I've never seen Hard Drivin' look so smooth! It's becoming a really interesting time for retro computing and gaming devices. I love to see people keeping these things alive and showing that they're still useful in modern times. I think the hardware back then is more interesting, as at the time, a single computer that could do everything very well didn't really exist, and it's easy to see in the hardware that different machines had different things that they were good at (like the ST for audio production). I think that's part of why a lot of these machines are viewed as more desirable... I know I want to add an ST to my audio setup, if only for the sweet synth editors available (I have used Stella in the past to emulate an ST in order to program my Roland D-20, but it would be nice to have an actual machine to do that). I'm super excited that people are out there who still love and support these machines, and are developing new enhancements for them. I can only imagine how far things will go.
My Amiga 1200 is my baby.. fitted with a Blizzard 1230 mk IV with 32mb ram, SCSI CD rom and a 40gb HDD running Classic Workbench and WHDLoad... I love it...
ts only a pocket calculator.so why acceleration ????? that it can do 0.12 mhz more ??????? hahahahaahhaaaa FAAAAAST CALCULATING THEN......................................
Poland loves video games. Amazing stuff for the Amiga, GOG.com, The Witcher... maybe I really should have tried learning Polish when I was younger (right now, I am busy learning Norwegian and I cannot learn more than one language at once. I tried it with French and English, and failed miserably with French).
The SupraTurbo28 was actually 36MHz during development-- we had them in engineering at up to 40MHz, but as you observed over 36MHz was pretty sketchy. We had a couple beta testers have issues at 36MHz (it also had to behave in a 2000), so it was dialed back to 28MHz to be safe. We used 68HC000FN-16's with the numbers sanded off with an electric eraser. (I don't think -20's were around then, or they were more expensive or something.) ;-)
I still have an A500+ with a Supra Turbo28 and AlfaData IDE controller, given to me in the early 2000s. Definitely fun running WB 3.1! Never realised the SupraTurbo was so rare!
I overclocked my ST28 and found 40mHz to be it's fastest stable speed, just got lucky by the looks of it. Wish I still had it, but was gifted it for free and passed it onto someone else for the same price. Biggest regret is selling my Phoenix A1000 though, I knew I was doing the wrong thing at the time but still went ahead with it.
The chip didn't get to hot . The chip could use a tad bit more voltage . Hell it wouldn't hurt to put an active sink on it but not sure it would do anything . I guess it would be a thing to test .
There is no "c" in the name of this card. "C" is silent when "h" is after in polish. Always. So, name of this card is Wi(c)her - strong wind in polish. I think "gale" would be a proper english translation. Anyway. Cool video. As always. 🙂👌
vee-her. the pronunciation of the W is also wrong in the video :) its like a V in video. but thats just nitpicking.. thank you for your videos! and greetings from Wrocław!
At firat i thought the name is witcher and i was thinking what about the copyrights to that name. But it is vee her with audible h in polish meaning fast and furious wind. So quite proper name for such card. Anyway- good video as always. Greetings from Warsaw!
I miss my Amigas. I had a Amiga 500 which I pimped with 1.5 Mb extra memory. And the second mod was a kickstart switch so i could switch between 1.3 and 2.04. My other Amigas included 2x Amiga 2000, Amiga 3000 and Amiga 4000.
Excellent video! Hard Drivin actually looks playable! I agree with your thoughts on internal vs external acceleration. Much rather it be inside the machine rather than hanging off the side.
Todd's Nerd Cave Yeah, especially if you had a sidecar HD hooked up. I had a Supra Turbo 28-it had a pass-through-and an ICD Trifecta 500LX. If your table or desk was too wiggly things could shift and the system would crash. Not too good for your system. This was one reason I loved moving up to an A2000 and later an A4000/040.
Exactly what I thought. It's way faster than the original Amiga (and probably even the arcade) version. 3D games like Stunt Car Racer, Falcon, Black Crypt, F1 or Warhead would be interesting to check on these cards too.
I remember that my old Supra Turbo 28 had a 68010 processor. It stands out since you really didn't see 010's in Amiga accelerators much, if at all elsewhere. It would also convert for use in an A2000 when you removed the case and set a jumper on the board--which was what I did when I got my A2000 and moved the accelerator, DKB Mini Mega Chip with 2MB Agnes, Super Denise and my 3.1 ROM from the A500. You could also convert it back by removing the jumper and putting the board back into the case.
Put a small heatsink on the Xylinx, and add an adjustable voltage regulator with fine tuning pot to power the card instead of the mainboard power. This will probably solve any stability issues.
I think with so many retro computing and gaming channels gaining popularity on youtube, its bringing the old Atari and Amiga computers to light and getting people interested in retro gaming beyond old consoles and MS-DOS. The Amiga computers seems like someone I would have loved to played around with if I grew up with them in the 80's and 90's (but my first computers where Win95 and Win98 generation computers having been born in 1992)
Thank you for this video! I had been looking for a game since I was a child and could never find it and you showed it. The game Hard Drivin' was something that I played at a local pizza place as a child and I thought it was the greatest thing ever. Rad!
I don't think it's THAT surprising the A500 is starting to get some serious love. Take a look on ebay how much a semi-tidy A500 is vs a similar quality A600. One is £40 - £50 the other £100+ with some cheeky chancers wanting £200+ for an A1200. Having said that I'm sure the A500 will go up in price sooner or later as more people hoover them up and slap "retro vintage" in their listings rather than "found in the attic".
11:55 Holy sh*t, that's an Ottifant on the screen in the background! It was created by the German comedian Otto Waalkes, and my mind is just blown to see one in an Amiga demo.
@@ulliulli Das die aus Deutschland kommen war mir schon fast klar. Ändert nix daran, dass mein Geist weggepustet wurde, als ich den Ottifanten gesehen habe. ;)
IIRC the Vampire replaces so much they might as well put it in a new case and allow a USB keyboard+mouse. Why put that in the A500? It's not using much of the original hardware.
You should show before and after footage with and without the accelerator card for those of us who are interested in retro Computing but don't happen to own one of these beauties.
So, what would be the easiest way to get a complete (or as near to complete as possible) library of games working on WHDLoad? Get an Amiga 500 with Kickstart 3.1, this accelerator card, a MC68HC000, 8 Megs of FastRAM and a compactflash drive? I literally don't know anything about soldering or futzing around with the insides of an Amiga and I'd only want to use it for games. Used to have one in the 90s and looking for stuff now can get somewhat overwhelming with no knowledge of how to set one up correctly.
Forwarded this video to my brother. He also loves his retro hardware and would get a kick out of someone making accelerator cards for vintage hardware. He's purchased a couple modern accelerators for his Apple II, and a recreation that someone reverse engineered of a very rare audio/video card for his Apple 2GS. Very neat video.
Its amazing to see how they keep these 20+ year old computer going, There are 6000+ games, 1000 of programs for the Amiga. Great way to learn about computing extra.
I've had less than 3 hours sleep, but this woke me right up! Some serious Polski power in a beautiful package. Sterling work on the video MVG. +100 internet points for featuring Thrust's - Ottifanten demo! 😉
Got now a Wicher500i Rev 2a on my A500 Revision 5 with the kickstart 3.1. Have the CPU Motorola MC68HC000FN20 20Mhz and a 8MB EDO 60ns 72pin SIMM on it and a 8GB CF with WB 3.1 and WHDLoad games. I liked it more than my ACA500Plus and yes i still waiting for the Vampire 500 V4. Nice video and the Wicher500i is a great turbo card for WHDLoad games.
I have been looking at this for my amiga 500. I was wondering if it will work well with a sd to ide board? My setup now is a 500 with the supra500xp with a scsi to sd and the supraturbo 28 with the kipper2k 68000 with the 8 mb ram but like you said the side is used and is not a nice clean package
I recently watched your video on how to get the Amiga running on a modern monitor and I'm excited for the parts to come in. The Amiga 500 was my dads first computer and the first computer I ever played with. He bought it the year I was born, 1987. I've decide to dust it off and give it a new life after many years of enjoyment but I cannot find this card anywhere. Do you or anyone out there, know where I can purchase one of these? I would love to have Workbench 3.1 and WHD Loader running.
8:00 Get a heat sensing camera, or laser led thermometer, and install a passive heat sink on the card CPU and other chips that get hotter than 60C or 140F. You'll still be well below the 92C/200F max temps the chip supports.
So, after doing extra research, I ended up ordering the ACA500 Plus. It is cheaper overall than the wicher right from the start and comes with 8 mb of fast ram, legal copies of workbench 3.1 in rom that automatically installs onto CF cards and 2 compact flash ports. The Wicher still requires the ram module(that I think I have kicking around somewhere), the extra purchase of 3.1 roms, connecting jumpers and an IDE to Compact Flash adapter needs to be purchased as well. Once, you kick in the extras and shipping, it ends up being literally double of the ACA 500 Plus. The benefit, as you mentioned, is having it all internal...I would have loved to have this internal on the A1000 making it my first choice; however, after witnessing many attempts on the web, the wicher is not stable in an A1000...sigh. Perhaps, at a later time, I'll order a Wicher for one of my many A500, especially after the new A500 cases arrive that have been ordered through Indiegogo. Nevertheless, I am pumped seeing accelerators for such Vintage hardware...I hope to see similar improvements available for may many Atari St's as well. So, when this arrives from Europe, I'll have to see if I will purchase an external case for it or make one...cheers!
Mr. SEA good luck ... keep me posted on your results?
7 лет назад+1
Have you tested the HC508 card, which was released last year?
7 лет назад+5
I have the card too (500i version, without the battery slot). It's everything I need to play games via WHDLoad, watch demos, etc. I have 4 kickstarts and a switch for turning the card (mostly) off. This way I still have compatibility with disk demos, old games etc.
It really warms my heart seeing all this new hardware and software coming out, not just for the Amiga, but for all kinds of retro computers. Even the Vic-20 is getting some love. I wonder where we'd be if Motorola had continued with the 680x0 line beyond the '060...
Yeah, Motorola was doing really well against the 286/386/486 Intel line until clock speeds progressed beyond about 66mhz (Thanks largely to DEC's breakthrough with the Alpha AXP line and its very high - for the time - clock speeds). I seem to remember that when DEC was broken apart, the technology was purchased by Intel and HP.
Great to see this review :)...Now I'm proud that I introduce you Wicher turbo card :) You should reach 50MHz without problem with 8MB simm EDO 50ns even with stock cpu. My Wicher runs rock solid in 50MHz with 8MB simm 50ns edo. You can add little heatsink on Xilinx chip and/or CPU to improve stability. Of course I will send you info when new projects for Amiga will be available :) Pozdrowienia od Polskich fanów Amigi z PPA :) (Cheers from Polish Amiga Fans on PPA.PL)
You can use any of 50ns EDO simm 72pin. Wicher installer have option BigRAm. It helps to recognize 8MB in 16 or 32 oe 64MB simm module. I have two 8MB Simms Edo 50ns and theyre from different companies. I found them in allegro.
Thanks for the info. I would love to use >8MB but would be sad if the BigRam option doesn't work. If anybody knows of a 8MB EDO 50NS SIMM available please let me know. (and every1 else I guess :D)
it's funny that the name of the card is Wicher, which English speakers pronounce as "The Witcher" (I guess the most famous Polish export product), but it actually means "gale" in Polish. Anyway, based stuff
Hi. Great Vid. So out of all the accelerator cards you mentioned, which one would you suggest as the easiest to get up and running on an original unmodified 500. Main use is a mix of general software and gaming and I don't want anything outside the case with the least amount of modification as possible. Cheers.
Wish they make an amiga 4 tablet with both touchscreen and pen and full modern amiga functionality and backwards compatibility with all previous software, and usb support for adding common items such as drives and mouse and keyboard items to it. It would be a great tablet to have as alterantive to the usual android tablets and ipads.
Hi mate, lovely job that pimping Amiga, can you tell me name of that demo on Amiga with funny-pink-elephant-like creature on your lower left screen staring about 11:54 please :)
Thanks for the well-made video review! Kudos! Guess I will pick up an Amiga 500 rather sooner than later after beeing without "my girlfriend" for about 20 years. The card looks really nice, too. Awesome deep-blue PCB, for the look alone it should be worth it. ;-) Seeing F18 perform as well as in the video is really an eye-opener.
one Vic 20 + games , two disk drives, datasette, dot matrix printer, two C-64s, one C-128, one A1000 c/w faster 68000, signatures under the top cover, one A2000 with 68040 accelerator/Ram/SCSI and de-interlacer card, HD....,two Cyberstorm A4000,s 060/PowerPC with extra am and Retina and Picasso + internet board, Video Toaster/awitcher and software, multiple HDs with OS3.9....digitizer, extra disk drives, monitors, 250 games and programs for all computers, mac drive + software, etc. MY son says he will throw them all out as "junk", when the time comes. Where is the best place to market this stuff? Ebay?
Great video as always. It will be worth checking out different memory modules and configurations in order to see what's the best RAM to hit that sweet 50mhz ceiling. Loving these Amiga videos mate!
Wow! I'm thinking where the hell is my Amiga500+ nowadays... My A1200 I do know (it's in my storage) with 40 Mhz 68EC030 (Blizzard card?) and 68882 FPU... and I think 4 Mb fastram... I absolutely loved that machine to bits... Even though all my friends had to get 68030 50 Mhz variant... but hmm... would be nice to pimp my A500+.. I just wonder where it is... can't remember selling it (never sold anything in my life except my (if I remember correctly) Intellivision with keyboard and programming ability (or was it an Odyssey?)...
Dan here from LemonAmiga. Amazing video! Im truly happy they are making these cards, and I can imagine there will be a long waiting list. I might order one myself! I much prefer this idea to the vampire solution. But will this run Cannonball Outrun :)
I'm looking at ordering a Wicher 508i for my A500 Rev 5, just wondering... Do I also need to have a 512k memory expansion card to the trapdoor slot? asking because my 512k expansion board corroded so I would need to buy a new one of those.
Hi! Awesome videos! Great source to check out the avalible accelerators for the Amiga 500 :) iam in to buying and accelerator and your work has been to great help :) there is a new accelerator out as well called hc508cr would be lovely to see you do I review about it to! Another thing I would love to see is some more in depth info about the rewieved accelerator, like whload compability especially the quitkey function does it work? Maybe do like a comparison video with all the different accelerators for the a500 with pros and cons :) well it's just some humble ideas it your channel and it great anyways! Keep it up and take care! /Dan
Sweeeeeeeeet!!! The Amiga is getting so much love recently =D Might just have to get one of those for my 500 or 500+ EDIT: Although it's nice, the TF530 has more power due to the 030. This is still a lovely option though depending on price. Amazing just how many options we are getting lol
Wish there was a simple accelerator with a 14Mhz 68020 CPU, 68881/68882 FPU, 8MB RAM, and CF/SD card slot for under a hundred quid. Would be a great little internal upgrade!!
Looks like a great solution and I agree it is great to see this stuff popping up for the Amiga 500 nowadays. For me personally though after having a Vampire I have reverted my personal Amiga 500 back to stock. The nostalgia I have in regard to the machine does not include making it super fast or using WHDLoad. For me the true Amiga 500 experience is the stock experience. I have done some things to "modernize" it such as a DFO: switcher to allow the external port to be used with a HxC floppy emulator mounted in an external floppy case and a USB keyboard solution (internal piggybacking the CIA) to allow a wireless keyboard to be used in conjunction with the real keyboard. I am able to button it up RF shield and all and play games in a modern way but still keep it just like how it was when I purchased it new.
I had a Supra Turbo28. I thought it had a 68010 in there. I couldn't afford a beefier accelerator at the time. But the nice thing was that when I shifted over to my A2000, I was able to remove the Supra Turbo 28 board from the case, set a jumper and plug it into the A2000's processor slot. It worked well enough but there was no room for onboard Fast RAM and I had to use a Zorro II RAM board.
I guess you either forgot or it failed to hit 50Mhz? I really would have liked to have seen you try to use it with your 1.3 Kickstart with SCSI patch.... The perfect solution would be a dual Kickstart then with 1.3 and 3.1 both with SCSI support...
alex76gr wanting that SCSI support too! I’ve got an old SCSI flatbed scanner, etc to use from my A2000. It would be great to play a SCSI CD player & old 1 Gig-HD.
Cheers mate! Great insight. Might get one for my A500 ;-) . I've been too many years of focusing on my A1200 (which I often leave in it's flight case) so it'd be great to have a second box that can also boot to CF and but running faster 68k.
Hey there is a spot in that board where it says "Caution Hot!" Can you re-run the tests at 42 and 50MHZ if you can somehow add a heatsink to that chip or a fan?
I don't think that would make a lot of difference. I can't quite make out the part number but the chip looks like an XC95-series CPLD. They can run ridiculously fast and will get pretty hot at 5 volts, but they're designed to cope with it. To get a really serious overclock you would need to start with the 20MHz rated CPU, the fastest RAM you can get your hands on, and try your luck from there!
This is very interesting. I agree with you on wanting the accelerator on the inside. Simply because it frees up the side socket for an Action Replay v3.17. Which was something I had a lot of fun with back then and I kind of miss that experience now on my accelerated A1200s. I guess the question is; will the Action Replay cartridge be functional at those speeds?
Have you or can you do a rundown of LCD monitors that work on the Amigas? I've just got an NEC AccuSync, but they are hard to get hold of. It looks like you have a Dell in the background. Sorry if this has already been covered - I'm just getting my Amiga back on the rad, as it has been in storage for 20 years! I have an early A500 (with the Cherry Mechanical Keys) and an A1200. This Wicher board looks like something I'd want!
Great video, MVG! I always learn quite a bit about Amiga hardware. I'm glad to see so many modernized solutions for these systems. It makes such a difference in gaming and worth the effort to seek out a fast and stable system. Do you still feel the community is attempting to push the Amiga to its limits? Are there limits?
Chip that is comment as "uwaga gorące" is getting hot under overclocking - it litteraly means "caution hot". Use radiator and probably you see no more glitches :) give me update if that will work :))
Now that is great improvements for the Amiga 500 playing at real arcade like speed. Even though Commodore defunct in 1994, who took over Commodore? Perhaps if that new company made that highly fast mod Amiga 500 in small laptop like formation if Ben Heck might try, that is something new and different.
Cool stuff. I have an A500 and this looks like something I'd use. I do have 1 question though: if I connected a cf card adaptor to it could the cf card be treated like a hard disk? or is it just for floppy images?
Your 64 meg simm will only have meg available because it is 68000, which is 24 bits addressing bus and maximum is 4 meg. I just wish the acelerators could have a DSP built in as well.
Fifty Mega Hurts!
Nice! Thank you for the review. Have you tested those CPU's from ebay? How far is it possible to overclock stable?
Hertz so good.
Fifty Mega Hearts
so fast that hurts
What a boss
Amazing that it's 2018 and there are new hardware products on the market. Crazy. :)
I've never seen Hard Drivin' look so smooth!
It's becoming a really interesting time for retro computing and gaming devices. I love to see people keeping these things alive and showing that they're still useful in modern times. I think the hardware back then is more interesting, as at the time, a single computer that could do everything very well didn't really exist, and it's easy to see in the hardware that different machines had different things that they were good at (like the ST for audio production). I think that's part of why a lot of these machines are viewed as more desirable... I know I want to add an ST to my audio setup, if only for the sweet synth editors available (I have used Stella in the past to emulate an ST in order to program my Roland D-20, but it would be nice to have an actual machine to do that).
I'm super excited that people are out there who still love and support these machines, and are developing new enhancements for them. I can only imagine how far things will go.
My Amiga 1200 is my baby.. fitted with a Blizzard 1230 mk IV with 32mb ram, SCSI CD rom and a 40gb HDD running Classic Workbench and WHDLoad... I love it...
ts only a pocket calculator.so why acceleration ????? that it can do 0.12 mhz more ??????? hahahahaahhaaaa FAAAAAST CALCULATING THEN......................................
So out of date a £30 emulator board will outrun it.
Can I come over and play speedball 2, Ill grab my mk1 zipstick
Poland love Amiga/Amiga love Poland.
Mój pierwszy komputer:) dobre czasy/ My first computer, good times:)
1987 called....
Polanball can into Boing.
Poland loves video games. Amazing stuff for the Amiga, GOG.com, The Witcher... maybe I really should have tried learning Polish when I was younger (right now, I am busy learning Norwegian and I cannot learn more than one language at once. I tried it with French and English, and failed miserably with French).
Wicher (not witcher) means gale - strong wind in polish.
Dokładnie :)
@@TheDrunkenPL But The Witcher is great!
and it's pronounced with H like in "here", not like in "cheer"
Bo wicher zamiecie wszystko.
Yup
The SupraTurbo28 was actually 36MHz during development-- we had them in engineering at up to 40MHz, but as you observed over 36MHz was pretty sketchy. We had a couple beta testers have issues at 36MHz (it also had to behave in a 2000), so it was dialed back to 28MHz to be safe. We used 68HC000FN-16's with the numbers sanded off with an electric eraser. (I don't think -20's were around then, or they were more expensive or something.) ;-)
I still have an A500+ with a Supra Turbo28 and AlfaData IDE controller, given to me in the early 2000s. Definitely fun running WB 3.1! Never realised the SupraTurbo was so rare!
I overclocked my ST28 and found 40mHz to be it's fastest stable speed, just got lucky by the looks of it. Wish I still had it, but was gifted it for free and passed it onto someone else for the same price. Biggest regret is selling my Phoenix A1000 though, I knew I was doing the wrong thing at the time but still went ahead with it.
I never had a Amiga but I LOVE how the community won't let this great machine die.
Man you voided the warranty!!!
Edit: Ha ha should of read the comments before posting. Im glad we all think alike!
I wonder if a a heat sink might help with reaching 50MHz, both on the CPU and possibly on the FPGA as well.
The chip didn't get to hot . The chip could use a tad bit more voltage . Hell it wouldn't hurt to put an active sink on it but not sure it would do anything . I guess it would be a thing to test .
There is no "c" in the name of this card. "C" is silent when "h" is after in polish. Always. So, name of this card is Wi(c)her - strong wind in polish. I think "gale" would be a proper english translation.
Anyway. Cool video. As always. 🙂👌
Good info thank you for the explanation!
vee-her. the pronunciation of the W is also wrong in the video :) its like a V in video. but thats just nitpicking.. thank you for your videos! and greetings from Wrocław!
At firat i thought the name is witcher and i was thinking what about the copyrights to that name. But it is vee her with audible h in polish meaning fast and furious wind. So quite proper name for such card. Anyway- good video as always. Greetings from Warsaw!
Yeah. I forgot about that W. 😅 W=V. There is no V in polish alphabet. And still it has 32 letters 😁
At first I thought it is called "Witcher"!
Greetings from Jelcz (Poland)
I miss my Amigas.
I had a Amiga 500 which I pimped with 1.5 Mb extra memory. And the second mod was a kickstart switch so i could switch between 1.3 and 2.04.
My other Amigas included 2x Amiga 2000, Amiga 3000 and Amiga 4000.
Man that F-18 was smooth. And naturally, followed by a chaser. Great mod!
Skychase is beautiful too.
Excellent video! Hard Drivin actually looks playable! I agree with your thoughts on internal vs external acceleration. Much rather it be inside the machine rather than hanging off the side.
Todd's Nerd Cave Yeah, especially if you had a sidecar HD hooked up. I had a Supra Turbo 28-it had a pass-through-and an ICD Trifecta 500LX. If your table or desk was too wiggly things could shift and the system would crash. Not too good for your system.
This was one reason I loved moving up to an A2000 and later an A4000/040.
The A1200 with some 030 cards wasn't much better!
Exactly what I thought. It's way faster than the original Amiga (and probably even the arcade) version.
3D games like Stunt Car Racer, Falcon, Black Crypt, F1 or Warhead would be interesting to check on these cards too.
I played Hard Drivin in the arcade, it was awful. This looks like the hardware it needed all along.
Seeing the A500 again gives me goosebump memories...I hope fat agnus doesn't mind new arrivals.
I remember that my old Supra Turbo 28 had a 68010 processor. It stands out since you really didn't see 010's in Amiga accelerators much, if at all elsewhere.
It would also convert for use in an A2000 when you removed the case and set a jumper on the board--which was what I did when I got my A2000 and moved the accelerator, DKB Mini Mega Chip with 2MB Agnes, Super Denise and my 3.1 ROM from the A500.
You could also convert it back by removing the jumper and putting the board back into the case.
Put a small heatsink on the Xylinx, and add an adjustable voltage regulator with fine tuning pot to power the card instead of the mainboard power. This will probably solve any stability issues.
In the configuration menu where it says 1-16 or 16-128 you need to select 16-128 because your SIMM size is 64MB that why you can only see 4MB
I think with so many retro computing and gaming channels gaining popularity on youtube, its bringing the old Atari and Amiga computers to light and getting people interested in retro gaming beyond old consoles and MS-DOS.
The Amiga computers seems like someone I would have loved to played around with if I grew up with them in the 80's and 90's (but my first computers where Win95 and Win98 generation computers having been born in 1992)
Thank you for this video! I had been looking for a game since I was a child and could never find it and you showed it. The game Hard Drivin' was something that I played at a local pizza place as a child and I thought it was the greatest thing ever. Rad!
I don't think it's THAT surprising the A500 is starting to get some serious love. Take a look on ebay how much a semi-tidy A500 is vs a similar quality A600. One is £40 - £50 the other £100+ with some cheeky chancers wanting £200+ for an A1200. Having said that I'm sure the A500 will go up in price sooner or later as more people hoover them up and slap "retro vintage" in their listings rather than "found in the attic".
11:55 Holy sh*t, that's an Ottifant on the screen in the background! It was created by the German comedian Otto Waalkes, and my mind is just blown to see one in an Amiga demo.
Haste den Lauftext nicht gelesen? 12:08 Da steht groß 8510 Fuerth West-Germany. Außerdem, Thrust war eigentlich ne Release-/Crack Group
@@ulliulli Das die aus Deutschland kommen war mir schon fast klar. Ändert nix daran, dass mein Geist weggepustet wurde, als ich den Ottifanten gesehen habe. ;)
But what about a Vampire 500 V2? Those Vampire cards are amazing if you can get one.
IIRC the Vampire replaces so much they might as well put it in a new case and allow a USB keyboard+mouse. Why put that in the A500? It's not using much of the original hardware.
You and Anthony should be Must-See TV for ALL computer history fans. Great video, Bill! So good.
You should show before and after footage with and without the accelerator card for those of us who are interested in retro Computing but don't happen to own one of these beauties.
THIS IS POSSIBLE BY USING THE PAUSE FUNCTION... :D
So, what would be the easiest way to get a complete (or as near to complete as possible) library of games working on WHDLoad? Get an Amiga 500 with Kickstart 3.1, this accelerator card, a MC68HC000, 8 Megs of FastRAM and a compactflash drive? I literally don't know anything about soldering or futzing around with the insides of an Amiga and I'd only want to use it for games. Used to have one in the 90s and looking for stuff now can get somewhat overwhelming with no knowledge of how to set one up correctly.
Dude! This mod will void your Commodore warranty!
I just checked my A1200 box and found I had filled out the warranty but hadn't sent it, in do you think they would still cover it?
@@daishi5571 Of course ! :)
@@daishi5571 Obviously, duh!! ;-)
Forwarded this video to my brother. He also loves his retro hardware and would get a kick out of someone making accelerator cards for vintage hardware. He's purchased a couple modern accelerators for his Apple II, and a recreation that someone reverse engineered of a very rare audio/video card for his Apple 2GS. Very neat video.
I'm a simple man, I hear Alien Breed soundtrack I subscribe.
Hard drivin' and f18!! Ahh the good ol days. I'd like to try D-paint & digi-view with that!
That thing so old it's making my screen refresh like crazy
Its amazing to see how they keep these 20+ year old computer going, There are 6000+ games, 1000 of programs for the Amiga. Great way to learn about computing extra.
I've had less than 3 hours sleep, but this woke me right up! Some serious Polski power in a beautiful package. Sterling work on the video MVG. +100 internet points for featuring Thrust's - Ottifanten demo! 😉
Ottifant - been looking for that :-D
@@marcschlegel4944 Glad to help you relive some demo memories. 𝑨𝑴𝑰𝑮𝑨 forever!
Hey MVG, met you at CRX 2017. Glad I found your channel! Love all your videos. Keep it up!!!
Got now a Wicher500i Rev 2a on my A500 Revision 5 with the kickstart 3.1. Have the CPU Motorola MC68HC000FN20 20Mhz and a 8MB EDO 60ns 72pin SIMM on it and a 8GB CF with WB 3.1 and WHDLoad games. I liked it more than my ACA500Plus and yes i still waiting for the Vampire 500 V4. Nice video and the Wicher500i is a great turbo card for WHDLoad games.
Discovered you through The Retro Hour podcast and so glad I did!
Another amazing video. Please keep these coming, so awesome dude.
I have been looking at this for my amiga 500. I was wondering if it will work well with a sd to ide board? My setup now is a 500 with the supra500xp with a scsi to sd and the supraturbo 28 with the kipper2k 68000 with the 8 mb ram but like you said the side is used and is not a nice clean package
I recently watched your video on how to get the Amiga running on a modern monitor and I'm excited for the parts to come in. The Amiga 500 was my dads first computer and the first computer I ever played with. He bought it the year I was born, 1987. I've decide to dust it off and give it a new life after many years of enjoyment but I cannot find this card anywhere. Do you or anyone out there, know where I can purchase one of these? I would love to have Workbench 3.1 and WHD Loader running.
8:00
Get a heat sensing camera, or laser led thermometer, and install a passive heat sink on the card CPU and other chips that get hotter than 60C or 140F. You'll still be well below the 92C/200F max temps the chip supports.
So, after doing extra research, I ended up ordering the ACA500 Plus. It is cheaper overall than the wicher right from the start and comes with 8 mb of fast ram, legal copies of workbench 3.1 in rom that automatically installs onto CF cards and 2 compact flash ports. The Wicher still requires the ram module(that I think I have kicking around somewhere), the extra purchase of 3.1 roms, connecting jumpers and an IDE to Compact Flash adapter needs to be purchased as well. Once, you kick in the extras and shipping, it ends up being literally double of the ACA 500 Plus. The benefit, as you mentioned, is having it all internal...I would have loved to have this internal on the A1000 making it my first choice; however, after witnessing many attempts on the web, the wicher is not stable in an A1000...sigh. Perhaps, at a later time, I'll order a Wicher for one of my many A500, especially after the new A500 cases arrive that have been ordered through Indiegogo. Nevertheless, I am pumped seeing accelerators for such Vintage hardware...I hope to see similar improvements available for may many Atari St's as well. So, when this arrives from Europe, I'll have to see if I will purchase an external case for it or make one...cheers!
Mr. SEA good luck ... keep me posted on your results?
Have you tested the HC508 card, which was released last year?
I have the card too (500i version, without the battery slot). It's everything I need to play games via WHDLoad, watch demos, etc.
I have 4 kickstarts and a switch for turning the card (mostly) off. This way I still have compatibility with disk demos, old games etc.
It really warms my heart seeing all this new hardware and software coming out, not just for the Amiga, but for all kinds of retro computers. Even the Vic-20 is getting some love.
I wonder where we'd be if Motorola had continued with the 680x0 line beyond the '060...
Beyond 68060, Motorola branched in to the PPC, and RISC (88000) and on to pave the way for ARM based SOC's.
Yeah, Motorola was doing really well against the 286/386/486 Intel line until clock speeds progressed beyond about 66mhz (Thanks largely to DEC's breakthrough with the Alpha AXP line and its very high - for the time - clock speeds). I seem to remember that when DEC was broken apart, the technology was purchased by Intel and HP.
Wow.. cant believe people are making upgrades for my 1st computer... Rock on peeps
Really interesting video, the F-18 footage blew me away!
A machine of such beauty, I am in awe!
Great to see this review :)...Now I'm proud that I introduce you Wicher turbo card :)
You should reach 50MHz without problem with 8MB simm EDO 50ns even with stock cpu. My Wicher runs rock solid in 50MHz with 8MB simm 50ns edo.
You can add little heatsink on Xilinx chip and/or CPU to improve stability.
Of course I will send you info when new projects for Amiga will be available :)
Pozdrowienia od Polskich fanów Amigi z PPA :)
(Cheers from Polish Amiga Fans on PPA.PL)
And you should pronounce "vi-her" use connection of two words "Wii" or "Vi" and "her",,,,And yes Wicher means "Strong Wind" It's not Witcher :)
I can't find any 8MB 50ns simms anywhere. What is the part # on your simm? Thanks alot!
You can use any of 50ns EDO simm 72pin. Wicher installer have option BigRAm. It helps to recognize 8MB in 16 or 32 oe 64MB simm module. I have two 8MB Simms Edo 50ns and theyre from different companies. I found them in allegro.
Thanks for the info. I would love to use >8MB but would be sad if the BigRam option doesn't work. If anybody knows of a 8MB EDO 50NS SIMM available please let me know. (and every1 else I guess :D)
This option is working but not with every simm module So the best option is looking for 8MB module.
it's funny that the name of the card is Wicher, which English speakers pronounce as "The Witcher" (I guess the most famous Polish export product), but it actually means "gale" in Polish. Anyway, based stuff
I just found an Amiga 500 in my wife's closet and RUclips algorithm is strong. Probably going to the bin though unless I can find a home for it.
I have my old Amiga sitting right next to me in a box, hasn't been out in 20 years...should i pimp her up?
Remove the battery
@@mrkitty777 Battery?
If it has a battery it will leak and cause destruction
@@mrkitty777 ahhh i never thought of that thank you.
Hi. Great Vid. So out of all the accelerator cards you mentioned, which one would you suggest as the easiest to get up and running on an original unmodified 500. Main use is a mix of general software and gaming and I don't want anything outside the case with the least amount of modification as possible. Cheers.
Wish they make an amiga 4 tablet with both touchscreen and pen and full modern amiga functionality and backwards compatibility with all previous software, and usb support for adding common items such as drives and mouse and keyboard items to it. It would be a great tablet to have as alterantive to the usual android tablets and ipads.
Hi mate, lovely job that pimping Amiga, can you tell me name of that demo on Amiga with funny-pink-elephant-like creature on your lower left screen staring about 11:54 please :)
Thanks for the well-made video review! Kudos! Guess I will pick up an Amiga 500 rather sooner than later after beeing without "my girlfriend" for about 20 years. The card looks really nice, too. Awesome deep-blue PCB, for the look alone it should be worth it. ;-) Seeing F18 perform as well as in the video is really an eye-opener.
one Vic 20 + games , two disk drives, datasette, dot matrix printer, two C-64s, one C-128, one A1000 c/w faster 68000, signatures under the top cover, one A2000 with 68040 accelerator/Ram/SCSI and de-interlacer card, HD....,two Cyberstorm A4000,s 060/PowerPC with extra am and Retina and Picasso + internet board, Video Toaster/awitcher and software, multiple HDs with OS3.9....digitizer, extra disk drives, monitors, 250 games and programs for all computers, mac drive + software, etc. MY son says he will throw them all out as "junk", when the time comes. Where is the best place to market this stuff? Ebay?
I hear it comes with two co processors.
The steel one renders humanoid sprites.
Silver is for monsters.
That monitor stack you have in the background is crazy lol - I like it =D
Great video as always. It will be worth checking out different memory modules and configurations in order to see what's the best RAM to hit that sweet 50mhz ceiling. Loving these Amiga videos mate!
thanks - yes i agree!
Wow! I'm thinking where the hell is my Amiga500+ nowadays... My A1200 I do know (it's in my storage) with 40 Mhz 68EC030 (Blizzard card?) and 68882 FPU... and I think 4 Mb fastram... I absolutely loved that machine to bits... Even though all my friends had to get 68030 50 Mhz variant... but hmm... would be nice to pimp my A500+.. I just wonder where it is... can't remember selling it (never sold anything in my life except my (if I remember correctly) Intellivision with keyboard and programming ability (or was it an Odyssey?)...
hard driving working but frankly it was an Atari ST port, it didn't use the feature that allowed the amiga to fill in polygons
Dan here from LemonAmiga. Amazing video! Im truly happy they are making these cards, and I can imagine there will be a long waiting list. I might order one myself! I much prefer this idea to the vampire solution. But will this run Cannonball Outrun :)
Why is this solution preferred over the Vampire solution?
I'm looking at ordering a Wicher 508i for my A500 Rev 5, just wondering... Do I also need to have a 512k memory expansion card to the trapdoor slot? asking because my 512k expansion board corroded so I would need to buy a new one of those.
Hi! Awesome videos! Great source to check out the avalible accelerators for the Amiga 500 :) iam in to buying and accelerator and your work has been to great help :) there is a new accelerator out as well called hc508cr would be lovely to see you do I review about it to!
Another thing I would love to see is some more in depth info about the rewieved accelerator, like whload compability especially the quitkey function does it work? Maybe do like a comparison video with all the different accelerators for the a500 with pros and cons :) well it's just some humble ideas it your channel and it great anyways!
Keep it up and take care! /Dan
Sweeeeeeeeet!!! The Amiga is getting so much love recently =D Might just have to get one of those for my 500 or 500+
EDIT: Although it's nice, the TF530 has more power due to the 030. This is still a lovely option though depending on price. Amazing just how many options we are getting lol
yep - choice is always welcome ! im waiting for a TF530 with more RAM, 2 Meg just isnt enough
+Modern Vintage Gamer Yeah, 8MB would be a good minimum I think. The board supports 4MB I think? The CD32 model he produced has 8 I think.
+K's Retro Computers ah, yes - so in theory you could add another RAM upgrade? Does it work with the kipper2k ram board yet?
Thank you for opening a new world of ideas for me!
The memories. Grew up on the Amiga 2000.
Still have my Amiga 500 with MTec 68020i Turbo card with 68882 math coprocessor.
Wish there was a simple accelerator with a 14Mhz 68020 CPU, 68881/68882 FPU, 8MB RAM, and CF/SD card slot for under a hundred quid. Would be a great little internal upgrade!!
Looks like a great solution and I agree it is great to see this stuff popping up for the Amiga 500 nowadays. For me personally though after having a Vampire I have reverted my personal Amiga 500 back to stock. The nostalgia I have in regard to the machine does not include making it super fast or using WHDLoad. For me the true Amiga 500 experience is the stock experience. I have done some things to "modernize" it such as a DFO: switcher to allow the external port to be used with a HxC floppy emulator mounted in an external floppy case and a USB keyboard solution (internal piggybacking the CIA) to allow a wireless keyboard to be used in conjunction with the real keyboard. I am able to button it up RF shield and all and play games in a modern way but still keep it just like how it was when I purchased it new.
I had a Supra Turbo28. I thought it had a 68010 in there. I couldn't afford a beefier accelerator at the time. But the nice thing was that when I shifted over to my A2000, I was able to remove the Supra Turbo 28 board from the case, set a jumper and plug it into the A2000's processor slot. It worked well enough but there was no room for onboard Fast RAM and I had to use a Zorro II RAM board.
This is superb. Thanks for the video. I think I'll have to get this screened at tomorrow's South West Amiga Group (SWAG) meeting.
Excellent review.
Will you make a supplementary video when you have the 20MHz 68000 cpu?
if i can hit 50mhz...then yes :)
I guess you either forgot or it failed to hit 50Mhz? I really would have liked to have seen you try to use it with your 1.3 Kickstart with SCSI patch.... The perfect solution would be a dual Kickstart then with 1.3 and 3.1 both with SCSI support...
alex76gr wanting that SCSI support too! I’ve got an old SCSI flatbed scanner, etc to use from my A2000. It would be great to play a SCSI CD player & old 1 Gig-HD.
What is the spec for your monitor you are using with your amiga? Thanks, cool video!
From what I read there cards were a limited edition card and if you go to 7bit website they don't even advertise it only the Wicher 500i rev.2
leongt1954 but don’t they now have the 508i model out 04/21/2020! I am about to order one.
Cheers mate! Great insight. Might get one for my A500 ;-) . I've been too many years of focusing on my A1200 (which I often leave in it's flight case) so it'd be great to have a second box that can also boot to CF and but running faster 68k.
cTrix ! thank you so much! its great to see you here.
Man those frame rates are gorgeous, well done.
Hey there is a spot in that board where it says "Caution Hot!" Can you re-run the tests at 42 and 50MHZ if you can somehow add a heatsink to that chip or a fan?
I don't think that would make a lot of difference. I can't quite make out the part number but the chip looks like an XC95-series CPLD. They can run ridiculously fast and will get pretty hot at 5 volts, but they're designed to cope with it. To get a really serious overclock you would need to start with the 20MHz rated CPU, the fastest RAM you can get your hands on, and try your luck from there!
Is there a mini amiga 500 that is supped up for 2018?
This is very interesting. I agree with you on wanting the accelerator on the inside. Simply because it frees up the side socket for an Action Replay v3.17. Which was something I had a lot of fun with back then and I kind of miss that experience now on my accelerated A1200s. I guess the question is; will the Action Replay cartridge be functional at those speeds?
Have you or can you do a rundown of LCD monitors that work on the Amigas?
I've just got an NEC AccuSync, but they are hard to get hold of. It looks like you have a Dell in the background.
Sorry if this has already been covered - I'm just getting my Amiga back on the rad, as it has been in storage for 20 years!
I have an early A500 (with the Cherry Mechanical Keys) and an A1200. This Wicher board looks like something I'd want!
RavJ Dell 2410f
Great video, MVG! I always learn quite a bit about Amiga hardware. I'm glad to see so many modernized solutions for these systems. It makes such a difference in gaming and worth the effort to seek out a fast and stable system. Do you still feel the community is attempting to push the Amiga to its limits? Are there limits?
Very nice! More love to the Amiga 500. :)
Had an eargasm when you displayed the card.
Don't recognise the app you're selecting on the workbench under TRIAL. Sierra game? As a Sierra fan I'm intrigued.
Thank you man, exciting times for Amiga, I love your channel.
Totally forgot the water cooling in this video. Still 5 stars. Keep up the good work.
What a time to be looking at getting my first Amiga
They are working on one which will run at 75 to 100 mhz . That's freaking rediculous
Great informative video.
So the question is will it also work with a A2000 using a CPU relocation board.
Chip that is comment as "uwaga gorące" is getting hot under overclocking - it litteraly means "caution hot". Use radiator and probably you see no more glitches :) give me update if that will work :))
That intro bit was too spoopy. Did me a frighten!
Now that is great improvements for the Amiga 500 playing at real arcade like speed. Even though Commodore defunct in 1994, who took over Commodore? Perhaps if that new company made that highly fast mod Amiga 500 in small laptop like formation if Ben Heck might try, that is something new and different.
Hi! Interesting content! I wonder how did you connect A500 with this fancy LCD monitor? :)
Cool stuff. I have an A500 and this looks like something I'd use. I do have 1 question though: if I connected a cf card adaptor to it could the cf card be treated like a hard disk? or is it just for floppy images?
has the amiga community addressed the year 2016 problem on the amiga? Will this problem affect the use of these battery units?
ahhhhhhhhhh..memories....! Brilliant video!
Your 64 meg simm will only have meg available because it is 68000, which is 24 bits addressing bus and maximum is 4 meg.
I just wish the acelerators could have a DSP built in as well.
How are you using the right mouse button to bring up tiny launcher, is that a startup-sequence trick or something else?
I want WHDload games too.
I had the Supraturbo - it was SUPER compatible and comparatively cheap.
Frontier ran faster than on A1200.