Mediator 4000Di worth buying?

[Argus]

I was looking at Elbox's recent sales pitch and was wondering about the 4000Di board. It's about US$215.00 now. Anyone out there have one?  I like that it fits in the A4000 desktop case without modification and I still get 3 ZIII slots with the 4 PCI slots.  I'd like to use a Voodoo5 card, anyone know if this works?  Opinions?? Thanks.

[billchase]

If you can live without the video slot, then go for it.

C Snyder

[HammerD]

I haven't got one myself, but I have a prometheus, which works well - except for the lack of drivers.  That is why I am seriously considering a mediator myself for my A4000T.

Anyone own one care to comment on how the Mediator boards are?  Do the drivers work well and is the speed ok?

With sound cards and playing back mp3 files - does it take up alot of the 68k cpu time? or not?

thanks!

[doctorq]

Well, not exactly the MediatorDi model I have, but I do have a Mediator board sitting in my Amiga 4000 and one in my Amiga 1200...

The Mediator works very well, so do the drivers. But how do you determine if drivers work well anyway?

Graphics speedwise it is quite good, at least compared to a CyberVision64/3D which is one of the graphics board I have tried before.

As for soundcards and playing mp3s, then it will take up a lot of CPU time. A sound card will give you better sound, but there is no integrated mp3 decoder. If you want to play mp3 with little or no CPU usage, then you need a MAS Player or something similar.

[Brian]

My A4000 in MiragePCI tower works very well. And so does my friends A4000 with a Mediator4000Di. It's worth buying in you calculate with the costs of Zorro upgrade cards and the speed gain you get from the PCI side... no question about it.

Personaly I would not use a Voodoo5 card in the machine. You will do better with a Voodoo3 cause: it's smaller so won't block a zorro slot, there's no real speedgain between Voodoo3 and Voodoo4/5 cause the drivers are made for the Voodoo3 witch results in some modes doesn't work with 4/5 and the second GPU on the bigger card doesn't get utilitized, due to the second GPU not being used you can only use half the memory available on the bigger card, although the Voodoo3 does get quite hot it's nothing compared to the 4/5 witch requiers extra power to the card and have 2, noisy?, fans.

I have two Voodoo5 5500 cards, a Voodoo3 3000 and a Voodoo3 2000 and I use the 3000 in my machine... before I go the 3000 model I used the 2000 model. The Voodoo5 are for backup just in case and they are resonably good on lowend PC's without AGP ports.

[Argus]

@HammerD

I too have a Prometheus, but you can really only use about one of the pci slots in an A4000D with a right angle pci adapter.  The Mediator 4000Di seems a more elegant solution and does purport to have more driver support.  The Voodoo3 setup on the Promi works well, but I'd like a sound card, ethernet, etc. and they just all won't fit in the stardard case.  I know that a tower is an option, but I like keeping things as 'stock' (at least on the outside) as possible.

@billchase

true, a video slot would be nice.  then again, there are only a few rare/expensive cards which actually use it...an external flicker fixer and switch box or second monitor work fine for the AGA modes if needed.