Material: GVP 4060DT

(article written by Guillaume Wante in May 2010; translated from the original French page)

Presentation

GVP-M (Great Valley Products) remade some cards for Amiga Classic in 2009 and 2010, including the GVP 4060DT accelerator card. I ordered it from Software Hut, an Amiga dealer in the United States. Joe Muoio, the Software Hut manager, confirmed his availability from my order and sent it to me upon receipt of my payment. Its price is $445. I received it seven business days later.

The GVP 4060DT is an accelerator card for the Amiga 4000 only, and which, as the name suggests, features a passively-cooled 68060. This is the new version of the T-Rexx II card marketed in 1995. The processor is a "Full RC" at 50 MHz; meaning it has an FPU and MMU. The card has, in addition, a SCSI II 50-pin connector and can support a maximum of 128 MB of RAM (I also took this option). In addition to this, an internal ROM can copy the Kickstart to speed up the machine. The jumpers are numerous but the card arrives preconfigured. In the package, you will find a manual for setting the jumpers, a floppy disk with the utilities and libraries necessary for the proper functioning of the card, and the RAM if you have chosen that option.

First of all, you must install the software and libraries on the diskette. To do this, insert the floppy disk that was provided and start the installation from the "Install060" icon by answering the various questions that are asked.

Then, turn off your Amiga 4000 (unplug the power plug to avoid any risk) and remove your old processor board. Move jumpers J100 and J104 of your motherboard to position "INT" if they are not already (usually the case before an A3640 card is installed). You will first need to fix the shims (not included) that allow you to avoid bending the processor port under the weight of the accelerator card. Next, connect your GVP 4060DT to the processor port on the motherboard by applying force to the entire surface of the connector. All that's left is to close your case and start your A4000.

Performance

From the start, the difference is felt compared to a 68040; windows and applications open faster. A screenshot of SysInfo v3.24 shows the presence of the FPU and MMU and especially a performance in MIPS of 38.23, and MFLOPS of 27.42. However, these tests are not optimized for the 68060. In fact, using newer test software, SysSpeed, we get 64.01 MIPS and 25.62 MFLOPS, which is a power between two and four times that of an A3640 card.

Conclusion