NEC usb hack for mediator

[Darrin]

Hi Mechy,

I'm certainly interested in a card for my A4000's Mediator.  PM me a price (and make sure it reflects the amount of hard work you've done) and I'll place an order.

I told AmigaKit that I wanted a Spider from them months ago and heard nothing since, so I'll happily take you up on this offer and then I can put my Deneb in my A2000.

[Darrin]

I think that Elbox need to change the way they now market the Mediator.  Instead of making money off the PCI cards, they should concentrate on just selling the Mediator bus boards.

When you consider the cost of adding a Zorro RTG card to a big box Amiga, a USB solution (either Zorro or clockport) and a better sound card, if you know that you can buy a Mediator from $285 upwards and that you can plug in your own dust-covered ViRGE graphics card, a $5 USB card and a salvaged SB128 card then it more than pays for itself.

[Darrin]

Thanks, i am not the originator of this hack,but its a good one! i have 20 cards coming the beginning of the week and i will mod them and stick them on the shopping cart.
I didn't really do any of this to stab elbox in the eye or anything,because the mediator is damned fine hardware(even if it doesn't do proper DMA),i mean mines been running for 10 years 24/7 i think now.They have stood the test of time. But the thing with the spider was wrong and advertising stuff that is not for sale etc.. I still want the mpeg card drivers! thats one thing i was really looking forward to.

Yep, I agree that the Mediator is a fine piece of kit.  I have the A4000D version for an A4000 destop in a tower case and it has more PCI slots and Zorro slots than you can shake a stick at.  I have a FastATA4000 and Deneb in the Zorro slots (and a Emplant II than needs to be installed), and a Radeon 256MB card (which also provides an extra 192MB of RAM) and a Soundblaster 128 in the PCI slots (want to add my PCI Catweasle too).

Even if you have a desktop A3000 and A4000 in original cases then there are smaller models for them.

If you want a proper graphics card in an A1200 thenthis is one of the few solutions and the only one you can actually buy.

It isn't cheap, but it is worth the money.

[Darrin]

@darrin
You can use video ram of graphic card as system ram?. How is it done?
Didn't know it was possible.
Thanks!!!

Oh, it can be done OK, because I'm doing it.  :-)

You need one of the Radeon cards with lots of RAM and the latest Mediator Radeon drivers.  You decide how much RAM you wish to reserve for graphics and data (by changing a value in a text file) and the rest is allocated as system RAM.  It effectively treats your graphic card's spare RAM like it was a Zorro based RAM Card.  It is nowhere near as fast as RAM on a CPU card, but it is there to be used by the software.  

When you consider a 256MB RorRAM card is $195 then suddenly a Mediator board with a Radeon card looks like a very good purchase.

Here's an old screen grab from my A4000 Workbench:
http://i18.photobucket.com/albums/b134/darrin01311/grab2.jpg
If you look at the top and bottom left you'll see the memory displayed in the title bar and on Tiny Meter.  That's the RAM left after displaying a 1920x1080 desktop with a bloody big wallpaper, various tools & add-on.  16MB Fast RAM & 2MB Chip RAM is on the mobo, 64MB is on the CPU card and the rest comes from the Radeon.

(Ignore the date on Tiny Meter... I've removed the battery and never replaced it)

[Darrin]

BUMP!  Still have more cards left if anyone needs them! $20 shipped USA,$25 shipped Overseas.

You might want to mention what the cards look like.  3 USB sockets on the back and 1 angled socket to attach something inside the case?

If you have a Mediator then installing these cards is as simple as copying the spider.device into the correct folder, installing Poseidon and then activating the spider device in the Trident preferences (as Mechy detailed above).

If you already have a Deneb installed then you can have both the Deneb and the Spider running together (just activate the spider device in Trident - no need to update Poseidon).  In fact, if you have a Deneb up and running then it really is as simple as copying the spider.device and then activating it in Trident.  Click/click and off you go.