Elbox Mediator 4000Di

[slaapliedje]

I have pretty much the same setup as Darrin, without the FastATA4000, Deneb, Spider and SB128....Okay, not really the same... but I use the monitor/indivision  the same way.

The problems I have run into were with lockups in Radeon resolutions.  Higher resolution, the quicker it locks up.  I think my problem is one of the programs I am running.  Once I disabled AmiDock and the memory info program, it locks up less..  Still haven't figured that one out, but it may be a bug in ClassicWB.

Otherwise the video modes are really fast, and if it weren't for the stock 040 and the slow IDE drive, it would feel snappier than Windows 7 does on my system with 8 cores and 8 GB of memory!

slaapliedje

[slaapliedje]

I'm using FFS for the SYS: partition, and SFS for a 16G and 20G partition of a 40GB drive.

I'm going to also see if I can get an old Adaptec 2940UW from work and put that in my Amiga (I have a 10,000RPM fatty Seagate Cheetah 73GB drive just sitting around collecting dust, but the controller I have for it is a 19160, which would be extra sweet if support for it was added to the aic78xx driver.)

I think I have an 80GB laying around I could set up with the FFS3.  I think I went with SFS because everyone was saying it was great, and it supported larger than 2GB partitions, or something.  That was a while ago though..

slaapliedje

[slaapliedje]

When I first bought my Amiga+Mediator setup (used) I had the same lockups as u.

It all turned out that there was a jumper on the mediator for safe or dangerous.  Well dangerous always crashes.  Safe never crashes.  STUPID JUMPER!

Once I changed the jumper over to safe.  Everything was fine.  And my transfer speeds dropped from 11MB/sec to 9MB/sec  No prob since it made my Amiga rock solid for many years.

Pretty sure I've checked every jumper on there, and there wasn't a 'Safe' one.  There are three jumpers on it.  One says "SWAP CONFIG" (currently Open) and "MASTER" (Closed) and WINSIZE (Closed)

Just opened my Amiga again.  I don't know which is sadder, the fact that I've probably opened it up more than I've had sex, or that I'm admitting that on an Internet forum!

Now that I've bled on it a little... maybe it'll not lock up for me!

[slaapliedje]

Hi Again yes you can only use the 9200 series Cards but they have to be Modded to 5v for the Mediator. the one i got from Elbox was allready modded had 256mb on board but only 128mb could be used as it had 2x 128mb Banks so i modded a new one i got from Hongkong and that uses the full 256mb on mediator.
 
becare of cheap imatation radeons as some dont work.
 
If you Need help in that department i could give you some help on the modding, if your Handy with a soldering iron.
 
Nobby

My Radeon also has two banks of 128MB, how do you mod it to get the full 256mb to be seen?  Always wondered if this were possible.  

For those that want to know, a Sapphire branded Radeon 9250 works at the 5v (but as stated, only shows 128mb instead of 256mb.)

The exact SKU# is 11046-18, and it is a PCI VGA/TVO/DVI-I card.  I currently use the DVI out on it, and it works great.  I managed to find a script on these forums that will allow you to convert modelines (resolutions) from xorg to Picasso96 settings, so I have all the resolutions to look AMAZING on my Asus VG23AH through it...

Now if only I could get it to not lock up!

slaapliedje

[slaapliedje]

I'm very much leaning toward the possibility that I simply have a bad radeon card.

I killed Amidock (which for some weird reason, this time around Amidock didn't like that I was changing resolutions, normally it doesn't prevent it).  This seems to have made it run for longer.  But check this out!  This time around I managed to extract AmIRC, while having IBrowse loaded, and started up EaglePlayer, loaded up the Xenon2 music mod, and had that playing.  Then I went to check Aminet for some more mods and that's when I had the crash.

But listen to the awesomeness of Xenon2 during a crash!

I also am attaching the reason why I think my Radeon is bad... the heatsink appeared to be glued to the GPU... I had one that I had gotten from Elbox (64MB one) and took the heatsink off of it to see if it would fit better (the PCI1 on the Mediator wouldn't even fit with the original heat sink, the one I replaced it with barely fit in the slot, but I'm afraid it was still touching the busboard, so didn't dare turn on the system).

Well the 64mb had the usual two pegs holding the heatsink in, the 256mb one that I had in the system did not!  Pried off the heat sink, and check out the nastiness!  

My next thing is to swap it with one of the ones I have that has an active fan on it...

http://thefnords.org/amiga-crash.mp3.zip

slaapliedje

[slaapliedje]

Hi Guys
          That with the lockups with the Radeon is i think got to do with which pci Slot the Ethernet and Radeon are in together i tryed a lot of variations and found that the best combination for my System is.
 
starting at the top working to wards the Mainboard is,
 
10/100 fast Ethernet
Radeon 9200 256mb
Spider Usb
Sb 128
 
this is with all jumpers closed on the mediator 4000di mkII
 
The only program that causes Problems is Genesis. when i press offline the System locksup.but Miami dx works perfect.
 
The other way to get the other bank of 128mb to sort of work is use the program addmem from aminet but youll have Play around with the start and end ram addresses till you get a working set, but i only managed to get 64mb working stable.
 
can you give your Card positions through so that other users can give
it a try and maybe saving hair pulling Frustration. as when some Cards are not fitted they may Need  another Position for the Cards to work stable.
Nobby

Pretty sure I've tried every possible configuration.

Currently I have the Video card in the top (Radeon 9250 256mb) and Fast Ethernet 10/100 in the bottom (above the bus board).  I couldn't even get the video card to fit in that slot, because it touches the bus board.

slaapliedje