Supra Accelerator
Johan Lagerstr.m
>> I own an Amiga 500 with 2meg of fast ram, 2meg of chip ram, and a
>> Supra
>> Turbo 28MHz accelerator. Can anyone out there with this config
>> (especially
>> the
>> 28MHz accelerator) tell me how Wing Commander performs. I have heard
Is this Supra accelerator any good? I've seen some ads for it, but I haven't
read any reviews. How does it work? (New processor?) How compatible is it? Is
it worth the money? Will it work together with a GVP HD8+ harddrive?
In Sanity, Johan
Jim Harmon
I bought one about 2 weeks ago for $145 from Computability and I think
it is well worth that. It truely gives about 3.5 times speed up. It is
designed to work with a harddrive and they specifically mention the
GVP drives in the manual. I find it about 95% compatably in 28mhz mode
and haven't found anything that wouldn't run in it's 8mhz mode.
There's an external switch that you can turn on/off on the fly so you
can get a good idea of the performance increase. It really enhances
flight simulators and the likes that do full screen redraws. It really
improves World Circuit (the game I play the most), you can race in
high detail mode with no slow down. Here's the number to Supra's Amiga
tech support (503) 967-2493 if want it.
hawk...@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu
I bought one over x-mas and for the $145 bucks I paid its excellent. :)
It gives you about the speed of an 020, WB is a lot peppier now. I've
had very few incompatability problems (Pinball Fantasies occasionally would
make some weird noises, sound effects were absent or came out garbled).
It will work just fine with a GVP HD8+ (I have one) but that is if it
doesn't contain any RAM on it. It WILL work with mem on it if you have
a certain ROM revision, I'd have to look up the exact #. They provide
a patchfile for those boards that have the certain version of ROM (or
greater). Has something to do with the way the thing does DMA. Doesn't
inform the system that mem xfer has taken place so the cache will be
invalidated, so the patchfile allows it to "snoop" on what the board
is doing. At least that is what the doc file says.
The processor is a 28 mhz (28.90 according to sysinfo) 68000. It plugs
into the rightmost slot very close to the actual 68000 chip itself (on
the A2000 version). On the back of the card is a toggle switch so you
can start up the machine with it on or off. They also provide a software
toggle to turn it on and off from WB. You can even flip the switch
on and off while its running. The only problem I had was that it was
that the Supra28 came just close enough to the first slot that the HD
hanging off the GVP would push down it so I had to bump it over to the
second slot.
I don't know how Wing Commander performs, but Frontier runs at "acceptable"
speed at max detail in space. But still gets a bit choppy when roaming
across the surface.
Summary: Its a good buy if you want a decent amount of speedup for less
than $200. I don't regret getting one.
David Poland
hawk...@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu