Subject: REVIEW: Blizzard 1260 Turbo Board
From: [email-masked] (O. D. Jones)
Date: 17 Sep 1998 16:03:04 -0400
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.reviews

PRODUCT NAME

    Blizzard 1260 Turbo Board

MANUFACTURER

    Phase 5 Digital Products

Address   : In der Au 27
            D-61440 Oberursel
            Germany

Telephone : +49 (0)6171 628455
Facsimile : +49 (0)7171 628456

BRIEF DESCRIPTION

    "68060 ACCELERATOR BOARD FOR THE AMIGA 1200" - as it says on the packaging!

To elaborate slightly, the Blizzard 1260 is a 68060-based accelerator, featuring
autoconfiguring memory expansion (for 32-bit and 36-bit single-sided 72-pin SIMM
modules up to 64MB in size), optional expansion with the Blizzard SCSI-Kit IV, a
battery-backed up real time clock and some superb engineering.

UK DISTRIBUTOR

    There are quite a few UK distributors, most notably Gordon Harwood Computers
and BlitterSoft (I purchased my board from the latter.)

Telephone: +44 (0)1773 836781 (Gordon Harwood Computers)
           +44 (0)1908 261466 (BlitterSoft)

I would personally recommend BlitterSoft - as they seem more inclined to provide
good old-fashioned customer support than Gordon Harwood Computers (sorry GH, but
that is the truth!) They were also a teensy bit cheaper - but when buying costly
computer equipment such as the 1260, you should always consider customer support
*before* you consider the cost. Paying 20 UK pounds more may seem objectionable,
but it's a hell of a lot better than suffering because they can't provide a good
service to you as a customer. (Remember, you're PAYING them to provide it!)

LIST PRICE

    Although BlitterSoft seem to be selling the Blizzard 1260 at 300 UK pounds -
most, if not all others, are selling it at around 320 UK pounds or more. For the
Blizzard SCSI-Kit IV, be prepared to pay around 55 pounds upwards.

HARDWARE REQUIREMENTS

    An Amiga 1200 would be of some help! ;-) Unlike the 1240 board, the Blizzard
1260 has quite a cool-running processor, so if you like your A1200 as it is, you
will be pleased to know that you will not need to towerise it to use the 1260.

SOFTWARE REQUIREMENTS

    The 68060.library and 68040.library replacement (included on a floppy disk.)

The instructions say you will need to install the software before installing the
hardware - however this is not strictly true in some cases - and may actually be
impossible in still more.

COPY PROTECTION

    The Blizzard 1260 board acts as a dongle ... just kidding! ;-) You could, if
you had another brand of 68060 board (okay - not likely, but possible!) copy the
CyberPatcher software (which will speed up most FPU-intensive applications), and
use it. Given that this software is also available via FTP, I cannot see this as
a major copyright problem if you decided to do this.

MACHINE USED FOR TESTING

    Latest A1200 from Amiga International (although is still says "Technologies"
on the box), Psion Dacom 56K Gold Card Global PCMCIA modem - and a Dell external
1.76MB floppy disk drive. I also used an Amitek A500-style PSU for extra power -
although I did try everything with the standard 23W power supply, and it worked.

I did buy the Blizzard SCSI-Kit IV (which can be used with the 1230-IV and 1260)
at the same time, so I fitted the SCSI kit to the 1260 (it is a piggy-back board
which just slots onto the gold card-edge connector) before fitting everything. I
did also have 32MB of memory, in the form of two 16MB SIMMs which I fitted also,
before installing the lot.

I did also have a SCSI tower with a Quantum Fireball 1.280 gigabyte SCSI-II hard
disk, and a Pioneer DRU-12X 12-speed SCSI-II CD-ROM drive. Additionally, I had a
SyQuest EZ-Flyer 230MB removable drive (external version) on my SCSI chain.

OVERVIEW

    Everything comes in a rather nice little black box - with a thin paper cover
over it - with "BLIZZARD 1260 TURBO BOARD" proudly emblazoned on the front. And,
on the back (in English and German) a feature list which every new user looks at
in relieved wonder (and - no doubt, some degree of smugness!)

Slide off the cover, and open up the box: and the first thing you will see is an
instruction manual, the registration card and the installation disk. Lift up the
foam packaging, and you will see your brand new Blizzard 1260 Turbo Board in its
semi-transparent anti-static packaging. Note the superb engineering on the board
and heave a sigh of regret you won't see this board for most of its working life
(some things never change, and with Phase5 products this is depressingly common!
Never mind. You'll get over it - the performance will bowl you over!) Looking at
the board, there is really no doubt at all which chip is the one which is really
doing the business, why it's that massive purple-grey chip dominating the board!
Looking at the chip does indeed confirm that it is a 50MHz chip, and Phase5 have
not gone to any effort to hide this (which is commendable, not all manufacturers
are as honest. Some go to the trouble of putting a sticker on the chip - to hide
its real rating, and some have the audacity to put "Warranty Void if Removed" on
the sticker itself in case curious users wanted to find out the rating!)

DOCUMENTATION

    You get a rather cute little dual-nationality manual (10 pages in German and
another 10 pages in English. Not the Queen's English - not quite, but close! The
author of the manual makes a few mistakes here and there, but his/her English is
better than my German!) Installation of the board is covered in a fair amount of
detail, and there are plenty of illustrations - so you shouldn't get stuck.

You also get a warranty card - which entitles you to a one-year warranty on your
brand-new pride and joy.

INSTALLATION

    On its own, the Blizzard 1260 is remarkably easy to fit (I did try it on its
own once!) It doesn't invalidate the warranty and you can be done in two minutes
(or maybe even less.) However, as with any sensitive electronic components - you
MUST be careful to ground yourself with an antistatic wrist strap - or something
equivalent, before you take the board out of its packaging. I am really serious!
Going to Maplins and ordering an antistatic wrist strap is not going to cost you
a lot of money. If you can't be bothered to go shopping, phone 01702 554000, and
order yourself one over the phone. Order code FE29G buys you a nice wrist strap,
with a detachable crocodile clip and a curly cable. Yours for 10.49 UK pounds. I
think this is dead cheap compared to zapping your 1260 (and possibly your A1200)
and having to pay another 300 UK pounds for a replacement - don't you agree?

Okay, it's very simple. Unplug everything (yes, even the power!) - and turn your
A1200 so it is resting upside-down, on the keyboard. Use a flat-head screwdriver
to lever the trapdoor off. It should snap free without much effort on your part.
Insert the 1260 (hold it by the edges where the gold trim is) and insert it - so
the board is lying flat inside. Push gently, on the edge of the card - until you
can feel resistance. If the card won't give, you have not inserted it correctly.
Try pushing on the top-right corner of the card (that should level it). Push it,
firmly, but not too hard - and it should suddenly snap in place. That is it! You
can then replace the trapdoor, right your A1200 and plug everything in.

There is one jumper on the 1260 - called MAPROM. It controls the copying of your
A1200 Kickstart ROM to Fast memory on your 1260. By copying the Kickstart ROM to
Fast memory on your accelerator, you can significantly increase the speed of any
operating system functions (and believe me - the difference is noticable!) There
is a price, however, and that is 512K of your Fast memory. If you have more than
say, 4MB of Fast memory, I would wholeheartedly recommend it. Using MAPROM won't
tie up the 68060's MMU either (another argument for using it) - rather the board
will take care of it, leaving the 68060's MMU free for fun things like Enforcer.

As far as memory is concerned, the Blizzard 1260 should be able to take any PS/2
style single-sided 60ns Fast-Page-Mode half-height 32-bit SIMM (phew!) Using EDO
memory is not recommended - but if you must, the 1260 will take it. However, you
will not be able to fit memory to the Blizzard SCSI-Kit IV in this case - as EDO
memory does not work very well with the Blizzard series. The memory SIMM must be
a single-sided SIMM, as it juts slightly over the 68060 chip, with only a couple
of millimeters (if that) of clearance. However, if you own the Blizzard SCSI-Kit
IV, you *can* expand that using a double-sided SIMM.

I had no qualms about replacing my A1200 trapdoor after fitting the 1260. If you
buy a product that is designed to be used in your A1200 normally - you should be
able to replace the trapdoor without a worry. The 68060 does not get very hot. I
would say that if it doesn't work with the trapdoor on, send it back and ask for
a replacement. I have had mine on for hours, without so much as a hiccup.

If you fitted the Blizzard SCSI-Kit IV as well, expect the trapdoor to bulge out
slightly (your A1200 trapdoor is only so big! The 1260 and SCSI-Kit IV are quite
a monstrous combination - and considering their combined size - they do fit very
well into the confined space available!) The 1260 on its own is a rather slimmer
contender, and your trapdoor should breathe easy when you close it! ;-) However,
when fitting the SCSI kit, I noticed that the top of the SIMM socket touches the
bottom of the keyboard. As a precaution (and because I didn't mind opening up my
A1200) I taped an ordinary envelope over the bottom. It made me feel better, but
you may not be as willing to improvise in this fashion.

As far as the software installation was concerned - I am afraid I have to say it
is flawed. I installed a fresh copy of the Amiga OS on my EZ-Flyer drive to test
it out - and the installation program (which uses Installer) failed to copy over
the new 68040.library from the disk; instead it copied the old one locally. When
I rebooted, the machine crashed. Eager as always to solve a problem - I wrote an
AmigaDOS script to copy the files over. Type this into a copy of ed, save it out
as CopyLibs, and protect it as a script, like this:

4.Ram Disk:> Protect CopyLibs +s

Now, you're ready to run it. Use it like a normal Shell command:

4.Ram Disk:> CopyLibs <Your system partition name>

So, for example, if your system partition was called "System3.1", you would use:

4.Ram Disk:> CopyLibs System3.1:

Here is the script:

----8<--------------------------------------------------------------------8<----
.KEY SystemPath/A
.BRA {
.KET }
Ask "*NInstall 68060 libraries on {SystemPath} ? [Y=Yes/N=No] :"
If Warn
	Echo "*NChecking ... " NoLine
	If Exists {SystemPath}Libs/68040old.library
		Echo "deleting 68040old.library ... "
	EndIf
	Echo "done.*NCopying libraries ... 68040.library, " NoLine
	Copy SystemDisk:Libs/68040.library {SystemPath}Libs/
	Echo "68060.library, " NoLine
	Copy SystemDisk:Libs/68060.library {SystemPath}Libs/
	Echo "done.*NCopying commands ... CPU060, " NoLine
	Copy SystemDisk:C/CPU060 {SystemPath}C/
	Echo "ROM2Fast, " NoLine
	Copy SystemDisk:C/ROM2Fast {SystemPath}C/
	Echo "done.*N*NInstallation complete!*N"
Else
	Echo "*NInstallation aborted.*N"
EndIf
----8<--------------------------------------------------------------------8<----

REVIEW

    It has to be said, if you are a poor A1200 user who has, through much saving
of money, blood, sweat and tears, etc, bought a Blizzard 1260 as your very first
accelerator, you are in for a very big surprise. Just shy of 40 MIPS, this board
does not exactly hang around. It does bring a smug grin of satisfaction when you
run SysInfo and see Nic's Comment: Phone Me NOW!!! If you have a harddisk fitted
already, you may well have noticed a speed increase with disk operations. It has
to be said though, some hard disks speed up more than others - and don't be very
surprised if yours doesn't seem to speed up at all. Life's like that! ;-)

Okay, reality check: Unless you managed to patch your boot 68040.library and add
the 68060.library - the first thing you are likely to see is a Software Failure.
This can be more than a little disconcerting! However - patches for 68060s are a
neccessary evil, unfortunately. So, boot from your original Workbench disk (or a
copy, without the 68040.library added) - and copy the 68040.library over the one
on your hard disk, and add the 68060.library - from the Phase5 disk supplied. At
long last, you are now ready to rock and roll!

There are lots of pleasant changes. Icons seem to appear instantaneously instead
of popping up here and there as if they were asleep. Windows open and close like
nothing you have ever seen before - and gadget rendering is virtually invisible!
These changes are particularly noticable if you enabled the MAPROM function - it
all just flies! :-) For general usage, I assure you - you will not look back!

If you are a programmer, like me, the advantages of the 68060 are obvious. Large
projects will compile much quicker, and with the new 68060-optimising version of
SAS/C (currently at version 6.58 as I write this) you can even write 68060-based
applications! Artists will also be pleased - Photogenics handles the extra power
very well, spray painting has to be seen to be believed! Not to mention Imagine,
Real 3D, Lightwave or any 3D work - the 68060 tears the work into shreds! Things
like compression and decompression (the latter is rarely noticeable!) are *much*
faster, and many factors more bearable. Life's too short!

Despite all this power, I still run a 4-colour Workbench (old habits die hard!),
but even if you want to use 256 colours - you will not be disappointed! You will
also find that things run a lot quicker, run the Palette Preferences program for
example - and that colour wheel is drawn in record time! Blanker likes the spare
processor cycles when you activate both animation and colour cycling, too! Final
Writer 5 suddenly becomes a lot quicker (especially when printing), and programs
like ExpertDraw suddenly seem a lot wider awake than they were before. If you've
a penchant for 3D, you'll probably benefit the most - however - not by using the
standard 68040.library replacement and 68060.library.

One of the problems of the 68060 is that certain instructions simply don't exist
anymore. A number of FPU instructions were trimmed, along with a few other less-
used instructions (like 64-bit multiplication) - to streamline the design of the
chip. However, when a program that does use these instructions comes along, what
happens is that a non-existant instruction is trapped and the 68060.library will
catch it. The 68060.library will find out what instruction the program wanted to
execute, and what is will do is emulate that instruction. When the emulation has
finished, control is passed back to the application, as if nothing had happened.
However, during the emulation period, the whole machine is frozen - this is more
noticable when you move the mouse around - the pointer will "judder", as with an
operating system like Microsoft Windows 95! ;-) However, Phase5 recognised this,
and came up with a rather elegant solution called CyberPatcher. CyberPatcher can
patch software when it is loaded, so replacing those old instructions with quick
drop-in replacment code fragments. This allieviates the need for 68060.library -
most of the time - but will speed up many applications, like Imagine 3.0 and 4.0
and just about anything else that uses an FPU.

The Blizzard 1260 does thankfully come with a real-time clock and a rechargeable
backup battery, so those days of booting in 1978 are over! :-) You should charge
it for at least 4 hours when you first install the board (just leave it on), and
for two hours per day for the following week to fully charge the battery. Fully-
charged, it should last for about six weeks of downtime. However, leaving it off
for longer than this will damage the battery - so it is not recommended. Really,
I can't envisage anyone with a brand new 060 ignoring their machine for long, so
I don't see that this is going to pose much of a problem! :-)

Unfortunately, not everything about this board smells of roses - but I hasten to
add, some of this is not Phase5's fault. A lot of games will not like the 68060.
An awful lot. In most cases you can fix this by holding down the 2 key after you
reset the machine (while the flashy coloured stripes are showing, or before.) It
does solve a lot of 68020-only game problems - however it has to be said that if
you are using the Blizzard SCSI-Kit IV, if you reboot without the 68060 you also
reboot without SCSI! And any memory you fitted to the board(s)! While this suits
floppy-only games, if like me, you have a SCSI hard disk - not being able to use
it in 68020-mode can be a little annoying to say the least. Using Fast memory to
store RAD disks is unfortunately not possible, because the Blizzard memory lacks
a vital attribute tag. However there is a similar RAD device available on Aminet
which will run on your 1260. Alternatively, you can use BlizzMagic to patch your
Blizzard memory tags, so the RAD will work.

EXPANSION

    64MB of memory not enough for you? (Unlikely!) Would you like to use SCSI-II
devices with your Amiga? If the answer to either question is "yes" - I recommend
you to have a look at the Blizzard SCSI-Kit IV. When combined with the 1260, the
SCSI-Kit not only gives you fast SCSI-II access, but gives you another SIMM slot
too - allowing you to access up to 192MB of memory in all! :->

The SCSI-Kit IV is a rather neatly-impleneted idea - rather than other solutions
like the SquirrelSCSI - which require you to sacrifice your PCMCIA slot in order
to get access to SCSI devices (and even then, only using 16-bit polled transfer)
the Blizzard SCSI-Kit IV is an altogether different creature. It is a board that
piggy-backs on top of the 1260 - and you actually *gain* an additional I/O slot,
not lose one! Where? Under the floppy drive - you will notice there is a plastic
cover. This is removed, and the SCSI-Kit comes with a header with an Apple Mac -
style SCSI-II port. It is just a matter of sliding the header in and screwing it
into position (Commodore even put a screw hole in the right position!)

Once properly fitted, the SCSI kit will add a few extra seconds onto the booting
time of your Amiga - but not much. The SCSI-Kit is also capable of booting off a
SCSI device - my Amiga has no internal hard disk, and I boot off an external 1.2
gigabyte Quantum Fireball SCSI-II drive. Likewise - if I wanted to, I could also
boot off my SyQuest EZ-Flyer. In fact, the only device on my SCSI chain I cannot
boot off is my CD-ROM drive (OS 3.1 unfortunately doesn't have CD-ROM drivers in
ROM, unless you have a CD32.)

SCSI access times *are* quick. With a supposed 10MB/sec synchronous bandwith (or
7MB/sec asynchronous) your SCSI devices will fairly fly. However, you should set
the Mask setting in HDToolBox to 0xfffffffe, not the standard value (because the
SCSI-Kit uses DMA, which is capable of addressing anywhere in the Amigas memory)
If you don't, things will crawl. When I first got my hard disk, I did wonder why
SysInfo gave it a 3.1MB/sec transfer rate - but writing an 80K file took about 5
seconds! When Mask was set up correctly, things went just fine. MaxTransfer also
may be set to its maximum value (that being 0x7fffffff) for most SCSI-II devices
- certainly my Quantum hard disk and EZ-Flyer drive don't complain about it! :-)

There used to be a big problem with the Blizzard SCSI-Kit IV, being the handling
of removable devices. Since about version 8.1, this problem has been ironed out.
The latest board revision is 8.5, and I had a few initial problems when I fitted
mine. My SyQuest EZ-Flyer - which had served me faithfully up till now, suddenly
started generating "Unexpected Phasechange" errors. I tried it out with an older
8.2 board (courtesy of BlitterSoft) and the problems didn't recur. I sent my kit
back to BlitterSoft, and they furnished me with a new one, which also turned out
to exhibit the same behaviour. At that stage, I had to admit that the SCSI cable
linking the EZ-Flyer to my external SCSI case, was a little on the thin side. So
before trying anything else, I invested in two nice thick SCSI-II cables. Just a
quick call to SyQuest in Edinburgh, 8.50 UK pounds per cable (not bad, I've seen
inferior cables sold at higher prices) and that seems to have done the trick! In
at least seven days use, I haven't seen a single error with any drive on my SCSI
chain, so I would say choosing the right SCSI cable is a very important issue!

In use - most removable SCSI devices behave just like floppy disks. CD-ROM discs
appear automatically when you insert them - and disappear when you eject them. A
rather useful disk with SCSI utilities on is provided with each SCSI-Kit IV. You
can fiddle with SCSI devices remotely (for example, you could turn the motor off
in your hard disk, and turn it on again. You can remotely eject a removable SCSI
device (in my case, my CD-ROM drive and EZ-Flyer) and mount any partitions on it
you please.) People write hacks for IDE hard disks, to do things like switch off
the motor. With SCSI, this sort of thing is provided as standard. And you do not
need to do any hacking!

The two utilities that come with the SCSI kit are SCSIConfig and UnitControl. To
get the latest versions of these - you can, as usual, download them off Phase5's
ftp site (ftp.phase5.de) SCSIConfig allows you to set up your SCSI devices, in a
similar fashion to HDToolBox. I have not really touched it much though (I prefer
HDToolBox - and anyway it now comes free with every new Amiga.) UnitControl is a
toy more than anything else. It's useful to impress friends with, but has little
merit when it comes down to serious work. Not much of a problem, since you won't
need to do much else with your SCSI chain which the Amiga OS lets you do anyway.

Most SCSI devices are impressively fast these days. The fastest 2.5" hard disk I
had in my A1200 did around 1.8MB/sec. Even my 12x CD-ROM drive beats that, if by
the smallest of margins! My EZ-Flyer does about 2.4MB/sec, and my big Quantum is
currently the leader, at just over 3.1MB/sec! With 24x SCSI-II CD-ROM drives now
available, UltraSCSI hard disks (which are SCSI-II backwards-compatible) and the
SyQuest SyJet, you can still get a lot faster!

LIKES

    The general build quality of the board, and the performance - which, it must
be said - is nothing short of spectacular, for the Amiga 1200. Despite having to
use patches for FPU operations, this board still manages around 28 MFLOPS, which
will drive any 68040 into the ground (the 68040 only manages around 7-8 MFLOPS!)
MIPS-wise things look good too - just under 40 MIPS I get with SysInfo - not the
"over 80 MIPS" claim in the Phase5 manual, but impressive nonetheless.

DISLIKES

    The complete disabling of the SCSI-Kit and the Fast memory when in the 68020
mode. Also, the inability of Fast memory to (currently) support RAD disks. Other
than that, not much. This is not a very easy product to hate! :^)

COMPARISON TO SIMILAR PRODUCTS

    The only other accelerators I own/have owned are/were 68030-based - so I can
not really draw a fair comparison from experience. The Blizzard is a good brand,
though (I have owned the Blizzard 1230-II, and 1230-IV - and they were also good
for their time. Very reliable, no hassles. What you want, really! :-) )

There is one observation I have made, though. When booting, unlike the 1230-IV -
which seems to be able to tell whether there's an IDE hard disk present or not -
and skip the 35-second wait under Kickstart 3.1, the 1260 does not seem to share
this capability. If you are planning to build an system based around 1260 - with
no internal IDE hard disk, this is an important consideration. There is a way to
bypass this wait (irrespective of your accelerator board) which involves fitting
an IDE cable with a 4.7K resistor between two holes - however this is strictly a
hardware hack, it will invalidate your warranty and you risk damaging your Amiga
if you don't do it right. If you need more information on this, contact me.

PERFORMANCE BENCHMARKS

    Here I used SysInfo 3.23 to guage the performance of the Blizzard 1260 card.
I tested in both NTSC and PAL screenmodes, and here are the results:

SysInfo (NTSC)                         SysInfo (PAL)

Speed Comparisons:                     Speed Comparisons:

A600  68000  7MHz  : 70.78             A600  68000  7MHz  : 70.19
B2000 68000  7MHz  : 53.56             B2000 68000  7MHz  : 53.12
A1200 EC020 14MHz  : 30.76             A1200 EC020 14MHz  : 30.51
A2500 68020 14MHz  : 18.21             A2500 68020 14MHz  : 18.06
A3000 68030 25MHz  :  8.09             A3000 68030 25MHz  :  8.02
A4000 68040 25MHz  :  2.05             A4000 68040 25MHz  :  2.03

Chip Speed vs A600 :  7.20             Chip Speed vs A600 :  6.75

Dhrystones         : 37445             Dhrystones         : 37133
CPU MIPS           : 39.08             CPU Mips           : 38.76
FPU MFLOPS         : 28.02             FPU MFlops         : 27.79

Coming out at just over twice the speed of a 68040-based A4000, I think you will
agree that the Blizzard 1260 is quite a beast! :-)

For a more practical exercise of the 68060's processing power, I participated in
the RC564 challenge, setting my Amiga onto the problem! My Blizzard 1260 managed
to calculate a whole block in about 41 minutes.

COMPATIBILITY

    Most modern applications will work extremely well with the Blizzard 1260, as
long as the 68040.library replacement and 68060.library have been installed okay
but as stated before FPU-intensive applications *will* benefit from CyberPatcher
(which can just be dropped in your WBStartup drawer) - however CyberPatcher will
affect some demos - which have very precisely-coded timing mechanisms - if these
are patched glitches will appear. Simple solution: don't run CyberPatcher if you
want to run demos, unless you know they work okay with it. CyberPatcher *can* be
run from your S:User-Startup too, so you can even install something to switch it
on or off at boot-time (say, by holding down a mouse button, etc.)

Older software (particularly games) will not like the Blizzard 1260. Some take a
great degree of coaxing to run at all, some will just keel over before they even
finish loading. However, several people have addressed this - most notably Jean-
Frangois Fabre, who has written an excellent series of HD-installers for a great
many games (quite a few of them are the older, more addictive variety! :-) ) and
since Jean actually owns a Blizzard 1260 himself, compatibility is assured!

BUGS

    The aforementioned problem with using RAD in Fast memory.

VENDOR SUPPORT

    Available from BlitterSoft (1pm-2pm weekdays), Gordon Harwoods and Phase5. I
have tried all three. (And yes - the tech support at Phase5 *do* speak English!)
However I think they were a little bit vague - and I got the impression that the
people working for Technical Support weren't completely clued-up as to their own
products. I have also tried emailing Phase5 in the past, and not one of my mails
got answered - that does not bode well for any company! Are you listening, Wolf?

If you buy from BlitterSoft or Gordon Harwood Computers, you should be okay - as
their technical support isn't bad. Plus, it's a lot cheaper than calling Germany
whichever way you look at it!

WARRANTY

    1 year, excluding the battery - which is replaceable.

CONCLUSIONS

    All in all, an excellent board for any serious Amiga 1200 user. Perhaps, not
a first choice for the gamer (I keep a separate machine for this anyway) but for
serious use, I can't fault it. Plenty of power where you need it.

I give the Blizzard 1260 Turbo Board a score of 92% - which is mostly influenced
by the vendor support, or rather the apparent lack of it. Phone calls to Germany
are expensive - and if there's one thing I insist on, it's good value for money.
Remember that buying a product is only half the story!

- Review written by O. D. Jones ([email-masked])

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