"Mystery" Amiga 1200 Expansion

[@cullmaster7361]

Interesting video Jan. just to add. This card with 4MB RAM is PCMCIA friendly. Once you add the extra 4MB (To get 8MB) this will stop the PCMCIA from working as it runs in the 24-bit space. The add 4 modules do exist and they do from time to time show up on EBay for sale, especially on the U.K site. As for clocking the FPU to 40Mhz. It doesn’t add much to speed up the system.

[@brynjarborgersen8131]

Was a little let down you didn't try AIBB and the beachball with and without the FPU, as that should give an indication of how useful the fpu is

[@imqqmi]

Those expansion boards were insanely expensive even though it didn't contain an 68030. I was only able to afford a blizzard 1230 MMU/FPU 33MHz 4MB ram accelerator when the Amiga was on it's way out somewhere around 1994 I think and the expansion boards were dumped. I had a different one but was very unstable but it was about half the price of a blizzard probably around 250 dutch gilders while a 1230 was around 500 iirc. I used it to render with Scenery Animator, Vista Pro, Lightwave 3D etc. The FPU made a huge difference with that kind of software that came with '881 optimized executables.

[@JamesMossR33]

Sounds like the board I bought back then, and I still have now. When I got the machine out a couple of years ago I recapped it and it was still very unstable. Bought a Meanwell PSU, but same so I'm still thinking it's the board. Sometimes helps if I re-seat it.

[@imqqmi]

@@JamesMossR33 I think mine was an MTEC 28MHz 68030 accelerator card. iirc it had 2MB of ram with a simm or dimm module. I still have notes from back in the day that there was an issue with the Zappo CDROM driver having a problem with fastram. It was probably a 25MHz chip overclocked 3MHz which made it unstable I think.

[@jimbotron70]

Well, insanely. Not insanely priced. Rather pricey, yes.

[@paulmichaelfreedman8334]

That's all I can remember from that period. All the goodies were so frikkin expensive. All I could afford was a 512 Meg expansion for my A500 and I made do with that for a few years before I switched to a 286 machine. More affordable than Amiga hardware, and it helped that I actually worked in a PC shop.

[@DrProctor180-rc5yn]

I have a Microbotics 1230 XA. 50Mhz 68030 processor and a 50 Mhz 68882 Fpu. 16 MB RAM expansion and a memory management unit (MMU). It could maybe be expanded with 128 MB RAM, not sure. I haven't been able to test it in recent years because I can't find the power supply. I also had a 720 MB ide 3,5 inch ! hard drive crammed in, it was just enough space to close the lid.

[@giuseppelavecchia775]

Phase 5,all'epoca uno dei migliori produttori in assoluto di schede acceleratrici AMIGA!

[@AshtonCoolman]

The blank screen at 9:08 made me think my PC crashed for a second LOL. As for this expansion, I have a similar modern version of this that has 8MB of RAM and a socket for an FPU. It doesn't, however, have the ability to run the FPU at an asynchronous speed so I'm now jealous.

[@JanBeta]

Whoops, something must have gone wrong during editing/rendering. Sorry! I don’t think asynchronous speed is going to make any difference at all actually. Maybe for some very specialized software but not for everyday tasks and gaming. Don’t be too jealous! (Although I just ordered an oscillator to try that feature out.)

[@madigorfkgoogle9349]

@@JanBeta you kidding right? The floating point calculations @40MHz are almost 3 time faster then the stock CLK, which means that you render 3 pictures instead of one in the same time. But yeah today... not a big deal.

[@markk5764]

The software has to be designed to take advantage of the FPU. As Jan says, most don't so the FPU speed is irrelevant for most software.

[@AshtonCoolman]

@@markk5764 yes, I'm not sure which games use the FPU. The original Sim City on PC uses the FPU but I'm not sure if any Amiga games use it.

[@DavePoo2]

​@@AshtonCoolmanApparently "TFX" by ocean could use the FPU on the Amiga.

[@angrydove4067]

I was expecting a shorted electrolytic cap. Thanks for the tip on the DFO Terminator, I am getting one.

[@paulmichaelfreedman8334]

My A500 conked out suddenly back in 1992. The tantalum cap on the keyboard PCB had decided to call it a day, completely shorted. Went pop just like that.

[@richardvallender6282]

From Amiga Shopper ad in the UK - cost of the base model was £179. The addition 4MB module was an extra £159. Then there were 3 options in the £200's for the base model plus FPU (price depending on FPU speed).

[@valenrn8657]

When compared to AT&T's DSP3210 (25 MFLOPS @ 50 Mhz FP32), MC688882 FPU 1.33 MFLOPS @ 50 Mhz for games.

[@therealjammit]

The memory add on card should be easy to reverse engineer. All the RAM share the same pins for data in and out. The only thing different would be the chip select, and that would be easily found on the same chip that does the chip select for the existing RAM.

[@joeteejoetee]

ABSOLUTELY TRUE !

[@Ama-hi5kn]

I had one of those weird accelerators back in 1995. It had a 20 MHz 030 overclocked to 28 MHz. Since it is so long ago I forget what brand it was. But it worked. I never had a FPU for it though. It was lost in time sadly.

[@abszu]

The real interesting board is the Blizzard 1220, which came some months later.

[@ClassicTrialsChannel]

I still have my A1200 and the Blizzard A1220 4mb. It has a 28mhz cpu and a 33mhz fpu. I got it out the spare room, when it had been since 1995. It all worked perfectly. I have since upgraded the fpu to 40mhz and you can buy a modern 4mb upgrade to make it 8mb total. There on ebay

[@Chrisst1961]

This was also my 1st expansion card and is still in my spare room somewhere. Replaced it with an Apollo 040 plus 32 meg of ram.

[@wimwiddershins]

Amazing how much improvement you get just by adding a bit of RAM to Amigas. Great video Jan. 👍

[@madigorfkgoogle9349]

no you dont, the sysinfo is a bit misleading, dont forget that A1200 chipset is mostly 16bit, so some games are benefiting from 32bit bus, but it is not like they run 100% faster...

[@DavePoo2]

Yeah, workbench is a lot less chuggy with just a little bit of fast RAM. It's a shame the 1200 and 500 didn't come with a small amount of fast RAM as standard, games could have made great use of it.

[@madigorfkgoogle9349]

@@DavePoo2 that is a nonsense. Workbench is same slow no matter if you use Fast RAM or not. If you use some custom large resolution, then the Fast RAM may speed up the WB somehow, but normally its a nonsense. Also how would you wanna use Fast RAM on A500 as you stated, its CPU has just 16 data lines... Having the Chip RAM restricted by a single chip in A1200 times is the biggest drawback of outdated architecture Amiga had.

[@RDJ134]

Always a pleasure to watch your video's :)

[@josehereter4062]

My favorite channel, thanks

[@gertsy2000]

Great outcome Jan. Great video. Cheers.

[@SoraxTheOriginal]

I would love to see it running at 40MHz!

[@JanBeta]

I ordered an oscillator so we‘ll see!

[@madigorfkgoogle9349]

It is just the FPU that runs at 40MHz not the Amiga.

[@SoraxTheOriginal]

@@madigorfkgoogle9349 Yes, that was clear from the video. The clock increase should be evident in FP dependent tasks. It'll be neat to see.

[@modulusixt]

Jan inserted true Amiga feel to this video @9:08! Jan Beta channel now with true Amiga feeling! (Magic workbench start sound)

[@bobingabout]

what happened at 9:08?

[@yorkan213swd6]

great Video, make an expansion Board with PCBway, so you get also a sponsorship.... ;-) No I am not from PCBway... But: As written below the PCMCIA Interface is not working, I wonder if there is a workaround...

[@anakondase]

Gets me thinking about the VLX30 board with 2MB RAM32 board I used for my A500. It has both a 030 and an FPU. I don't recall ever finding any use for the FPU outside running AIBB though. Wanted to expand it to 8MB to make it really useful but could never find the correct DIP memory chips. I still have the board but one or more of the memory chips are faulty so it crashes rather quickly. Got a more modern board with 64MB instead which I transplanted the 030 to. No FPU socket on that sadly.

[@steveowley1237]

17:40 what is going on around that capacitor? By the way, great channel!

[@JanBeta]

Thanks! The capacitor is held in place with hot glue, I had to patch this board up significantly to make it work because a lot of the plating and pads were missing when I got it (see my previous video).

[@mikedefoy]

I had dumped my problematic GVP 040s and replaced them by buying three Phase5 Blizzard 060 accelerator cards for my completely filled A2000s. They ran great, my issues went away and using the shell you could turn on and off functions of the processor for compatibility or higher performance purposes.

[@antonyd5976]

I was interested if there was any increase in sysinfo score. I have a 4/8MB RAM upgrade, I'm going to test results. FPU not so significant for games etc...

[@jensschroder8214]

With Chip Ram, the CPU and the chipset reach the RAM one after the other, which corresponds to 7 MHz. The Fast RAM has access to the full 14 MHz of the CPU.

[@g04tn4d0]

Nice find!

[@jameslewis2635]

I found the Phase 5 website. For some reason it seems to be still up but it also seems to have not been updated for the last 4 years.

[@holleholl3057]

Für WHD Load reicht so eine "einfache" Speichererweiterung wirklich vollkommen aus. So gut wie alle Spiele, die für den Amiga "damals" herauskamen, laufen durch die Bank weg durch. Ich habe mir für meinen A1200 auch eine einfache, aber "moderne" Speichererweiterung gekauft, die gar nicht mal sooo teuer war (8MB mit FPU für 80 Euro) und bin absolut zufrieden. Für meinen "getunten" 1200er mit durchsichtigem A1200-Case habe ich tiefer in die Tasche gegriffen und mir eine ACA1233 gekauft - das ist schon übertrieben für diese Zwecke. Doom braucht ohnehin einen 68040 oder den 060er, aber das ist ja wieder eine andere Preisregion...

[@LandisSeralian]

When I imported an A1200 from Germany I was pleasantly surprised to find a blizzard 1220/4 already installed. Basically the same card but with a 68EC020 at 28 MHz built in. Unfortunately my A1200 has issues with random crashing that I have yet to figure out, and the crashing is worse with th Blizzard 1220/4 installed.

[@kepanoid]

Maybe recapping time? Those SMD electrolytics are legendary for going bad. I'm going to do it on my A1200 "soon".

[@_Matthias_0815]

If the A1200 still has it"s original power brick, it could be faulty. The Brick from my A1200 back in the day caused random system crashes. Once I hooked up the power brick from my A500, everything worked like a Charm.

[@LandisSeralian]

@@kepanoidI do still need to recap it, working on setting up a workbench before I get back into troubleshooting the A1200.

[@LandisSeralian]

@@_Matthias_0815Fortunately I have already replaced the powerbrick with a Mean Well PSU, and have tested it on a A500 that's in very poor repair, and it got the A500 booting into workbench again despite it's many other issues. So the PSU isn't the problem. My guess is it needs a more thorough cleaning and a recap

[@postguru5805]

it was a 25Mhz 68EC020 !! overclocked to 28,xx MHz 😉 1:1 Clock from the A1200 Crystal

[@Zentauri77]

2.3 times faster than an amiga A1200 with only chipmem. Commodore should have put at least 512kb additional fastmem into the CD32. Would have been 2x faster in most games if memory is allocated appropriately.

[@rasz]

A1200/cd32 doesnt have fastram memory controller build in, so it would require at least one more chip from a company penny pinching buying long obsolete and EOL 68020 CPUs from Motorola on a clearance sale.

[@fu1r4]

Expansion boards was always very expensive for the Amiga. What happened at 9:08?

[@jimbotron70]

They weren't all very expensive.

[@IlhanNegis]

you should make a render benchmark with Imagine, i used to lust after math cards because of render times, 7 hours to get a render was killing me

[@IlhanNegis]

spoke too soon, you mentioned at the end eh!

[@twocvbloke]

I was wondering if this was about to turn into an "It's the RAM at fault" video, but amazingly not, given it's always the RAM being a pain in the rear... :P

[@JanBeta]

I would have guessed that there was something wrong with the expansion myself. Quite surprised it just worked after setting it up correctly. 😅

[@twocvbloke]

@@JanBeta It's always a nice surprise when something just works like that... :D

[@OscarSommerbo]

Having very cursory experience with A1200s, I guessed Phase 5 Blizzard from the thumbnail. It is gratifying to be right. The PiStorm isn't superexpensive and gives the A1200 quite a kick. Unless you are a purist, I would say that is the way to go, especially now that you can buy Raspberry Pis again.

[@madigorfkgoogle9349]

PiStorm, what a nonsense "upgrade" in the world of retro computing...

[@ErazerPT]

@@madigorfkgoogle9349Not sure what you mean. I myself was used to a CSPPC 060/604e with CVPPC gfx. So, for me, the PiStorm would be a "downgrade". WinUAE is the upgrade. @OscarSommerbo "purist" is like "audiophile" ;) People in the "retro space" really have little clue how eccletic (and batshit crazy in a good sense) the Amiga community was back when. For example, my "network setup" went from "Ethernet over slip to an old P133 with a winmodem Wintel box" to "Wintelbox over slip to Amiga with Miami and a real 56K" to "Ethernet over plip to an old P133 with a 8139 network card running wingate" to "Wintel box 8139 to A2065 Amiga gateway running MiamiDX/Genesis". MY CDROM and monitor tales are similar. We cared about "more" and "faster", as much as we could afford and no matter how whack.

[@olDirdey]

Mystery? Steht doch Blizzard 1200 hinten drauf.....

[@JanBeta]

Deshalb ja auch die Anführungszeichen im Titel.

[@Charleshawn66]

Nice video. TY

[@PaulinesPastimes]

Excellent ✨

[@charlesdorval394]

Need find! Holy hell that's one yellowed mouse!

[@JanBeta]

The mouse was yellow from factory, actually. It’s a Sunny Mouse, they came in all kinds of "fun" colors.

[@charlesdorval394]

@@JanBeta Oh okay! Nice shade then! ;)

[@g4z-kb7ct]

3:12 DIP chips? LOL! Whoever wrote that has no clue. Those are 1M x4-bit DRAMs in SOJ26/20 package.

[@user-Atamigaputer]

Jan you didnt brush your hair today??

[@JanBeta]

I rarely brush my hair. This seems to be a particularly bad hair day. :D

[@rager1969]

According to a Google search, Wikipedia says "on 31 December 1998, the Council of the European Union fixed the irrevocable exchange rate, effective 1 January 1999, for German mark to euros as DM 1.95583 = €1." That would convert 494 DM to 252.58 EUR. Using a German inflation calculator for 1993 to 2024 values, it says 252.58 EUR in 1993 is equivalent to 447.22 EUR in 2024. So, yeah, very pricey.

[@rasz]

Commodore didnt bother bundling fast ram memory controller in A1200 so every Fastram expansion had to ship its own controller = Amiga ram was >2x more expensive than buying SIMMs for 486. In 1994 Fastram expansion with 0 ram for A1200 was ~100 Pounds + ~30 Pounds a meg to populate it. Adding 4MB cost almost as much as A12000 to begin with (270 Pounds). Hard drives were even crazier. in 1994 A1200 + Fastram + HDD + multisync monitor cost as much as brand spanking new loaded 486DX2/66 with more ram.

[@rager1969]

@@rasz What does that have to do with Jan wondering what this board's 1993 cost would be equal to in 2024?

[@rasz]

@@rager1969 Its called context. ~$270 in 1993 money while 4MB Simms were $110.