more A2000 questions

[DamageX]

1) Are all Zorro II RAM cards slow like chip RAM (3.5MB/S)?

2) What are my chances of getting a DKB 2632 RAM card (and is there any other A2630 RAM expansion?) ? Would that RAM be the same speed as the fast RAM on the A2630?

3) Failing #2, would it be better to look for a different A2000 accelerator or just get an A4000? (wish I could find Amiga stuff nearby to avoid shipping cost...)

4) I might be getting a bridgeboard and am wondering if there are drivers for video or sound cards. How hard is it to make an RTG driver?

[orange]

1) yes, ZorroII is limited to 3.5MB/s link

[Noster]

Hi

1) - Yes all Zorro-II ram-boards for the A2000 are slow, fast enough for an A2000 with 7MHz 68K cpu but too slow for an 68030 or faster.
2) - Don't know, have seen such an expansion card only once at german ebay in the last 2 years. But even if you can get one: I think you need ZIP-rams for that board, these are also very hard to find (and expensive).
3) - Depends on your demands: An A4000 with A3630 or A3640 might be cheaper than a fast accelerator card with ram for an A2000. So if you just want to have a fast powerfull Amiga, you should look for an A4000 or an A1200 in a tower-case. The accelerator boards for the A1200 are much cheaper and easier to find than the ones for the A4000.
4) - Depends on your knowledge ;-) If you've never written an RTG driver and you start from zero, I think it will take you several month at least, if you work full time on such a driver.

Noster

[PaSha]

The DKB 2632 uses normal 72-pin SIMMs.
http://www.amiga-hardware.com/showhardware.cgi?HARDID=988

Regarding sound, there are GoldenGate2+ drivers for the "TrueSound MP3 decoder board".
Other Sound/RTG drivers don't exist, and due to the lack of DMA they would most likely be slow if anyone bothered to program such drivers.

-Paul

[Lex]

2) Aside from the DKB 2632, there's the Jochheim Access 32, which uses ZIPs. Compare the two and look at the photos: amiga.resource.cx/exp/search.pl?cat=ram&intf=a2630

[motrucker]

Lex wrote:
2) Aside from the DKB 2632, there's the Jochheim Access 32, which uses ZIPs. Compare the two and look at the photos: amiga.resource.cx/exp/search.pl?cat=ram&intf=a2630

Who would ever want to use ZIP ram at this point in time?! SIMMs are the only way to go, unless you're trying to put togetehr a real antique!

[motrucker]

DamageX wrote:

2) What are my chances of getting a DKB 2632 RAM card (and is there any other A2630 RAM expansion?) ? Would that RAM be the same speed as the fast RAM on the A2630?

The RAM on this card will be the same speed as fast RAM on the accelerator.

[Dr_Righteous]

3) - Depends on your demands: An A4000 with A3630 or A3640 might be cheaper than a fast accelerator card with ram for an A2000. So if you just want to have a fast powerfull Amiga, you should look for an A4000 or an A1200 in a tower-case. The accelerator boards for the A1200 are much cheaper and easier to find than the ones for the A4000.

My A4k gets alot more use than my A2k, but I whole heartedly agree with the lack of accellerators for it. C'mon folks, throw us A4k lovers a BONE!

[DamageX]

I'm a person who is fascinated by the numbers. (A lot of old PC hardware I have setting around here was bought for the sole purpose of running benchmarks.)

After a while I had the idea to replace my 25MHz crystal with a socket so now I can plug in whatever crystal I want. It won't boot with 32MHz but I have 28.3MHz in there now and that works fine. The fast RAM doesn't give proportionally higher numbers under bustest like I expected it to which makes me wonder about how the timing for that (as well as the 2632) works.

Anyways, my A2000 was a bargain and I'm having fun with it but wishing I had AGA and more than 4MB of fast RAM.

As for RTG drivers, I'm not sure what one even does. I have programmed (S)VGA cards under assembly on the PC. Of course even that part would be harder on the Amiga since I can't call any VGA BIOS functions