Today I picked up a small parcel that was sent to me, the parcel contained a GBAPII++ mini Amiga graphics card PCB. The GBAPII++ is a half size Zorro 2 Amiga graphics card based on the Cirrus Logic GD5434 chip, you can read all about that project here. This is a smaller version of that card – It is intended to be used with the Denise A500+ clone (Mini-ITX) but can be used on all Amiga systems with Zorro slots. You can read all about the mini version of the graphics card here.

Specification of the GBAPII++ card

This is a Zorro 2 card, it has 2 MB memory and is comparable with the Picasso 2 graphics card in performance (give or take performance in some tests). It is a perfect match for Z2 and 030+ systems IMHO but is not really a competitor with the zz9000 regarding performance (in a Zorro 3 system).

Lets take a look at the GBAPII++ card

Usually I prefer to build projects from scratch but in this case I did not mind a version where the passives where already pre-installed. The GBAPII++ mini version uses mostly 0603 component sizes. That is 1.6 x 0.8 mm in size, not impossible to solder, and to be honest not that challenging, just very tedious. Especially if you do not have a proper workshop with microscope.

The missing components are 2 MB memory consisting of four chips, SOJ40 (this is the same memory type that is installed in an Amiga 1200 rev 1.4d). The card needs one CPLD, two ICs, crystal and the GD5434 chip. The Cirrus Logic chip can be taken from a PC graphics card. Occasionally NOS chips show up on Ebay from time to time. Expect to pay 25-40 euro for the graphics chip alone (and more for the full graphics card).

I also got this little VGA out PCB that hooks up to the graphics card and fits neatly at the back of the Denise Amiga 500+ clone.