Saturday, November 12, 2011

A600: Testing my new arrived "Furia S628"

Hi my friends.
Long time no see I know... but after fiddling along with other hardware platform over the weeks I thought of giving a bit of rest to my beloved Amigas :)

So, yesterday I received my very own "Furia S628" accelerator with 2MB Fast RAM and connector for future Fast RAM board.
This was a board that was discussed over EAB at some point. I already have gotten the excellent ACA630@30MHz from Individual Computers but I really wanted to support such an effort so I made a small donation to Boboo just for supporting him a bit :)

Some time ago he completed testing his board so I was given the chance of ordering such a lovely unit!
To follow the whole original thread on AmigaPortal.cz follow this link.
Enough for the long talk... Time for some pr0n :)

So here's the package that arrived yesterday.




Yes it had a 3-wire cable to solder to 3 points in the motherboard... but that will be seen next :)



This is the front side of the PCB with the ceramic (I think) heatsink and the SmartBUS connector.




This is the back side of the PCB with the PLCC connector, the 3-wire connector and the Donators names! (Thanks a lot for this honor Boboo mate) /respect





This was a folded print page that explained where to solder the 3-wire cable onto the A600 motherboard. Not so hard to spot :)



...and this is the actual soldering of my own cables into my A600 Rev.1.5 mobo.



Most awesome part is that the classic El'Cheapo angled female 44pin CF2IDE adapters fit like a glove with "Furia S628" (not to mention it holds the accelerator in place better).



Well, I present you with a video that I uploaded on YouTube that shows a mini test performance of "Furia S628".
The test was made using Bloodwych's ClassicWB 68k and it's test without and with the Furia in place.



As you can see from the video, the results are MORE than impressive and Furia seems to work really well with many WHDLoad games that I tested :)
It's a really nice addition and the future FastRAM module that will be attached to the SmartBUS connector would be even better!
The installation is really straightforward and Plug&Play (once you solder the 3-wires).

The memory lacks 512KB of memory that can be added by using the AutoAddRAM command using the following file that was taken from the AmigaPortal.cz Furia thread:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/939939/Furia/FuriaS628_AddRAM.lha
Just adding the following command before SetPatch in Startup-Sequence is enough :)
C:AutoAddRAM >NIL:

Also a better resolution connector photo can be downloaded from here as well:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/939939/Furia/FuriaS628_Connector.pdf

That wasn't such a thorough review, but a test of this amazing accelerator which really gives a nice boost to our beloved A600's!
Once the extra memory module will be ready, it will be a LOT better than the A608 :)

Boboo mate, great job! Keep up the good work \o/