I had the 68030 + 8MB board, it was a pig to fit but it sure made Stunt Car Racer run smoothly. Acted as a nice desk warmer as well. Unfortunately I had to sell it to pay for more beer as a student, kept the 1200 afterwards though and this thread is really tempting me to plug it in again.

Did anybody else reach the super fast blue tracks in Stunt Car, same tracks but a much faster car and you could overshoot the big jump by boosting too much.

 

Any compatibility issues with software/games using the upgraded CPU & Memory?
Remember the software for the A500 was very picky on the Extra RAM you added in, It had to Be (From memory) Slow ram. I think that's why the A500+ and the 600 didn't take off so well I wonder if the Atari ST had the same issues?

 

Yup, got to those tracks I only had a 1Meg A500, but never had any speed issues when playing. Blue tracks were certainly a good way to get holes in your car

 

I can't recall a game that I had trouble with. Once the A1200 was out, most games were fine and many benefitted from extra speed and especially extra memory.

It was always possible to use a software Kicktart as a temporary measure for the old A500 games that did cause trouble - a bit like emulation today for old games.

The 'rumour' at the time was that your cracked games wouldn't work on the A500+. That wasn't quite true - the A500+ came with Kickstart V2 rather than the 1.3 that was with the original. That caused some problems at first. In the end, I got an A500 but later on and a Rom Switcher where I could physically switch between 1.34 and 2 !

 

I was under the impression that the difference between the A500 and the A500+/A600 was the fact that the A500 had 512MB and those games that required more were tuned to the 512MB + >512MB Slow RAM upgrade. And therefore with the A500+ and A600 (1mb Naitive) had compatibility issues with some older games

 

I think you meant 512k, not mb

But yes, I'd forgotton about 'Chip' ram Vs 'Fast' Ram. The A1200's came with 2mb chip ram and no Fast ram as standard. The A500 with 512k Chip ram - and I added an extra 512k (not sure if Fast or chip)....and then a a 4mb Fast RAM extension on the side. I could copy whole games to RAM and they were very quick!

I still don't recall that many problems with the games though. Maybe it's...er...age or maybe the games I had tended to benefit from more ram anyway

 

Didnt the 1200's have the new AGA chips and to overcome compatibility issues you could tell it to run Kickstart 1.2 with the old chipset emulated?

 

Yes I keep forgetting back then anything over a 1MB costed you a small fortune Must remmeber these things ran in KB

 

Don't recall that, but knowing how my memory is functioning these days...

Seem to recall a function where when you powered up the A1200 if you held both mouse buttons you had a menu to change from AGA to non-AGA mode. Not sure if this did change you're kickstart.

 

Had the 512STE and upped the memory in it.

Speedball II rocked and had been said before things like Dizzy and Elite II. I think it is somewhere in the loft.

5t.

 

Yes, I had 'Kick1.3' which would help run any stubborn old games.

And you could hold both mouse buttons down and enable 'original, ECS or AGA' chipset - it's slowly coming back.

 

You could be right, it was a long time ago

 

Well at least one of my brain cells isn't letting me down today.

I wonder if it was the same for the A4000?