Thanks to Amigakit for shipping my ACA1221ec the same day I ordered it. Their despatching seems to be really quick nowadays and I recieved this and other recent orders the next working day after ordering. So bigup to Matthew and crew.
Onto the board. I got it to go in my spare A1200 machine. In my other machine is a Blizzard 1220/4 so the ACA is like a modern day equivalant of this board.
Decided to leave it at the 28MHz default and maprom enabled.
Sysinfo reports 4925 Dhrystones / 5.14MIPs for this card vs the Bizzard's 4842 Dhrystones / 5.05 MIPS.
People have reported the ACA1221ec gets warm. It does but not 040 warm, about 030 50MHz warm, I couldn't burn my finger on it (this is @ 28MHz). The Biizzard does run its chip cooler - not sure if its because of the package type (PLCC vs PGA) or if its because if the speed of the memory.
Pics online show a full 68020 @ 16MHz rated but my board has an "EC" 020 but rated at 25MHz despite this, in the default setup for 9MB FAST RAM, the PCMCIA port is still usable. If I was to find the ADD4 board for my Blizzard 1220, it would render the PCMCIA port unusable so on the Blizzard I am restricted to 4MB.
On the Blizzard I have a 40MHz 68882 with 40Mhz crystal installed. There is no FPU socket on the ACA. The Blizzard has a RTC as standard - the ACA it is an optional board - £17 at time of writing.
Moving around on A-Train Hi Res mode does seem to be much more quicker on the ACA, as is Workbench operations in general. Everything seems so much more instant. I put this down to the MAPROM feature and the speed of the Fast Mem. Using Sysinfo v4.0, HDD access is slightly quicker on the ACA - PCMCIA CF read speed is about the same.
Both these cards are super stable, super compatible and cost about the same - the advantage of the ACA of course is there will be a warranty - the Blizzards were made in the mid 90s!
I would say if you need an FPU the Blizzard is the one to go for, other than that go for the ACA1221ec - its just over 100 pounds, you will have 9MB extra RAM (plus there is some ramdisk additional memory I believe you can activate- haven't tried the ultils yet), and you will be supporting new classic hardware and the resellers such as, but not exclusive to, Amigakit.
EDIT: Seems MAPROM isn't available yet. This will be a firmware update from what I understand so more performance is achievable it seems. Last edited by A1200 on 06-May-2017 at 12:05 AM. Last edited by A1200 on 05-May-2017 at 11:57 PM. Last edited by A1200 on 05-May-2017 at 11:53 PM. Last edited by A1200 on 05-May-2017 at 11:39 PM. Last edited by A1200 on 05-May-2017 at 11:39 PM. Last edited by A1200 on 05-May-2017 at 11:37 PM.
_________________ Amiga A1200, 3.1 ROMs, Blizzard 1230 MKIV 64MB & FPU, 4GB DoM SSD, Workbench 3.1 |