08/1997
Path: rcfnews.cs.umass.edu!barrett
From: u4arg@csc.liv.ac.uk (Alistair Gutcher)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.reviews
Subject: REVIEW: Blizzard 1230-IV accelerator for A1200
Followup-To: comp.sys.amiga.hardware
Date: 21 Mar 1996 01:55:11 GMT
Organization: The Amiga Online Review Column - ed. Daniel Barrett
Lines: 429
Sender: amiga-reviews@math.uh.edu (comp.sys.amiga.reviews moderator)
Distribution: world
Message-ID: <4iqctv$sqf@kernighan.cs.umass.edu>
Reply-To: u4arg@csc.liv.ac.uk (Alistair Gutcher)
NNTP-Posting-Host: knots.cs.umass.edu
Keywords: hardware, accelerator, 68030, A1200, SCSI, memory, commercial
X-Review-Number: Volume 1996 Number 9
Originator: barrett@knots.cs.umass.edu
PRODUCT NAME
Blizzard 1230-IV
BRIEF DESCRIPTION
The Blizzard 1230-IV Turbo Accelerator Memory Board is a 68030 50 MHz
accelerator, RAM expansion, FPU, and SCSI-2 capable card for the Amiga 1200.
COMPANY INFORMATION
Name: Phase 5 Digital Products
Address: In der Au 27,
D-61440 Oberursel,
Germany
Phone: (06171) 583787
U.K. DISTRIBUTOR
There may be more than one but I obtained mine from Gordon
Harwood Computers (Alfreton, Derbyshire). Price was 399.95 UK pounds
for the 50 MHz model with MMU and 8 MB of luurrvely RAM. The memory
was on special offer and was quoted as being a 60ns SIMM. Insured 48
hr. carriage and the Gold warranty was included in the price.
LIST PRICE
Well, dunno, but it was advertised in Amiga Format for
U.K. pounds 179.95 for the bare accelerator.
SPECIAL HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE REQUIREMENTS
HARDWARE
An Amiga 1200.
SOFTWARE
AmigaDOS 2.1 or higher.
COPY PROTECTION
None. Well, copyright means that Apple or Microsoft can't very
well copy it can they.....:)
MACHINE USED FOR TESTING
Amiga 1200 standard model from Commodore, revision 2B, 2MB Chip RAM, stock
power supply (23 watt A600 type (according to the underside of it),
lightweight type).
8MB 50 ns 72-pin, 32-bit Seimens SIMM, single sided.
Kickstart in ROM, V39.106. Workbench 39.29.
Hitachi DK221A-34 2.5 inch 340 MB IDE hard drive (1.1 Amp)
INSTALLATION
Before I start: BEWARE. The following describes opening up
your Amiga's case and if you are unsure of this or still have a
warranty on your machine then doing this can invalidate your warranty,
your sanity, and your whole damn machine if you do not take the
appropriate anti-static precautions beforehand. Please pay attention
to this. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.
I have done this sort of thing before in my machine with a
previous RAM only expansion and found that it saved a heck of a lot of
time, effort, and mucking about to just remove the top of the case,
lift it over, move the keyboard out of the way, pull back the metal
shielding in the vaccinity of the edge connector for extra safety from
short circuits, and just tilt the board and plug it
in. Unsurprisingly, the same idea applied here also. (NB :- if you
are looking down from the top of the machine the idea is that the
'lip' of the board goes ABOVE the support guide rail i.e. inside the
machine, not outside).
The problem is that the board will not go more than about 3mm
onto the edge connector by the strength of your fingers alone (unless
your first name is Arnold and your surname begins with S and is almost
unpronounceable). I had to use a screwdriver and use the leverage from
the plastic case of the A1200 to force the git on. Suddenly, just when
you think you are about to break the thing it jumps forward fully onto
the connector with a reassuring firmness. Nice one. All done.
There is no heat sink or fan supplied with the board but it
doesn't say in the manual that it needs one. The memory came already
fitted to the board by Harwoods. The processor faces downwards so the
underside of the computer desk acts as one big expensive heat sink. On
other products my friends have, the CPU faces the underside of the
keyboard (so you can warm your fingers while typing on a frosty cold
winter's night ;) . There are two jumpers on the board, one for
mapping the ROM into Fast RAM and one for the RAM speed
setting. Mapping your kickstart ROM into RAM will help speed up the
execution of commonly used system functions, since the ROM is slower,
even though it is 32-bit wide. Doing so will obviously cost you 512K
fast RAM. A funny thing here, though. I thought that the ROM was
copied across into RAM and then the MMU is activated to point to the
start of the ROM image in fast RAM, but when you run either Sysinfo or
AIBB they both state that the MMU is disabled or not in use. However,
when I use the AmigaDOS 'cpu -fastrom' command and then run the info
progs again they both say that my MMU is 'in use' or 'enabled'.
Odd. The second jumper can only be set if you have 60ns SIMMS or
greater. It allows you to decrease the wait states (presumably to
zero) on your memory . You need this jumper to be set (as long as your
mem is fast enough) otherwise the INST BURST and DATA BURST modes will
be unavailable). I enabled both jumpers (mapping = on, faster mem =
on). You don't have to tell the board via jumpers what memory it has
on board because this bit is autoconfig. I chose not to replace the
trapdoor lid after installation because:
1) It was held rigidly in place by the support rail,
2) It provides extra cooling to make a good reliability.
REVIEW
Right, you are now ready to try loading Workbench.
WHHOOAAA!!!!! This thing is excellent. Nice large amount of 'other'
memory in the titlebar, bootup time reduced to 15 seconds for fully
loaded Workbench with AREXX, BlitzBlank, Virus Checker, Toolsdaemon,
fairly lengthy 's:user-startup' and 8-colour high res PAL screen. Same
stuff took 26 seconds before. A general look around makes you realise
this is like a completely new machine. 8-Colour mode is blindingly
fast, 256 colour mode is now *very* useable, icons pop up VERY fast,
text scrolls like lightening, and GIF decoding feels faster than
HP-RISC or 486. You can now have backdrops on WB in 256 colours, use
MUI and AMosaic Web browser or Digital Universe without waiting 'till
Christmas for all that OOP C++ code to do it's stuff.
How the hell did I live without this before? Oh yeah, I can
now emulate a Mac at the speed faster than the Uni's IIci as well,
should I wish it.
There is no software whatsoever with this Blizzard card, but
what on earth do you need it for anyway? It is completely autoconfig
and transparent in use . I must say also, that the engineering of the
board is absolutely beautiful. It is a pity it has to be hidden away
when it is in use!
There are only two things of software that appear to be
incompatible with this board. Wordworth 3 for some reason objected to
it, and I heard that Imagine 3.0 guru's (although it was a very old
version apparently). Absolutely everything else worked fine including
Imagine 2.0, Final Writer 4 Lite, etc, etc...
What else can I say about this product? It is fabulous. A REAL
performer at a bargain price. Buy one tomorrow, you won't regret it
for a instant.
FAQs (unofficial) from Usenet about this board to be answered
to the best of my ability coming up next! Check these benchmark
performance figures out first though...
AIBB V6.5 TEST MODULE
Revision 2B motherboard, Commodore original A1200, 8MB 32-bit 50 ns SIMM.
Setpatch 40.3, KS 39.109, WB 39.29
Comparison base: 1200 (no fast mem)
Code: 68000 [020 where stated] i.e. 020 code was used wherever possible.
CPU used for all operations [no FPU utilisation in comparison systems tests
although they may have one present]
1200/030/50 A3000/25 A4000/040
EmuTest 5.85 2.76 9.19
Writepixel 3.09 1.16 5.11
Sieve 4.17 2.08 3.20
Dhrystone 6.11 2.77 9.55
Sort 5.31 2.65 7.26
EllipseTest 1.97 0.98 2.28
Matrix 5.00 2.51 4.68
IMath 4.92 2.37 6.43
MemTest 4.61 2.38 1.27
TGTest 1.69 0.91 1.80
LineTest 1.11 0.62 1.09
InstTest 6.56 3.12 5.73
Savage 5.08 2.45 6.99
Savage 020 5.08 2.45 7.01
FMath 5.54 2.63 9.42
FMath 020 5.57 2.62 9.36
FMatrix 4.97 2.42 5.13
FMatrix 020 5.07 2.46 5.28
BeachBall 4.99 2.39 7.25
BeachBall 020 5.01 2.48 7.20
Flops 5.05 2.43 8.07
Flops 020 5.09 2.44 8.09
TranTest 5.17 2.48 7.16
TranTest 020 5.17 2.48 7.15
FTrace 5.03 2.43 7.31
FTrace 020 5.03 2.43 7.33
Cplxtest 5.47 2.61 7.90
Cplxtest 5.48 2.59 7.99
Sysinfo 3.24 says I am getting 9.90 MIPS.
Notice the cool MemTest figure. This is due to two things,
one; it looks large compared with the slow memory subsystem on the
A3640 CPU module in the stock A4000, and two; I got 50 ns SIMMs for
some reason, when I actually ordered a 60ns one. Luck City!!
FAQ (MINE)
Q1. Is the Fast RAM autoconfig & will games and demos run much faster if
they are not on a DOS disk, or does it need a patch in the
s:startup-sequence?
A1. Yes, it is autoconfig as advertised. Many of these games and demos on
non-DOS disks are much faster. Some (e.g. platform games) are not because of
the mainly custom chip usage rather than CPU usage. No, you don't need ANY
changes to s:startup-sequence or s:user-startup etc. No software supplied
with it, as stated before. It is plug and go.
Q2. Is the SCSI expansion board available right now?
A2. Well, I can't verify this but the advert states they will be available
first quarter '96. However, there is good news because the 1260 / 060 50 MHz
board also shares the exact same SCSI expansion so there will be quite a
demand for these ensuring their production. It is 89.95 U.K. pounds, and also
includes a second SIMM socket. It apparently goes from the expansion
connector, under the floppy drive, and comes out of that plastic blanked off
port at the back of the machine.
Q3. Is it SCSI-2 ?
A3. Yes, as advertised, but I can't check this yet.
Q4. Is the SCSI DMA or not (i.e. will it block all other tasks when accessing
SCSI peripherals?)?
A4. Yes, as advertised, but can't check.
Q5. What is the speed of data transfers from the IDE/floppy drive with the
50 MHz?
A5. My Hitachi DK221A-34, 2.5 inch, 340 MB IDE hard drive (1.1 Amp) has now
gone up from 800K/sec to 1,193,317 bytes/sec according to Sysinfo 3.24.
Floppy access is now at 22,940 bytes/sec.
Q6. Can it remap Kickstart for shadowing into fast mem (faster execution of
commonly used O/S functions)?
A6. Yes, & it takes 512 K of fast to do this. You can either use the
"cpu fastrom" command in Dos or the jumper on the board.
Q7. Is remapping done by a software patch or jumper?
A7. By a jumper or by standard dos command as above.
Q8. Is the fast RAM mapped into the PCMCIA port's address space thus
disabling the use of it?
A8. No, it puts it way above the port and into the top part of the 030's 4Gig
address space at $78000000 to $7877FFFF (using 8MB SIMM with Kickstart remap
on via jumper). This means you can still use the port exactly in the same way
as before.
Q9. Does it have Inst cache, Data cache, Inst burst, Data burst and can they
be all independently set?
A9.Yes, but the Inst burst and Data burst modes are unavailable and appear
ghosted with RAM access speeds of slower than 60 ns. With a 60ns or faster
SIMM and the fast mem speed jumper set you can have all 4 modes available,
and note that no matter how many modes are available, they act independently
from each other.
Q10. Can it be used for virtual memory with the MMU?
A10. Yes, VMM etc. works fine with e.g. big custom page on a paint package.
Without it I can't use 1600 x 1200 pixel screens, and with it I can. Simple
as that, really.
Q11. What memory does it take? 72/76 pin SIMM? 50/60/70/80 ns? Parity/non-
parity? Industry standard or GVP? ;) Single or double sided? Fast page mode,
EDO, or Ultra fast page mode (4K refresh) SIMMs?
A.11. It takes 72 pin or 76 pin (32 or 36 bit, respectively) SIMMs, and
ignores the extra (parity) bits on the 76 pin (36-bit) mem. 70 ns
(nanoseconds) access or faster mem is required for use with this board.
Parity or non - parity mem usable, board regards them as being identical.
Industry standard SIMMs with 72 or 76 pins are the only ones usable (NOT GVP
type). Single or double sided usable. Standard (fast page mode) or EDO
(Extended Data Out) or the better Ultra fast page mode mem is usable.
I used a pre-installed SIMM bought with the board which was 8MB, 32-bit,
fast page mode, 72-pin, 8 chip, single sided, 50 ns, no parity.
Q12. Is CPU surface mounted? Is there a separate socket for FPU? PGA or PLCC
type usable? FPU clock speeds below 50 MHz usable? 68881 or 68882? Extra
crystal needed?
A12. CPU is in a PGA socket, not soldered to board. One socket for FPU, PGA
type only. Thus PGA FPU usable only. FPU clock speeds below "not recommended
by Motorola" in manual. 50 MHz only. 68882 type FPU only. No extra crystal
needed.
Q13. Does it still recognise the hard drive after a warm boot (3 finger
salute) or does it need a cold boot (off at power)?
A13. Yes. Recognised after warm boot every time. Recognised after cold boot
90% of time (may need a warm boot in about one in every 10 cold boots). All
early startup menu options usable and it recognises the hard drive every time
after any option is set. Wonderful!
Q14. Can you completely disable the board and get the machine to act exactly
like a stock A1200? How? Keyboard, jumper, or software?
A14. Yes. Just hold down '2' on the main keyboard (not numeric pad) to
completely disable the board. Hold down ctrl-A-A for more than 10 seconds to
return to the accelerator.
Q15. Is the clock compatible with all Workbench clock prefs setting programs/
clock progs?
A15. Yes. You can set it with sys:prefs/time and show the clock time with
sys:utilities/clock. It also doesn't seem to get reset or overwritten by
software failures, EVER. My old ram board's clock did though.
Q16. Does it take a lot of power? Will I need a new supply to prevent
crashes / lock -up?
A16. No. I have the 50 MHz 030, 8MB SIMM, and Hitachi 2 1/2 inch hard disk
(1.1 amp) and I am still using the standard lightweight type power brick (23
watt). No problems whatsoever, no crashes. I have seen a similar setup with
Blizzard II in a friend's machine but the hard drive was 1Gig and the power
light was much duller.
Q17. How long can you leave it on for with SIMM slot used, hard disk, stock
power supply? Does it get too hot? Does it crash / lock up because the power
supply gets to hot?
A17. With my set up I have used it extensively (150 hours) since I got it so
far and it has never gone wrong. This also includes 2 x 12 hours ish renders
in Real 3D, and a 7 1/2 hour transfer of a 76 meg file down a serial cable to
a PC at 57600 baud. It does make my desk warm up underneath even though it is
3/4 of an inch thick wood. Temperature on the underside of the desk after a
very long render session feels slightly cooler than hand warm water. It never
gets any hotter, but remember I left my trapdoor lid off. It never overheats.
The power supply gets about as warm as a hot cup of tea after 1/2 a day, but
never any hotter. No crashes / lock ups experienced. Nice.
Q18. Will I have to ever replace the clock battery?
A18. Not for a couple of years, I reckon. It is self recharging and socketted
so it can be replaced in event of problems.
Q19. Is it a brand new '030 processor or a factory second/second hand/from a
Mac?
A19. It is a brand new beautifully finished, socketted, MC68030RC50B as
printed on my chip.
Q20. Is it an overclocked CPU?
A20. No, it is a full 50 MHz 030 processor.
DOCUMENTATION
You get a small manual, but the necessary things are explained
clearly and concisely. No real technical stuff is explained, but let's
be fair-this board is just totally plug-and -go!!! The installation
instructions are in a step by step format.
LIKES
Speed !!! 10 MIPS / 20,000 Dhrystones of pure POWER
RAM expansion !!! (YEAH!!) -any industry standard 32-bit SIMM to 128MB
SCSI-2 expansion module with DMA & another SIMM slot !!!
Plug-n-go !!! -no faffing about...
The integration of the RAM, SCSI-2, 50MHz, MMU
and no drawbacks into a single product!!!
Compatibility !!! -with almost all game/demo/serious software available
Can disable board for TOTAL A1200 compatibility at a keystroke!!!
Reliability !!! -works perfectly, a dream to own.
Real time clock that never gets reset!!!
Is there any better 030 A1200 expansion available anywhere in the world?
NO!!!
Am I mighty pleased with my purchase? YOU BET YOUR ASS!!!
If it could cook would I marry it? Errmmm... I might chose Kim Wilde
instead, but I can't get her on mail order for 179.99!!!
DISLIKES
None. (for once in an Amiga product review...:)
COMPARISON TO OTHER SIMILAR PRODUCTS
I was thoroughly sick of reading about other people's problems
with 1200 accelerator boards and was originally going to buy a
Blizzard II/III but after hearing other similar rave reviews in
comp.sys.amiga.hardware I took a chance on Bliz IV. I have seen a Bliz
II in operation but I don't know about that one in detail. I saw the
GVP at another friend's house but couldn't possibly afford one at the
time. It was good though, but needs special GVP SIMMs at slightly
bigger prices.. It was also a whole MIP slower !?. Go figure.
BUGS
None found.
VENDOR SUPPORT
Helpline available from Harwoods and at Phase 5, but I haven't
tried it.
WARRANTY
12 months.
CONCLUSIONS
I could never go back to a 14 MHz 68EC020. Score: 10 out of 10
This review is dedicated to: R.J.Mical, Carl Sassenrath, and
also to the beloved memory of Jay Miner. Thanks for creating my
favourite machine, the AMIGA.
You can distribute this article in any form, anywhere BUT with
the one condition that is must NOT be altered. Any one wanting to
alter this review MUST have express permission from the author,
A.R.Gutcher (u4arg@csc.liv.ac.uk).
---
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