Hi everyone,

Sooo, it's been a while-ish. Still drop in here and there, but not really been active on the Amiga for years. I'm thinking of digging out the ol boing ball again.

I have been keeping up with some aspects of the Amiga world (no pun intended), buying Amiga OS 4 and its updates as well as the recent 3.3. Even picked up Settlers 2 because I wanted to support.

I have an A1200 here with some sort of dual CF IDE interface in there. The CF card itself doesn't really boot up too well. Not sure how it was setup, but it's trying to do too much and the computer doesn't have enough RAM to get started and it all gets a bit clogged up. I could probably try to boot up from a floppy and clean things up, or I could try connecting the CF card to my Mac and (somehow) mounting that Amiga formatted card as a drive and prepping it all in FS-UAE.

But, I'm also thinking of cleaning the old gal up and picking up some new kit. I'm here for some basic guidance.

- Form factor: I want to keep the A1200 in the original form factor
- Acceleration and RAM: I've seen a handful of cards out there and would really like to beef up the speeds (back in the day I had a Blizzard 1260/50 and a Voodoo FX 3D, towered up with a Mediator card). What super nippy options would any of you point towards?
- GFX: I'm guessing I won't be plugging in a GFX card like I used to. But what are the RTG options available these days? I assume HDMI is quite easy to mod in these days.
- Audio: Would I be right in assuming Paula is still rocking and no alt audio output is needed?
- Connectivity: Are these any wi-fi or Bluetooth options out there (mainly thinking for mouse/joypad inputs) and how well are we supported these days? USB: Is this supported well enough on the Amiga and do any of you have USB-C ports doing anything these days?

And anything else. Have I missed anything obvious that someone might want to think about or consider coming back to the platform?

What I plan to use it for is:
- Classic Gaming: Still got my WHDLoad key and still stoked that we have Putty Squad :D
- "Modern" Gaming: Quake was always fun on the Amiga, and I'm sure I've seen other fun modern projects on the go (Saw the AB3D2 post earlier. Nice)
- DPaint: I loved this application, so that might be for my down time. (And perhaps the other artistic ones I enjoyed too, Photogenics, Vista Pro)
- Music Production: Install all the classic and updated trackers and get back into chopping up some beats

And generally enjoying computing again. All this modern lark is starting to feel like work.

It'll be great to see some of the classic names in here. number6, Toaks, RoqueFort... and many others I've not spoken with in years.

FuZion.

@FuZion

As you're in Birmingham, are you able to get across to Telford this Saturday? West Midlands Amiga Group are meeting and you'd get to see some of the latest developments and get advice.

A great, current option is PiStorm and Emu68. It's a carrier board for a Raspberry Pi 3 or 4 which runs a bare metal CPU emulator. It's fast, allows you to use the HDMI output of the Pi, as well as the WiFi, ethernet (Pi4), and RAM (up to 2GB).

Some users on here don't like the CPU emulation but it's much faster than running something like Amiberry (full Amiga emulator) on a Pi standalone.

@FuZion

Like @AndyFC, I too would have to strongly recommend the PiStorm/Emu68 combo. It ticks most of the boxes on your wish list, easy enough to get, and quite affordable.

The runner up is the more expensive Apollo V4 FPGA-based expansion card with 68080 + SAGA. Not as speedy as a Emu68, but is a mature and well-rounded offering.

For a working OG A1200, these are the best bang-for-buck options.

Last edited by agami on 07-Nov-2025 at 01:05 AM.

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All the way, with 68k

Thanks @AndyFC and @agami.

I’m not going to be in Brum on Saturday unfortunately, but I will look out for other gatherings. Thanks too for your suggestions too, that gives me something to research.

Appreciated.

FuZion.

@FuZion

pistorm is worth nothing shit that changes your amiga into mouse and keyboard interface for rpi
rpi that run emulator that work like winuae
using it is stupid simply beacause amiga mouse and kayboard was copied from pc many years ago
do not listen to some that want to fool you and spread pistorm/emu68 propaganda
do not waste money for this shit pistorm just use winuae almost for free

@FuZion

Don't listen to ppcamiga1, he's the resident PPC troll and can't stand the fact that there are fast and affordable options for 68K users while he's stuck with hardware that gets an already outdated release once a decade if he's lucky.

Emu68 is *nothing like* UAE, it doesn't emulate any of the Amiga custom hardware, it just talks to it like any other accelerator. It's more akin to Amithlon (except that it runs bare metal): an emulated CPU with a bunch of additional hardware. All the software and drivers run on the 68K side.

No physical 68K solution can hold a candle to it in terms of performance. You also get RTG and other bonuses with it.

It's very hard to make a case against it except that it's not authentic 68K silicon. There are plenty of fast 060 boards available today but you'll typically have to provide your own 68060 for them

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Doing stupid things for fun...

@ppcamiga1

The thread was going so well. Your an idiot, that needs to learn to not post with stupid comments.

Sibbi, please ban this troublesome soul.

@FuZion

As already said, ignore ppcamiga1. He doesn't speak for the sane people on here.

Last edited by F0L on 06-Nov-2025 at 09:34 AM.

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@FuZion

There 2 cheap ways to go:

1. PiStorm (like it was introduced by all the others here)
2. A1200NG, a software Emulator like it is on PiStorm with an A1200 compatible mainboard.

You should also think about hard-disk/hard-disk replacement a CF card or the memory on the software emulators might be a good solution, and about HDMI Output both versions will add RTG (Graphiccard) RAM, acceleration AHI Audio Ethernet/Wifi

This place is still as awesome as ever. Great to see fueds are still alive and kicking too �

Great to see you still here Karlos 👊

I may start to look at the various options people are mentioning next week.

@FuZion

Yeah, I'm feeling a lot older but not much wiser

Pft, I can't even type smilies like I used to.

Last edited by Karlos on 06-Nov-2025 at 01:40 PM.
Last edited by Karlos on 06-Nov-2025 at 01:40 PM.

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Doing stupid things for fun...

@Karlos

Aren't we all eh �

There's one more thing I think I'll be trying too. I have some old 3.5" HDDs. In all likelihood, they're probably knackered. But if they are salvageable, they're probably either FFS or SFS. I'd like to be able to plug these in, as slave drives or something and grab anything I can from them.

I spotted a tool called BlueSCSI (I think that was the name of it), which looked very cool, but this would be a one time use thing.

FuZion.

@FuZion

I've had success using UAE to image old Amiga HDD.

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Doing stupid things for fun...

@Karlos

Karlos stop strolling start working on zune on aros

@FuZion

pistorm is worth nothing shit that changes your amiga into mouse and keyboard interface for rpi
rpi that run emulator that work like winuae
using it is stupid simply beacause amiga mouse and kayboard was copied from pc many years ago
do not listen to some that want to fool you and spread pistorm/emu68 propaganda
do not waste money for this shit pistorm just use winuae it is almost for free

and especially do not listen to karlos he is well known pistorm troll
he will be try to cheat you about pistorm
do not believe in anything that karols write
it is pure propaganda bs
use winuae it is cheaper and many times faster than pistorm/emu68

@FuZion

I've a similar experience to Karlos. I bought a cheap IDE to USB adapter interface to mount real Amiga formatted drives in WinUAE. Useful for recovering data off old drives and setting up new ones from scratch.

I've no experience of BlueSCSI but I assume it's for SCSI drives, not IDE.

@ppcamiga1

Quote:

ppcamiga1 wrote: and especially do not listen to karlos he is well known pistorm troll he will be try to cheat you about pistorm do not believe in anything that karols write it is pure propaganda bs use winuae it is cheaper and many times faster than pistorm/emu68

Aww I feel special now!

At the risk of giving him an aneurism, I actually agree, UAE is faster on whatever PC you own if it's remotely modern. This is just the natural consequence of high end x64 being significantly more powerful than a Raspberry Pi. Of course, nobody has ever once claimed otherwise. I use Amiberry x64 on Linux for my Amiga fix these days because all my actual hardware is in storage and likely in dire need of repair/maintenance.

The claim that is being made is that the PiStorm is the fastest 68K accelerator available for installation within a physical Amiga. I think that claim stands up to scrutiny.

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Doing stupid things for fun...

Soooo, I've had a very quick look (quite the day in the family, so not much of a look). And from what I can find out, this pistorm thing for the A1200 only comes in a "Lite" version. Is that correct? Can anyone explain in a one liner to explain why the A1200 version's called "Lite"?

FuZion.

@FuZion

I am sure someone more familiar with the hardware can explain better but as I recall, the original PiStorm design for the A1200 originally only works with the RPi CM4 (Compute module). This design was a better fit for the 1200 trapdoor but that particular RPi unit became unobtainum for a while. The PiStorm Lite is compatible with more RPi Models.

There are other hardware differences, the FPGA used to glue it all together, etc. I am not sure if there are any other capability differences to be aware of too, hopefully someone with more direct experience can answer that.

Last edited by Karlos on 06-Nov-2025 at 11:17 PM.

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Doing stupid things for fun...

@FuZion

Just for a little clarity Pistorm is an accelerator much like any other accelerator for 68k Amiga's. The biggest difference is that rather than plugging in a 680x0 cpu (for conversations sake at least, obviously most accelerators have the cpu surface mounted without a socket) to the accelerator you plug one of a handful of supported Raspberry Pi's.
The ARM CPU on the Pi's uses a translation layer where 68k instructions are mapped to their ARM equivalents.
On top of that there's also ppc emulation being added using warpos, making it akin to a bppc, but offering much faster 68k and ppc speeds than avaialble to a bppc.
It also adds the RAM of the Pi (up to AmigaOS's limits) and direct access to the gpu, which has both 2d rtg drivers, and 3d acceleration being worked on currently.

It uses the entire Amiga's hardware directly. No software emulation of chipsets, memory maps, i/o, etc. and all the stuff an emulator like UAE will use (which is great because it lets a person use their Amiga and peripherals and displays, no need for a host OS, no api "wrappers" for 2d and 3d gfx, etc. While UAE on a fast PC is faster, the inherent latency that full system emulation cant avoid isnt there, so it has a certain immediacy lacking from UAE (from the perspective of someone running WinUAE on an i9-13900k, using Amiga 1200 case with usb to db9 adapters and "real" Amiga mouse/keyboard, amiga keyboard, and a greasweasel (so I can boot, read and write real Amiga disks)).

n.b. its entirely possible that I've written that last paragraph to double as negating a certain fruit loop who makes up whatever suits his internal narrative.
Over time you'll start to see half of his opinions are based on him misunderstanding things he read that were years old to begin with (seems selectively so he can convince himself), and then misrepresenting what was never true in the worst light possible.
It seems to be his happy place

@FuZion

fishy_fis lie to you and spread pistorm propaganda bs
every other other accelerator for 68k Amiga's use real cpu and this real cpu work with native os
pistorm run emulator, whole os is emulated like in uae
don't waste money for pistorm
use uae it is the some and almost for free