ISA slots questions

[xaccrocheur]

Hi

I did a search but w/o luck so I'm asking for details about the ISA slots found on the Zorro Amigas. If I'm righ, the 2000 has 4 of them, the 3000 has 2, and the 4000 has 3 of them.
They are genarally described as "inactive ISA slots" however, when I see this (Frank uses his 2000's ISA slots for a NIC !!!) I'm again wondering : Can one make use of those "inactive ISA slots" to (actively) do things ? I'm sure I could get my hands on an old 10Mb ISA ethernet board, if I was sure that I could get it to work (drivers&all) on a 3000, or a 4000. Heck, this makes me want a 2000 even more !

I remember that those slots were made for PC compatibility via bridgeboards that were scarcily produced, if ever. Do I really need one of those ? What the hell do they do to "activate" those "dead" slots ?? :-?

Thank you for any real-life information about using the ISA slots.

[MrZammler]

Yes, you need either a Bridgeboard, or a GoldenGate. They are needed to make the ISA slots active. Why? Dont really know, maybe cause they're needed to translate ISA signals to Zorro?

[Markus_Bieler]

Indeed you need a bridgeboard or a card called Goldengate to activate these slots. Doing it this way you can use the
ISA.cards from the AMigaside if there are drivers for these cards available. Look at aminet for drivers.

or

You put in a industry "PC on a card" into one of the ISA-slots and then you have two independent computer in one box. Doing this you need a separte PSU for the ISA-PC. And keyboard Mouse etc.

[xaccrocheur]

Markus_Bieler wrote:
Indeed you need a bridgeboard or a card called Goldengate to activate these slots. Doing it this way you can use the
ISA.cards from the AMigaside if there are drivers for these cards available. Look at aminet for drivers.

or

You put in a industry "PC on a card" into one of the ISA-slots and then you have two independent computer in one box. Doing this you need a separte PSU for the ISA-PC. And keyboard Mouse etc.

wow.. Man, this PC on a card surely sounds like those weird ideas they had in the 80's... anyway, OK about the drivers on the 'minet, but what about the bridgeboards ? Gosh, I think I *really* need an XSurf3cc... Luckily  XMas is coming !

I just discovered that the said XSurf also has a 1200-style clockport ! Is anyone happily using this, I mean a USB clockport extention plusgged in a XSurf plugged in a ZorroII slot ? Is all this running along nicely ?
The good thing about this solution, is that it's available commercially now.
[deit] found the relevant info

[Thomas]

They are genarally described as "inactive ISA slots" however, when I see this (Frank uses his 2000's ISA slots for a NIC !!!) I'm again wondering : Can one make use of those "inactive ISA slots" to (actively) do things ?

"Inactive" means that they are not connected in any way to the Amiga. They just get power from the power supply and that's it. You need any kind of bridge board which connects one ISA slot to the Zorro slot next to it, then the bridge has access to all the ISA slots and to the Zorro slot, so with the correct software you can access the ISA slots from the Amiga side. But don't expect it to be fast.

Bye,
Thomas

[FrankBrana]

Yeah, its not the fastest NIC you have ever seen, but its fast enough to handle, at full speed, the 1MB DSL connection I have at home.

Sadly, as far a i know, there arent any other drivers for GFX card, scsi cards, sound card... or whatever.

I dunno if it would be too much hard port or adapt some of the existing ISA cards drivers made for the ATEO BUS ( AFAIK there are 3rd party drivers for non ATEO licenced ISA cards )

[Jeff]

I have the Goldengate from SRE. It works well with an ISA nic but not much else. It doesn't do DMA, and the IDE drivers available when SRE stopped development only supported a limited number of small drives like the stock 120 meg that came in the 4000.

[xaccrocheur]

Jeff wrote:
I have the Goldengate from SRE. (...)

Man, you're one lucky amigan. I'd like two of them Oh well, I'm gonna save for an XSurf, this piece of HW seems to rule really, w/ the added clockport.

Thank you for this explanation. Indeed, I saw a Goldengate image, man the board is crowded !? Just hoping that someday, somehow..

[amigadave]

xaccrocheur wrote:

Jeff wrote:
I have the Goldengate from SRE. (...)

Man, you're one lucky amigan. I'd like two of them Oh well, I'm gonna save for an XSurf, this piece of HW seems to rule really, w/ the added clockport.

Thank you for this explanation. Indeed, I saw a Goldengate image, man the board is crowded !? Just hoping that someday, somehow..

I have two Goldengate bridgeboards and one Commodore 386 that I am not using at the moment and have been thinking of putting on eBay.  I also have an ISA card to use with them that has onboard IDE controller/VGA/8mb RAM (maybe more).  I had it set up with a SoundBlaster16 which also had a SCSI controller on it at one time ages ago, but since the bridgeboards are 386 and sx486 they are not good for much as they barely run Windows 3.1.  What a nightmare that was.  MS-DOS v6.22 was tolerable for what it did, but that whole Windows 3.0 & 3.1 mess gave me a healthy respect for my Amiga and a loathing for Microsoft.  XP Pro is finally a usable (but still flawed) product and it only took MS 20+ years to make.   :lol:

Off topic: While deciding what kind of laptop to get my 77 year old Mom for Christmas, my 4 brothers and sisters and I decided not to go for a cheap $300 to $600 PC laptop and ordered her a 14 inch iBook.  She has never owned a computer before, so we figured a little extra expense on our part would result in a lot less of my Mom fighting with the OS to get what she wants to do with a computer, email, Internet & family pictures.