The emu68 1.0 release has come a long way. When I built my PiStorm 3 years ago, I quickly became disappointed because so many of my favorite games had issues with it. Out of frustration, I then purchased an ACA500+. One of my best buys ever. Even though it ran fine at 42MHz,, shortly after I added an ACA1221 just to have the 020 for the games that specifically supported it (like Ambermoon). Two years ago I digged out the PiStorm again for trying the experimental emu68, and it felt already a lot more compatible than the linux based emulator right from the start. And yesterday, I tried the 1.0 release of emu68 and everything I throw at it just works perfectly. All the compatibility issues I had seem to be gone. Absolutely amazing. The only one thing that PiStorm/emu68 is really missing out on is a way to easily switch the emu68 configuration. Right now, you'd have to prepare and swap SD cards with different configs, which kind of sucks. Especially if you have no LazarusStorm adapter. The ACA500+ is -a lot- more versatile in that regard.
I would still recommend the ACA500+ for people who want a „plug and play“ solution. It really „just works“. And the optional A1200 accelerators can take it even further. For everyone who is technically inclined and likes to dabble in the configuration the PiStorm or Lazarustorm is a great option. We currently use the ACA500+ exclusively as our daily driver. Makes playing older adventures from harddisk a breeze. And the stealth mode is awesome for compatibility.
Thanks for sharing the video. I actually have both solutions on hand. Initially, I bought the Lazarus for Pistorm, but I couldn't get it to work with my rev5 A500. The instructions weren't clear to me when I purchased it, and I didn't realize I needed to add the 7Mhz clock signal to the expansion port. All I found was that it wasn't compatible with rev5 boards. Your video clarified things for me, so now I can switch between the two solutions as I like. Thanks again for the helpful tip!
Also one more thing about the 8MiB RAM limit you say and you try to combine it with chip RAM... - there's no such thing. The address space of any Amiga that uses the 68000 is 24 bit (16MiB) and in that address space you can have up to 8MiB _continuous_ Fast RAM, in the Zorro II expansion range from $00200000 to $009FFFFF. In addition, there's up to 2MB chip RAM possible, at the start of the address space, from $00000000 to $001FFFFF. There are also smaller "holes" of the address space, where additional RAM is possible, for example the a range from $00C00000, which is reserved for the 512KiB trapdoor expansion (usually), but actually up to 1MiB here can be used. So that's 9MiB of Fast RAM already, and we still did not take Chip RAM into account... There isn't really a hard limit, but there might be diminishing returns trying to use every small block that would be possible, really. On the Amiga 600, the ACA620 can map up to 10.8MiB of Fast RAM into the 24bit address space - plus 2MiB chip RAM is possible, on top of that. I have no experience with the ACA500, but i _think_ what you see, is a bunch of Fast RAM eaten up by disk buffers. Amiga filesystems can be quite obnoxious with RAM requirements, especially when used with large media. I see the installer copying over PFS3, not sure if that was used, but both that and FFS can eat up megabytes of RAM for buffers easily. This can be controlled in HDToolBox though, and reduced (on the expense of losing some performance).
Used to have the ACA500+. Good card, but not without it's problems. One was contact with the slot. One A500 I had didn't have it's original rubber feet, and this tiny difference in angle had a big effect on the reliability of the connection. The other A500 had the original feet, but connection still wasn't perfect. I guess one might have similar problems with a Lazarustorm, for others it might not be a problem at all with either card. What put me off the ACA500 and made me sell it was the fact that the A500 is already a huge computer on it's own, which is why I prefer an internal solution. And just when I pulled the trigger on a Terrible Fire PCB and had collected the first parts for it, I became aware of the PiStorm. Which I still haven't bought - I just can't decide :-)
Fair point. If desk space is an issue the internal solution is worth thinking about. For me the ACA500+‘s big advantage are its ease of installation, the great hard disk support and its stealth mode for vintage software that wants a stock machine.
Very nice video. I have a ACA 500+ mine runs at 42MHz ok, I put a heatsink on it. I use my ACA 1233n card with a 68882 fpu I got the X-Surf for the ACA 500+.But I have a PiStorm for my A1200.
I now learned that overclocking mostly depends on the mask revision of the CPU. Seems I have a rather rare one, albeit less overclockable. Lucky you, that you got a 42MHz capable one!
Pi 4 is supported, Pi 5 won't ever be (most likely) because its GPIO functionality is behind a PCIe slot, and while PCIe has amazing bandwidth, it has appalling latency, and PiStorm needs low latency to be able to react to the 68k bus in time.
I wonder why they went with PCIe for the Pi5. It’s nice to have for peripherals, but the GPIO was always a way to have low latency IO more or less directly wired to the CPU. Maybe the successor to the Pico will be more powerful and become a valid alternative… perhaps not on the performance level of a Zero2, but good enough for emulating a quite fast 68040…
Did seem like they crammed too much on the Pi5, sucks that the GPIO isn't direct anymore but their priorities seem to be consolidating the hardware with main chipsets and supporting newer peripherals with PCIe to get them more in line with rivals. Guess the Pi4 is good enough to get nearly everything done on the Amiga but it would've been nice to have the option to explore more with the Pi5.
People mention that the cpu will interfere with the lazurus storm if not removed and that if you dont remove it, it could be unreliable? Did you encounter any issues running the amiga with lazurus storm when keeping the cpu in? I dont really mind if its hacky, i think if it works its really good.
I much prefer the ACA500+. Mine does the 42 just fine if i wanted to. With the PiStorm .... well ... it doesn't feel right to put a modern Porsche engine into a Beetle from the 50s.
Lucky you! Seems you got a good mask revision of the 68000! But 20 MHz is already pretty nice for the games that do run on the A500. I just feel like the ACA500+ is a great plug-and-play solution. It truly "just works". The PiStorm is great if you want to have RTG and run more modern Amiga software, which I don't. I want to stay with classic software and homebrew aimed at stock A500s. Just a bit of a speed boost and the convenience of a hard disk.
I think I have a Rev5, yes. You need a little bodge wire to get the main clock onto the expansion port. Have a look here: github.com/KaiEmilW/A500-Side-Expansion-Slot-CPU-Relocator Furthermore, the Lazarustorm is a bit wonky, and won't start right away most of the time. But resetting usually gives it a little kick.
Looking for something WiFi… maybe someone will do a Pico based card next. The MS DOS world now has extremely inexpensive Pi Pico based NE2000 emulation that connects to WiFi. I guess something similar would be possible for the Amiga.
@@root42 I do have a Pico W based WiFi card design for the Amiga parallel port ready for months, that even emulates the PlipBox pinout for easy driver porting, but I was so busy with family and work over the past year, that I just can't seem to find that week of a deep(-ish) focus time I'd probably need to push it over the finish line. But it's really not rocket science indeed. It literally only need a Pico W and two level shifters, plus some firmware stuff ported over from PlipBox. There. The "idea" (quite obvious, really) is out there. Maybe someone will be able to do it, if I can't find that time...
Just looked it up. That’s way more features than I need. :) I really wonder why there isn’t a Pico W network card for Amigas yet. Wish I knew more about hardware design! :)
The emu68 1.0 release has come a long way. When I built my PiStorm 3 years ago, I quickly became disappointed because so many of my favorite games had issues with it. Out of frustration, I then purchased an ACA500+. One of my best buys ever. Even though it ran fine at 42MHz,, shortly after I added an ACA1221 just to have the 020 for the games that specifically supported it (like Ambermoon). Two years ago I digged out the PiStorm again for trying the experimental emu68, and it felt already a lot more compatible than the linux based emulator right from the start. And yesterday, I tried the 1.0 release of emu68 and everything I throw at it just works perfectly. All the compatibility issues I had seem to be gone. Absolutely amazing. The only one thing that PiStorm/emu68 is really missing out on is a way to easily switch the emu68 configuration. Right now, you'd have to prepare and swap SD cards with different configs, which kind of sucks. Especially if you have no LazarusStorm adapter. The ACA500+ is -a lot- more versatile in that regard.
I would still recommend the ACA500+ for people who want a „plug and play“ solution. It really „just works“. And the optional A1200 accelerators can take it even further.
For everyone who is technically inclined and likes to dabble in the configuration the PiStorm or Lazarustorm is a great option. We currently use the ACA500+ exclusively as our daily driver. Makes playing older adventures from harddisk a breeze. And the stealth mode is awesome for compatibility.
I can swap the card without opening my a500, i made a expansion slot cover that has a sd card slot.
Thanks for sharing the video. I actually have both solutions on hand. Initially, I bought the Lazarus for Pistorm, but I couldn't get it to work with my rev5 A500. The instructions weren't clear to me when I purchased it, and I didn't realize I needed to add the 7Mhz clock signal to the expansion port. All I found was that it wasn't compatible with rev5 boards. Your video clarified things for me, so now I can switch between the two solutions as I like. Thanks again for the helpful tip!
You’re welcome! To be fair, the Lazarustorm is a bit obscure and not very well documented.
I have one those late production A500's with 512 kb chip ram, but Agnus chip is Fat Agnus, meaning it supports 1 meg of chip RAM.
Lucky you!
Also one more thing about the 8MiB RAM limit you say and you try to combine it with chip RAM... - there's no such thing. The address space of any Amiga that uses the 68000 is 24 bit (16MiB) and in that address space you can have up to 8MiB _continuous_ Fast RAM, in the Zorro II expansion range from $00200000 to $009FFFFF. In addition, there's up to 2MB chip RAM possible, at the start of the address space, from $00000000 to $001FFFFF. There are also smaller "holes" of the address space, where additional RAM is possible, for example the a range from $00C00000, which is reserved for the 512KiB trapdoor expansion (usually), but actually up to 1MiB here can be used. So that's 9MiB of Fast RAM already, and we still did not take Chip RAM into account... There isn't really a hard limit, but there might be diminishing returns trying to use every small block that would be possible, really. On the Amiga 600, the ACA620 can map up to 10.8MiB of Fast RAM into the 24bit address space - plus 2MiB chip RAM is possible, on top of that.
I have no experience with the ACA500, but i _think_ what you see, is a bunch of Fast RAM eaten up by disk buffers. Amiga filesystems can be quite obnoxious with RAM requirements, especially when used with large media. I see the installer copying over PFS3, not sure if that was used, but both that and FFS can eat up megabytes of RAM for buffers easily. This can be controlled in HDToolBox though, and reduced (on the expense of losing some performance).
This level of knowledge is Boris Krizma of Furia fame level…
Used to have the ACA500+. Good card, but not without it's problems. One was contact with the slot. One A500 I had didn't have it's original rubber feet, and this tiny difference in angle had a big effect on the reliability of the connection. The other A500 had the original feet, but connection still wasn't perfect. I guess one might have similar problems with a Lazarustorm, for others it might not be a problem at all with either card. What put me off the ACA500 and made me sell it was the fact that the A500 is already a huge computer on it's own, which is why I prefer an internal solution. And just when I pulled the trigger on a Terrible Fire PCB and had collected the first parts for it, I became aware of the PiStorm. Which I still haven't bought - I just can't decide :-)
Fair point. If desk space is an issue the internal solution is worth thinking about. For me the ACA500+‘s big advantage are its ease of installation, the great hard disk support and its stealth mode for vintage software that wants a stock machine.
Very nice video. I have a ACA 500+ mine runs at 42MHz ok, I put a heatsink on it. I use my ACA 1233n card with a 68882 fpu I got the X-Surf for the ACA 500+.But I have a PiStorm for my A1200.
I now learned that overclocking mostly depends on the mask revision of the CPU. Seems I have a rather rare one, albeit less overclockable. Lucky you, that you got a 42MHz capable one!
Holy Moly your channel is awesome! Subbed.
Pi 4 is supported, Pi 5 won't ever be (most likely) because its GPIO functionality is behind a PCIe slot, and while PCIe has amazing bandwidth, it has appalling latency, and PiStorm needs low latency to be able to react to the 68k bus in time.
I wonder why they went with PCIe for the Pi5. It’s nice to have for peripherals, but the GPIO was always a way to have low latency IO more or less directly wired to the CPU. Maybe the successor to the Pico will be more powerful and become a valid alternative… perhaps not on the performance level of a Zero2, but good enough for emulating a quite fast 68040…
Did seem like they crammed too much on the Pi5, sucks that the GPIO isn't direct anymore but their priorities seem to be consolidating the hardware with main chipsets and supporting newer peripherals with PCIe to get them more in line with rivals. Guess the Pi4 is good enough to get nearly everything done on the Amiga but it would've been nice to have the option to explore more with the Pi5.
People mention that the cpu will interfere with the lazurus storm if not removed and that if you dont remove it, it could be unreliable? Did you encounter any issues running the amiga with lazurus storm when keeping the cpu in? I dont really mind if its hacky, i think if it works its really good.
No issues there. But my Rev5 board is a bit finicky with the Lazarustorm and won’t boot up straight away but require a couple of retries.
I much prefer the ACA500+. Mine does the 42 just fine if i wanted to. With the PiStorm .... well ... it doesn't feel right to put a modern Porsche engine into a Beetle from the 50s.
Lucky you! Seems you got a good mask revision of the 68000! But 20 MHz is already pretty nice for the games that do run on the A500. I just feel like the ACA500+ is a great plug-and-play solution. It truly "just works".
The PiStorm is great if you want to have RTG and run more modern Amiga software, which I don't. I want to stay with classic software and homebrew aimed at stock A500s. Just a bit of a speed boost and the convenience of a hard disk.
What is the revision of your Amiga PCB? Seems that the Lazarustorm is not working on Rev. 5 motherboard.
I think I have a Rev5, yes. You need a little bodge wire to get the main clock onto the expansion port. Have a look here: github.com/KaiEmilW/A500-Side-Expansion-Slot-CPU-Relocator
Furthermore, the Lazarustorm is a bit wonky, and won't start right away most of the time. But resetting usually gives it a little kick.
@@root42 That did the trick! Thanks for that 🙂
A plipbox to get the amiga online is both very inexpensive and easy to build. Cheers!
Looking for something WiFi… maybe someone will do a Pico based card next. The MS DOS world now has extremely inexpensive Pi Pico based NE2000 emulation that connects to WiFi. I guess something similar would be possible for the Amiga.
@@root42 I do have a Pico W based WiFi card design for the Amiga parallel port ready for months, that even emulates the PlipBox pinout for easy driver porting, but I was so busy with family and work over the past year, that I just can't seem to find that week of a deep(-ish) focus time I'd probably need to push it over the finish line. But it's really not rocket science indeed. It literally only need a Pico W and two level shifters, plus some firmware stuff ported over from PlipBox. There. The "idea" (quite obvious, really) is out there. Maybe someone will be able to do it, if I can't find that time...
Well, that sounds amazing! Even if you yourself can’t bring it to completion.
@@chainq68k I would love to see this happen so I can build one!
Maybe you could add an A314-cp to the ACA to get Wi-Fi. Costs around 35€ + a Pi Zero2 W.
Sounds intriguing. But the Zero2 sounds like overkill. A Pico W should be sufficient for networking and is way cheaper.
Just looked it up. That’s way more features than I need. :) I really wonder why there isn’t a Pico W network card for Amigas yet. Wish I knew more about hardware design! :)
Emu68 has it's WiFi driver.
Good, good)😊
#PiStorm
I have to give a downvote because of all the talk. Bla bla bla of how great it is. And almost no showing how superior in every way the pistorm is.