Pretty nifty. In my experience, a 486DX2-50 will also run Windows 98 (provided the drivers for the hardware are available.) It's a shame this can't share resources with the Amiga side, otherwise it would have a bit more value to me, personally.
You say you found a manual; I assume the ISA bus is active and it would make use of other ISA peripherals in the Amiga? And is that on-board networking?
The 486 CPU is surface mount, so no upgrades.Would be cool if one of those Pentium Overdrive chips that fit in a 486 socket would work on one of these as $50 is very cheap.
There is a similar board with a Pentium 100 and onboard SCSI for sale on eBay for £99.
And is that on-board networking?Yes, it's got 10baseT, NE2000+ compatible, Win95 did not find it, so you have to configure it manually, I can ping loopback, so looks like is working.
I'd like to run OS/2 Warp on one of these things.
If I remember correctly, 4MB was needed to run Win95, 8MB to run is smoothly. I upgraded my 486 DX2-66 to 20MB. That was a nice system! BTW, install Dark Forces if you got the chance. Great game!I run, back in 1996 or later, win95 with 4Mb RAM, it was a nightmare! AOL would take forever, and I mean forever to load. the virtual memory would go crazy in full overdrive!
It's a shame this can't share resources with the Amiga side, otherwise it would have a bit more value to me, personally.
You could probably make a bridgeboard that worked alongside one of these cards. But finding someone that can do it and will put the effort in is the problem. There is software for linking PC's and Amiga's though, which should work.
Most probably it's so much easier to link them via Ethernet without any special hardware (and probably not much slower either). A bridgeboard requires dual-ported RAM and lots of protocols and system software on both sides.
OK, I got myself brand new ISA sound card today from my local PC store. Plugged in the second ISA slot, fired up the board, and Win95 recognized it, so the ISA slots are active and working, Cool!
so far, very nice, looks like I have full 486 PC inside my Amiga.
I have couple game installed on it and work great, the only thing I don't like is that WWF Wrestlemania and Descent 2 requires a CDROM to work. I was planning to install the games, remove the CD drive and play.
Curious how these work .. do you actually need a functional amiga in order for this to work?I think it's going to work, as long as it provides power to the ISA slots.
Or could you use one that had a lot of battery damage? I guess as long as it gets all the signals it needs through the ISA slots?
Sorry, just don't know anything about these boards but it sounds pretty neat to use in a damaged 2000 that has no other uses (besides being a resource for parts).
I'd like to run OS/2 Warp on one of these things.
Would be cool if one of those Pentium Overdrive chips that fit in a 486 socket would work on one of these as $50 is very cheap.
There is a similar board with a Pentium 100 and onboard SCSI for sale on eBay for £99.
Hey Nicholas,
Haven't seen you around lately.
Great Vonnegut quote.
I'd had that thought before in relation to a '386 or '486 bridgeboard, but Warp really requires a VGA card (at least version 3 does).
You can also run Win3.1 under later versions of Warp.
Use of an ISA VGA card is possible, but then you are dealing with two separate displays.
Has anyone tried to use a Sigma Designs ReelMagic card in an ISA slot with a bridgeboard or sbc?
Under Warp that should allow Mpeg decoding at 640x480 in 256 colors.
I used to have two of those overdrive chips.
Curious hybrid between '486 and Pentium.
Smaller then a Socket 7 processor.
Wound up throwing them away when I inadvertently bent the pins.
OK, I got myself brand new ISA sound card today from my local PC store. Plugged in the second ISA slot, fired up the board, and Win95 recognized it, so the ISA slots are active and working, Cool!
so far, very nice, looks like I have full 486 PC inside my Amiga.
I have couple game installed on it and work great, the only thing I don't like is that WWF Wrestlemania and Descent 2 requires a CDROM to work. I was planning to install the games, remove the CD drive and play.
OK, I got myself brand new ISA sound card today from my local PC store. Plugged in the second ISA slot, fired up the board, and Win95 recognized it, so the ISA slots are active and working, Cool!
so far, very nice, looks like I have full 486 PC inside my Amiga.
I have couple game installed on it and work great, the only thing I don't like is that WWF Wrestlemania and Descent 2 requires a CDROM to work. I was planning to install the games, remove the CD drive and play.
Plugging a SBC card into a Mediator would certainly cause major damages.
The PCI slots can't be active for the Amiga and the PC side at the same time.
I have the same problem with an AtéoBus (which is merely an ISA bus with no DMA support): i would like to put there a Pentium MMX SBC that i have but there would be big conflicts with the Amiga.
These cards can only live with the Amiga in 100% inactive slots, such as the ISA slots of the A2000/A3000/A4000.
That could be true for mediator but old micronik busboard had PCI slots not accesible for the Amiga so i assume that it is only for SBC boards
Does anyone know where I can get the connectors to convert my two 8 bit slots to 16 bit?
Try to get yourself an ISA Gravis Ultrasound card.
0% CPU usage. Made my 486 sx25 fly back in the day! :)
I had a ISA GUS. I actually had it following the release of that board and was a pretty early adopter.
It was great for playing MODs and had really good general MIDI, but native support was really pretty bad and the SoundBlaster compatibility did in fact use a lot of CPU, sounded strange and never worked particularly well. I ended up having two soundboards in my PC for this reason. I eventually gave up (gave it away..) on the GUS and bought an Ensoniq Soundscape.
It was good hardware, and I wanted to like it, but really not well supported at all and was overall a big headache. I'd much rather have an Ensoniq. Also consider a Roland MT32 and Soundblaster/MPU-401 compatible sound card (or Sound Canvas).
I guess GUS is well supported in the demo scene but commercial support was never that good, unless I just gave up to soon...
I got MT32 for 32 bux. I use it with DOSBOX with USB midi.
I just desoldered them from old dumped PC-boards and soldered them into the empty slotsholes on the A2000. (Some A2000 have to be cleaned from solder in the holes before you can stick the missing slotconnector into the holes. AND never drill the holes with a dremel etc., you will damage the board.)
Markus
I can't say I ever used the SB emulation in DOS much, if at all to be honest. I used it purely for watching (listening to?) demos and coding them.
I used to have two of those overdrive chips.
Curious hybrid between '486 and Pentium.
Smaller then a Socket 7 processor.
Wound up throwing them away when I inadvertently bent the pins.
Those are industriual-PC-boards which work in many environments. They are available with nearly all CPU-variants (yes, even Core-CPUs like i7 QuadCore etc.) and should work in all Amigas with ISA-slots (provided the PSU is fit enough). Sometimes it needs a small modification to the ISA-slot (there is thread on http://www.a1k.org according this topic).
I had some of those cards and it was very funny to operate a 2 GHz-system in a 8/50 MHz A2000 :)
Unfortunately they are not very cheap.
Now that you mention it, I remember doing the same thing with the DRAM :) It's funny that you mention having a K6-II because I ended up getting the K6-III.
if you got a Core one, you could run WinUAE which would really freshen up that A2000 :)
Loved that series.
I had about a half dozen K6-III+ at one point.
All would clock at at least 550MHz.
And one I got over 600.
At that point, why keep the Amiga motherboard?
Loved that series.
I had about a half dozen K6-III+ at one point.
All would clock at at least 550MHz.
And one I got over 600.
Funny, I didn't have as much luck with the K6-2+.
Probably because these were just harvested K6-III+ chips with half the cache disabled.
Problem was, if you benched a K6-III+ and a lowly AMD Duron at the same speed, the Duron wiped the floor with the K6.
Come to think of it, I always did get a kick out of using chips that were not intended for desktop use in desktop motherboards.
My last Athlon XP was an XP-M 3000+. Easily good for 2.4 Ghz, pushing it 2.5.
Sorry, way off topic.
mine was 400 and was under the impression that they were not very overclockable, so I never tried.
It was pretty fast though. I had a Pentium 450mhz at work an I do recall DVD playback being smoother on the K6... Most of the 4D games were slightly slower, but still a nice CPU.
Seems to me that I upgraded from a 166mmx that I ran at 200mhz and was able to keep the same MB. DVDs were a slideshow at 200mhz :) all I really wanted to do was play DVDs which were the new hot thing without springing for a new MB, RAM, etc...
I guess the benefit to using the ISA CPU board is that you could keep the Amiga intact and even run deinterlaced it in a window if you used a USB capture card and something like AmigaManiac's svideo adapter.