Are the Elbox tower and mediator products worth it?

[lempkee]

tanzyr and all others who didnt understand what i meant by an real amiga'n.

what i was saying or trying to anyway was about the earlier thread where SOMEONE said an amiga with mediator aint anything less than PC and UAE , sorry for being so short about it but i wanted it to be as short aspossible ....hrrmpft

ok , try 2...  you should buy an GFX CARD for your amiga no matter what and mediator is the only real thingy for Amiga1200 , on a4000 and such u have other alternatives but still i think most would choose mediators anyway, and i am aware of all the Earlier issues but to be honest i havent had any problems , EXCEPT for the installation wich was quirky.

to all whom complain over support, weird because i get answers within minutes when i email em, dont know why but i do...maybe i am special :DDD

Grexx is abandoned so thats out of the loop unless u really only need the drivers it has atm, and about the openpci solve for it, doubt it ever will get out of the waiting loop

promethus is a4000 only and that i see as an alternative to mediator, but it has issues.

beyond that u can always go for the slower options , like.... zorro3 gfx cards :O..

but forget about zorro stuff in a1200, too slow and it wont last long until u upgrade to either a grexx or a mediator because you want better speeds.


cheers...

[PMC]

An Elbox tower and Mediator will utterly transform your Amiga.  

The tower is a well made and sturdy piece of kit, with plenty of room for whatever you wish to put in it.  The Mediator is quite simply THE most significant Amiga add on since the advent of PPC.  You have access to a large number of very cheap and high performance PCI devices which outperform and are considerably cheaper then the Zorro equivalent.

There is a downside though.  If you want USB or Soundblaster then you have to buy Elbox's own drivers (£50 and £20) respectively.  

There was talk of a PCI mounted PPC accelerator card some time back, but Elbox haven't released any new details in over a year.  The cynic in me says that idea bit the dust, but I'd love to be proved wrong.

[MaDDuck]

Of all of the threads that I have ever read since I started posting here on Amiga.org, this was by far the most informative!!!!

******KUDOS
*********TO
*********ALL
*********OF
*********YOU!!

I, too am concidering making the ELBOX jump and expand my A4000. I already asked (and was duely flamed!) about the promised Shark PPC..

BUT, I have one other (hopefully non) flame-worthy question, are there any PCI RAM cards in existence, and if so will the mediator accept them?

BTW, everytime I see/hear the word mediator, I remeber the movie METROPOLIS! The underlying theme was that the heart was the mediator between the brain and the hands. ALSO- buy the KINO video version, it's MUCH better than the old PD versions floating around. Easily the best German movie and my favorite right behind The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari!

I also have an internal scandoubler/flickerfixer, will I have to get a SVGA monitor switch to use it concurrently with a PCI graphics card on a mediator?

Thanks guys!

[Lemmink]

BUT, I have one other (hopefully non) flame-worthy question, are there any PCI RAM cards in existence, and if so will the mediator accept them?

I don't think so, as PCs (that't what PCI cards are made for) don't use such things. I have seen some strange PCI like setups with RAM on it (no, it wasn't the cache of a SCSI-card) in a server but that was an P1 133 MHz stoneagamonster.
Even if there ware such a thing as a PCI-Ram card, it simply wouldn't make sense, as it would be dead slow.
(remember the route PCI-bus <-> Prozessor works at ZIII speed at best)
There are ZIII RAM-cards like the DKB3128 and the Fastlane with it's RAM that reach about 90% the speed of the A3/4000 Motherboard-RAM.
That was the long answer.
The short would have simply been: no

 also have an internal scandoubler/flickerfixer, will I have to get a SVGA monitor switch to use it concurrently with a PCI graphics card on a mediator?

Yes, you will have to use a switchbox, as no PCI-cards has a VGA-trough port (like some Zorrocards). What should they have one for, they were made with PCs in mind that don't need such things.

[redrumloa]

cough..cough...Prometheus...

ahem..cough.. announcement coming soon..

Cough..

[Acill]

redrumloa wrote:
cough..cough...Prometheus...

ahem..cough.. announcement coming soon..

Cough..

You keep telling us this, but the board isnt supported outside openPCI and thats a problem.

[redrumloa]

You keep telling us this

I havn't announced anything yet, give it a week tops :hammer:

[cgutjahr]

@Samuar:

Seems a lot of money for not a lot of components. What are your experiences and are they worth it? Does it make a significant difference to the Amiga products?

Yes it does. You'll have a completely different (i.e. better) setup after upgrading.

However, you should carefully examine if you still need the custom chips. If your main desire is to have a machine that runs AmigaOS faster, is more comfortable to use etc., you may aswell buy an AmigaOne or a Pegasos. These will not run software that needs the custom chips (i.e. games), but they are way more powerful than any classic Amiga will ever be.

Personally, I'd just keep a slightly expanded A1200 (internal HD, some FastRAM) for Retro-Gaming and buy an AmigaOne/Pegasos instead.

[logicalheart]

Yes.  I have two.  One A4000T Mediator, and an A4000D in a Mirage Pro.  They are both great, and I've had zero problems.  It has given me faster video (PIV vs. Voodoo3), audio (Concierto vs. SB128), and cheaper ethernet.  Not to mention the fact that the boards are a lot smaller and replacement and upgrade cards will be cheaper and plentiful.  The only downside is video configuration through P96 is manually done, and I've got a second monitor for native AGA screenmodes since there is no native video pass-through.  But, I love it, no complaints.  (BTW, I prefer the Mirage setup over the A4000T w/Mediator)  - Lars

[ikir]

Yes Mediator is my best buy ever.

Elbox support is INCREDIBLE, they reply to you very fast.

But now i don't want to buy anything more for my 1200. Only things for my AmigaOne :-)