CD32 Quake

[Nebulon]

This guy's playing Quake on a tricked-out CD32:

https://youtu.be/ZOaXpAAr9Hg?t=384

[Daedalus2097]

Yep, and not only is he playing Quake on it, he also designed and built the 68060 CPU accelerator board that's powering it

[+OLD CS1]

[phoenixdownita]

I bought the TF328 that he designed in 2017 (it's 8MB of fast ram + IDE for the CD32 expansion bay) literally 3 weeks ago and it works fine for what I want to do (decent AB3D and Gloom play).

He also designed the TF330 (64MB 32bit ram + IDE + 68[EC]030 at 50Mhz) and now his latest creation is the TF360 (64MB 32bit ram + IDE + 68060 at 60/66/75 Mhz tbd):

https://www.exxoshost.co.uk/forum/viewforum.php?f=75

 

All of his boards require a riser card to connect to the CD32 slot.

 

A good comparison CD32 stock vs TF328 vs TF330 can be found here:

(note that a newer firmware for the TF330 added another 20% or so boost, the same guy above has an updated video about it, he also tried to overclock it at 55Mhz to cross the 10mips barrier in SysInfo)

 

Prices are ~100GBP for a TF328 setup, ~150GBP for a TF330 setup (a little less if instead of a full 50Mhz 68030 you are fine with a overclocked 40Mhz 68EC030) and probably shy of ~300GBP for the TF360 (it seems the CPU alone is about 140GBP but this is purely speculative as the TF360 is not finished yet).

 

Note: I am so tempted to purchase the TF330 but at the same time it makes little sense for what I want to do, which is to play a very few selected AGA games at a decent speed (aka better that a stock CD32/A1200) so fast ram alone (TF328) for me seems to be doing enough already ... still so tempting.

[MrMaddog]

On 10/28/2019 at 1:29 AM, phoenixdownita said:

I bought the TF328 that he designed in 2017 (it's 8MB of fast ram + IDE for the CD32 expansion bay) literally 3 weeks ago and it works fine for what I want to do (decent AB3D and Gloom play).

He also designed the TF330 (64MB 32bit ram + IDE + 68[EC]030 at 50Mhz) and now his latest creation is the TF360 (64MB 32bit ram + IDE + 68060 at 60/66/75 Mhz tbd):

https://www.exxoshost.co.uk/forum/viewforum.php?f=75

 

Sweet, glad to see acclerator boards made for the CD 32.  I can only imagine if they get a Vampire running on it...

[phoenixdownita]

9 hours ago, MrMaddog said:

Sweet, glad to see acclerator boards made for the CD 32.  I can only imagine if they get a Vampire running on it...

In the end the actual AGA chipset and the 2MB chip ram are the bottleneck, the Vampire is very fast and with RTG you can get very fast gfx too but at that point it becomes something else entirely (that's why they are now building a whole new Vampire that does not depend on any Amiga HW).

 

This would be the second "computer became console" to which I bought an expansion (the other was an XEGS) and it seems keyboard and mouse are back in ... which makes it a lot less of a console and more of a computer .... it'll probably end up like the XEGS, sold as at that point it's no longer a console and becomes a time/money sink for a whole horde of wrong reasons (my opinion mind you).

Will see if I cave (TF330) or resist and just play those 2 or 3 games that were "slideshows" on the bare CD32.

 

My third "computer became console" is a GX4000 but aside from a flash cart it seems there's no real intent to make it a 6128++ for example so that may sit around here a little longer (but the games kind of ... well, they are what they are).

I've got a fourth too in the guise of a FM Town Marty which atm has a bad sprite RAM (it's been 3Y since I promised to myself I'll fix it .... time flies).

 

No wonder all those "computers became consoles" did not do too well, as consoles they are clunky (their games tend to carry over some baggage) and as computers they are underpowered (either they were too late or had been obsoleted in a matter of months).