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Dynamic_Computing

Posted Tue Nov 27, 2018 9:44 am

I have been using my Warp Engine on my A4000 for months now - 40 Mhz 68040, 64 MB of RAM, really fast SCSI. I love that thing! WIth it (and my Cybergraphx card) I could play back MPEG1 videos and MP3 files pretty well, and the Fast SCSI made hard disk access a breeze. The 15000 RPM SCSI drives helped a bit! With OS 3.9, I had no 4 Gig limit on drive capacity, either.

Then back in August I ordered a '040 to '060 adapter from tbtorro on Amibay - as I heard they work great with the Warp Engine. I got it in, happily took out my Warp Engine, and realized the A3000 version has the CPU soldered on the board, not socketed! Uggggh! I do not trust my moderate soldering skills with delicate work like adding a socket to a rare board, so I got a quote to ship it off to Belgium and get a socket installed and two new SIMM chips. It was pricey, so I started saving my retro-pennies to send it away. Well, I mentioned this on the Facebook group, and two guys (John Hertell and Paul Renandaz) both offered to do it for about $100 cheaper! I went with Paul because he is one state away, not half a world away like John!

A few weeks later, my beautiful board came back with a socket and two new SIMM sockets to take this little guy up to 128 MB! Oh...My...Goodness. I installed the chip, booted it up and this things FLIES at 80 Mhz! I put my 2x32MB chips back in, and then my 2x16MB that I originally had - add the 16 MB from the motherboard and this little honey is rocking 114 MB!

Now, I had some very serious issues with the SCSI on this conflicting with the IDE. I go over the problem and the solution on my latest 10 Minute Amiga Retro Cast here. https://youtu.be/-WygpEhK2II

From what I have read, the '060 is a bit faster than a similar speed Pentium - so my 80 Mhz '060 might be about the same as a 100 Mhz Pentium. Not too shabby.
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User avatar
Mr.Toast
Roseville, CA

Posted Fri Nov 30, 2018 12:01 pm

That's a helluva screamer. DId you have to boot a special kick or replace timing GALs?

User avatar
Dynamic_Computing

Posted Fri Nov 30, 2018 2:46 pm

I use a modified Kickstart that I got when I ordered the '040-'060 adapter, but those are no longer needed with the OS 3.1.4 ROMS.
The performance is really unbelievable. I had been using TVPaint 3.6 when this was a 40 MHz '040, but running it now with an 80 MHz '060 is just incredible.





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