hey there buddy, not sure if you're still out there,
have got a job now, so back in the internet, this was quite some time ago and i remember looking to buy an SX32pro from you, well, pretty soon i'll have the money! mad mad stuff bin happening,
anyway, have a prototype PCB design in the works at the moment. the main problem i have with the FMV card design is its pretty high on the ol' address priority list, and steals 4Mb of the zorro 2's addressing space, i'm not sure how that would work with a mediator, but it think it should be ok, just slow it down a little owing to the increased paging involved with a 4mb window as opposed to an 8Mb window.
another consideration is the space involved... and the cooling requirements...
as for producing another FMV card, as far as i know, its all under licence ATM. and you'd have to ask permission (from who?) for the custom bridge IC designs to be able to address the FMV chip on the CD32 bus.
sure a DVD decoder would in theory be possible. but this would take a little more bus bandwidth than zorro 2 bus can realisticly provide (which the signals allready exists). so you'll realisticly be looking at a mediator / PPC bolt on as the PCI bus can handle the bandwidth, PCI cards are readily available, just the drivers need working on.
oh yeah, and the CD32 twin speed CD drive... erm... well, you'd need to replace that to read DVDs. i like the idea of bootable CD's, with the drivers built into the ROM. none of this "only available after boot" rubbish, with half made cludged together drivers (not impressed with IDE FIX97)
only problem, we're starting to move away from the whole "one small system unit" idea and looking towards an (yuck) tower system. lets face it, towers are bulky, unattractive, and take up FAR to much space for their contents. hence my idea for a docking station affair that the CD32 would drop into. could carry space for a couple of PCI cards that lay flat with the mediator board. DVD decoder, GFX card.
try and have USB, ethernet and sound on board, so you don't need to waste too much.
anyway..... we shall see.... i like the idea of the CD32, just not its overall execution.
oh, as a post script to the selling the A4000 saga,
i got my money, but did i pay off my car? no. mum conned me into paying for her flights to chicago to see a friend with "pay you back next week". so far, have had naff all to show except some nasty letters from the loans company.
the lessons learned are...
moral #1
lending money gives people amnesia.
moral #2
Listen to advice, but at the end of the day, only YOU
know whats best for YOU. and advice can be twisted to the benifit of someone else.
moral #3 known by all the ladies out there,
Guilt trips always work.
and last but not least, #4
Lifes a b1tch sometimes. :-(
