brilliant PCI graphics cards with DVI for Amiga

[lempkee]

effy:i agree but there is one problem here, if you had an gforce card or whatever (pci) in your mediator then there would be problems like "big and little endian" problems and maybe most of all, warp3d and later 3d api\s must be rewritten, so i see this as an ok solve, i bought my voodoo3 from a local pc store in 2001..., then later i bought an voodoo5 from ebay..

anyway i agree with you but i find it very true to why we have only banshee,vodoo support atm , take a look at pegasos/mos , amigaos4/a1 and what gfx card do they use for everything now?...
surely this will change asap but until then i find it 100% understandable,  as far as this thread goes about Elbox stopping people from making drivers for other cards, NOW thats wrong.. there is allready Grexx and promethus as options and what gfx cards do they support ?..

final... you can apply to elbox for an nda and develop drivers yourself though i wont recomend it
and other options is OpenPci for grexx etc..

[lempkee]

and as far as it goes with uptodate gfx cards, sure i would love tohave GF4 instructions to mess with but the fact that it will be so slow for just about everything with the current hw (mediator + 060/603/4) i really dont see the point;( ..

lets see when (IF) the shark comes.

additionally the mediator suffers from an 8mb window issue , i would blame WOS and W3D and mediator drivers ofcourse but since i dont know for sure why and what well until then i will just say... the 8mb window is a big bottleneck...

[mantisspider]

as far as this thread goes about Elbox stopping people from making drivers for other cards, NOW thats wrong

?who said that elbox stops people making drivers in this thread? my eyes are still a bit blury as I just woke up, but i cant see that.

Cool, so the shark will allow for the fast transfers so then all this would be academic as people would either upgrade to a shark+mediator, A1 or Pegasos. Either way would seem that the ATI cards would be an option for all three, making ATI the new standard for Amiga. Although the 7000 is outdated now its still good enough to play GTA vice city on, well not outstandingly high resolution.

[mantisspider]

Current expansion options:

Zorro equiped amigas
Prometheus £180
Mediator £140 to £200
SharkPPC G3/G4 £200 to £315

non-Zorro Amigas
Mediator £100 to £170
Grexx/Predator £140
SharkPPC G3/G4 £200 to £315

Unless you already have a PCI busboard for your amiga, it doesnt make much sense upgrading your machine even if you have a suped up a4000 or a1200.

Without even including the cost of USB and network addons, its cheaper to get an AmigaOne (and the AmigaOne is still too highly priced).

AmigaOneG3-SE G3 750CXe@600MHz £360.00
AmigaOne-XE G3 750FX@700MHz 450.00
AmigaOne-XE G4 7451@800MHz 500.00
SharkPPC: 750CXe, 750FX or MPC7450 (allow for up to 700Mhz but 667Mhz is max listed on website)

Ive got 5 classic Amigas at home and a fair bit of cash already spent getting them enhanced when I had the chance. I would love to upgrade my Amigas to have G4 running on them, but not when a cheaper more powerful solution is available.

Current classic Amiga PCI and CPU solutions have to fall in price to be able to compete with a total replacment option. But unless high numbers are sold then the prices wont come down, but without prices coming down it doesnt make sense to buy in high quanities (see where this is going).

The ColdFire guys and Elbox seem to be the only companies designing a processor upgrade for the Classic Amiga, and Elbox are only releasing theirs when OS4 is released.

The only market for the SharkPPC are people who already have a PCI bus-board upgraded classic Amiga. So the sharkPPC wouldnt really be used to generate more sales for the Mediator boards (unless they are able to bundle the sharkPPC and Mediator for quite less than an AmigaOne).
For the SharkPPC not to work on all PCI busboards as some people are worried wouldnt make sense for Elbox as it would bring down their potentional sales revenue, as they wont be making any (or many) new mediator customers.

So unless you already have splashed out on a PCI upgrade for your Amiga, then dont bother getting any new accelerators for your Classic Amiga, save your money and buy and AmigaOne.

Sticking to upgrading classic Amigas and not going for the new total replacements will do more damage to the future of Amiga software and hardware development.

The PC had its big revolution when software developers stood up and said "we will only make games and apps for machines that are running the latest hardware" without caring for supporting the older machine users HAD to upgrade drastically to keep up and spend loads of cash. That started the snowball effect all those years ago.

The posts of how great the Amiga is because the PC cannot run modern software on systems that are 10 years old, are not a good thing. I love my austin allegro but just cos she can still drive on the same roads as a BMW and even Ford Fiesta, it doesnt mean that she can keep up with them.

The amiga is starved for developers, but any developer that comes to the Amiga should forget about supporting anything less than OS4 G3/G4 powered machines. OS4 can handle playing 68k and old PPC games and thats as far as support for the 'classic' Amiga should go in the push for Amiga's survival.

My a1240 will have to sit in the shadows of her younger cousin when she arrives.

On a note for Prometheus owners:
Prometheus FAQ says that with PPC CPUs emulating 68k they can get 120Mb/s.  So a SharkPPC on a Prometheus should be good too.

damn just noticed how agressive this post is :-S sorry, the realisation of the problems facing any future software developed for the Amiga to modern standards makes you see that its one of those brief opportunities where its cheaper to replace your machine than it is to upgrade it.

[Acill]

The last I hear from Elbox on why no other cards are being supported is the fact a lot of companies wont share teh required specs with them. Since 3DFX went under and released the driver and tech info to the public it was easy to get a working drive made for Amiga. The others just wont do this. Becides the Voodoo 3 is faster then any Amiga specific card ever made. I love mine.

[lempkee]

manti: well i would say as always, go for it..get a mediator now... then the shark wont sound too expensive when it(IF!) comes.

my mediator is for me what the 060 was for me in 95 and up... my best upgrades ever..

[mantisspider]

@lempkee

mate, I was about to get a Mediator and a SubWay USB port, so not to suffer from the problems that are populating the forums about Spider USB stacks. I wanted to have a Voodoo3, USB and 060 on my Amiga. But even without the SharkPPC its still more cost effective just to get an A1.

I was thinking about buying someones second hand classic Amiga already PCI'd up. But people are still wanting big money for these systems.

Ive finally decided on what im gonna do:
Sell my amigas apart from my original A500+, My first A1200, and my CD32's.
Keep using Mavis (thats my A1200). Buy an AmigaOne in Bath if they are going cheap and then buy the Pegasos2 when it comes out and then in Easter buy the mini-ITX AmigaOne.

To paraphrase Bart Simpson
"You're damned if you do and you're damned if you don't"

[lempkee]

manti:oh ok, but remeber pegasos 2 is as much vapor as shark ppc atm.., it will show up eventually (peg2) i have no doubt about so but until then its vapor.

a1micro has atleast been shown but its still vapor until its out...so dont get me wrong.

anyway i wont get ridd of my classic amiga when os4 s released and i have an a1mirco... , my classic amiga will surely not be used as much but i still will use it for all my classic needs..

cheers