Amiga 1000 Escort 2 Zorro box questions

[save2600]

So I've got this external expansion box for the A1000 called the Escort 2 by Expansion Technologies:

http://amiga.resource.cx/exp/search.pl?product=escort&company=

...looking in the manual and reading what Amiga.resource has to say, they mention either Zorro I or just plain Zorro. Thing is, inside the chassis are 2-100 pin slots. I thought the 100-pin Zorro slot is Zorro II and the 86-pin slot is Zorro I?

Reading a blurb on the BBOAH just now, it mentions that the 86-pin expansion bus of the A500 and A1000 are not officially Zorro I (news to me). But wait... then there's the A2000's accelerator bus or "Fast Slot" that happens to also be 86-pins. What a coincidence, huh? By way of an adapter, I bet they're compatible with A500 & A1000 expansion boards. Guess I could always look up their pin configs, but thought it might be easier just to ask if that's truly the case.

Real question though is about this Escort 2 box. If they're Zorro II, why in the hell did they design the box the way they did? Vertically... so no way a traditional Zorro II card could fit. I used to have this Dataflyer SCSI card that was this short/stubby thing. That would have fit inside the Escort.

[save2600]

To see what Zorro was originaly meant to look like, check out a BytebyByte PAL expansion chasis.  It's a clone of the original miga design AFAIK.

Thanks Terse... yeah, weird. Never saw that before!

Okay, thanks for the info fella's. Looks like this expansion box will end up being more useful than I thought. Shouldn't be difficult to procure another little SCSI card to throw in there then.  

As an aside, the A1000 Microbotics expansion system I bought from LoadWB does have a handful of bad RAM chips so I took the ones off the Zorro I board inside the Escort 2 and sure enough, all is fine inside the Microbotics. Just wish there was an easy way to tell what RAM chips are blown so I could at least populate the board inside the Escort with some kind of 512k or 1MB config.

BTW: the battery backed calendar inside the Microbotics is completely useless. Doesn't accept years past 2010.  :mad:

[save2600]

My case is sexier. :knuddel: :lol:  

Power supply reads: 5v DC (of course) 1 amp and the center being positive.

BTW: what's with the cooling fins near the back of yours?? Is there a regulator screwed to it or something? If that's the case, I doubt our power supplies would be compatible. The original that's supposed to go with yours probably outputs 12v DC... ??

[save2600]

Yeah, she's uglier and has fins and stuff stickin out but, you know, I couldn't turn her out into the streets or nuthin. :lol:

:rofl: