| Dave, I have just finished reading an article in Amiga Shopper on this
very beast. It was in the middle of a review foe various accelerator
cards, and as the review for this was not that long in comparison to
the other boards... here is what they say.....
"The ADSpeed comes under the heading of a speed up chip rather than an
accelerator as such. And, although it looks unimpressive in the face of
all this other racing hardware, its ability to double the speed of your
Amiga such that you can switch back to 7MHz mode without having to
reboot is certainly not to be sniffed at.
The unit is a little 68000 chip on a tiny circuit board, with lots of
other chips on and between it and the board (Really Technical...STU!).
A neat little device and , being solidly built, it pushes into the slot
with what the manual describes as 'moderate force'.
The ADSpeed slots into the processor socket and the fallback mode is
operated by activating a program from the CLI or Workbench, which can
select the mode you want to operate in. The unit is trouble free and
very compatible, but due to the lack of RAM speed there is no
positive boost to performance for graphics purposes."
I admit that this is not very technical... most of the article is
devoted to accelerator cards, and in fact for the price of the ADSpeed
they recommend that the HARMS 020 and 030 are better value. In the UK
the ADSpeed is retailing for around #173 and the HARMS 020 and 030 from
around #150. These plug into the trapdoor from what I can gather, so no
messing with the Amiga, and they have the option to take faster 32 bit
RAM which of course will be extra.
I have just re-read the article again and it appears the the HARMS
cards are not for the trapdoor after all but you have to pop out the
68000 to slot them in..
VIVIAN is in the UK so why not get a copy of Amiga Shopper...99p .. and
have a read.....or maybe you have.....8*)
Stuart
|
| Stuart,
Thanks for the info. However, I have the mag and have read the
article. The Harms card you refer to seems a good option so I rang up
Bytes 'n' Pieces and spoke to the M.D., he said that he was not
particluarly happy with the manufacturer of the card. It is difficult
to expand and to use his words ".. If you buy one you may end up in a
cul-de-sac.." this statement refered to it's limited expandability.
All in all I gathered he was not happy with this product. Not exactly a
beaming endorsement !. The bottom line is stay clear. Go for a CSA or
SSL, although I have heard that the SSL card have problems as well.
About the Adspeed. I have just spoken to Jason Miller of Third Coast.
He told me that Amiga Computing reviewed one of the Adspeed boards and
were not impressed. This was an early production model. It transpired
that the old versions had a problem with the way the Cache was working
and caused the board to run extremely slow. However, ICD corrected this
by adding a 'GAL' chip which they glued to the underside. Now the
latest versions should all have this 'GAL' chip (apparently it's the
only chip on the underside). Now the board flys at 80-100% as was it's
original intention.
Jason also said that if he can get an order of 5 or more he will sell
it to the interested parties for �149.95 instead of �169.95. Currently,
MJC are the cheaped source of Adspeed with a price of �159.95. So, any
takers ????. If so mail me.
Regards.
Dave.
|
| Stuart,
Opps!, I nearly forgot, some prices for the Harms.
Bare Harms board w/o cpu, co-por or ram - �150
with 68020/20 cpu - �199
with 68881/20 Co-pro - �254
Harms 030/25 inc cpu - �385
but no ram or co-pro
Regards.
Dave.
|
| I have had an ADspeed for a couple of days now and I thought I'd share
my good experiences thus far. I haven't had much time to do specific
speed testing yet since I've been very busy using my Amiga for real
work, but I haven't had any reliability problems running as hard as I
have been.
My main reason for buying it was to speed up real-time playing of
animations while playing sequenced MIDI music. I have a Director
program which measures frame rate of anims being played and I was
getting only 4.5-6.6 frames/sec before the AdSpeed while playing very
complex musical sequences. Knowing that AdSpeed doesn't speed up chip
operations, I wasn't sure if it would help me much in playing anims
faster. The review in 4412 which had performance, didn't relate to any
of my requirements, so I purchased one for $209 and took a chance.
My anims that were playing in the 4.5-6.6 fps range play at 12 fps now.
Ocasionally, during very complex musical segments, it will slow for a
few frames to 8.5 fps, but overall, its running at 12. Without
Adspeed, they were running more at 5 with an ocasional spike at 6 or
higher, so I am very pleased with the very inexpensive performance I
have received. An interesting note, if I turn off the music and run
the test, the anims run at 12 fps too, just no slowdowns.
I have a 2000 with 4MB of ram, 2 of which are chip ram (Megachip 2000),
the ICD Advantage with a Quantum 52MB and a Syquest 44MB drive. No
compatability problems at all.
Terry,
|