I have been upgrading a couple of old Amigas with accelerators. You can get new 68030s boards running at 45/50Mhz (there are actually TWO different providers I'm aware of) with gobs of memory, options for drop in and card slots, etc. You can also get a FPGA based "68080" drop in replacement CPU (I don't have one of these).
On the mac side... Novy Quik30s and Total Systems Geminis appear to be unobtanium. Options for accelerating compact 68K macs are few are far between.
Imagine, for a moment, a drop-in CPU replacement for your 68K mac that brings it to 500-800Mhz, AND adds 128MB of RAM. Without, hopefully, a case mod. Compatible with legacy 68K software. Running 6.0.8 (and newer if you insist). $500-ish.
Would that be interesting? To be clear: it doesn't exist, and I'm not the one to pull it off. BUT... Could it be done?
Ingredients:
I just looked now, and they have a little thing on the order page that says 5655 Vampires have been sold so far. If the Amiga community can produce those numbers, would the Mac 68K community produce more? Maybe less? Amiga is kind of a special community, because of the whole demise-of-commodore thing. But I would guess there are a lot more 68K macs in circulation nevertheless.
So... two questions:
1) What's the level of interest in something like this? Would you plunk down $500 for an accelerator/RAM upgrade?
2) any chance one of our gods wants to take a look? Maybe somebody who has made a disk emulator or a scuzzy SD adapter or SCSI-ethernet adapter?
Any finally, I want to ask: please don't bombard them with posts or email asking for "mac versions". They have been working on this for years, and years, and they are a small team focused on Amiga products. I believe they are open to supporting a business that was capable and serious about it; I am confident they don't want to hear from a bunch of people like me (consumers) about how great it would be to have a mac or Atari ST version.
err, one other thought: I bought a 68030 accelerator/RAM/CF card adapter ("68030TK") for one of my Amigas, and something like that is another option. That particular project is completely open source as I understand it. Obviously still needs the firmware/etc work to happen. But cheaper, if less dramatic.
On the mac side... Novy Quik30s and Total Systems Geminis appear to be unobtanium. Options for accelerating compact 68K macs are few are far between.
Imagine, for a moment, a drop-in CPU replacement for your 68K mac that brings it to 500-800Mhz, AND adds 128MB of RAM. Without, hopefully, a case mod. Compatible with legacy 68K software. Running 6.0.8 (and newer if you insist). $500-ish.
Would that be interesting? To be clear: it doesn't exist, and I'm not the one to pull it off. BUT... Could it be done?
Ingredients:
- Vampire 68080 CPU from Apollo team. I don't have direct contact with them, but scan of forum there makes me think they'd need at least $200-300 per unit (not to consumers, to the company/person making the adapters). The full systems (which have video, etc. are 300 - 450 EUR it looks like). https://wiki.apollo-accelerators.com/doku.php/apollo_core:start
- Engineer(s) to make the circuitry required between the vampire CPU and the mac 68000 socket. Would buy vampire units and resell with the hardware circuitry.
- Engineer(s) to write firmware
- Engineer(s) to write drivers for system 6 and 7 (and 8 and 9 if that floats your boat)? Not sure about this part. Maybe connectix virtual (for memory) and the Gemini (?) control panel (for accelerator recognition) are enough? Like I said, I'm not qualified to help in any way.
I just looked now, and they have a little thing on the order page that says 5655 Vampires have been sold so far. If the Amiga community can produce those numbers, would the Mac 68K community produce more? Maybe less? Amiga is kind of a special community, because of the whole demise-of-commodore thing. But I would guess there are a lot more 68K macs in circulation nevertheless.
So... two questions:
1) What's the level of interest in something like this? Would you plunk down $500 for an accelerator/RAM upgrade?
2) any chance one of our gods wants to take a look? Maybe somebody who has made a disk emulator or a scuzzy SD adapter or SCSI-ethernet adapter?
Any finally, I want to ask: please don't bombard them with posts or email asking for "mac versions". They have been working on this for years, and years, and they are a small team focused on Amiga products. I believe they are open to supporting a business that was capable and serious about it; I am confident they don't want to hear from a bunch of people like me (consumers) about how great it would be to have a mac or Atari ST version.
err, one other thought: I bought a 68030 accelerator/RAM/CF card adapter ("68030TK") for one of my Amigas, and something like that is another option. That particular project is completely open source as I understand it. Obviously still needs the firmware/etc work to happen. But cheaper, if less dramatic.