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[amiga-penn-wchester]

old board, either 1 or 2 (2megs with expansion). new board had 2megs I believe.

I once had a picasso IV (picIV is also ZII compat.) running on an A1200T/060 w/ a micronik ZII bus-extender. It was pretty quick at moving windows around, items refreshing, but if you had many 1280x1024 screens open you could notice that when switching screens, it was choking due to the ZII bus speed. If you keep it at a few screens or have a decently sized Workbench screen to hold apps (things like ImageFX can be made to run on the WB), it should be reasonably fast.

I haven't used a Pic II on a ZII bus, but it was designed for it, so it should be a similar experience to the above.

[hese7]

Originally Posted by blakespot

Can anyone tell how much RAM is on this Picasso II I just grabbed?

http://www.ebay.com/itm/ws/eBayISAPI...0#ht_648wt_922

2 megabytes (16 x 128 kB).

[zipper]

Picasso II is clearly slower than Picasso IV, only on 8bit they are comparable. 24bit pics take llooong time to load on PII and longish on PIV - I mostly used 16bit as it's a good compromise.

[Damion]

Here's a question for the experts: Isn't Z2 on an A2000 just a bit faster than Z2 compatibility mode on a Z3 Amiga?

Being that the Picasso II is Z2 only, doesn't that mean the '060 and PII combo may actually be a bit faster in the 2000 than if it were in the 3000? :P

[Crumb]

Originally Posted by Damion

Here's a question for the experts: Isn't Z2 on an A2000 just a bit faster than Z2 compatibility mode on a Z3 Amiga?

Being that the Picasso II is Z2 only, doesn't that mean the '060 and PII combo may actually be a bit faster in the 2000 than if it were in the 3000? :P

Nobody would use a crap zorroII gfx card on a ZorroIII Amiga, it would be like putting square wheels to a Lamborghini :-P

I doubt very much speed difference is noticeable, anyway as soon as you loaded chipmem bus with anything heavy A2000 would slow down and A3000 would keep multitasking better thanks to its twice faster chipmem access ;-P

PS: Amiga 3000 accelerators have faster SCSI and you could even use a Permedia2, try that on an A2000 ;-)

[Damion]

Originally Posted by Crumb

Nobody would use a crap zorroII gfx card on a ZorroIII Amiga, it would be like putting square wheels to a Lamborghini :-P

I doubt very much speed difference is noticeable, anyway as soon as you loaded chipmem bus with anything heavy A2000 would slow down and A3000 would keep multitasking better thanks to its twice faster chipmem access ;-P

PS: Amiga 3000 accelerators have faster SCSI and you could even use a Permedia2, try that on an A2000 ;-)

LOL, all very true. :-) I suppose the best you could hope for on the 2000 would be the WildFire/Inferno combination (DMA ethernet!), but I've never seen a WildFire for sale, and IIRC the Inferno only had a limited release of a few units for developers. The TekMagic has just as fast onboard memory performance as the Cyberstorm MK3/PPC, but of course only 10MB/s SCSI, no Z3, no PCI, etc..

[matt3k]

Hey Damion,

You still haven't found a Warp Engine 3040? Chfriend scored one a month back off this website, look harder my friend.

If you can find a Cyberstorm MK III, that would be nice also.

[Damion]

Originally Posted by matt3k

Hey Damion,

You still haven't found a Warp Engine 3040? Chfriend scored one a month back off this website, look harder my friend.

If you can find a Cyberstorm MK III, that would be nice also.

Not yet, though I have to admit I haven't been trying too hard! An MKIII would be icing on the cake, but admittedly a 3040 WE would be more than enough. Have everything else for it ready to go, kind of itching to finish the project since it's my last Amiga still in pieces. My goal was to get them all back together and working this year. :P

[amiga-penn-wchester]

hard to say whether A3000 and greater is slower in ZII compatibility mode. Dave Haynie described it as an "emulated" ZII, so whether that theoretically should be slower - I'm not sure. Probably is "at speed"

...

Of course 8 bit modes on the Pic II would be faster than the 16 or 24 bit modes. I had a Pic IV on a ZII busboard and it was quite spiffy, didn't notice problems "loading" 24 bit images. It was AOS screen swaps that hogged the bus.

[matt3k]

The warp engines were the best accelerator for the Amiga 3000 IMVHO, yes I know that the CS MK III is a better card. But the build quaility and speed of the warp engine was faster then an 50MHz 060 MK II except for math. For daily use an older, 'slower', card was faster. Even thought the CPU was faster, memory access and SCSI IO were slower. Macrosystems hit a home run right out of the gate, where phase five released 2 under developed units until they hit their home run... Phase 5 won the battle in video cards to be fair...

This was corrected with the MK III.

Warp Engines install perfectly and are extremely stable.

Keep looking a WE or CS will transform your 3000 into a productivity machine. A PIV 4, Cybervision 64, Retina BLT Z3, or CV64 3d will complete the package.

I still enjoy using my 3000 after 20 plus years... The best system to me that commodore ever released.
my 20000000 cents (2 cents adjusted for inflation)

[Crumb]

@matt3k

WarpEngines are sexy! and very hot :-)

[nscaleworld]

Originally Posted by terminator4

while on topic of a2000...
Only rev 4 board is german made and it had issues.
rev 4.x and 6 were designed in westchester, pa and produced in hong kong / taiwan etc.
All my Amiga 2000s don't say Made in germany so maybe you have something you picked up in europe?
I also have rev 4.3 A2000 board and thats cr*p compared to rev 6.x which has all the changes and fixes. of all of them 6.2 and 6.3 and 6.4 are more desirable obviously.
I think A2000 was build at time when Commodore was doing ok, ok enough not to be cheap etc. A3000 came in 1990 and I think by then Amiga/Apple were losign their edge to IBM Clones so some corners might have been cut (the case is very small similar to PC-ii or PC-iii that commodore was selling)

WRONG! All Amiga 2000 motherboards were made in Germany, and most of the Amiga 2000 computers were assembled in Germany. Some of the parts were made in Hong Kong and other countries, but the parts were shipped to Germany for final assembly. Many Amiga 500 computers were also made in Germany.

[Damion]

Originally Posted by matt3k

The warp engines were the best accelerator for the Amiga 3000 IMVHO, yes I know that the CS MK III is a better card. But the build quaility and speed of the warp engine was faster then an 50MHz 060 MK II except for math. For daily use an older, 'slower', card was faster. Even thought the CPU was faster, memory access and SCSI IO were slower. Macrosystems hit a home run right out of the gate, where phase five released 2 under developed units until they hit their home run... Phase 5 won the battle in video cards to be fair...

This was corrected with the MK III.

Warp Engines install perfectly and are extremely stable.

Keep looking a WE or CS will transform your 3000 into a productivity machine. A PIV 4, Cybervision 64, Retina BLT Z3, or CV64 3d will complete the package.

I still enjoy using my 3000 after 20 plus years... The best system to me that commodore ever released.
my 20000000 cents (2 cents adjusted for inflation)

I fully agree, and I eventually decided to hold out only for a WarpEngine. I did consider a Mercury since I like the looks of the board, but I know it's slower and lacks the awesome SCSI of the former.

I had an MKII in the 3000 for a bit, and the card felt so much slower than the TekMagic in my A2000. Fastram performance was some 15MB/s slower than the TekMagic, and of course the MKII SCSI module doesn't fit in the 3000 (TekMagic has the same awesome SCSI as the WE). I ended up overclocking the MKII to 66MHz and put it in the 4000 where it works great, and finally feels a bit more responsive. Next project there is to try to get the Fastlane going so the 4000 has some decent form of SCSI.

I agree Phase5 finally surpassed everything with the MKIII. Only major fly in the ointment was the reliability problems those cards were often known for. I'd rather stick a WE or modified GVP 4060 in there and forget about it. (IMHO, the GVP 4060 was probably closest to what the WE '060 would have been, NCR SCSI, good memory performance, etc.)

[blakespot]

Just got my Blizzard 2060 w/ 50MHz 68060. My god -- the speed increase on this Amiga 2000 over my old '020 is *insane*.

Got the Picasso II installed -- no drivers setup yet. Later tonight...




bp