Elbox Mediator 4000Di

[Darrin]

Dandys information regarding the Spider is outdated.
The latest poseidon & spider.device works together but it was true for a while that they didn't.
It even seems to work quite fast & reliable but i don't have any numbers to show because i'm a new user. But the deneb is better and will always be.

I'm intrested to know what kind of transfers speeds dandy gets with a 100Mbit/s nic.  Miami/Amitcp is way to slow to get anything near 80Mbit/s even on a fast computer like a pegasos running morphos.

I can confirm this too.  I had a Deneb in my A4000 and updated Poseidon to the latest version.  When I put in a Spider and loaded the drivers the USB stack detected it and once activated it worked like a charm.  I had the Deneb and Spider working at the same time.

[cv643d]

If it was a config error then I would be interested in the Mediator again!

Can someone try Hippoplayer, Delitracker or Eagleplayer, play a module and open up a visual scope such as stereoscope or similar, does the scope run (react to music) as fast as in Mediator screenmode as in an AGA mode?

Thanks!

[TheBilgeRat]

Dandys information regarding the Spider is outdated.
The latest poseidon & spider.device works together but it was true for a while that they didn't.
It even seems to work quite fast & reliable but i don't have any numbers to show because i'm a new user. But the deneb is better and will always be.

I'm intrested to know what kind of transfers speeds dandy gets with a 100Mbit/s nic.  Miami/Amitcp is way to slow to get anything near 80Mbit/s even on a fast computer like a pegasos running morphos.

Deneb is no longer in production, and the spider is.

[Ratte]

A4000  + Mediator4000Di works great!
Radeon9250 256MB
SB128
8139D 10/100MBit

http://www.a1k.org/forum/showthread.php?t=32293

btw. the A4000 Mediator is much faster compared to A1200 Mediator.
Blitting on bigbox is arround 20-40 times faster ...  

[cv643d]

I see, I remember I asked Amigaz to try out some applications on his Mediator A1200 5 years ago and he had the same problems as I had on my setup.

So the A4000 setup is faster. Interesting.

[slaapliedje]

When I first bought my Amiga+Mediator setup (used) I had the same lockups as u.

It all turned out that there was a jumper on the mediator for safe or dangerous.  Well dangerous always crashes.  Safe never crashes.  STUPID JUMPER!

Once I changed the jumper over to safe.  Everything was fine.  And my transfer speeds dropped from 11MB/sec to 9MB/sec  No prob since it made my Amiga rock solid for many years.

Pretty sure I've checked every jumper on there, and there wasn't a 'Safe' one.  There are three jumpers on it.  One says "SWAP CONFIG" (currently Open) and "MASTER" (Closed) and WINSIZE (Closed)

Just opened my Amiga again.  I don't know which is sadder, the fact that I've probably opened it up more than I've had sex, or that I'm admitting that on an Internet forum!

Now that I've bled on it a little... maybe it'll not lock up for me!

[slaapliedje]

Hi Again yes you can only use the 9200 series Cards but they have to be Modded to 5v for the Mediator. the one i got from Elbox was allready modded had 256mb on board but only 128mb could be used as it had 2x 128mb Banks so i modded a new one i got from Hongkong and that uses the full 256mb on mediator.
 
becare of cheap imatation radeons as some dont work.
 
If you Need help in that department i could give you some help on the modding, if your Handy with a soldering iron.
 
Nobby

My Radeon also has two banks of 128MB, how do you mod it to get the full 256mb to be seen?  Always wondered if this were possible.  

For those that want to know, a Sapphire branded Radeon 9250 works at the 5v (but as stated, only shows 128mb instead of 256mb.)

The exact SKU# is 11046-18, and it is a PCI VGA/TVO/DVI-I card.  I currently use the DVI out on it, and it works great.  I managed to find a script on these forums that will allow you to convert modelines (resolutions) from xorg to Picasso96 settings, so I have all the resolutions to look AMAZING on my Asus VG23AH through it...

Now if only I could get it to not lock up!

slaapliedje

[slaapliedje]

I'm very much leaning toward the possibility that I simply have a bad radeon card.

I killed Amidock (which for some weird reason, this time around Amidock didn't like that I was changing resolutions, normally it doesn't prevent it).  This seems to have made it run for longer.  But check this out!  This time around I managed to extract AmIRC, while having IBrowse loaded, and started up EaglePlayer, loaded up the Xenon2 music mod, and had that playing.  Then I went to check Aminet for some more mods and that's when I had the crash.

But listen to the awesomeness of Xenon2 during a crash!

I also am attaching the reason why I think my Radeon is bad... the heatsink appeared to be glued to the GPU... I had one that I had gotten from Elbox (64MB one) and took the heatsink off of it to see if it would fit better (the PCI1 on the Mediator wouldn't even fit with the original heat sink, the one I replaced it with barely fit in the slot, but I'm afraid it was still touching the busboard, so didn't dare turn on the system).

Well the 64mb had the usual two pegs holding the heatsink in, the 256mb one that I had in the system did not!  Pried off the heat sink, and check out the nastiness!  

My next thing is to swap it with one of the ones I have that has an active fan on it...

http://thefnords.org/amiga-crash.mp3.zip

slaapliedje

[Lozspd4]

Hi Guys
          That with the lockups with the Radeon is i think got to do with which pci Slot the Ethernet and Radeon are in together i tryed a lot of variations and found that the best combination for my System is.
 
starting at the top working to wards the Mainboard is,
 
10/100 fast Ethernet
Radeon 9200 256mb
Spider Usb
Sb 128
 
this is with all jumpers closed on the mediator 4000di mkII
 
The only program that causes Problems is Genesis. when i press offline the System locksup.but Miami dx works perfect.
 
The other way to get the other bank of 128mb to sort of work is use the program addmem from aminet but youll have Play around with the start and end ram addresses till you get a working set, but i only managed to get 64mb working stable.
 
can you give your Card positions through so that other users can give
it a try and maybe saving hair pulling Frustration. as when some Cards are not fitted they may Need  another Position for the Cards to work stable.
Nobby

[Bamiga2002]

A4000  + Mediator4000Di works great!
Radeon9250 256MB
SB128
8139D 10/100MBit

http://www.a1k.org/forum/showthread.php?t=32293

btw. the A4000 Mediator is much faster compared to A1200 Mediator.
Blitting on bigbox is arround 20-40 times faster ...  

A4000 Mediator is faster because it has Zorro III vs A1200 that has Zorro II. But you can compensate in some Warp3D games with a speedup, read more here on EAB

[cv643d]

As was told to me, the problem was not only Z2 and Z3, I had Picasso2 and it was faster than Mediator on a 6860 MikroniC Z2 busboard for A1200.

Someone mentioned the way the Mediator works is the problem on the A1200.

For example, I felt scrolling in Ibrowse was slugish with Mediator in a different way than Z2 slugish. Best example is trying out scopes in module players on the WB.

There is a thread about this on the Mediator mailing-list, but I cant find it. It was 6 years ago I bought a four slot Mediator for the A1200. Sold it in under 1 month lol.

Lol.. whats the point of having a mediator if some ****ty Warp 3D game runs smother and WB runs slower

[Bamiga2002]

There is a thread about this on the Mediator mailing-list, but I cant find it. It was 6 years ago I bought a four slot Mediator for the A1200. Sold it in under 1 month lol.

Lol.. whats the point of having a mediator if some ****ty Warp 3D game runs smother and WB runs slower

If you could find that thread it would make an interesting reading. Hey, this is a hobby for me and the W3D games are a part of it . And my WB runs very smooth, I can make a video of it. But I don't claim the Mediator design hasn't got flaws, but that's something we have to live with since there's no real alternative... :/

[slaapliedje]

Hi Guys
          That with the lockups with the Radeon is i think got to do with which pci Slot the Ethernet and Radeon are in together i tryed a lot of variations and found that the best combination for my System is.
 
starting at the top working to wards the Mainboard is,
 
10/100 fast Ethernet
Radeon 9200 256mb
Spider Usb
Sb 128
 
this is with all jumpers closed on the mediator 4000di mkII
 
The only program that causes Problems is Genesis. when i press offline the System locksup.but Miami dx works perfect.
 
The other way to get the other bank of 128mb to sort of work is use the program addmem from aminet but youll have Play around with the start and end ram addresses till you get a working set, but i only managed to get 64mb working stable.
 
can you give your Card positions through so that other users can give
it a try and maybe saving hair pulling Frustration. as when some Cards are not fitted they may Need  another Position for the Cards to work stable.
Nobby

Pretty sure I've tried every possible configuration.

Currently I have the Video card in the top (Radeon 9250 256mb) and Fast Ethernet 10/100 in the bottom (above the bus board).  I couldn't even get the video card to fit in that slot, because it touches the bus board.

slaapliedje

[mechy]

ok, so I've grown a pair and Amigakit seem to have some in stock, so I've ordered one.

what's the best GFX card, or rather, what cards have people experience with?
I notice that you guys have Radeon's installed. it's not on the supported list? confused...
how are you finding it with heat, power, noise etc.
i'm looking for something not too noisy, and given the A4000's pathetic cooling, something not too hot.
my experience with AGP voodoo3's from way back when was that they got really hot!

is warp3d stuff supported on the radeons? i'm not looking at a voodoo4 or 5 as that's just a little bit far out regarding availability or even driver support.
I won't be using the GFX card as fast ram as I also have a couple of zorro ram cards on their way.
I've got a soundblaster128 somewhere, and ordered a 100Mb NIC - as all I have laying around these days are intel gigabit jobs.

The mediator for the 3000 is intended for their mirage tower.
you want the radeon or a voodoo3 3000 ideally. make sure the A3000 has a buster 11 chip,since you will need it for zorro3 operation on the mediator. many machines came with buster7 which does not support zorro3 operation.Not sure if mediator works on buster9,but 11 is required i seem to think. note the mediator for the 3000 is not intended to fit a desktop,only a tower(their tower no longer sold?)..check into this carefully.
from elbox website:

'The recommended configuration is: Amiga 3000D in Mirage                      3000 tower case, any 68060 (or PPC with 68060) turbo card                      with 128MB RAM, a SharkPPC G3/G4 card with 256MB SDRAM, a                      Voodoo3 graphic card.'

Honestly,i'd recommend a A4000 to do this in.the 4000DI version works well.The 4000di version will not fit the 3000
For those of you using 1200 mediators,since the A1200 has no zorro3(buster chip)the difference is the 1200 version has a tiny 8MB window and the A3000-4000 mediator has a 256/512MB window. That is one reason why the 3000/4000 board seem to handle anything with no glitches and problems even at res like 1920x12xx.

I've been running a 4000 mirage tower with mediator for many years nearly 24/7 and its been rock solid other than some crap ATX power supplies going bad.Good psu is worth the $$.

Mech