Hi everyone,
Today I stumbled upon some interesting news concerning a brand new accelerator for the Amiga 500, Amiga 2000 and the CDTV. The card is called Zeus68k and it the specifications looks very cool to say the least.
First of all, this is not a standard turbo-card that only provides you with a heftier CPU and more RAM. The Zeus68k will give you an IDE-controller and a Kickstart ROM-switcher to boot! This is something I believe many Amiga 500 and CDTV users will be happy to hear. As an additional bonus, an Action Replay replacement might be included as well, but time will show if that happens. Now, let’s have a quick look at the current specifications:
- 68SECooo-CPU clocked at 7 or 50 MHz
- 8 MB of RAM
- Boot menu
- 6x Kickstart ROM-switcher
- IDE-controller (Gayle Logic A600)
- Clock port
Looks very good in my opinion. The clock port will give room for more expansions and the IDE-controller will make it a breeze to install a decent hard drive. If my trusty old Amiga 500 was still alive, I would have gone for this upgrade as soon as it hits the streets.
The card is only available as a prototype at the moment, but the final version might be released some time during the upcoming winter.
Here’s a few pictures for you to enjoy:
Any Amiga 500, Amiga 2000 or CDTV owners interested in this upcoming piece of hardware? 🙂 Would love to hear your thoughts on this board.
Old School Game Blog 
That looks like a pretty amazing expansion card! My A500 has the extra 512k RAM expansion at the moment and a kickrom switch, and I’ve taken out the floppy drive to replace it with one of those FDD to sdcard emulator boards. Since all I’m after is using the A500 to play games on, would something like this be useful, or is it a bit of overkill do you think? Apologies if this is a stupid question, still a relative Amiga newbie – only had a C64 when growing up, and that got superseded by a 386DX40-based PC in 1993 🙂
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Hi Sean,
Many thanks for your comment. 🙂
Your current config should be fine for gaming. I don’t think you’ll need all the bells and whistles from the new card, although some extra memory and a hard drive controller would come in handy for WHD-Load (running games from hard drive). Personally, I’d stick with the config you already have. 🙂
Ahh.. 386DX-40! That brings back memories. I never had such a PC myself, but I remember friends who had one. Did it come with Windows 3.11 or did you run DOS?
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Cool, thanks for that – I’ll keep the current config then, but will stil enjoy reading about the cool stuff these kind of expansion cards allow 🙂
For us, we were running Windows 3.1 on top of DOS 6. Was a great time to be a PC user, it meant I learned to use a command prompt OS before the PC went down the path of being primarily driven by a GUI-based OS 🙂
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No problem, mate. 🙂 Glad to be of help.
Sounds cool. If I were going to get an old PC for retro-gaming, would you consider a 486 DX to be most compatible? I’m also interested in info concerning relevant sound and graphic cards. Thanks in advance.
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8 mb is very low , memory chips ram are very low cost now, 32 mb is better and not effect final cost , speed may be better , 50 mzh test?
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Nice piece of hw. However… sorry for being a bellyaher… what for? I have an impression that like in the old days we had demo competitions, now we have hw prototypes contests. Just for sake of a challenge and “I’ll show them!” pose.
Of course I am full of admiration and awe to the guy who did it.
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Hi mate,
Thanks for commenting. What you write is important. What shall we use this hardware for? It would be great if they added AmigaOS 4.x or MorphOS support for example. That way it would be possible for more people to run next-gen operative systems on their classics. Time will show if that happens though. 😉
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Hi, for my opinion if you no change tech information and final board have only 8mb ram etc etc is perfect for upgrade cdtv. In this mode finally cdtv have correct hardware for work with all ecs program/game. Just you must many test for looked if in cdtv plus zeus work well game that use whdload. In this mode cdtv is trasformed in multimedia game center. Just how idea.. but any interface for use controller ps3 on cdtv ;-)??? Forget!! the cdtv for have a good use must have 1 mb chip ram (better 2) and your 8 mb ram how fast..
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Hi Ashtarot,
Thank you for your comment! Much appreciated! 🙂 Intersting ideas you’ve got there!
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WoW! please tell me this will work/ fit on my Amiga 1000 (fingers crossed)
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From what i read on eab. It will fill the amiga 1000 and you will be able to kickstart it with any version that is available for amiga 500. Means that you will not need to kick it from floppy.
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Not fill but fit! Damn auto-correct
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Hehe.. 😀
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Nice. Thanks for the info, Juan. 🙂
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I would love one of these boards I hear you have them for both AMIGA’s & ATARI STe’s? I really like this. Another mod I was looking at was something rather amibitous someone took on that managed to use an accelerator board to add 32MB EDO RAM to it, nearly outperforming the A4000. But I like how on both revisions I have heard of that there is switchable TOS or Kickstart ROMS. That’s very attractive alongside the rest of the features… Question is Where do we get them & when are they in mass production & how much are they set to cost ?
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I would love one of these boards I hear you have them for both AMIGA’s & ATARI STe’s? I really like this. Another mod I was looking at was something rather amibitous someone took on that managed to use an accelerator board to add 32MB EDO RAM to it, nearly outperforming the A4000. But I like how on both revisions I have heard of that there is switchable TOS or Kickstart ROMS. That’s very attractive alongside the rest of the features… Question is Where do we get them & when are they in mass production & how much are they set to cost ?
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Interesado in this card
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I want one and I think a lot of people of zona de pruebas too, our 500 needs new hardware…!!! Please sell it!!!
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Whats hanppend? We are still waiting! There are no Hardware like this avalibile, so you could make a good business!
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aww c’mon my A2000 need this card
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[…] Zeus68k: New Accelerator for Amiga 500/2000/CDTV […]
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