Path: kernighan.cs.umass.edu!barrett From: mfontana@ing.unico.it (Mauro Fontana) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.reviews Subject: REVIEW: Blizzard 1240 T/ERC accelerator for A1200 Followup-To: comp.sys.amiga.hardware Date: 12 Feb 1997 15:23:16 GMT Organization: The Amiga Online Review Column - ed. Daniel Barrett Lines: 330 Sender: amiga-reviews@math.uh.edu (comp.sys.amiga.reviews moderator) Distribution: world Message-ID: <5dsn94$c61@kernighan.cs.umass.edu> Reply-To: mfontana@ing.unico.it (Mauro Fontana) NNTP-Posting-Host: knots.cs.umass.edu Keywords: hardware, accelerator, 68040, A1200, commercial X-Review-Number: Volume 1997 Number 1 Originator: barrett@knots.cs.umass.edu PRODUCT NAME Blizzard 1240 T/ERC BRIEF DESCRIPTION The Blizzard 1240 T/ERC Accelerator Memory Board is a 68040 40 MHz accelerator that features autoconfig RAM expansion that accepts till 128MB SIMM 32 or 36 bit, 70ns or faster, an optional SCSI-2 DMA module that has another SIMM socket connector and supports throughput till 10MB/sec. The module is the same as the Blizzard 1240-IV or 1260. The 68040 is complete, that is it has MMU and FPU built in fully working. I don't know the real meaning of the Eco Recycled term (the ERC in the name of the board), but I could read the original Motorola specs on the 040 chip as the heat sink covers only the bottom part of them: the chip is declared as XC68040RC40Mzh so it is NOT a overclocked one. COMPANY INFORMATION Name: Phase 5 Digital Products Address: In der Au 27 D-61440 Oberursel Germany Phone: (06171) 583787 ITALIAN DISTRIBUTORS There are quite many distributors in Italy of Amiga and Blizzard products. I have purchased mine at NewVideo, Limbiate (Milano), though due to their lack of professionality I would not recommend. If they were available I would have bought it from DBLine srl. - V.LE RIMEMBRANZE 26/C - 21024 Biandronno (VA) - Tel: 0332/76800 - Fax 0332/767244 - 768066 - Vox onFAX 0332/767360 - bbs LIST PRICE The price ranges from about 630,000 LIT (US $410, 630 DM) to 660,000 LIT (US $425, 660 DM). SCSI-2 Module: about 250,000 LIT (US $160, 250 DM) All prices include 19% IVA SPECIAL HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE REQUIREMENTS HARDWARE An Amiga 1200 mounted in a tower house or wherever, but not in the standard A1200 case. SOFTWARE 68040.library to patch the 68882 FPU functions not present in the 68040. COPY PROTECTION None. (Does that mean you are allowed to clone it? 8) ) MACHINE USED FOR TESTING Amiga 1200 model from Commodore, revision 1B, 2MB Chip RAM, 16MB 70(?) ns 72-pin, 32-bit SIMM, single sided. Kickstart in RAM, V39.106. Workbench 39.29. 2 floppy drives. Western Digital Caviar 1.6GB 3.5" EIDE HD External A1000 Keyboard NEC Multisync II 14" monitor Tried a GoldStar 8x IDE CD-ROM for some time. The computer has been mounted into an old big PC desktop. The original stock Amiga power supply just powers the motherboard and the accelerator board, while all the rest (HD, floppy drives, keyboard, CPU fan and the monitor as well) is powered by the desktop 200W power supply. INSTALLATION Provided you have a towered house A1200 the installation is very easy. As the 68040 becomes very hot a heat sink and a fan are provided as standard. All you need is to plug the power connector of the fan into a 4 pins connector that is equal to those used to power the HDs. There are quite lots of them spare coming from a PC power supply so there should not be problems. Before closing everything you have just to choose if you want to disable the MAPROM feature that automatically maps the Kickstart ROM into RAM just by setting the unique jumper existing on the board. The memory SIMM must be inclined so a double faced SIMM is not usable. The good thing that differentiates this board from similar ones like the Apollo one, for example, is the fact that all the surface mounted components, the SIMM socket and the CPU as well are all positioned on the bottom side of the board, that is they are upside down looking at the ground. This means that, with some caution and small efforts it can be installed into a normal A1200 case without worrying about the heat produced. For mounting the board in a standard A1200 case see later. The manual, for the following surprise, will explain the installation of the board in the normal A1200 case. However it explains very well all the steps to do before you can power up your Amiga. The addendum sheet, that you must read before the user manual, states that the fan MUST be connected and checked for proper function and that operation without cooling is not possible. OVERVIEW The board comes into the phase5 classic black box. As this is the 3rd phase5 board I have purchased I can say that the package is similar to the other ones, that is of very high quality. The big white stick on the box clearly states that you need a towered house A1200 to use this board. Opening the box reveals a surprise, and what a surprise. The box contain the user manual, a registration card, an addendum sheet and the anti-static envelop that contains..... a Blizzard 1260 card! The board in fact is the same as the 1260 with just the CPU and the CPU power adapter changed. phase 5 states in the addendum sheet that they are going to provide a 68060 upgrade kit which will transform the board in a full 1260 card. All the documentation provided is both in English and German, which is a very good thing. However the manual is the same as the 1260 board and the differences are listed just in the addendum sheet. This is not a problem as the only thing that changes is the fact that there's no software to install before using the board. You just need the 68040.library that should be present on the WB disks. I say should because I didn't find it and I had to copy it from one of the many PD CD-ROMs I have. REVIEW So let's see how good this board is. Once installed everything correctly (remember to connect the CPU fan if you don't want a hole in your tower case) I just powered everything on. I have to admit that, before this board, I have been using my A1200 in the basic configuration (only 2MB of chip ram) for many months. It was amazing seeing a basic boot happening in 3 secs. But what is most impressive is the update of the windows! Now all the gfx functions are performed in an incredible speed, and even a 64 color WB on a AGA machine is fast. Using graphics programs like DPaint in 256 colors is now really possible without falling asleep waiting for the image to appear. The board comes with a battery backed clock so it is now possible to have a permanent clock on the WB screen and use all those programs that need to know the real date. The MMU finally allows programmers (like me) to use debugging tools like enforcer or for those who really want to to install any UNIX operating system (like Linux or NetBSD). The powerful 68040 FPU running at 40MHz allows the use of intensive calculation programs (fractals, rendering and raytracing, general math based programs) in a productive way without having to wait a night of full calculations to see the results of the simplest scene. The only problem is the fact that the 68040 FPU lacks some of the most used 68881/2 FPU instructions. The 040 (and the 060 too) have in fact the basic FPU instructions to build the other more complex (and more used) ones, but these basic instructions are executed much faster than in the 68882. The real problem is that the major part of the software available, when compiled to use the FPU, is compiled for the 68882 and so an external library is needed (the 68040.library) to trap all the FPU exception produced by the unavailable instructions and to transform them in the right basic instructions that the 68040 can process. This thing results in a big slow down of all the FPU calculations, and sometimes the integer version of the same program can be slightly faster. This, of course, affects only programs compiled for the 68882 FPU, while programs compiled for the 040 can take advantage of all the horse power provided by the optimized FPU. For old programs or games that do not want to run with the 040 there's the option to disable the board by pressing the "2" key on the keyboard while booting, or, even though not documented in the user manual, pressing the right mouse button. This gives you a real plain A1200 as the board is disabled completely, that is CPU, RAM and the optional SCSI controller are all disabled to assure complete compatibility with the outdated programs. BENCHMARKS AIBB 6.5 - 020+ optimized code - CP FPU code. All other systems were set to their maximum (020+ code whenever possible, while FPU is always set to standard CP whenever possible as the major part of the programs use this optimization). MAPROM function enabled (ROM in FAST RAM). Comparison base: stock A1200 no fast. 1240/40 A3000/25 A4000/25 EmuTest 15.87 2.72 8.66 WritePixel 4.23 1.19 5.16 Sieve 6.51 2.14 2.70 Dhrystone 14.89 2.75 9.34 Sort 12.53 2.65 7.31 EllipseTest 2.18 0.98 2.28 Matrix 9.08 2.76 4.40 IMath 7.84 2.11 4.86 MemTest 3.92 2.38 1.27 TGTest 1.84 0.91 1.79 LineTest 1.08 0.62 1.09 InstTest 12.57 3.12 5.73 Savage 126.57 98.68 78.74 FMath 200.13 13.87 124.16 FMatrix 19.46 3.08 8.29 BeachBall 86.77 19.53 60.83 Flops 312.85 33.53 193.75 TransTest 103.53 47.80 50.19 FTrace 100.40 57.79 58.96 CplxTest 24.76 3.66 14.43 SysInfo 3.24 says: MIPS 30.12 MFLOPS 7.71 Dhrystones 28855 The HD speed has also increased, seeing SysInfo results, from 1.3MB/sec to almost 2MB/sec. As you can see the gfx tests are not that impressive, though I have used the same mode and depth of the other standard modules provided with AIBB. The problem is surely due to the slowness of the Chip Ram and the fact that the board has to synchronize to the motherboard clock before accessing the chip ram. Nevertheless, the Apollo 1240/40 board is a faster in the gfx tests and in many other tests, though the module I have seen shows it has burst mode to fast ram enabled through the installation of two SIMMs. CPU/Memory latency index is so lowered from 6.1 of the Blizzard to 5.1. I don't know if it possible to have burst mode with the Blizzard and the SCSI module which comes with another SIMM socket. A great boost in graphics performances can be obtained by installing the FastWaitBlit patch by Dave Jones. Here the gfx tests with the patch running: WritePixel 6.88 EllipseTest 2.46 TGTest 1.95 LineTest 1.08 BeachBall 100.12 LIKES & DISLIKES Likes: Lots. I like the speed provided by such a fast processor, the fact that all gfx operations have been accelerated to a decent usable level, the icon updating that is almost immediate. The SCSI connector for the optional SCSI controller. The technology used (no visible last second revisions and modifications). The fact that the chips are mounted upside down looking toward the ground. The PCMCIA is not disabled (though I could not test it as I don't have any PCMCIA device). The complete memory autoconfiguration, though this is now a standard thing even on PC compatibles. The battery backed clock (that should have been mounted as standard on the A1200 like in the old A500plus). Unlike the diffuse thought that the 040 becomes very hot and can almost be used for warming your bedroom, the fan is able to keep it cool (not warm, but really cool). Without the fan, however, I have to agree that the chip becomes very very hot (I have once used it without the fan for some minutes and when I have touched the top part of the board, just over the CPU position, it was hot, while the heat sink was just warm). Very good is the lack of any jumper for configuring the board, but the MAPROM one. I liked the fact that there's an hardware MAPROM (no pain with software configurations, ROM files and slow boot) and that the accelerator board can be completely disabled by pressing the "2" key or the right mouse button on the keyboard during the boot. The fact that it is full 060 upgradable. The SCSI module's relative low cost (considered it supports DMA transfers till 10MB/sec and comes with a second SIMM socket). The fact that the chip is not overclocked but works at its native speed. It's price that is almost equal to that of a 030/50MHz board+FPU but giving more than twice the speed of that. Unlike the Apollo A1240/40 card that has chip mounted on the top part of the board looking toward the inside of the A1200, the Blizzard can be safely mounted into the original A1200 case provided the computer is kept raised from the desk and the trapdoor is always left opened to provide the fan with fresh air. However, the 040 uses lots of power, so the standard 25W power supply may not be enough to power the board, the ram, the AGA chipset, an HD and the floppy (and the fan). A more powerful power supply may be required. Dislikes: Not many, really. The less important is surely the fact that the fan power connector is not a pass-through type connector and need its own 4-pin connector. Not a real problem considering the fact that in big cases where there's a powerful power supply those connectors are abundant. The board length is also a negative thing as it fits into the trapdoor with lots of pain, while there are not many cases able to keep a 43cm long motherboard. I had to cut a piece of my already big desktop to make the motherboard+accelerator board fit (while the motherboard alone fitted perfectly). The single SIMM socket is also a big limitation, but it seems it is now the standard on all A1200 accelerators cards. However, a second socket comes together with the good SCSI module. - Mauro Fontana mfontana@ing.unico.it --- Accepted and posted by Daniel Barrett, comp.sys.amiga.reviews moderator Send reviews to: amiga-reviews-submissions@math.uh.edu Request information: amiga-reviews-requests@math.uh.edu Moderator mail: amiga-reviews@math.uh.edu Anonymous ftp site: math.uh.edu, in /pub/Amiga/comp.sys.amiga.reviews Web site: ftp://math.uh.edu/pub/Amiga/comp.sys.amiga.reviews/index.html