Have PPC in A1200. Now add Mediator or G-Rex ??

[KennyR]

Grex Pros: It's slightly faster technically, will support openpci (useful for newer things coming out these days, like the catweasel).

Cons: Lack of driver support.


Mediator Pros: More drivers for PCI cards.

Cons: No openpci and no outside support (many coders have argued with elbox in the past), so only elbox will ever code drivers.

[KennyR]

grexx is dead, that openpci thingy...sure it might become a hit but its VERY unlikely to happen

Openpci is very important! It may allow A1 users to use drivers for PCI cards written for amithlon or MOS. For a start, no-one is going to invest the time in doing certain drivers for A1 (like catweasel), just like nobody did for Pegasos. With openpci, a single driver can cover Amithlon, grex, A1, Pegasos, and Promethius. (But not Mediator, which has been excluded from openpci development for dirty tricks on the part of its designers).

Seriously, if openpci doesn't make it to A1 then OS4 is seriously screwed for any card that hyperion don't support directly. The userbase simply doesn't have the numbers or the talent to churn out drivers, and that goes for any current Amiga solution.

[KennyR]

You don't get it. OpenPCI itself isn't really a driver - its a wrapper, and redirects to whatever PCI control API runs on the host machine. One driver can be written for any card and immediately used for every kind of the machines I mentioned, even without recompling.

And it is unlikely multidisk.device or lowlevel.library (which use openpci to work on amithlon and pegasos) will be rewritten for A1 alone.