were designed for the original 7MHz 68000-based Amiga, so they are designed to frameskip. With a faster CPU it can certainly speed up these games.

[@jakubnovak5061]

Whats MOD playing in CPU part of video

[@CoyotepeltPlays]

4:04 What music is this? I really like it

[@GaryKildall]

I used an Amiga for 32 polyphonic channels music creation for 7 years. Windows 95 could not offer real time music recording and was far to unstable. It was 1999 when at 200 Mhz a Pentium with Windows 98 could do what an Amiga 500 could do since 1987 with Music X from David Joiner.

[@darrencafferty]

I remember music x lol I used to use bars & pipes and Octamed, I used to have a A500 with a GVP 52mb HD with 2mb fastram in it, bloody thing was nearly a yard wide 😀

[@Akriashi]

Okay, so the add-in board has it's own CPU..does this mean the new CPU takes over and the builtin one is inactive, or can the Amiga go dual-cpu (perhaps divying up responsibilities)?

[@henrikmikaelkristensen4784]

No, they can't do that. I'm not sure of the exact reason. However, when some boards started coming with PowerPC CPU's, they would also come with a 68060 on board to avoid emulating 68k software on PPC. It was a kludgy and expensive solution and in hindsight, emulation would have been a better idea.

[@Akriashi]

Probably too complicated to get working, like with the Saturn (only one cpu can access the system bus at a time,and that was managed by the SCU (its northbridge?)

[@galier2]

There's still only one system bus, chipset and memory. If both CPU run they would fight for that bandwidth. So one has to be put to sleep while the other has access to the system.

[@ingvarjensen9535]

Whats the song starting at about 2:40 called? I liked it

[@dmitryeight]

intro number 61 by WOTW. Not by Dubmood who make remix.

[@1973Washu]

So what is the price of the fully unlocked version?

[@outerspacebass]

28Mhz be gettin all the frames! thanks for the video. nice graphics

[@markrobinson6396]

Frontier looked identical on both!

[@RetroMarkyRM]

does this work on all a1200s...or do I have to do a capacitor mod?

[@104d_3rr0r_vince]

Nice presentation

[@vorkev1]

have you figured out how to hack the unit yet to unlock everything. My self I am wondering if maby it just posable to to change the 10 set of trile mode to such a high number it would never end

[@talkartoons]

I wish there was something like this for a compaq III

[@TobyDeshane]

While it seems like nice enough hardware, the 'licensed unlock' idea like a dead-end business model. Probably would have been best to just have a completely configurable card and just charge more up front (if the goal here was to avoid different models). Your customers will be happier in the long run (depending on the price) and won't feel ripped off, and you won't unnecessarily make yourself a target for piracy. **shrug** :/

[@niino4329]

+Toby Deshane The Raspberry Pi did this, too, with the MPEG-2 and VC-1 codecs, and - as far as I know - with success.

[@TobyDeshane]

martravi Fair enough. Just speculation on my part. :)

[@plechaim]

Mine has died after 3.5 years of occasional use, while it was nice when it worked I couldn’t vouch for its longevity

[@VarietyGamerChannel]

But can it run crys....I love your channel by the way! I remember the days my friends installed windows 95 on an 80286 with 2mb of ram. They succeeded, but it would take 2 hours to start up.

[@Patchuchan]

+VarietyGamer Sure you didn't mean an 80386 as that's the minimum cpu that can run windows 95?

[@VarietyGamerChannel]

It was a 286. They altered the install, employed all sorts of trickery to pull it off. Patchuchan

[@DangerousPictures]

Since the Card has no way to Check with some Sort of license Server, it shouldn't be too hard to crack it

[@PhoenixNL72-DEGA-]

I fail to see how this is an "accelerator" board? It has the same processor (al be it a different version) running at the same or only slightly higher clock speed (21MHz) as the 28MHz version would probably cause problems in the long run. It feels to me more like a fastram expension board with FPU unit. Most true accelerator boards of the era had 68030 clocked at least twice as high as the on board 14.28MHz (I believe it was) 68EC020. The really highend ones featured a 68040 but those weren't as popular due to the much higher price. There were some 68020 bases cards but those were a minority, mainly because the 68030 was faster per clock cycle then the 68020 and therefore delivered more performance for the money.

[@thiesenf]

I had a Blizzard1260 card with an 060@50MHz and 32MB FastRAM in my A1200... it was a KS3.0 which was mapROMed to KS3.1 at the very beginning of the heavily modded Startup-Sequence which actually survived warm reboots (I loved the MMU of the B1260)

[@danyoutube7491]

I remember that there was a highly rated '020 accelerator for the A1200 clocked at 28Mhz (I think you could later get '020s at 40Mhz), and it made a big difference. A full '020 rather than the EC, and running at 28Mhz, was a very significant upgrade according to the review results in magazines.

[@Rpendrick]

Are you and 8 Bit Guy from Wisconsin!?

[@disc_lord]

I think they're based somewhere in the southwest.

[@MRTOWELRACK]

Based on the 8 Bit Guy's Chevrolet Volt and camera videos, I remember him being from Texas. Plus, there's his accent which sounds southern.

[@weepingscorpion8739]

They're from the Dallas-Fort Worth area of Texas.

[@maniaque37]

the card is no longer 79 euros it is now sold more around 130 euros in 2018. it is sad u dont show how to install and configure the card...

[@robercano]

One more like and your var may overflow! :D

[@POKEGAMERZ-uy5lv]

The games don't have much of a change between 14 MHz and 28 MHz.

[@zerodegrees8]

$80us and costs less then $10 to make but it's being sold at cost? Makes no sense to me.

[@MaverickM1]

Never again I.C. product...

[@MaverickM1]

Worst support ever....

[@pelgervampireduck]

so...microtransactions for hardware??? that's insane, screw them, buy from another company.

[@meloehaze726]

your hats....arkansas? or alabama? consider yer answer carefully :p

[@felenov]

I hate when hardware is crippled by software. HACK IT! I have a Wicher 500i Ex

[@infraviolet]

this hardware unlocking bullshit is a fucking joke, but i'm sure someone will figure out a way past it so you can use a base board with the full 28 MHz and 63MB memory

[@louiei.1552]

Infra Violet Im trying to see why thid model is so disliked honestly, nothing is bought at cost at like a store or online, these guys gotta make a profit with this accelerator card. Could you explain why its so bad?

[@infraviolet]

Louie I. i personally think its somewhat scummy to build hardware on a board and rely on unlocks for profit, just enable it fully for one price

[@machinerin151]

Wait. Let me get this straight. They are trying to sell keys... For completely offline stuff. And there is 100% chance there is keygen for that online. How in the world?.. Who will bu... ?..

[@kuntosjedebil]

You'd be surprised that the piracy riddled platform like Amiga got a nice detox. I don't believe it is even possible to find any WHDLoad keys online, so I don't think that for such niche thing like this board there will be any keygen at all.

[@stumblepuppy606]

But I liked the piracy scene, it's where all the great cracktros came from and the trainers too

[@danyoutube7491]

@@stumblepuppy606 I hated the piracy scene, the self satisfied thieves boasting of their deeds with their cheap little 'cracktros'. I am sure they contributed to the decline of the Amiga, with ports of big games being shoddy or not happening at all because they didn't need the few thousand sales they would get from the Amiga market when they had millions of PC and console owners actually paying their wages by buying the game.

[@someonedab7222]

First

[@dlander67]

fail...

[@unebonnevie]

No difference at all between the 14mhz and 28mhz!