For example, over on my 8-bits I couldn't live without my Ultimate1541 these days. I've specifically made a mod to my C128D just so it could play nice with the device more seamlessly (more on that soon, I hope). And I picked up the C64 motherboard replacements and FPGA. I like new things, too.
And since I'm blessed with an abundance of hardware, I decided over the Christmas break to take the plunge and invest in the ZZ9000 card for my backup A3000. It was a total splurge, but I thought it would be an interesting project to put together whenever it arrives. It will kill me a little bit to remove the ROM Tower from my spare machine, but I'll be as careful as I can so the machine can be stored to its original condition should I choose to do so some day.
Have you all heard of this insane card? Its pretty bananas.
Based on the Xilinx ZYNQ XC7Z020 chip, it features not only a powerful 7-series FPGA, but also 2 ARM Cortex-A9 cores and DDR3 memory.
- RTG: Up to 1920x1080 FHD screen resolution at 8bit 256-colors "Chunky", 16bit or 32bit color depths. (1920x1080 at 16 bit, all other resolutions up to 32 bit).
- Enhanced VA2000CX Amiga native video passthrough functionality with AGA support (scan doubler with interlace flicker-fixer)
- Dual 666MHz ARM Cortex A9 coprocessors to offload computing tasks like JPEG, MP3 decoding and graphics acceleration
- 1GB DDR3 RAM (!!!)
- Ethernet interface: Get your Amiga online
- USB port supports USB mass storage devices. The driver allows you to access USB sticks from workbench. (YES!)
So since I'm going to have this kind of crazy resolution potential, though, I picked up a cheap (and color-matched, natch) NEC LCD monitor.
In addition to getting this insane card working, my planned upgrades will include:
- New RTC clock with coin battery
- SCSI2SD card with sd-based HDD
- Noctua fan for quieter operation
- OS 3.1ROMs
- Probably some wacky Workbench mods, like Classic WB or something like that
Fun stuff to geek out on, even if most of the software and games I'm interested in won't take advantage of all of these whistles and bells.
I guess I need to learn Lightwave!