Thursday, December 14, 2023

 Amiga users/ fans check out the latest Issue #12 of WhatIFF? Amiga Guide magazine

Available via download from http://www.whatiff.info/ as well as https://aminet.net/

Issue 12 includes:

Reviews:
A600 RGB2HDMI Adapters
Furia Accelerator
DrawerGenie
Aminet Goodies

Game Reviews:
Spheroid (Demo)
Tenebra 1 and 2

Guides:
Making DF1 work as DF0 with the PiStorm
A314-CP date/time and device not found fix
Creative Graphics: 3D Objects with a word processor
Brilliance 101 - Tokyo Bay
ImageFX 101 - Part 2

Articles:
The Amiga Philosopher's Stance on Amiga Games
Things Commodore Did Right
Amiga Through the Lens of an LD Learner

Interviews:
Andrew Vaisey - Spheroid
Rob Cranley - DrawerGenie
Miguel Fides - Trinity Card

Shell Talk
Invents Corner

Cover Disk:
Spheroid Xmas Demo - 15 Levels
Audio Sample Pack 1

Authors:
Ivan Sorensen, John Scolieri, Kevin Saunders, Rob O'Malley, and Timo Paul.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


Friday, September 29, 2023

 

 Amiga users/ fans check out the latest Issue #11 of WhatIFF? Amiga Guide magazine

Available via download from http://www.whatiff.info/ as well as https://aminet.net/

Issue 11 includes:

Reviews:
* ImageFX 4.5
* OmniPort A1200
* AmigaKit RED LEDs
* Amiga CD32 Disc Reference Guide Book

Game Reviews:
* CyberPunks 2
* NightShift

Tutorials:
* LightWave 101 - Rendering DEMs
* ImageFX 101 - Digital Postcard
* Brilliance 101 - Dithering
* OctaMED 101 - Setting up OctaMED SoundStudio
* How to install RTG on PiStorm32-lite
* ELUDE Demos on PiStorm32-lite
* Reducing noise in 8-bit samples
* Modern Effects in Oldskool trackers

Articles:
* Amiga Magazines Yesterday Today
* Custom music vs stock music
* Revisiting Tokyo Retro Computer Users Meet

Interviews:
* Apollo Team Part 1 of 2
* Scorpion Engine - Erik Hogan
* RNO Developer

Cover Disk
* BitBeam Cannon Demo - Aeon Legends
* Acidic breakcore OctaMED multi-module

Friday, June 30, 2023

 

 Amiga users/ fans check out the latest issue #10 of WhatIFF? Amiga Guide magazine

I have to admit that it's just comfy and cool to read a new Amiga magazine on my Amiga computer ! For this issue 10 release there's also a PDF version and both can be downloaded from http://www.whatiff.info/ as well as https://aminet.net/ and for the first time there's an exclusive game demo of Humulet which is a new dungeon crawler with great HAM6 graphics that can run on OCS miggies !

More details are below:

Reviews:

PiStorm 32-Lite
A314-CP
HID2AMI v2.0
How Synthesizers Work
Commotron Gamepad Turbo
Aminet Goodies

Game Reviews:

Weasels Quick Gaming Corner
Attack of the Petscii Robots
Luma
NEON Noir

Guides:

A314-CP Setup
LightWave 3D - Creating Objects for 2D work
Brilliance - RubThrough Tips

Articles:
Amiga Gaming and You
Amiga Daily Software

Interviews:
Remi - Hamulet
Carlos - RedPill
Marcin - A314-CP
Mirko - HID2AMI v2.0

Shell Talk

Monday, March 6, 2023

 TF1260-got a Rev.5 68060 let's see if it can overclock and run stable with the latest Alpha firmware & compare it to my Cyberstorm MKIII in my Amiga 4000 !!!

Was lucky to find a full Rev5. 68060 (FPU & MMU) recently without having to sell my kidney lol I was originally thinking to put into my Amiga 4000 BUT then I realized the headache of taking it apart to get to my Cyberstorm MKIII by Phase5 (the  CPU connector isn't fun to take off...) and thought my Rev.1 has been rocking for decades in my A4k so better to try overclocking it in my Amiga 1200 Tower via my TF1260!

First to carefully take off my Rev.1 68060:

-I used to use a small flat head screwdriver and s-l-o-w-l-y lift up each edge until eventually it would come off without bending any pins but luckily I found a removal tool on AmiBay that makes the operation so much quicker and most importantly it has alot more support on each edge of the CPU which drastically improves the chance of damaging pins.

 


Here's the Rev.5 securely on the socket:

- CPU in great shape. Bought it as tested and confirmed FPU and MMU as there's alot of rebadged Chinese knockoffs online nowadays unfortunately.


Now to put the heatsink on the Rev.5:

- first some double sided thermal tape...careful it's sticky stuff! I used wax paper and an exacto knife to peel & place on the 060


 - one side on

 

 

 - wax paper off


 
heatsink & fan on:

- won't connect the fan on now as I want to see how hot the 060 gets after overclocking & testing fist

and finally the moment of truth!..always worried about the magic smoke showing up still :-):
 

- phew great news no magic smoke & we boot right up into the newly released AmigaOS3.2-Update 2

- after making sure all is good at the stock 50Mhz and checking if it actually is a Rev5 with FPU & MMU it's time to start overclocking!

- using the new Alpha version of the cpuspeed command from the shell I try 70Mhz and it locks into 67 Mhz. All seems fine until I try to load up a program then the HD light stays on all the time and although I can still move my mouse and move windows around in Workbench I can't do anything else so time to reboot the 1200 Tower and try again

- after reboot I try at 63 Mhz and sadly same thing SO reboot again and try for 60 Mhz and cpuspeed locks in at 58.33Mhz...all looks good as I can load up programs and some games but just as I load up SysSpeed to do some benchmarks the system freezes up..dammit! I try again after a full power down (no reset) and same thing :-(

- disappointed as I know some friends with full Rev.5's with the Alpha firmware run very stable at 67Mhz but I also know that some don't like to be overclocked and it's just a flip of the coin which ones do or don't ! After the initial disappointment I felt grateful that at least my new CPU was humming along very stable for over a few hours running 060 specific demos and it was barely hot to the touch (quite a bit cooler than my Rev.1) so I decided not to connect the fan at all. Also my full Rev.1 can be easily sold for close to the cost I paid for the Rev.5 so it was definitely worth the upgrade.

 SysSpeed results at 50 MHz with OS3.2.2:


 Comparing with my Phase 5-Cyberstorm MKIII at 50 MHz with OS3.2.2:




WoW..very impressive stuff from the TF1260!

-The ROM & Fast memory tests are over 3x faster than the CSMKIII

- The Fast Ram speeds are on average approximately 4% faster (though I would have expected more since the modern chips on the TF1260 are much faster than the old DRAM chips on the MKIII

- The Fast Ram to Chip Ram speeds are only approximately 0.5% quicker on the MKIII.

- The CPU MIPS are 0.7% quicker on the TF1260

- The MFLOPS (FPU) are 0.25% on the TF1260

Overall bravo Terrible Fire developers!!! Looking forward to more firmware updates in the future


And of course the obligatory picture of what the mancave looks like at the time of writing this post (east end anyhow..notice the latest addition?)


 


Sunday, April 10, 2022

 TF1260-time for a new Alpha firmware update & lets compare results with my Cyberstorm MKIII !!!

Been enjoying my TF1260 with the Beta firmware update (see Dec27-21 post below) so let's look at what the latest Alpha firmware update brings to the table!

All tests carried out running AmigaOS 3.2.1with SysSpeed v2.6.


Note: On my Rev1 68060 I unfortunately couldn't over clock it to 62.5Mhz (like I did with the Beta firmware) or even 58 or 55Mhz so testing done only at base 50Mhz. That being said, in testing some intense 060 specific demos I honestly saw no difference in performance? Perhaps this is because of the big jump in chip ram speed or other internal changes?
Stability wise the Alpha firmware update is solid on my system.


Results at 50 Mhz with Alpha firmware:


Comparing to Beta firmware Results at 50 Mhz:

MIPS/ MFLOPS: +1.17 / +0.52

DRIVE SPEED: +1.47 MB/s (ReadFile)

MEMORY: +187.69 MB/s (CacheRead)

                  +22.11 MB/s (ReadROMb)

                  +40.98         (ReadROMw)

                  +51.76         (ReadRoml)

                  +0.49          (ReadFastb)

                  +0.51          (ReadFastw)

                  +0.67          (ReadFastl)

                  +0.35          (WriteFastb)

                  +0.56          (WriteFastw)

                  -1.56           (WriteFastl)

                  +0.22          (Fast2Fastb)

                  +0.3            (Fast2Fastw)

                  -5.53           (Fast2Fastl)

                  +0.03          (Fast2Fastm)

                  +25.74        (Fast2Fast16)- no result with Beta?

                  +0.06          (ReadChipb)

                  +0.12          (ReadChipw)

                  +0.24          (ReadChipl) 

                  +0.44          (WriteChipb)

                  +0.87          (WriteChipw)

                  +1.73          (WriteChipl)

                  +0.19          (Chip2Chipb)

                  +0.38          (Chip2Chipw)

                  +0.75          (Chip2Chipl)

                  +0.41          (Chip2Chipm)

                 +2.55           (Chip2Chip16)- no result with Beta?

                 +0.41           (Fast2Chipb)

                 +0.79           (Fast2Chipw)

                 +1.62           (Fast2Chipl)

                 +1.36           (Fast2Chipm)

                 +4.95           (Fast2Chip16)-no result with Beta?

 

Phew ok there you have it so there's alot of +'s there so basically almost every item improved with the best results being Fast Ram, ReadROM and especially Cache Read.

It's too bad I couldn't get my Rev1 060 to overclock with this latest firmware update so I could compare the 62.5Mhz results as well but I'm hoping future updates will bring back 62.5 Mhz as my system was humming quite reliably at 62.5 :-)


And now for fun sake & yes I know it's not Apples to Apples but below are my Cyberstorm MKIII results in my Amiga 4000 also running AmigaOS3.2.1 with Rev1(same mask)68060:




and the obligatory view of only the NorthEast corner of the mancave as it is at this time:





Monday, December 27, 2021

 TF1260-A NEW 68060 Amiga Accelerator board in 2021...time for a firmware update!!!

What great times we are in for new and awesome Amiga hardware being released for our favourite computer and OS! 

I was lucky enough to buy my new TF1260 from www.amibay.com from one of the authorized sellers for Terrible Fire products as up to recently only certain testers had one as it's been in beta for a while. I've recently been enjoying it inside my Amiga 1200 Tower and I'm very impressed with it as it's at par with my Blizzard Cyberstorm MKII in my Amiga 4000 performance wise and actually it surpasses it when I overclock my Rev1 060 from 50 to 62.5 Mhz! Cool part is you don't have to move jumpers, play with resistors on voltage boards etc. overclock the TF1260...all you have to do is open the shell and type "cpuspeed speed=xx" where xx is the speed you want to overclock too....it's rumoured from other TF1260 owners that some Rev6 060's can hit 100 Mhz with heatsinks and fans...personally I'm the type of guy that would rather overclock 'slightly' as I prefer my systems to be more stable than fast but quirky.  Since my full 060 is a Rev1 I'm quite happy with how stable my TF1260 is running 060 specific DEMO's all day long and the 060 itself isn't hot enough to fry an egg on like some old 040's I used to have back in the day lol...I've installed a heat sink on it to be safe.

After watching a great YouTube video from ACILL last night I finally got around to update the firmware on my TF1260 to the latest 'stable' release and run a few tests comparing before/ after results do let's go!

My TF1260 with onboard IDE CF cable attached

oops no JTAG connector on my TF1260 BUT luckily I've got all kinds of stuff lying around in my man cave that have pins on them πŸ˜‰

 

Quick snips to get the pins off casing

pins sit nicely on the TF1260 with no modifications

did I ever tell you I LOVE solder paste 😁A quick 20 seconds with heat gun at 400 deg.celcius and 35% air flow and we're ready to start flashing!


You'll need a C232HM-DDHSL-0 USB to MPSE cable 3.3V-0.5m as seen in Acill's YouTube video noted above! Follow the links below the video description to download the files you need and how to connect the cable to your TF1260. Once set up flashing my TF1260 literally took a few seconds.

All tests carried out running AmigaOS 3.2.1.

Testing with old firmware at 50 Mhz: 









Testing with old firmware at 62.5 Mhz:












Testing with updated firmware at 50 Mhz:











Testing with updated firmware at 62.5 Mhz:









Quick summary: The TF1260 lost a little bit (1.08MIPS) of overall MIPS/MFLOPS (don't tell your Amiga 500πŸ˜‰) BUT got a nice speed increase (1.17 MB/s) on the onbaord IDE speed and a very significant 2 to3 times read/write speed increase with the onboard fast ram !

and of course the obligatory view of the east end of the man cave at the time of writing this postπŸ‘