Mediator Review - Should I buy one?

[Argus]

jiffydos wrote:
Hi All,

I am thinking about buying a Mediator 4000Di for my A4000 desktop.  I was looking for some reviews and opinions, which I know we have a lot of here.  

Is it worth the nearly $300 USD?  Based on what I read, it is worth it to me to be able to install my Radeon 9200 Video and cheap Realtek ethernet card.

But, I am looking for some re-assurance.  

What do you all think?

Dave
Lowell, MA
USA

Lowell, eh?  I'm in Worcester.  You wouldn't happen to have been involved in the ULowell Graphics Card project?  I once met Dave Pelland who worked on it at ULowell (now UMass/Lowell).

I personally always wanted a 4000Di but decided against it as it has no video slot (too bad).  I have a 1200LT and it works great, though the driver installation left something to be desired as it installed the wrong Warp3D drivers (took me forever to figure it out).

[Argus]

I must say the Prometheus is the first pci board I bought and believe it or not, it does work better than the mediator on my A1200.  I used red's pci cable adapters to add a voodoo3 and realtek nic card in my A4000 desktop without having to discard the PicassoIV in the lowermost/video slot and I still have access to two additional Zorro3 slots (I think there's a serial card and a sound card in them....it's currently in the closet atm).  I did install one of those slot fans to help with heat but I ran it for a long while with the case closed and I still had flickerfixed AGA screens available (via the PIV).

If Jens ever releases the A4000 desktop version of his new FF, that would sort of replace the video slot lacking in the Mediator 4000Di design.