Hi guys,
something that always puzzled me when I used to read about this mysterious thing called Zorro in the AmigaFormat magazines, what is it?
Well I finally learnt what it was but was increasingly confused as to why Amiga would chose something that would make it totaly incompatible with 3rd party hardware already out there. Something I always complained about when I used to try and use different mice and joysticks on my amiga and spectrum 128k :-)
Does anyone know the story behind why the Amiga used zorro rather than have used an ISA-bus for their machines? From what I read the A2000 had both Zorro and ISA bus onboard but the ISA bus was only used when a PC-bridgeboard was installed.
Amiga History Guide:
Seven internal expansion slots (5x 100 pin Amiga Zorro II and 2 x 16-bit ISA slots). The ISA slots were disabled by default (only power and ground pins activated), but could be used when a Commodore bridgeboard was installed (a PC-on-a-card). Inactive slots can be used for non intelligent cards like TBCs or fan cards.
Couldnt the ISA-bus on the A2000 be used to work with ISA cards to run on the Amiga? From what I remember the ISA was not as reliable as the PCI-bus, but cards were cheap and everywhere.
Was it just that Amiga wanted to be seen as so different from the x86 PC machines that it would not switch to using a PCI-bus rather than develop the Zorro III?
This has always intreged me as it could have been one of those things that would have allowed the expansion and development of the Amiga to have kept up with the rapid growth of the x86 PC. There may even have been AGP port on the Amiga 4000.
Now wheres my time machine?
