PCI expansion

[Karlos]

Hi all,

A quick, bleary-eyed post...

Given that I have a BlizzPPC / BVision, would anybody out there recommend either the GREX or Mediator?

I'm interested in a bit of future expandibility. Do either of these solutions allow the BVision to stay connected, or would I have to sell it and get a PCI card?

What's the bus banwidth like on these things?

Cheers,

K

[Lando]

Karlos wrote:
Hi all,

A quick, bleary-eyed post...

Given that I have a BlizzPPC / BVision, would anybody out there recommend either the GREX or Mediator?

I'm interested in a bit of future expandibility. Do either of these solutions allow the BVision to stay connected, or would I have to sell it and get a PCI card?

What's the bus banwidth like on these things?

Cheers,

K

Just based on my personal experience but... Don't get a G-Rex - I bought one and it broke my motherboard - it got so hot that it started to melt.  My A1200 just had a black screen.  Luckily my BlizzardPPC was ok.

I've also owned the Mediator 1200 and 4000D.  I had a small problem with the Mediator1200 when I added a TV card but it worked well with a SoundBlaster, Voodoo3/5 and 100MBit ethernet.

The best of the bunch was the Mediator 4000D - a first-class piece of hardware and worked flawlessly with every card i had (I had in there a Voodoo3, Voodoo5, Scandoubler in the video slot, SB128 soundcard, RTL8139 ethernet, VLab y/c Zorro card, Hauppauge TV card).

So, I would recommend the Mediator for your A1200.
And you can get a SharkPPC when they come out and run OS4 on it.

[xeron]

And, of course, getting a Mediator will allow you to use the wonderful SuperTV software! :-D

I don't have any experience with the BlizzPPC or BVision, but I've been very happy with the Mediator in my A1200 (Blizzard 1260 w/SCSI kit, Voodoo 3000, SMC 100Mbit Ethernet card). Absolutely no problems and Elbox are very good about supporting their product with up-to-date drivers.

zman

[Karlos]

Thanks,

Just to quickly re-iterate, do either of these products allow me to use my BVision, ot do I need to sell it?

[Lando]

Karlos wrote:
Thanks,

Just to quickly re-iterate, do either of these products allow me to use my BVision, ot do I need to sell it?

G-Rex definitely won't, since it connects to the same connector where your BVision is currently plugged in.  The mediator can co-exist physically, but it throttles the speed apparently (makes everything run really slow) so you're better off removing it.

[Karlos]

Okey dokey. So, what cards (other than Voodoo, which I hate) do we have available?

[Lando]

Unfortunately its Voodoo or S3 Virge only.  Elbox said ages ago (over a year) that they were making a GeForce2 driver aswell but I don't know what became of it.

So... if you don't like Voodoos you may be better off just sticking with your BVision for now.

[ikir]

Mediator offcourse!

G-Rex sucks

[poweramiga2002]

I have the Grex works good but only 1 dma slot so no tv proggy works everything else works great but alas after the dealings with dce i wouldent bother again great pci solution but no manufacturer back up very poor indeed

[xeron]

Okey dokey. So, what cards (other than Voodoo, which I hate) do we have available?

Well, if you want to use fast ethernet, SB128 audio, or TV cards in a mediator, you HAVE to have a voodoo card in there (at least until SharkPPC/OS4, provided they ever appear of course .

But put aside your hatred for the Voodoo. I'm sure your hatred most likely stems from the rubbish 3dfx windows drivers.

Hyperion and Elbox's drivers for the Voodoo are fantastic; intuition benefits from the 2D blitter (intuition responsiveness is better than the two amithlon boxes i've used. YMMV of course :-) ), and Quake 2 runs OK at 640x480 even on a 68060!

[Karlos]

Well, my Permedia2 is no slouch when it comes to 2D. My principal gripe with Voodoo goes back to the fact that a sodding Voodoo 2 burned my old 17" monitor :-x
Another gripe is that the Voodoo, whilst supporting more ram, single pass multitexturing (though not sure if Warp3D does), blend modes and faster fill ratres than the Permdia2, lacks trucolour framebuffer support for 3D. I'm working on some high level visualisation stuff and 24-bit undithered colour is an absolute must.
My final gripe is that Voodoo cards are way behind even ATI and nVidia PCI cards in terms of what theyre capable of. I realise that's not an objective gripe since you have got to go with what's supported, but it annoys nontheless :-)

Still, I may get over these prejudices if a 64Mb Voodoo5 is supported ;-)

[Kronos]

Karlos wrote:
Thanks,

Just to quickly re-iterate, do either of these products allow me to use my BVision, ot do I need to sell it?

Doesn't really makes sense.

The GRex uses the same slot, so no chance.

The Mediator uses a Voodoo-card as some sort of transfer-window
between the A1200 and the PCI-slots, so you would want a Voodoo
in the Mediator, but that only works with P96, while the BVision
requires CGX .....

I'm very satisfied with my Mediator :-)

[Karlos]

Thanks guys.

On the whole, it looks like the Mediator is the way to go on this.

I like the idea of being able to use the SDRam on the gfx card for high speed bus transfers. Pity about the Voodoo dependency though.

I wonder how much it would have cost just to stick some some SDRAM on the board itself, or failing that some DIMM sockets on the thing...