A2000 Mediator??

[patrik]

@Kronos:

A mediator version for the A2000 would certainly be a slower than the A1200, A3000 or A4000 version. When reading an old thread 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

[patrik]

@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

[patrik]

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

[patrik]

@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)  you could continue using existing A2000 expansions with the addition of 3 PCI-slots.


/Patrik

[patrik]

@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

[patrik]

@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