The 68060 - The last of the V8 interceptors

Phase5's Blizzard 1260 Accelerator board





I had originally spec'd out a 68030 accelerator board to boost my new (yet to arrive) Amiga 1200's 20mhz14mhz M68020 CPU in order to run the more "recent" version of AmigaOS.

There's more...


While a 40mhz 68030 CPU is no slouch, it was apparently just adequate for running OS 3.9 (the last AmigaOS which runs on the 68k series). I was settling on this board simply because the company that sells the "NEW/Old Stock" machines also sells "New/New Stock" accelerators from a company called M-Tec. It wasn't the best board but it certainly would get the job done. And what's the reason for upping a stock Amiga to a 68030? From everything I've read, it's because the newer OS (OS 3.1, 3.5, 3.9) require some serious horse power. During the course of the last two weeks, I carefully have been lurking the market place forums for faster board to no avail.

I finally decided to post a simple "WTB: Blizzard 1260" on the Amiga.org marketplace forum. The first reply I got was somebody giving me the "Pa-shaw! Good luck buddy!" Apparently everyone and their crazy brother (who is locked in the basement) is pulling a Leonard Nimoy In Search Of episode trying to track these things down. But low and behold I was persistent and finally a nice individual in VA decided to let one go from his collection. I won't say how much I paid in order to save myself the embarrassment of buying 15 year old technology but it out-priced my 1200 system by a factor of TWO. Yep, just like the old days where the expansion parts always cost more than the system.

So what's going on here with the crazy prices of this Amiga hardware? Well, it looks like our beloved Amiga has entered the world of "The Collector" (say it in a long hallway so you get the appropriate reverb effect). Apparently things have actually settled down a bit because of the world-wide-cash-drought which means that nobody has that kind of dough to plunk down on antiquated hardware as much as they used to. BUT STILL, Amiga parts are pricey. It's all about the supply and demand and in today's world there isn't a heck of a lot of new Amiga hardware being made. I was quite shock and relieved to find a few loyal (mostly German) companies still making new things for these systems.

Back to the topic at hand. My blizzard 1260 board arrived and I'll be overjoyed once my system gets here from the UK!

This board has some interesting features:

* Obviously the 50mhz 68060 CPU. It has a built in FPU (floating point unit) which the AmigaOS can utilize through a MathLib library. Previous versions of the CPU required a separate FPU (just like how intel had the 8086/8087 combo). The CPU also sports an MMU although I'm not exactly sure how that ties into the OS as of yet. I always thought it was software which handled that. I will research this more.

* The board supports up to 128MB of RAM -- You know, those old 72pin SIMMS circa 486 days. This is actually quite a bit of RAM for the Amiga since they normally come with like 0.5MB of RAM. What to do with all that? Rent it out?

* The board can be disabled by holding down the "2" key on startup. This is for compatibility with old games

* The board automatically copies the Amiga Kickstart ROM into it's own FAST memory to speed up operations.

* The board supports an optional SCSI expansion board that gives you a fast 32bit Ultrawide SCSI interface that is DMA driven. This means you could plug in your old 10,000RPM cheetah drive that has been sitting in the closet for the past 7 years.. Oh, I guess that's just me with the Cheetah drive.

More fascinating information about the Blizzard 1260 can be found here at this awesome website which lists just about every piece of Amiga-related hardware ever made.