Elbox Mediator 4000Di

[darksun9210]

Hi all, a bit of advice is what i'm after i guess, or hints and anecdotes of your general expiriences with the above.

i'm toying with the idea of buying a Mediator Board. is this a better solution than hunting ebay or amibay for zorro ethernet and graphics gards? (i would prefer zorro, but that's just me

what's peoples thoughts on this? i always wanted to expand the ol' A4k, and it seems that PCI cards are the way to go these days. plus once i have the mediator, i can probably get hold of the cards themselves pretty cheap (or free).

i'm just a little bit dubious about their spec claims.
do you need to have a GFX card on the PCI bus to be able to run a network card?
264MB/s they claim is the max bandwidth between cards and/or host at 66Mhz *on the same bus*. and even this is unlikely. also the host in this case is the PCI/Zorro bridge chippery.
what are the real world speeds i can expect? will i even approach 10MB/s host to zorro to pci bridge to pci card?
i remember bustest would get 14MB/s max from a CV64/3D - so should i be pretty suspect of any claims above, say 20MB/s?

if i fully load the mediator with GFX card, NIC card, sound card, and USB card, will it choke?

whats the driver situation like? crashy? stable?
anybody know what the deal is with "version 2" advertised on elbox's website?

sorry for all the questions, but being the price they are, and the fact i know nothing whatsoever about them, thought this would be the place to ask

[darksun9210]

ok cool, so a general thumbs up then

[darksun9210]

hmmm, so a good user expirience seems to take a bit of tweeking. well it's not as though that's something we're not used to!

Stevee617, thanks for the offer. i'll definately give you a nod if i do plonk down the cash for one of these

was doing my banking last night and saw my outgoings on "toys" for last year. woops!

[darksun9210]

I've just managed to land an A3000D that i'll be going to pick up on Saturday. god knows what state she'll be in...
i've been dreaming about one of these machines for years .... anyway, off topic.

wondering if a Mediator can be modified to fit an A3kD. the expansion headers on the mainboard look differently spaced on the A3k, but all the mediator needs is the Zorro header... right? going to mod the mediator if i do, rather than the sacred machine herself.  

the mediator looks quite tall too. and compairing the daughter boards for the A4k and A3k looks like the 4k is highter by about 10 mil. but will get a chance to compare on the weekend.
heh. supposed to be decorating the lounge on Saturday, but looks like that's not gonna happen

[darksun9210]

ok, so I've grown a pair and Amigakit seem to have some in stock, so I've ordered one.

what's the best GFX card, or rather, what cards have people experience with?
I notice that you guys have Radeon's installed. it's not on the supported list? confused...
how are you finding it with heat, power, noise etc.
i'm looking for something not too noisy, and given the A4000's pathetic cooling, something not too hot.
my experience with AGP voodoo3's from way back when was that they got really hot!

is warp3d stuff supported on the radeons? i'm not looking at a voodoo4 or 5 as that's just a little bit far out regarding availability or even driver support.
I won't be using the GFX card as fast ram as I also have a couple of zorro ram cards on their way.
I've got a soundblaster128 somewhere, and ordered a 100Mb NIC - as all I have laying around these days are intel gigabit jobs.

[darksun9210]

fantastic, great to hear it's working well

ok, now on the hunt for a radeon card.

am I limited to the 9200 series?

loooong shot this, I know, but I have access to literally stacks of low profile ATI FireMV 2260's... that's based on an RV600 core, with a startech PCI to PCIexpress adapter... thoughts?

(should be cheaper than the CV64/3D I just got for the A3k :laughs: )

[darksun9210]

ah, so i can't just get one off of ebay and plug it in. heh, there had to be a catch somewhere.

when you say modded for 5volts, i thought that PCI was keyed for power anyway?
5 volt cards have a gap at one end, 3.3 volt cards have the gap at the other, and universal cards had a gap at both.

i take it something else needs to be done? voltage regulator added? removed?

and how do you mean you were only able to use half of the ram? is it not directly attached to the GPU anyway?

sorry for all the questions

[darksun9210]

Thanks lozspd4,
a lot of very good information there, many thanks my mind is expanded (and your english is excellent)

and ChaosLord's secret setting. Safe/Dangerous jumper. cool. i'll keep a look out for it

[darksun9210]

wow! someone buy Dandy a drink! awesome info, thanks so much!