What da heck is this A500 side expansion board ???

[Effy]

I found something that I can not find any info of on The Big Book Of Hardware :



Are these Zorro slots or cpu slots like the A2000 has  :-?

[Vincent]

I thought Zorro slots were a lot bigger.

Could this be something like a port-thru, as in you could plug in multiple cards in the side of the A500 instead of being limited to one?  Or would that never work?

[Effy]

So it´s like a cartridgeport-expander for a C64 Doesn´t seem very useful as the most obvious thing I can imagine to connect is an external harddrive, from which most are scsi so they do allow you to connect 7 devices to one cable, so I don´t see that use of using more than one external drive ... please do correct me if I´m wrong !!!!

[Merc]

Vincent wrote:
I thought Zorro slots were a lot bigger.

Could this be something like a port-thru, as in you could plug in multiple cards in the side of the A500 instead of being limited to one?  Or would that never work?

That's what it looks like!  You can see all the traces on the top layer are going straight from the connector that would plug into the A500 right though all of those slots.  That's a pretty interesting piece of gear; 5 cards hanging off there (that were designed for their own custom case to sit next to the A500) would be pretty sloppy I would think!

**EDIT** After looking again, I realize that the A500 has the edge connector, not the slot that an edge connector would fit into, so these slots wouldn't accept A500 expensions... maybe they are Zorro slots!

[Orjan]

@effy

Send it to hte big book of hardware.. It will probably end up in the mystery corner, and perhaps, someday, we will find out what it is.. :-)

[Tempest]

This card has 5 86-pol. A2000 CPU-Slots. You can use A2000 processor cards with it.

DMA Expander

[Vincent]

Merc wrote:
**EDIT** After looking again, I realize that the A500 has the edge connector, not the slot that an edge connector would fit into, so these slots wouldn't accept A500 expensions... maybe they are Zorro slots!

Ah crap, I forgot the A500 side port was a different socket.

I think Tempest has got it right.

Out of curiosity, whats on the other side of the board?

[Effy]

Tempest : okay, I can see the use of one A2000 cpu board but  why five If they are also seen as side expansion slots then you can also mount an external A590 harddrive unit to them but what about the other three that you are not using Is there something about A2000 hardware that I don´t know of  :-?

[Markus_Bieler]

1. A500 (and A1000) Zorroslot are more or less like the CPU-Slot in the A2000. Some pins have different sense.

2. There had been some cards available at that time for the CPU-Slot (A2620 / A2630 / A20000 and others)

3. Every exp slot on this card could be disabled with the switch at the left

4. REX Datentechnik always had a funny sense of expanding the Amiga (and also the C64). They did a lot of "strange" vards and adapter. (eg they made your Videorecorder to a backup streamer)

5. I could think that it could be usefull for towering the A500

6. Perhaps this card isn't at all for an A500, but for the A2000 and for developers so they don't need to stres the CPU-slot by testing different revisions of the same expansion.

7. I know there are Zorro2 risercards that rise the Slot out of the case. You have to cut a whole for that, but you could test your card without opening the case again and again.

[Effy]

So if I get this correct, with such a card and an A500+ with  1 Mb extra chip you can insert an A2630 68030 board but no gfx card  :-? I still have got a never used A500 pc keyboard adapter so like you said it might be useful for a tower conversion ...

[Tempest]

Yes, as far as I understand  you can use any A2000 accelerator board with this card, but only one DMA card at the same time. You can't use zorro cards, so no gfx card.
With an adapter you could also plugin a500 expansions.

5 CPU slots is a bit overkill, as you can only use one DMA card :-P

[Effy]

Thanks for the info Tempest. I guess this expansion board is a nice way to expand an A500 with an A2000 board with scsi. Thought it also could take Zorro cards but I was a bit too enthousiastic  :lol:

[Zac67]

For (multiple) Zorro you need a Buster - can't really be hard to build, but afaik there's no such expansion.

[adolescent]

Zac67 wrote:
For (multiple) Zorro you need a Buster - can't really be hard to build, but afaik there's no such expansion.

The IVS Trumpcard 500/Pro has 2 Zorro slots (one for the Trumpcard 2000 SCSI, another for a Meta 4 RAM card) without a Buster.  So, at least with these cards no Buster is required.  

[Effy]

There are a few Zorro busboards for the A500 on the Big Book, so I thought this expander was one of them ... that´s why I asked this info about this card ...