Elbox Mediator 4000Di

[darksun9210]

Hi all, a bit of advice is what i'm after i guess, or hints and anecdotes of your general expiriences with the above.

i'm toying with the idea of buying a Mediator Board. is this a better solution than hunting ebay or amibay for zorro ethernet and graphics gards? (i would prefer zorro, but that's just me

what's peoples thoughts on this? i always wanted to expand the ol' A4k, and it seems that PCI cards are the way to go these days. plus once i have the mediator, i can probably get hold of the cards themselves pretty cheap (or free).

i'm just a little bit dubious about their spec claims.
do you need to have a GFX card on the PCI bus to be able to run a network card?
264MB/s they claim is the max bandwidth between cards and/or host at 66Mhz *on the same bus*. and even this is unlikely. also the host in this case is the PCI/Zorro bridge chippery.
what are the real world speeds i can expect? will i even approach 10MB/s host to zorro to pci bridge to pci card?
i remember bustest would get 14MB/s max from a CV64/3D - so should i be pretty suspect of any claims above, say 20MB/s?

if i fully load the mediator with GFX card, NIC card, sound card, and USB card, will it choke?

whats the driver situation like? crashy? stable?
anybody know what the deal is with "version 2" advertised on elbox's website?

sorry for all the questions, but being the price they are, and the fact i know nothing whatsoever about them, thought this would be the place to ask

[smf]

I have the mediator 1200pci and i think it's great =)
I have been running it for about 12 years now.

You don't need a gfx card if you use an old 10Mbits network card but the rtl8139 driver need to use the gfx memory to function.

I have expanded my amiga with: Voodoo3, nic card, sound card & usb card and everything functions just fine

[darksun9210]

ok cool, so a general thumbs up then

[esc]

Yeah, I used to have an a4k that I towered and got a Mediator for.  My setup was:

CV64/3D+Scandoubler (for games, etc)
Voodoo 3 3000 (for workbench and extra ram)
Spider II USB
SB128 (never got it to work)
TV Card (never got it to work)
Fast ethernet, worked awesomely

For me, the only issue with doing this is the lack of decent tower solutions.  I'd gladly tower all my a1200, a3000, and a4000's in the future and put mediators in them if only more towers were around!  I don't like fitting this in a desktop case (the Mediator 4000Di, for example) because the graphics cards generate so much heat.  Plus I like to be able to put zorram and deneb cards in there if possible as well.  

[cv643d]

I had the A1200 version with 4 PCI slots and found out lots of Workbench apps where running jerky in Mediator screenmodes, jerkier than in AGA. Someone told me it was because of the way Mediator worked with the Amiga, still to this day I am amused more people do not notice it or complain. People just setup a nice WB and look at it?!

I am curious if A4000 version has the same problem, but not willing to pay 300 euro to find out, oh and I sold my 4 slot PCI Mediator and went back to Zorro cards instead.

[stevee617]

I've had a Meditor 4000Di Mk.II in my A4000 for almost a year now. I haven't experienced any jerky video using a Sapphire Radeon9250 128MB. My is loaded up with the Radeon, SB128, Ethernet and USB 2.0 and it all works good together. The higher rez screen modes are really nice. Just remember, the Radeon doesn't mode promote, so you will have to find a solution to use native mode for games and such. I use a Dell2420 monitor. The DVI is connected to the Radeon and the VGA is connected to the AMIGA video out with a C= adapter.

If you decide to get one PM me and I will send you a setup guide that will greatly help you as the one elbox provides is pretty bad.

[darksun9210]

hmmm, so a good user expirience seems to take a bit of tweeking. well it's not as though that's something we're not used to!

Stevee617, thanks for the offer. i'll definately give you a nod if i do plonk down the cash for one of these

was doing my banking last night and saw my outgoings on "toys" for last year. woops!

[Darrin]

I've had a Meditor 4000Di Mk.II in my A4000 for almost a year now. I haven't experienced any jerky video using a Sapphire Radeon9250 128MB. My is loaded up with the Radeon, SB128, Ethernet and USB 2.0 and it all works good together. The higher rez screen modes are really nice. Just remember, the Radeon doesn't mode promote, so you will have to find a solution to use native mode for games and such. I use a Dell2420 monitor. The DVI is connected to the Radeon and the VGA is connected to the AMIGA video out with a C= adapter.

If you decide to get one PM me and I will send you a setup guide that will greatly help you as the one elbox provides is pretty bad.

I've got the 256MB Radeon in my A4000/Mediator setup, along with a FastATA4000, Deneb, Spider II and SB128.  No graphics issues here either.

For native modes I use an Indivision.  I have a Viewsonic LCD monitor and, like you, I've connected the Radeon to the DVI port and the Indivision to the VGA port.  Switching displays just means pressing a button on the monitor.

I agree the installation sucks as the Multimedia CD now has updates and it isn't clear whether you should use the updates instead of what is on teh Multimedia CD or update the CD installation afterwards.  Not to mention what order it should be done in.  I wish they would just market a new CD with just the latest drivers and an updated installation guide.

Setting up the P96 modes is pretty straight forward once you get to grips with the P96 software.  Just remember to test the modes before you save them.

[danbeaver]

I have an A4000T with Mediator, Radeon 9200, Sb128, SpiderII, RTL8029 & Sii3114 for SATA drives. My setup dual boots OS 3.x and 4.1. Video is great: fast, high res (1920x1080), and sharp -- in OS 3.x I get the extra RAM as system memory. Sound is great (OS 4.1 AHI on SB128 is good).  RTL8029 is supported by both OS, but a USB NIC dongle is much faster. Spider works fine in 3.x (4.1 does not support it due to DMA so I also have a Deneb).  The Sii3114 is only supported in OS 4.1.

Please note that OS 4.1 wrote their own drivers for the Mediator, so the support list is different. OS 4.1 doesn't use much of the Radeon RAM and even then only for graphics.

Overall: it makes your system a more modern machine for the current cost of a Picasso IV. Elbox offers only "squeaky wheel" support and you have to be patient, "squeak" constantly, and be prepared to have them ignore you.  Either get your Radeon card from them or Amigakit. You can use a hacked NEC USB card if you want; you will find a ton of user help ( because there is so little from Elbox), and with OS 4.1 it makes you feel like you are using a modern machine with the ease of an an Amiga

[ciVic]

I own that card for a half year now and was able to get it running last weekend. Elbox support is good, they normally answere within two days, but sometimes their spam filter deletes your mail, so simply send it again if they do not answere. The reason why it took so long to get it working is that it was broken in the beginning and it took some weeks till I got a new one. After the repair it still didn't work and I had no time to work on it. This time my A4000 board and the PSU were the problem. After exchanging these parts it works now, but only under OS 3.1. I bought the Radeon 9250 bundle and at the moment OS 4.1 classic does not boot if the Radeon is plugged in. I think I will find out that problem within the next half year ;-D

Anyway, the Radeon is FAST. I love it. Hopefully I will get it working under OS 4.1.

[slaapliedje]

I have pretty much the same setup as Darrin, without the FastATA4000, Deneb, Spider and SB128....Okay, not really the same... but I use the monitor/indivision  the same way.

The problems I have run into were with lockups in Radeon resolutions.  Higher resolution, the quicker it locks up.  I think my problem is one of the programs I am running.  Once I disabled AmiDock and the memory info program, it locks up less..  Still haven't figured that one out, but it may be a bug in ClassicWB.

Otherwise the video modes are really fast, and if it weren't for the stock 040 and the slow IDE drive, it would feel snappier than Windows 7 does on my system with 8 cores and 8 GB of memory!

slaapliedje

[Darrin]

I have pretty much the same setup as Darrin, without the FastATA4000, Deneb, Spider and SB128....Okay, not really the same... but I use the monitor/indivision  the same way.

The problems I have run into were with lockups in Radeon resolutions.  Higher resolution, the quicker it locks up.  I think my problem is one of the programs I am running.  Once I disabled AmiDock and the memory info program, it locks up less..  Still haven't figured that one out, but it may be a bug in ClassicWB.

Otherwise the video modes are really fast, and if it weren't for the stock 040 and the slow IDE drive, it would feel snappier than Windows 7 does on my system with 8 cores and 8 GB of memory!

slaapliedje

Strange.  I'm using ClassicWB too with Workbench set at 1920x1080.  I created mine using the OS3.9 CD.  Perhaps I should upload my SYS: drive and you could download it to another drive and test it on your system.

What file system are you using?  I use FFS3-DS on 2 x 80GB HDs (each with 2 x 40GB partitions).  I had issues before with stability using SFS.

[slaapliedje]

I'm using FFS for the SYS: partition, and SFS for a 16G and 20G partition of a 40GB drive.

I'm going to also see if I can get an old Adaptec 2940UW from work and put that in my Amiga (I have a 10,000RPM fatty Seagate Cheetah 73GB drive just sitting around collecting dust, but the controller I have for it is a 19160, which would be extra sweet if support for it was added to the aic78xx driver.)

I think I have an 80GB laying around I could set up with the FFS3.  I think I went with SFS because everyone was saying it was great, and it supported larger than 2GB partitions, or something.  That was a while ago though..

slaapliedje

[darksun9210]

I've just managed to land an A3000D that i'll be going to pick up on Saturday. god knows what state she'll be in...
i've been dreaming about one of these machines for years .... anyway, off topic.

wondering if a Mediator can be modified to fit an A3kD. the expansion headers on the mainboard look differently spaced on the A3k, but all the mediator needs is the Zorro header... right? going to mod the mediator if i do, rather than the sacred machine herself.  

the mediator looks quite tall too. and compairing the daughter boards for the A4k and A3k looks like the 4k is highter by about 10 mil. but will get a chance to compare on the weekend.
heh. supposed to be decorating the lounge on Saturday, but looks like that's not gonna happen

[darksun9210]

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.