0660103030571 9[........................................................]  Centurbo 2 - The definitive lowdown!   Preamble... The 'greed for speed' is a potent infection, and one which never goes away. I blame the PC people for this, as every week, it seems they're adding a new processor or other widget to make their machines go just that bit faster for their latest new game, which would otherwise cluck like a sick turkey without it. We Atari owners sat back smug and satisfied for a long time. "It's all a matter to getting to know your existing hardware better!" We cried, which is still true to a very large extent. However, flattened by the constant bombardment of 'fast is good' propaganda from the PC camp, and flattered by slick and clever advertising from vendors closer to home, many of us are now thinking the previously unthinkable, speeding up the old Falcy. I never really learned from the Nemesis story, which came down to a case of 'fine and dandy when the unit was installed and running, but, oh, the pain and suffering involved in getting there!' This time was going to be different. I thought that the going would be infinitely smoother when it came to getting my brand new Centurbo 2 (revision B) accelerator installed in my ex-Floppyshop Desktopper Falcon. With professional fitting of a very high quality, it was going to be easy. I was, of course, wrong. Firstly, 'revision B' turned out to have three chapters in its short and happy life. The first 'revision B' turned its nose up at certain kinds of EDO FastRAM, most of them in fact. The second version, which I lived with for a good few weeks had a DSP controller that wouldn't talk to the DSP. The third attempt got it right with a reprogrammed DSP controller, but my DSP had decided to lie down and die, and could be described as 'intermittent' at best. At the time of writing this first installment of my review, a (hopefully) final visit to cure the problem is being arranged. Do you detect a theme here? To be fair, none of the above can be blamed on the people installing it, the ever-mighty System Solutions. In fact, I could say that the fitting service provided by Sys Sols, and their dogged persistence in rooting out the various problems, one by one, made all the difference to my sanity remaining intact over this difficult period. System Solutions have been burdened with a reputation for charging premium prices for their services, but it was really worth it, as they went way above and beyond the normal call of duty in laying this thing to rest! It is possible to self-fit the Centurbo 2 (CT2), but with previous Nemesis related experiences on my mind, you would have to be very *very* sure of yourself to make the attempt. A professional fitting service of the quality of System Solutions is an essential item, if you are planning to spend that sort of money anyway. Anyway, at time of writing this opening bit, I have a nicely functioning 50 mhz GEM-box with "occasional" DSP support! (Sys Sols thinks the DSP SRAM keeps failing.) We should have the full system, DSP and all by the time I get down to doing some heavy duty games and demo testing.  (Update note, we got it back okay! See the software section for the lowdown!)  An overview... Centurbo 2 is one of the next generation of Falcon accelerators. It had been in the pipeline for some time before, but hadn't been seen until the back end of last year, presumably to allow for an extra-long testing and debugging 'making really sure' period. It escews the earlier Nemesis and Centurbo 1 methods of acceleration, which is to overclock,speeding up key existing components of the Falcon. This method is fine up to a point, but is limited by the tolerances and goodwill of those components. In the case of Nemesis, the speed gain was kept to an extra 50% over normal, as this may have been perceived as a maximum 'safe' working level for the CPU and other support hardware. In other words, something like Nemesis could be made to go a lot faster, but the failure rate could go up a lot too! Don't forget, we are talking of Falcons made from job-lot components, sourced by Atari from God knows where, at the cheapest possible prices! Centurbo 2 takes the pressure off by running a separate higher quality 68030 CPU at 50 mhz on a daughterboard. This is actually a 32 mhz CPU overclocked itself to 50 mhz. Official 50 mhz (clocked to 75 mhz!) processors were used in early prototypes, but various complications in obtaining these, and in keeping manufacturing costs down, meant that these couldn't really be considered. Fact:- My Centurbo fitted Falcon has had its original 16 mhz 68030 CPU removed! With the new CPU running at all times, the old processor is just sitting there consuming power and doing nothing otherwise. CT2 runs on a daughterboard, with the CPU and 68882 co-processor (optional but very useful) on there, and many wires going off to different parts of the Falcy. The DSP is charged to 50 mhz, not such a great gain as the CPU, but still very useful, the bus is speeded up accordingly, with implications for new and exciting video modes, more of which shortly. The other major advantage to CT2, is its thoroughly modern approach to adding extra memory. This is in the form of EDO fastRAM (the PC owners first choice!) The revision B can take things all the way to 128MB! I settled for a good price on 64MB, which is more than enough for most Falcon owners, who are still really waiting for something that fully demands the 14MB of a standard machine! I got a strange warm and tingly feeling from owning a Falcon with more memory as my original 1993 purchased Falcon had hard disk space! (64MB plus 14MB) There is a certain amount of software to go with the hardware, various system patches and autofolder programs, benchmark and testing utilites, CentScreen and CentVidel, and demo versions of other Centek programs too. When you finally get to switching it on, a choice of three modes is on offer, normal 16 mhz Falcon, Turbo without fastRAM, and the rather strangely named TOS 7.02 mode, with full fastRAM support. Being keen to get on with it, I opted for 7.02. (An option for Dolmen, the new O/S for the Phenix was on the flash ROM menu, but has been quietly dropped, as it was only for use by Phenix developers anyway.) How it feels in use... With the CPU going from a lowly 16 mhz, to a rather less lowly 50 mhz, the view from the desktop is transformed from "Take a good long look at that", to "Did you see that?!" A large part of the improvement, GEM- wise does come from NVDI, essential if using CT2 in its highest 'turbo' mode with fastRAM support. That isn't to downplay all the good things that are going on at the CPU level, as many things which chugged sedately before, now charge along with renewed urgency. For example, Aniplayer (used by Centek to demonstrate CT2) manages to comfortably run the vast majority of .AVI and .MOV animations without any missed screens. Even .JPG depacking without DSP is in the category of 'lightning fast', thanks to the speeded up CPU. Many GEM programs are transformed by the sheer speed. With CT2, there seems to be a pretty solid feel whilst in use. Even the notoriously fickle MagiC O/S can be tamed sufficiently to work with it, and with the gorgeous Jinnee desktop running in conjunction with it, in high resolution Truecolour mode, CT2 really comes into its own. We're still trying to resolve the question of internet connection software, as CT2 and parts of STinG don't seem to get along with the current CAB overlay module? When this is sorted, then internet browsing will become a positive pleasure, rather than an extended wait, if the impressive off-line speed of CAB is any guideline. In general, CT2 in operation feels like an enlivening cool shower after a hot and sticky summer day. How Fast? Okay, so you want some benchmarks then? I've stayed away from GEMbench, as it tends to throw too much on the screen/VDI update side of things, especially if you're comparing an NVDI fitted computer with a machine that doesn't have it. Instead, Nembench concentrates purely on the CPU, and we compare the Afterburner 040, The CT2, and this Falcon temporarily removed from its normal guise of high speed glamour and running at an uncharismatic 16 mhz speed. For the purposes of making sense of the results, assume a stock Falcon runs (mostly) at values of 100%. There is an exception on my machine, which I'll explain at the appropriate time. Firstly, the Afterburner 040..  NemBench v2.1 - precision CPU/FPU profiler. Test resolution : 640x480x2colors Ref. resolution : MONO ST (640x400) Integer multiply (16bit) -> 2.925 Mips (~477%) Integer divide (16bit) -> 1.187 Mips (~328%) Linear (stalled) integer -> 32.000 Mips (~401%) Interleaved (piped) integer -> 32.000 Mips (~401%) Float multiply (64bit) -> 6.606 MegaFlops (~2492%) Wow! Float divide (64bit) -> 0.875 MegaFlops (~505%) These Linear (stalled) float -> 6.770 MegaFlops (~1270%) are fast! Interleaved (piped) float -> 10.778 MegaFlops (~2026%) 16bit read (100% hit) -> 63.091 MByte/sec (~803%) 16bit write (100% hit) -> 8.849 MByte/sec (~147%) 32bit read (100% hit) -> 125.786 MByte/sec (~801%) 32bit write (100% hit) -> 17.730 MByte/sec (~265%) Linear 32bit read (ST-Ram) -> 5.092 MByte/sec (~95%) Linear 32bit write (ST-Ram) -> 4.879 MByte/sec (~75%) Linear 32bit copy (ST-Ram) -> 2.493 MByte/sec (~77%) Linear 32bit read (FastRAM) -> 34.629 MByte/sec (~651%) Linear 32bit write (FastRAM) -> 17.055 MByte/sec (~264%) Linear 32bit copy (FastRAM) -> 11.397 MByte/sec (~353%) Linear burst copy (ST-Ram) -> 2.617 MByte/sec (~81%) Linear burst copy (FastRAM) -> 19.650 MByte/sec (~608%) Linear burst copy (ST->Fast) -> 4.582 MByte/sec (~141%) Linear burst copy (Fast->ST) -> 4.649 MByte/sec (~144%) As you can see, the '040 scores impressively over a stock Falcon, especially where its 040 based floating point power leaves everything else for dead. It seems to be happiest with FastRAM, as ST RAM read write and copy is slower than even on an '030 16 mhz machine. Read performances in FastRAM score significantly higher over write performances. The generally accepted 'rough' benchmark is 8x faster than a stock Falcon, but some bits are a great deal faster than others.  CENTurbo II Rev B NemBench v2.1 - precision CPU/FPU profiler. Test resolution : 640x480x2colors Ref. resolution : MONO ST (640x400) Integer multiply (16bit) -> 1.921 Mips (~313%) Integer divide (16bit) -> 1.135 Mips (~313%) Linear (stalled) integer -> 24.975 Mips (~313%) Interleaved (piped) integer -> 24.975 Mips (~313%) Float multiply (64bit) -> 0.840 MegaFlops (~317%) Float divide (64bit) -> 0.544 MegaFlops (~314%) Linear (stalled) float -> 1.665 MegaFlops (~312%) Interleaved (piped) float -> 1.658 MegaFlops (~311%) 16bit read (100% hit) -> 24.630 MByte/sec (~313%) 16bit write (100% hit) -> 20.161 MByte/sec (~335%) 32bit read (100% hit) -> 49.140 MByte/sec (~313%) 32bit write (100% hit) -> 40.322 MByte/sec (~604%) Linear 32bit read (ST-Ram) -> 10.288 MByte/sec (~193%) Linear 32bit write (ST-Ram) -> 11.538 MByte/sec (~178%) Linear 32bit copy (ST-Ram) -> 5.769 MByte/sec (~178%) Linear 32bit read (FastRAM) -> 32.483 MByte/sec (~611%) Linear 32bit write (FastRAM) -> 38.778 MByte/sec (~601%) Linear 32bit copy (FastRAM) -> 13.855 MByte/sec (~429%) Much has been made of the impressive FastRAM performance compared with just about everything else, and this has even been used to score points off Afterburner! Read/write rates are a lot less dissimilar than Afterburner, everything else more or less reflects the fact that this is roughly a 3x CPU speedup over a stock Falcy in the relatively neutral setting of a NemBench test.  Stock 16 mhz Falcon (with FPU) NemBench v2.1 - precision CPU/FPU profiler. Test resolution : 640x480x2colours Integer multiply (16bit) -> 0.616 Mips (~100%) Integer divide (16bit) -> 0.363 Mips (~100%) Linear (stalled) integer -> 8.007 Mips (~100%) Interleaved (piped) integer -> 8.007 Mips (~100%) Float multiply (64bit) -> 0.541 MegaFlops (~204%) Float divide (64bit) -> 0.350 MegaFlops (~202%) Linear (stalled) float -> 0.888 MegaFlops (~166%) Interleaved (piped) float -> 0.884 MegaFlops (~166%) 16bit read (100% hit) -> 7.898 MByte/sec (~100%) 16bit write (100% hit) -> 6.045 MByte/sec (~100%) 32bit read (100% hit) -> 15.785 MByte/sec (~100%) 32bit write (100% hit) -> 6.702 MByte/sec (~100%) Linear 32bit read (ST-Ram) -> 5.345 MByte/sec (~100%) Linear 32bit write (ST-Ram) -> 6.488 MByte/sec (~100%) Linear 32bit copy (ST-Ram) -> 3.247 MByte/sec (~100%) Almost everything comes up with the magic 100%. Note, there are no FastRAM figures. Also note, that my Falcy has an FPU which may well distort the figures in the float section? Screen Modes... With the supplied CentScreen software (reviewed in Maggie 27), Some new and interesting possibilities come to light. Quite apart from all the standard (and very well known) Falcon screen modes, two in particular stand out. Firstly, we are able to force out a high resolution 640 x 480 truecolour screen mode (this is a fudge of 320 x 480, but it works!) There isn't the sort of speed drop that you get normally when trying to squeeze truecolour out of a standard Falcon either, as GEM responses are still pretty sharp. Obvious benefits include truecolour operation of picture displayers, art, image processing and animation packages.Displaying of pictures is quicker as the time-lag to convert down to, say, 256 colours in an equivalent screen res has gone as well. Also, it is nice to be able to be able to www browse with full truecolour and a decent lick of speed. Not forgetting that GEM Demo looks really good in hi-res, especially in a multi-tasking context! One of my favourite things that I did the other day, was to run MagiC/Jinnee in 640 x 480 truecolour, with GEM Demo and Aniplayer (and a couple of other things) going at the same time. Now that's what I call multi-tasking! Even with a 25 megabyte animation running entirely in memory, I still had the best part of 40-50 meg of RAM left! With MagiC, to get that elusive high-res truecolour mode, you have to set up Centscreen in normal TOS first, and save the mode, then save the desktop. When you go into MagiC, select truecolour 320 x 480, and off you go! The other screen mode that turned into a bit of a show-stopper on my monitor, was the 1024 x 768 in 256 colours mode. This was almost certainly interlaced somewhere, as there was some slight flicker. It was interesting to try out picture viewers with that extended resolution, and almost certainly, web-browsing would give good results, as an offline test of CAB seemed to show. With this screen mode, there is a bit more of a tendency for crashes to occur. These are still rare, and may be down to tolerances of certain GEM software being pushed a bit too hard? You may want to try out 1024 x 768 in mono, especially if you're a large desktop area DTP freak with a good monitor. This upgrade makes the Falcon serious competition for the TT even in that specialised area at last. In the end, I found that my preferred day to day option, was a user- defined screen mode of 800 x 592, of either 256 or 16 colours. Centvidl came in useful there. Screen updates and overall system speed remain good.   That all-important software round-up!  Games... (3D polygon games) I tried 'Running' The definitive Duke/Doom clone first. Yes it ran, Centurbo's own list was telling the truth after all. It is very fast in low detail mode, the main menu music does not play correctly, but the in-game sound FX are all still ok. On the low detail setting, this game feels like a fast PC playing 'Doom', in other words, incredibly fast! Speed is still acceptable on high detail. As far as I was concerned, this game alone is a sufficient showcase for the power of the CT2, the rest of what was to follow was a pleasant bonus. Next, I looked at the underrated and underpowered gallic classic 'Lasers and Men'. Anxiously awaited the main game screen, and yes, this one worked too. There was an immediately notable improvement in the framerate. It still wasn't completely smooth, but good enough now. With a tendency for the game to throw in the odd super-tough bad guy, it is still a SOB to play! Sound support, including title screen music was there, and unblemished. There was also a Lasers and Men, pre-preview version. Again, this worked fine. It also does not use the DSP, I found that out as it was one of the few that worked in my 'DSP-less' period. The pre-preview was more sensible in some respects than the final game. It only half- textured its world, only the walls were textured, so it was acceptably fast even on a standard Falcy, making it very fast on turbo. It was also memorable for using a bunch of ripped Wolfenstein graphics. We soon went for some space-based action in the form of 'Crown of Creation 3D'. This worked, but there were problems in the form of frequent DSP clashes and communication error messages when the action heated up with the appearance of DSP generated spaceship shaped 3D objects. This is really better at the standard 16mhz Falcon, unless you like lots of error messages onscreen, right in the middle of the mother of all DSP object generated space battles. I would give this game top marks for error handling though, this program shows a very high standard of finish not out of place for many professional productions, as most other games would have crashed for good at that point! Towers II ran without a glitch. This game never was really slow on a stock Falcon though. Nice to see it could work on here. The ex Compo France 'F-Zero' styled racer 'Moon Games' ran, once you remember to boot it in accelerator friendly 'Mode B'. Very smooth and responsive indeed. Also a testament to the programmers recognition of accelerators relatively early in the Falcon's life. I'm still not sure about 'Steel Talons'. You may well remember this as one of the Atari sponsored productions, where Atari Corp took an average arcade game, and then beat the third party developers senseless with the 'mediocre stick', to produce an uninspired conversion. It is a genuine 3D game. Its graphics seem closer to the ST than the Falcon, reasonable for the earlier machine, but not a patch on later native Falcon games. It seems like it wants to run, but freezes? More investigations are needed. Another game we took a closer look at was the Czech created hovercraft simulator 'Gravon'. This was interesting for its simulation of a 'Midwinter' style landscape, with added effects such as mistiness. Like many of the other games discussed, it could have really used a touch of extra polygon processing power. It got it with CT2 in full turbo. The one noteworthy 'extra' that we got was a flickery control panel. Gravon was a bit fussier than normal, as to run it, we had to dispense with the Centscreen resolution changer, it only works with the boring default TOS res changer. The sound on this game is present (no title music though) and it has a nasty habit of kicking the internal speaker on, whether you want it or not! Gravon always was a bit of a sod to play, but that is not now through any lack of 3D updating. Like Lasers and Men, perhaps more a case of a difficulty level tilted away from the player? Reekin' Rubber (v0.8) ran beautifully, averaging a frame rate of 27-28 frames per second! The finished game is looked forward to with some anticipation by us! Looking at an ST-based, but 'generic' 3D game, the follow-up to 'Elite'. David Braben's 'Frontier'. This did run, and very smoothly as well. One of the few games on Atari to sit totally within legal system guidelines, this could be seen to run on 8 mhz ST (very slow), 16 mhz Falcon, (acceptable), and even 32 mhz TT (very acceptable!). Caused a bit of excitement running at 50 mhz, I can tell you! 'Hunter' was another favourite on the ST. I came across a cracked version, which was able to run from the desktop, and this coped with CT2 turbo mode! There wasn't a lot of difference discernible, it always had a good 3D virtual world engine that was comfortable, even on an ST. It may well be worth trying out some other 3D ST-based games, if these are runnable from the desktop somehow. This will probably exclude most legal/original disk protected copies? One that springs to mind to try, would be Unique Developments gouraud based Wolfenstein genre classic 'Sub Station'. This runs fast enough on a 16 mhz Falcon in any case, and might be too much of a good thing with a CT2 turbo mode? One game which might occur to a lot of people to try with CT2 too, is the Caspian Software STe derived space arcade blaster 'Zero 5'. This WON'T work under CT2 turbo mode, as it uses the blitter, which is locked out by NVDI on turbo mode. The blitter isn't that acceleration friendly, even with less ambitious speedups such as Nemesis, so anything trying to use it would crash. Another ST classic is the racing game 'Vroom',which got as far as a Falcon '030 version. The version I got may or may not be official, but bears a strong resemblance to the ST original? The title sequence works fine, but the main game screen is severely messed up. Until you look again, and try it without Centscreen, then it's fine! The only thing left to do then, is to try to contact the programmers to ask them to widen the tracks. We now have F1 cars charging around at close to Mach 1 (supersonic!) speeds. The trackside objects do, rather tediously, make their presence felt a lot as well. You even get full in-game sound effects, so every roadside scrunch is heard. (Non Polygon games) The majority of non-polygon based games won't really need the extra speed afforded by the CT2. In some cases, it could well hinder them! Another area where a big speed-up paid off was with the Godboy and Godlenes emulators. There was a big improvement (the music messed up, so turn it off) but the the emulation speed was more authentic, and a lot more playable in the case of early Godboy releases, especially 'Megaman'! A quick note regarding other Reservoir Gods games. These aren't really speed critical, and in the case of 'Double Bobble', the blitter kicks in with those zooming points scores, and will therefore crash it. (You might like to try 'Skyfall' in 'suicide mode' sometime, just for a moments sick self-amusement!) Willies Adventures, the preview version, apparently, yes, even the music, according to one report I've had. The finished game, when it turns up, will be well worth seeing! The Bad Mood and Patrice Mandin Doom engines should work. I probably need a new WAD file as mine may have got corrupted? Doom gets so far on the main menu, and crashes. There is an early (unoptimised?) demo 'Quake' engine reported as 'crawling' on CT2. Source - Evil of DHS Do Say:- "Heey, I'm getting motion sickness from speeding up Running!" Don't say:- "Will 'Backwards' still run in turbo mode?' Music... With music products, the news was very mixed. This being an area where the DSP was most likely to be heavily used. First off the musical blocks was Graoumf Tracker. It worked, just about. It was fiddly about which screen mode it liked to run in, really preferring a 16 colour mode. In 256 colour mode, it leaves a mouse pointer trail onscreen which is messy. The modfile format selector in the program tends to provoke a crash too. There is some gain on CPU time, but not as great as might have been anticipated. One S3M, which is my 100% CPU benchmark on a standard Falcon, came up 60ish% CPU time used? This may well show the extent to which the DSP is being leaned upon here? This is listed as compatible in Centek's own listing, but I seem to be one of the luckier ones here, as some CT2 fitted Falcys refuse to play with this one? Digital Tracker was a firm 'No' It never will either, if various stories about the poor relations between the author and Centek/Class 4 are true? This, sadly, extends to trying to use it in normal 16 mhz mode. The news was better for Flex Tracker v0.5, which works fine and ran in a stable fashion. Hopes are high for the full version (currently up to v0.8 at time of writing.) Mega Player (registered version) Yes, up to a point, but crashes on the bigger multi-channel modfiles, which it really shouldn't? This has been reported as a 'no go' by at least one other CT2 owner (Evil of DHS.) The rather strange huge virtual screen area based 'Mega Tracker' (preview version) does, but only on RGB systems? With the Commodore 64 music emulator 'Flaysid' player, this works fine, which is what the authors would have intended anyway. Nice to see no more slowdown of replay on the higher quality 33 mhz mode. The Creamsid player works fine too. As it does not use GEM or expect to run in a multi-tasking environment, there isn't really a need for it to. It will be interesting to see how the forthcoming generic Amiga format player will respond to turbo mode? Protracker is doubtful on turbo mode. The program boots up, 'Faclon Commando' message and all, modfiles load in, and you can access the different modes for 'edit', 'play' etc, but when trying to play the modfile, nothing moves! (You can quit out safely, so it isn't as if there is a crash.) There are still other players and tracker programs to try out, expect to get mixed results from what you try. Graphics.. The area of graphics software produced some excitement and interest, especially as certain programs had a lot more screen area to play with than before! We spent a long time with Apex Media. There was extensive testing done using this, especially with the earlier DSP fault. One way how to find out if your DSP is playing or not from Apex is to click on the Cyberdials option. If it gets stuck, you've got a problem. Also problems with JPEG loading will show themselves with a screenful of white garbage displayed. If there is no DSP fault, then Apex works just fine. The extra fluidity is noticeable when using even the more involved tools. Later versions of this program are capable of hi-res truecolour screen modes and work areas. The Apex viewers all came up fine. They were quick, but they always were. With 'Godpaint', it only seemed to like 100hz VGA, came up a mess on RGB. Rainbow Paint was a definite no-show. Standard mode only. GEMview got a new lease of life with turbo mode. Loading and displaying were very good, fast loading, even without Brainstorm DSP depacker on JPEG was impressive. There were very good results in extended resolutions - 1068 x 768 - 256 colour. With the depacker, loading times on most JPEG files dropped right down. Image Copy 4 benefited from the Brainstorm JPEG depacker too. Also able to use the extended screen modes. Speed of Light 3.8, yep, again, happy to accomodate a huge 256 colour screen. It has been reported that the *original* Atari Neopaint works in turbo! (not Neo Master?) Also Crackart may well work too, this was written to work on both an ST and TT, so it should do. Aniplayer works. but you would expect it to, with the author developing on a CT2 based Falcon! Impressive results were obtained with JPEG loading and AVI/MOV file playing. DSP decompression with the 50 mhz DSP played its part in reducing CPU load on a multi-tasking system, Excitingly, future versions of Aniplayer are to support a better MPEG player, including MPEG audio level 3! (MP3) A beta of this with unoptimised MP3 playing code 'lifted' from the PC is doing the rounds. Smurf (demo version) was tried out, and found to work in the extended GEM screen modes. Those effects modules supplied with it showed a major reduction in the time factor (whilst still not quite being real-time on some of the more complex ones.) Again, able to use the Brainstorm JPEG depacker, where this was present. Best of all. the 'Whip' Sound to Light software definitely does work under CT2 turbo! (like Godpaint, only really fancying 100hz VGA, but not RGB whilst in turbo?) Demos... The most subjective area of all.... Many won't. These are ones which do. Where monitors are concerned. things get extremely subjective from here, and some productions which are described as working under my SVGA may well not work, if it is an older and less flexible screen. The best bet to get maximum compatibility is to try to lay hands on a decent modern multisync or SVGA screen. As a rough rule, if it can get a 100hz mode, then you'll be fine. The Alive Demo by FUN will. This one is nice, with lots of 3D enviro- mapped objects. Also the ATS Demo by DHS does. Both of these are recent EIL (Error in Line) releases. Both authors are using a CT2. 'Alive' has more to offer with an options menu for enhancements with extra speed, higher definition 3D objects etc. ATS is just happy to run. Another EIL release, the 'Revert' demo by Cobra runs too. It was notable for running a very slow 3D virtual world on a standard machine, so any extra performance is clearly a bonus. it still isn't the fastest in the world, but it is better than before. Even the sound track works (A long sample made from an .XM modfile. ) It is really an RGB demo in normal life, but was able to run on my SVGA. If you really want to show off the sheer CPU power of a CT2, then I'd recommend the DHS Orneta '97 4ktro (4ever?) It is blindingly fast! There is no DSP involvement, but don't forget, the FPU is used. Just watch those tunnels fly! The 'Blue' 4ktro by New Beat from Orneta '97 runs as well. It runs like the clappers but really needs an RGB screen. The later 'Flu' 4ktro gets as far as the title screen then hangs when it tries to get to the next part. The Symposium 4ktros were worth checking out. The Lazer 'Gurkensalat' Elite-tro, is *very* fast in turbo! The Spirits Ewigekeit God-tro runs, and also the tSCc 3D morphing grid, and the TNB BSE+ intros. BSE+, timed to 2 minutes normally with countdown on screen, runs out of effects about 23 seconds from the end in turbo! All best started from ST low. All ran okay on my SVGA at 100hz. Other intros that did, included the EIL DHS Party invite (bumpmapped lake effect with haunting Tommy soundtrack.) This runs extremely fast, musically perfect too. Also, the Place to Be part V intro runs, there are lots of complex 3-D objects, toasters, gouraud cows, etc, which are very slow on a standard Falcon, now running at a respectable speed on CT2 turbo (looks like all CPU and no DSP apart from audio.) Parts of this intro may have been derived from an Amiga demo? Both of these ran perfectly on my SVGA. The 'Joint Venture' demo does, amazingly enough, just ignore the garbage onscreen at the very beginning. It prefers RGB screens and the music timing is 'out', but that doesn't matter with this demo as effects and music not really linked. individual parts such as the 'solar system' bit at the beginning are conspiciously faster. Tat's 'Sono' demo was not expected to work but we tried anyway! Before it did crash, those fishes didn't half shift onscreen. Completely fluid, natural, fantastic! It could have been interesting to see Tat carving out some code for the CT2. If the basics for his 3D world worked okay on a standard Falcon, it would only have been a matter of adjusting the CPU/DSP ratios and sitting back and enjoying the vast extra power!? Lost Blubb ran under turbo! I'll repeat that, Lost Blubb ran under turbo! Yes it did, although the music timing drifted badly out with the rest of the demo, and cut off abruptly at the end. Many of the effects were very much faster! We never realised that Martina had it in her! This is one where you would need a really good screen, as it ran on both my SVGA and RGB monitors, but not perfectly in either case. (but with all the best bits still on show!) The early but nicely formed Tat-derived effort 'Bio' did, but not very well on RGB. It was fine on my SVGA though. The speed-up can be seen to best effect with the fastest smoothest Z-Buffering on offer, even including the previously sluggish textured objects! The Hydroxid Symposium '96 entry was very well behaved, running perfectly on my SVGA, incredible, bearing in mind one of the major effects were to do with DSP dot objects. The early Lazer megademo, 'Autowaschen Verboten' (Ungto) did, but with corrupted speeded up sound, in fact speeded up everything. Scarey! And it got a picture from my SVGA, but garbled the screen on RGB! In general, I don't subscribe to conventional wisdom, which would say that demos ought not to run outright on such an accelerator as a CT2. Whilst this is mostly true, you can see from the, by no means exhaustive, list above, that quite a lot do to some extent, including one or two surprises! In general, if you are exploring your demo collection, then be prepared to expect the following. Strange screen modes, and demos working on monitor types they normally ought not to work on. Conversely, on other screens where they do normally run, then they may not? In some cases you might get dodgy sound, although the majority of the time, the sound player was the bit that worked the best. The soundtrack can get out of sync with the effects a lot of the time. Some demos, certain EKO demos springing to mind here, run a large part of the way in, but crash in mid-demo (when deploying a DSP based effect, probably?) There have been some notable failures found as we've gone into this. The DHS 'Dream Dimension' demo didn't, a shame for a relatively recent and rather good demo. It wasn't even very good with the DSP IRQ patch running in standard mode where jerks about and blinks onscreen as if it was running out of frames? Good job I've still for my Nemesis Falcy. Update, problem solved when a CT2 friendly version of that demo was released! Thanks Evil!  'Termfin', the grand-daddy of all Falcon demos by Amiga legend Sanity didn't really get going. The soundtrack implied it was there, but the screen stayed blank. The 1995 Inter 'Obnoxious' megademo crashed and made a "Turn off this machine NOW!" type noise. On an almost incidental note to close this section, you might be interested to know that both Maggie shells, ST, and Falcon (issue 27) ran okay under turbo mode, even the music was fine, with the Falcon shell using Graoumf sources. The only really noticeable differences were the really fast picture loading/depacking, and the elimination of speed lags on the text displayer in VGA when playing the really intense bits of a multi-channel modfile. The equally legendary Undercover MagaScene, at least in its issue 15 and 16 incarnations, was also happy with Centurbo 2 set any way you like. Still rumbling on, issues yet to be resolved? I finally got my DSP back in a fully working state, thanks to the hard work of the nice people at System Solutions. Rather than an outright component failure (the DSP Static RAM was suspected), it seemed that a bad connection/dry solder joint was to blame, and a resolder cured the fault. (Revise paragraph when eventually get machine working!!) This is why you've now got compatibility reports on all those lovely games and demos detailed above! At time of writing, I still have internet connection software that crashes/freezes the moment I dial into my account when in turbo mode. It is an oldish version of STinG, and it looks like this will need replacing, which I am loath to do, taking Mr Pink's view on the subject, "If it isn't broken, then don't fix it!" It now seems that it is broken? Also, once you've got past the barrier of actually making the connection work, there is the possibility, that CAB may well provoke a crash on its own. This may be down to a clash between STinG, and certain versions of the CAB ovl module? A shame, as CAB runs very sweetly with the extra speed on offer on an offline basis. There may well be a follow-up, which may or may not come within the scope of this article. I'd be very disappointed if this aspect of the upgrade turned out to be a letdown? I'm a *little* disappointed that the greatest failure rate seems to be in the crucial audio sector. The DSP-IRQ patch partially resolves the situation, but it isn't perfect. At least one person has come up with a schematic to rewire the DSP IRQ back into things, (the author of Aniplayer.) Digital Tracker is the biggest permanent failure, detailed earlier, not working even in standard 16 mhz mode. There was the odd bout of NVDI inspired 'whiteing out' of desktop icons, but this seems to have settled down. The very early installation of CT2 with the bugged DSP controller had a habit of chewing up my newdesk.inf file, but with the second fitting, that problem vanished too. Apart from that, Centurbo 2 hasn't presented me with any horrible surprises since, and being left on over a good period of time, has stayed rock solid. A reassuring change from my other Falcon, which suffers from 'mouse cursor epilepsy' from time to time. Any other failures are due to the extreme nature of the power on offer, and the software not being able to cope with it. Some ideas you might like to try? With an upgrade of this extent, it really could be worth trying to 'think outside of the box' (management seminar cliche no.962!) I was personally heartened that so much of the very best Falcon software ran on the CT2. I daresay the gendarmerie were called in, to investigate the source of the manic sounds of cheering around the vicinity of Centek GHQ, when they found out 'Running' worked! There is a certain amount of software, both Falcon specific, and intended for the higher spec TOS clones, that would really go down well on a CT2 powered Falcy. There are even individual 'scene' people involved pretty directly with their own CT2's, and offering enhancements to their new productions at the very least? It is unlikely that there will be anything really written closely for the CT2, owing to the sort of development time needed. We've been very lucky to get the software that we have now, with the sort of pressures working against us over the last few years. I might suggest investigating a few possibilities to (quickly and easily?) fill the gap though. I wonder if there is an Amiga equivalent to 'Bad Mood', say one that got more developed, used original material, had sources freely available, and was still able to run decently on a 50 mhz '030? Just speculating there? Porting of Amiga demo effects, and wholesale demos? The majority of 'Scene' Amigas are probably accelerated to some extent by now. It might be difficult to convert Power PC based Amiga stuff over, but there was a lot of faster '030 material? Think about it, the Falcon has one over the Amiga, if you are able to use the 50 mhz DSP as well? Generally, for demo coders. might be interesting to see if you could get something of the 3D world complexity of 'Sono' without having to use the DSP? Tat's 'Binliner' sources could be a good starting point here? Another area which could be re-examined, is the conversion of emulator software, again, this would be mainly Amiga based, with the sources in common? CT2 seems to be able to handle 8-Bit computer emulation of those existing TOS-based emulators with ease. It should be able to do a half-decent Commodore 64, and hopefully some of the more interesting 8- bitters, say the Amstrad 6128 or MSX? DSP support would not be necessary, and apart from soundchip emulation of the Flaysid variety, I can't see how the DSP could be made use of for an emulator? To give you an idea of what is possible now, the AtOric v0.9 Oric Atmos emulator timed to 5-6 seconds on a benchmark program running under CT2 turbo mode. This is comparable with 15 seconds on the real thing, 25 seconds on a TT, and 127 seconds on a standard ST. This also compares reasonably well with the 5 seconds taken by an '040 Milan! Matthias Jaap suggested that someone might try to convert the MESS Multi machine emulator, which can emulate several different computers and consoles. This may be marginal, even on a CT2, if not optimised, but would give access to a vast software library of many thousands of titles! Whilst I'm on the subject, anyone up for an Atari version of M.A.M.E.? (The arcade emulator.) I'd be happy with the early vector-based Atari games, Asteroids, Gravitar, that kind of thing. (See John Haywards review in this issue.) Okay, that'll be it for now. Like I said, just a few ideas. And finally... It has been a long six months since I started to get this upgrade. In an echo of the hyper-extended Mr Pink Nemesis 'awayday' saga, I have only just now got a fully working CT2! To be fair, I've not been without my Falcy for a very long time, and I've had it working in some form or other since the second visit to the premises of System Solutions. (I've got to know the inside of their workshop *very* well, and I can tell you that among other Atari curiosities, they've got a couple of old style ST's (no built-in floppy, slightly smaller case!) also, what looks like a brand new SH204 20MB hard drive, complete with manual, and that was something which stopped being new in 1987!) I've had time to examine the different aspects of CT2, and they haven't been found wanting. In the case of the more difficult 'non GEM legal' software arena, I've been pleasantly surprised at what did actually run! CT2 certainly will add a new lease of life to a tired and slow feeling Falcon, especially where software seems to make more demands of it, such as the new generation of GEM software really intended for the new TOS clones. It is refreshing to use in turbo mode, and very hard to switch back to 'normal'. I've already raved on enough about its effect on certain games and demos, so I won't anymore! In the context of the limited current market, CT2 has done very well, with Revision A and the first batch of Rev B both selling out, and further production of Rev B to cater for demand. I get the feeling that we really could have done with something like this a couple of years earlier, as the next generation of TOS hardware is finally getting ready to do the doorstep challenge to a wider world. I also can't help thinking that Atari really should have made the Falcon like this in the first place, as a large part of CT2 seems to be about putting right deficiencies left in the original Falcon design by Atari Corp, (you know, limited memory expansion potential, lack of big truecolour screen modes, slow processor....) Still, it is finally here, and it certainly lives up to its promise. Well, let's see what Class 4/Centek can do with the Phenix next! CiH - August '99 for Maggie