Carl Moppett and several other beta testers had SOLO-1 cards working on A1200 systems. I can tell you though, the SOLO-1 is a very "heavy" card on the PCI bus.
While you don't see it in the CPU usage any worse than Paula, it "feels" like it slows the system down because it's PCI Bus utilization seems to be very high.
Why has that factor not been made crystal clear before now?
Who would want a system that just doesn't respond well, merely due to installing a PCI soundcard!
Never mind the problems of getting it working, when you do, it seems anyone who does will regret it !!!!
What sort of improvement to an OS is that, the benefit of a soundcard, but a multi-tasking operating system that won't operate as it should.
And yes, we worked with the developer to optimize the driver as much as we could, but it didn't improve it much.
If I remember correctly, the SOLO soundcard was released when 486 PC systems were still available, Microsoft Windows 95 & NT, so it would have been a card that worked in a slower PC system, and even now it can't be made to work invisibly/unnoticeably &/or better and faster in a more multi-tasking operating environment with a faster PPC CPU. Something seems not quite right there.
My recommendation is to use Paula sound, or if you want, route Paula through a Soundblaster 128 card which some users have successfully done and they say it sounds better.
That's it, let's have our PCI Mediator boards useful for just Vision, Internet, SATA but not sound, now we're cookin' !!
But Paula can sound quite good too
I had Paula when I had no choice and before the Mediator came along, but now I should revert back to it, because there's basically no soundcard support, DUH!!
That's the sort of backwards step I'm not really sure is of benefit to anyone prepared to pay £100 for a partially non-operating system.
- if you put a good set of speakers and an AMP connected to Paula, it can sound fantastic and is the lowest CPU-usage solution.
Wow, that's great, but what about the recording facilities that a soundcard offers that the basic Paula chip doesn't offer?
It's like making excuses because the underlying kernel doesn't work to accomodate the Classic hardware to allow a hybrid form of DMA that most PCI cards seem to need.
The Mediator was around long before any Classic OS4.x was released. So it's not like its method of operating was not known about as Elbox are on the betatesters list with Hyperion, so that 'hack' could have been incorporated/modified to make it system legal, and blend into the OS, or a workaround implemented and supported, if that's possible, so that Elbox could offer more PCI support to Hyperion for use with Classic OS4.x.
I wouldn't get hung up on the SOLO-1 either. Yes, you can play full quality 16-bit stereo sound out of it, but there is a CPU usage penalty.
Yes, why bother with a soundcard, but let's shout out out that the SOLO card is supported and will work in the OS, but not tell the intended customer that you'll find it slows your already low-horsepowered system down so much that you'll regret buying it, both the soundcard and the Classic OS4.1.
The guide for using a Soundblaster 128 routed through Paula is here:
http://www.hd-zone.com/2011/06/using-a-soundblaster-128-in-amigaos-4-x-classic/
Seen that, but I have a Soundblaster Live card working in my Mediator TX under OS3.9 that allows 16 bit sound, and doesn't slow my system down in a noticeable way, and it's only using the slower 68k chip. What's more, while that's working I've Blizzard SCSI, and an Adaptec SCSI card, Spider USB card, and Radeon 9200 256MB, and Voodoo 3 3000 16MB card - YES, 2 graphics cards, so I can choose which I want to use, and also get the benefit from the Radeon's on-board RAM being added to my system RAM so I've got almost 1/2 GB of FastRAM, for when I do large detailed scans, and the system multi-tasks great.
That's the power of PCI in a Classic Amiga system, not this barely supported piece of software called Classic OS4.1, that doesn't support even the basics of PCI hardware - SOUND.
But hey, guess what, if you spend £100 you can upgrade to what appears to be the very first backward stepped Amiga OS, brilliant .... NOT
I appreciate you being helpful with all the support you've given to the latest Classic OS4.1, and I really mean that. I also am grateful for you being honest about the hardware, and its limitations, but frankly this is not a good feature of the somewhat limited or as I like to call it a non-Operating system.
AmigaKit does list a SATA 4 port card that works with AmigaOS 4.1 Classic. Follow up with them for A1200 support: http://amigakit.leamancomputing.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=1042
I've already asked them, in this thread, and via their own website support forum, and email/contacts, but I haven't had a reply from them as yet.
It's on the radar for testing this, but it may be that those cards will never work. The Sapphire card has been tested and is known to work. They pop up on eBay frequently. One is here:
http://cgi.ebay.com/SAPPHIRE-RADEON-9250-PCI-64MB-64-BIT-DVI-VGA-TV-/170651814174?pt=PCC_Video_TV_Cards&hash=item27bba4091e#ht_857wt_1139
I've already got one, or maybe even 2 or 4 of those Sapphire 9250 cards, but I'm hoping my Radeon 9200 256MB card will work, as it is one of the older versions of those cards, so from what you've said I'm optimistic - but I haven't committed to Classic OS4.1 as yet, as I'm still not convinced it's worth it.
To explain my current dilemma about buying, or at this stage, not buying Classic OS4.1, I recently bought an ASUS A7V8X motherboard for £4, with an AMD Athlon AXDA2800DKV4D CPU, and I already have Amiga OS XL/Amithlon so I can either run that and get a much faster Amiga system using that, or I can install AROS and get a fast system on that same board, and have to pay nothing more, though I'd probably donate an amount, as that seems only fair, so there's no incentive to change to Classic OS4.1 with those options.
Unless the hardware (Mediator PCI) gets better supported under Classic OS4.1 I'll be staying with OS3.9, as it seems it will support much more functionality than I'd ever get with Classic OS4.1 as it stands at present.
I'm having to write this message via my Windows XP PC, as IBrowse, my favourite Amiga browser has not been updated, as I'd hoped it would, and so the display under Classic browsers is not so well presented with modern web systems. So I use Firefox, which is the next best browser IMHO, well in fact it may even be a lot better than IBrowse overall, seeing as development with IBrowse has been inactive for sometime now, and to all intents and purposes seems to have been abandoned.
Even then my Windows system cost me £20 for the OS (XP Pro), and £10 for the Motherboard, and £5 for the CPU, with some RAM already on board (1GB). In total my PC setup cost me about half the cost of what Amiga Classic OS4.1 would cost me if I was to pay for it, but it's not got the functionality I need, it's as simple as that - the figures just don't add up to make it economical or ergonomical for me to take the plunge and buy Classic OS4.1.
I really dislike the idea of not buying Classic OS4.x for the Amiga, but I just don't see any benefit at this stage.
Come up with the goods - functionality/compatability/stability, PCI hardware support, and I'd most probably decide to buy Classic OS4.1, but it's a long way off that at present IMHO.
Not as of yet. The developer that has volunteered to work on it is still busy as far as I know.
OK that's understood, but that's another factor not to buy Classic OS4.1 - no Blizzard SCSI support.
Not that I have seen, other than some users have the Radeon working with Elbox's driver. However you lose 3D support and compositing and access to all of the Radeon's memory.
That's something I'm still not sure is usable in Classic OS4.1 - can the RAM on board the Radeon be mapped into the system FastRAM, as it can be using OS3.9 and Elbox's pci.library? So a Blizzard with a fully populated RAM of 256MB, can add some or most of the RAM to make it up to virtually 1/2GB of FastRAM under Classic OS4.1.
It's still a 68k driver and not properly written to use AmigaOS 4.1's PCI sub-system - it uses it's own, so it's not compatible with the above mentioned features.
Not without re-doing kernel support and the entire PCI sub-system and memory arrangement which I don't think is going to happen. (The Mediator is NOT a DMA device in itself).
That I am already all too familar with - no HACKs allowed.
I just want to say that I appreciate your questions and critiques of AmigaOS 4.1 Classic, but you primarily compare it against AmigaOS 4.0 which I don't think is fair,
So tell me, what fundamentally has changed in Classic OS4.1 compared to Classic OS4.0?
Because, quite frankly I still see it as an update, an extensive one for the graphics system, but I don't see what other hardware has really been supported, apart from SATA cards, and there seem to be a few workarounds that have to be manually altered by the user once the OS has been installed, such as for the Deneb/Poseidon.
