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Amiga computer related discussion => Amiga Hardware Issues and discussion => Topic started by: barney on June 06, 2009, 07:24:20 AM
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Are there any PC graphics cards that can be used on an Amiga in Workbench. I am just curious if this is possible. Thanks.
Barney
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Yes, you can use S3 Virge, Voodoo Banshee, 3, 4 and 5 cards and Radeon 9200 and 9250 cards with Elbox PCI boards for example. Other PCI solutions mostly limit their support to only Voodoo 3 cards.
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There are non which can be used directly
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There are non which can be used directly
I didn't mention that because the stock Amigas lack PCI slots and I thought that would be clear.
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I didn't mention that because the stock Amigas lack PCI slots and I thought that would be clear.
It might not be to someone unfamiliar with the machine hardware. Additional note, you also need driver software. To some extent, what you use will be determined by which PCI bus expansion you use.
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That's why I'm glad that alexh mentioned it; I sometimes get some tunnelvision because I happen to know my Amiga ;-).
And it's true that card support differs with each PCI solution; I mentioned that in my first answer. The Mediator from Elbox gives you the most options to choose from.
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And soon another Radeon card will follow...
http://hdrlab.org.nz/radeonhd-driver/
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And soon another Radeon card will follow...
That sounds very interesting indeed!
I had a quick look at the page, looks like they are developing a driver for OS4.x though, not for classic Amiga's so to say.
BTW, now that we are on the subject, is there any chance to get a Radeon working woth Prometheus? Some OpenPCI type driver maybe?
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And soon another Radeon card will follow...
http://hdrlab.org.nz/radeonhd-driver/
That's very cool.
If only nVidia were as open to the developer community :( That said, I don't imagine any of the current CUDA capable cards are available in AGP form factors.
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And soon another Radeon card will follow...
http://hdrlab.org.nz/radeonhd-driver/
only for os4 as far as i get it.
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If only nVidia were as open to the developer community :( That said, I don't imagine any of the current CUDA capable cards are available in AGP form factors.
:lol: Just imagine CUDA running on Amiga - that would be WAY cool!
I wonder whether some day we'd get PCIe backplanes for classic Amigas...:banana:
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:lol: Just imagine CUDA running on Amiga - that would be WAY cool!
I would absolutely love that. The first thing I'd investigate is hardware planar to chunky conversion to allow OS support for old planar modes (with the bitplanes living in the card's memory) with a kernel to perform p2c conversion into a visible framebuffer. Adding support for things like HAM would hardly be taxing, either.
I wonder whether some day we'd get PCIe backplanes for classic Amigas...:banana:
Not very likely, unless someone wants to make a custom northbridge :)
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Not very likely, unless someone wants to make a custom northbridge :)
Definitely quite a bit of work not very probable to pay off. Do you think a simple PCI-PCIe bridge could work for a single slot? Usually they're used the other way round, but might it be possible to adapt a PCIe slot to a PCI bus that way?
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In theory, it's doable. If you can convert serial to parallel, the reverse is possible. I dunno how many PCIe gfx cards would work in a single lane though. Not many, I expect. You can get GPUs designed for PCIe with AGP bridging logic to work with older v3 AGP slots, but vanilla PCI is significantly further back still.
Attempting to covert multiple lanes on the card to parallel PCI I simply cannot see working, given the way PCIe does point to point.
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only for os4 as far as i get it.
Correct, the RadeonHD drivers are OS4 only. It's being developed using cards with built in PCI-to-PCIe bridges. I still hope that someone can make OS4 hardware with a proper PCIe bus though.
Hans
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Are there any ISA graphics cards that will work on the legacy Amiga? I remember sombody telling me that you could use an ISA graphics card if using a PC emulator board. Can one be used if you don't have a PC emulator board. Thanks.
Barney
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Are there any ISA graphics cards that will work on the legacy Amiga? I remember sombody telling me that you could use an ISA graphics card if using a PC emulator board. Can one be used if you don't have a PC emulator board. Thanks.
Barney
I doubt it. From memory, the ISA bus was on the bridge-board, so you won't even be able to plug the ISA cards in. Besides, ISA graphics cards are not available any more.
Hans
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ISA cards could be used with a suitable driver running on the bridgeboard but there is no such driver. I wanted to try writing something but I never got my hands on a working bridgeboard. With that kind of setup the x86 CPU could just use the card's VESA BIOS to set the screen mode and could even act as blitter or whatever. The only problem is that the Amiga has to pass data through a 32KB window IIRC.
BTW, nVidia GeForce 8 cards are available on both PCI and AGP, and I recall a 9400 PCI being announced so that may exist also.
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I doubt it. From memory, the ISA bus was on the bridge-board, so you won't even be able to plug the ISA cards in. Besides, ISA graphics cards are not available any more.
Hans
No, there are ISA slots on all big box amiga models, usually in line with Zorro slots. But they're passive, Amiga cannot access them. Only a bridgeboard can access these cards.
In a short answer, no you can't use any PC graphic boards on Amiga without buying extra hardware (a mediator or bridge board - even with bridge board you'ld need drivers and I doubt performance will be better than original Amiga chipset)
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No, there are ISA slots on all big box amiga models, usually in line with Zorro slots. But they're passive, Amiga cannot access them. Only a bridgeboard can access these cards.
In a short answer, no you can't use any PC graphic boards on Amiga without buying extra hardware (a mediator or bridge board - even with bridge board you'ld need drivers and I doubt performance will be better than original Amiga chipset)
Thanks for correcting me. I had a sneaking suspicion that I had gotten something wrong after I posted, but I was 100% sure that you couldn't use ISA cards in an Amiga without the bridge-board. I never owned a big box Amiga, so I've never seen the internals. That's a bit of an odd setup, having parts of the motherboard that require a plug in board to work.
Anyway, the bottom line is that you need the bridgeboard for the ISA slots. To be honest, I was glad when the ISA bus was ditched in favour of PCI and I can't imagine anyone still wanting to use it.
Hans
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There were no "real" ISA gfx cards.
All bridgeboards (including GoldenGate2 which activate ISA slots soley in Amiga domain) don't support DMA so most ISA soundcards don't work either.
Network cards are the only things that can really be used, but why bother?
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wouldnt it be possible to compile your drivers for 68k for use with mediator under 3.x? well, i suppose not. or if yes it would be probably too much work. afaik there is primarly already an electrical problem to this solution and also closed source elbox driver solution for the bridge. but just wanted to ask.
probably even 4.0 drivers wouldnt work even if one could fit such a card into mediator.
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...did you get shot?...
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@zipper:
lol, yeah, nearly, by obvious stupidity of my question, but i couldnt resist.
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wouldnt it be possible to compile your drivers for 68k for use with mediator under 3.x? well, i suppose not. or if yes it would be probably too much work. afaik there is primarly already an electrical problem to this solution and also closed source elbox driver solution for the bridge. but just wanted to ask.
probably even 4.0 drivers wouldnt work even if one could fit such a card into mediator.
If you're talking about the RadeonHD driver then no, it can't be recompiled for 68k. It uses Amiga OS 4.x's PCI interfacing API, not OpenPCI, and OS 4.x's library interfaces. I don't have classic PowerPC hardware, and didn't see much point in supporting the classic anyway, TBH. Classic Amigas don't have the speed required to get much out of these cards. Heck, a few people even think that it's pointless supporting this card on next-gen Amigas because the CPU is too slow, and so is PCI.
I have no idea whether these cards will work with a Mediator board under OS4.
Hans
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Are there any ISA graphics cards that will work on the legacy Amiga? I remember sombody telling me that you could use an ISA graphics card if using a PC emulator board. Can one be used if you don't have a PC emulator board. Thanks.
Barney
You can use an ISA card on a 1200 with an AtéoBus board, or on a 2000, 3000, or 4000 with an oMniBus board.
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If you're talking about the RadeonHD driver then no, it can't be recompiled for 68k. It uses Amiga OS 4.x's PCI interfacing API, not OpenPCI, and OS 4.x's library interfaces. I don't have classic PowerPC hardware, and didn't see much point in supporting the classic anyway, TBH. Classic Amigas don't have the speed required to get much out of these cards. Heck, a few people even think that it's pointless supporting this card on next-gen Amigas because the CPU is too slow, and so is PCI.
I have no idea whether these cards will work with a Mediator board under OS4.
Hans
fine. thats what i thought anyway. im not even sure if mediator works with open pci. but then i only would think it might be worth considering if the effort was not much beyond stright recompilation. keep up. thanks for the answer.
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Hi there!
Sorry if this is a little OT, but im awaiting my "brande new" Mediator card, and i would like to know if a card like this http://articulo.mercadolibre.com.ar/MLA-64238690-placa-de-video-ati-radeon-9200-128mb-pci-vga-dvi-s-video-new-_JM (http://articulo.mercadolibre.com.ar/MLA-64238690-placa-de-video-ati-radeon-9200-128mb-pci-vga-dvi-s-video-new-_JM) would work with the Mediator and my Amiga (1200 in an Elbox Tower). That card has 128 MB. I have seen a similar with 256MB. also i have seen Radeon 9200se version ? What does se mean? Any special things i would have to look to know if the card is compatible or not?
Kind regards
Sebastian