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Amiga computer related discussion => Amiga Hardware Issues and discussion => Topic started by: artman on November 16, 2003, 12:07:58 AM
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Hope I haven't asked this question before, if I have, please forgive. Just got to thinking about my lovely A2000. Pretty much a nice Miggy, '060 Blizz, Cgx64-3D, 128meg ram, OS3.9 etc. Any chance any one of the currently offered Mediator's could be made to work with her? Seems like that would open up a whole new world. Best regards to all....Art :-)
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Mediators do require Z3.
Now,the Mediator is actually the PCI-board with the lowest RL
transfer-rate,but even that is far to much for Zorro2.
Only chance of seeing PCI on an A2000 would be to have it connected
localy to the accelarator, but only the ancient A2630 and some GVP-boards
feature a connector that could be used for something like that. There is
also the rather small chance of getting the ColdFire-accel to work,
but that is something far in the future.
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@Kronos:
A mediator version for the A2000 would certainly be a slower than the A1200, A3000 or A4000 version. When reading an old thread (http://www.amiga.org/forums/showthread.php?t=3190) regarding mediator and grex transfer-speed it seems like the mediators hovers just around 8MB/Sec. An A2000 version of the mediator connecting to the ZII-bus could achieve about 3.5MB/Sek which is the maximum transferrate for the ZII-bus. This would make the A2000 version of the mediator roughly half as fast as the other mediators which definately would be usable... ofcourse the graphic-cards would not be as fast, but when using expansions like network-cards, usb-cards etc. the difference would hardly be noticeable.
/Patrik
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Every time I read about the 'flipper' card for the catweasel, I wonder if it could be used as a Zorro to PCI bridge in a 2000... after all, it's got a zorro bus on one side and PCI on the other.
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@patrik
Chances are there could be timing problems. On the Z-II side, the hardware would be working flat out, on the PCI side stuff would be sat round waiting.
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@Karlos:
You are right in that there would be complications with timing, the bandwidth of ZII-bus would be fully utilized. Though this is not different from the situation with the existing mediator products where the bandwidth of the used buses also is fully utilized. When the PCI-side of the existing mediator products are doing transfers to/from the Amiga-side a lot of waitstates are inserted to cope with the slow bus on the Amiga-side. In a ZII-implementation the difference would be a rough doubling of the waitstates.
I am positive a ZII mediator would be a doable thing.
/Patrik
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Wouldn't the best thing be to fit the PCI busboard directly into the accelerator slot, with passthrough for the accelerator? Or is the CPU slot also operating at ZII speed?
/Martin
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@AdMartin
Zorro2 and the accel-slot are roughly the same, with the main difference
that the accel ist directly connected to the 68000, while Zorro is buffered.
So,no speed gain here.
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An A2000-mediator connected to the ZorroII-bus with a 32-bit local-expansion-connector to give it the future possibility of making bridges to connect it to suitable accelerators maybe would be an idea :).
/Patrik
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patrik wrote:
An A2000-mediator connected to the ZorroII-bus with a 32-bit local-expansion-connector to give it the future possibility of making bridges to connect it to suitable accelerators maybe would be an idea :).
/Patrik
Guess you mean somthing like the Shark...
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by patrik on 2003/11/16 6:00:08
@Karlos:
You are right in that there would be complications with timing, the bandwidth of ZII-bus would be fully utilized. Though this is not different from the situation with the existing mediator products where the bandwidth of the used buses also is fully utilized. When the PCI-side of the existing mediator products are doing transfers to/from the Amiga-side a lot of waitstates are inserted to cope with the slow bus on the Amiga-side. In a ZII-implementation the difference would be a rough doubling of the waitstates.
I am positive a ZII mediator would be a doable thing.
From a commercial POV, a suicide!
How much users own an A2000? some (or quite all) of them, wants that the A2000 stills be an A2000 in a quite original configuration
ColdFusion option? yes the best option IMHO when it will be available.
Ciao
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How about a Zorro2PCI that connects over two Zorro slots? :-)
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And what would that bring ?
Note Z2 is a bus, 1 slot can use the full bandwith or you can share
the same bandwith on 2 or more slots.
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@Framiga:
You are right in that it would probably be a quite uneconomic to manufacture, but it would be a very fun piece of hardware to have. I would atleast want one in my A2000.
If you used the space above the three rightmost ZorroII-slots for a PCI-board (A2000 motherboard (http://amiga.resource.cx/photos/a2000rev45.jpg)) you could continue using existing A2000 expansions with the addition of 3 PCI-slots.
/Patrik
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@bloodline:
Well, some kind of local bus making it atleast possible in theory to connect to something faster using a bridge of some kind to adapt to that something ;).
/Patrik
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The planned Blizzard A2604 PPC accelerator was to have a local bus for CybervisionPPC GFX-card, with speeds exceeding ZorroIII.
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Whatever happened to that board? I remember seeing adverts for it at the time in CU Amiga and Amiga Format. :-? :huh:
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The problem is this though...
You get an A2000... then you put a PCI board in it, on that PCI board you have a Local Bus for a CPU upgrade.
Then you Put a PCI gfx card in it, a new CPU card with 256 Megs of RAM on it, a PCI sound card, a PCI network Card, a PCI IDE card (with a DVD-R/RW and a 120Gig Hd), a PCI USB card with a new Keyboard and a new optical mouse.
Then you have to put a new Power supply in it to handle all this stuff... What are you left with?
A new computer (since the A2K motherboard isn't used for anything) in an Amiga 2000 case...
Keep the A2K as a working museum peice and get a new computer :-)
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@bloodline:
This is pretty much the situation with all Amigas. If you expand them to the max not much of the original motherboard will be used. The motherboard will be used for some various I/O like keyboard/mouse, ROM-socket ;) and as a means of compability with older software.
Though there is no need to go all the way to the max when expanding a system. A PCI-board with a graphic-card and a network-card would a reasonable expansion :).
And you have to admit that it would be fun with PCI-slots in an A2000! ;)).
/Patrik
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And you have to admit that it would be fun with PCI-slots in an A2000! ;)).
Without question!!! :-D
But I have got to the point where I want my Amiga's in their "virginal" state without all the PC bits and bobs hacked on.
I have a PC for the PC stuff :-)
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Wow! What a lot of info to soak in. Thank you all for your input. From what I can gather, it's not something I'll try to work out in my A2000, just sounded like a cool idea. I agree with Bloodline in that I like my Amiga to stay pretty close to the original configuration. Kinda like keeping a classic car original rather than hacking it up into something else. Now maybe that A3000 thats just sitting here would be nice to stick into a Mirage case and start from there. Have to see how much stuff I can sell to raise the bucks. Best regards...Art :-)
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And what would that bring ? Note Z2 is a bus, 1 slot can use the full bandwith or you can share the same bandwith on 2 or more slots.
Oh, I didn´t know that they shared the bandwith. Sorry. :-)