EBAY: SBC 486 50MHz (not mine)

[Iggy]

That could be true for mediator but old micronik busboard had PCI slots not accesible for the Amiga so i assume that it is only for SBC boards

I wasn't aware of that.
Why did they bother?
If they weren't accessible the majority of users wouldn't have a use for them.

And while this whole discussion is interesting, in practice these ideas aren't too practical.
Basically what you have is two separate computers in one case.

But then face it, we don't always do things because they make good sense.
Sometime we do it just because we can (the neato factor).

[Markus_Bieler]

Does anyone know where I can get the connectors to convert my two 8 bit slots to 16 bit?

I just desoldered them from old dumped PC-boards and soldered them into the empty slotsholes on the A2000. (Some A2000 have to be cleaned from solder in the holes before you can stick the missing slotconnector into the holes. AND never drill the holes with a dremel etc., you will damage the board.)

Markus

[bbond007]

Try to get yourself an ISA Gravis Ultrasound card.

0% CPU usage.  Made my 486 sx25 fly back in the day!

I had a ISA GUS. I actually had it following the release of that board and was a pretty early adopter.

It was great for playing MODs and had really good general MIDI, but native support was really pretty bad and the SoundBlaster compatibility did in fact use a lot of CPU, sounded strange and never worked particularly well. I ended up having two soundboards in my PC for this reason. I eventually gave up (gave it away..) on the GUS and bought an Ensoniq Soundscape.

It was good hardware, and I wanted to like it, but really not well supported at all and was overall a big headache. I'd much rather have an Ensoniq. Also consider a Roland MT32 and Soundblaster/MPU-401 compatible sound card (or Sound Canvas).

I guess GUS is well supported in the demo scene but commercial support was never that good, unless I just gave up to soon...

I got MT32 for 32 bux. I use it with DOSBOX with USB midi.

[nicholas]

I had a ISA GUS. I actually had it following the release of that board and was a pretty early adopter.

It was great for playing MODs and had really good general MIDI, but native support was really pretty bad and the SoundBlaster compatibility did in fact use a lot of CPU, sounded strange and never worked particularly well. I ended up having two soundboards in my PC for this reason. I eventually gave up (gave it away..) on the GUS and bought an Ensoniq Soundscape.

It was good hardware, and I wanted to like it, but really not well supported at all and was overall a big headache. I'd much rather have an Ensoniq. Also consider a Roland MT32 and Soundblaster/MPU-401 compatible sound card (or Sound Canvas).

I guess GUS is well supported in the demo scene but commercial support was never that good, unless I just gave up to soon...

I had the original ISA GUS too and I remember ripping DRAM chips off my video card and installing them on the GUS to beef it up.

I can't say I ever used the SB emulation in DOS much, if at all to be honest.  I used it purely for watching (listening to?) demos and coding them. Still got my old Borland Turbo Assembler boxset somewhere I think.

I even had a GUS PnP with the Interwave DSP chip in my K6-II machine in 97/98.

I got MT32 for 32 bux. I use it with DOSBOX with USB midi.

Now that is cool!

[Iggy]

I just desoldered them from old dumped PC-boards and soldered them into the empty slotsholes on the A2000. (Some A2000 have to be cleaned from solder in the holes before you can stick the missing slotconnector into the holes. AND never drill the holes with a dremel etc., you will damage the board.)

Markus

Yep, I'm going to have to use a desoldering bulb on the holes, but I was hoping for something less painful then removing the slots from an old board.

I've only found one SBC that doesn't require a separate power connection.

[bbond007]

I can't say I ever used the SB emulation in DOS much, if at all to be honest.  I used it purely for watching (listening to?) demos and coding them.

Now that you mention it, I remember doing the same thing with the DRAM It's funny that you mention having a K6-II because I ended up getting the K6-III.

The SB emulation was not done in hardware but by a driver TSR. There are a number of problems with that.

First, it did tend to use some additional CPU which, while discouraging, was not the end of the world. Next, it(FM emulation) just sounded different... Some instruments sounded better, but usually at least one would just be really off making the whole thing sound bad. Or the timing or cadence would be off. Again, not a show-stopper... FM stuff never sounded that good anyway.

Probably the bigger issues were that the TSR would tie a chunk of that precious 640K making it difficult to run some 16bit stuff or just made some programs prone to crashing.  

Also, I could not find stable windows drivers. I also seem to recall the TSR conflicting with windows.

A lot of people did what I did and installed both SBpro and GUS, but because ISA could not share IRQs it was a PIA finding a combination that worked and you usually ran out of IRQs long before you ran out of ISA slots.

It was great hardware spec wise, but ownership was overall very disappointing. True, there were a few demos and trackers that sounded fantastic, but that was also kind of discouraging to get a taste of what the hardware COULD do... if it only had support.

[bbond007]

I used to have two of those overdrive chips.
Curious hybrid between '486 and Pentium.
Smaller then a Socket 7 processor.

Wound up throwing them away when I inadvertently bent the pins.

I had the 83MHZ overdrive chip that I bought for super cheap. On day one I just happened to have my MB clock set to it ran at 100mhz, so I always ran it at that speed without an issue.

A lot of people thought the who P24T "overdrive" thing was a scam, but it really worked well except it cause the floppy drives not to work on a lot of MBs I tried it on. I'd say it ran faster than a real P75....

[bbond007]

Those are industriual-PC-boards which work in many environments. They are available with nearly all CPU-variants (yes, even Core-CPUs like i7 QuadCore etc.) and should work in all Amigas with ISA-slots (provided the PSU is fit enough). Sometimes it needs a small modification to the ISA-slot (there is  thread on http://www.a1k.org according this topic).

I had some of those cards and it was very funny to operate a 2 GHz-system in a 8/50 MHz A2000

Unfortunately they are not very cheap.

if you got a Core one, you could run WinUAE which would really freshen up that A2000

AllocVec, I assume that would work with that nice mint "German Engineered" A2000 you were selling?

[Iggy]

Now that you mention it, I remember doing the same thing with the DRAM It's funny that you mention having a K6-II because I ended up getting the K6-III.

Loved that series.
I had about a half dozen K6-III+ at one point.
All would clock at at least 550MHz.
And one I got over 600.

Funny, I didn't have as much luck with the K6-2+.
Probably because these were just harvested K6-III+ chips with half the cache disabled.

Problem was, if you benched a K6-III+ and a lowly AMD Duron at the same speed, the Duron wiped the floor with the K6.

Come to think of it, I always did get a kick out of using chips that were not intended for desktop use in desktop motherboards.
My last Athlon XP was an XP-M 3000+. Easily good for 2.4 Ghz, pushing it 2.5.


Sorry, way off topic.

[Iggy]

if you got a Core one, you could run WinUAE which would really freshen up that A2000

Now that is a demented idea.
At that point, why keep the Amiga motherboard?
Besides, most high end SBCs require an ATX power supply.

[bbond007]

Loved that series.
I had about a half dozen K6-III+ at one point.
All would clock at at least 550MHz.
And one I got over 600.

mine was 400 and was under the impression that they were not very overclockable, so I never tried.

It was pretty fast though. I had a Pentium 450mhz at work an I do recall DVD playback being smoother on the K6... Most of the 4D games were slightly slower, but still a nice CPU.

Seems to me that I upgraded from a 166mmx that I ran at 200mhz and was able to keep the same MB. DVDs were a slideshow at 200mhz all I really wanted to do was play DVDs which were the new hot thing without springing for a new MB, RAM, etc...

I guess the benefit to using the ISA CPU board is that you could keep the Amiga intact and even run deinterlaced it in a window if you used a USB capture card and something like AmigaManiac's svideo adapter.

[psxphill]

At that point, why keep the Amiga motherboard?

Mostly for nostalgia. Although if you could get a link between the two computers in the case then that would be interesting. Even if it was so that you could use a video toaster from WinUAE (which I don't have). I don't even have a big box Amiga anymore, I used to have an A2000 but got bored with not having a use for it. I always wanted an A4000.
 
But it's just pipe dreams, which I think is what keeps us here :-)

[LoadWB]

Loved that series.
I had about a half dozen K6-III+ at one point.
All would clock at at least 550MHz.
And one I got over 600.

Funny, I didn't have as much luck with the K6-2+.
Probably because these were just harvested K6-III+ chips with half the cache disabled.

Problem was, if you benched a K6-III+ and a lowly AMD Duron at the same speed, the Duron wiped the floor with the K6.

Come to think of it, I always did get a kick out of using chips that were not intended for desktop use in desktop motherboards.
My last Athlon XP was an XP-M 3000+. Easily good for 2.4 Ghz, pushing it 2.5.


Sorry, way off topic.

I dunno, this seems at least partially on top.  I have a Solaris 8 x86 server running in my home office on a AMD K6-III/400 at 500MHz.  At 550MHz the motherboard and what-not became unstable (old ASUS.)  The motherboard is dated 1997 (or 1998, can't recall which) and the BIOS supports 128GB hard drive, maximum (oddly, wouldn't take my 120GB, so I have a 160GB in there.)  It's a fast, stable box.  I actually got hold of a K6-III+/500 that I would like to try, but I have to do some weird finagling with the voltage and I never could get it to run stable with 256MB even though specs say it will take the 64MB SIMMs required to do so.  There's a Tyan mobo that I'm watching for which will run it at the proper voltage and 600MHz, is ATX, and takes PC133 RAM.  There's also a DFI board which I fancy, but rarely ever turns up.

[Iggy]

mine was 400 and was under the impression that they were not very overclockable, so I never tried.

It was pretty fast though. I had a Pentium 450mhz at work an I do recall DVD playback being smoother on the K6... Most of the 4D games were slightly slower, but still a nice CPU.

Seems to me that I upgraded from a 166mmx that I ran at 200mhz and was able to keep the same MB. DVDs were a slideshow at 200mhz all I really wanted to do was play DVDs which were the new hot thing without springing for a new MB, RAM, etc...

I guess the benefit to using the ISA CPU board is that you could keep the Amiga intact and even run deinterlaced it in a window if you used a USB capture card and something like AmigaManiac's svideo adapter.

Interesting idea, except I'd use something with more bandwidth then a USB port.

BTW - The original K6-IIIs were horrible overclockers.
The + components were part of the final die shrink. Eventually they only saw use in mobile devices.
The cool part was that for the first time the K6-2+ got a cache (half that of the K6-III, but still an enhancement).
I would have kept them, but long after they were irrelevant, the Germans (big AMD fanatics) were paying big bucks for one.
And you usually needed an updated bios for the K6-2+ (I guess the cache freaked out older bios'). Oddly enough, the K6-III+ was usually just a plug in.
Another cool thing, the 6X multiplier AMD substituted for the 2X.
With that, older 66 and 75MHz bus machines could do 400 to 450 MHz (on hardware that before was limited to a lot less)

[Iggy]

"micronik busboard"

http://www.amiga-hardware.com/showhardware.cgi?HARDID=1389

hmm...interesting Fran.
Never really paid attention to that one.
I assume the PCI slots were all connected and that so were the ISA slots.

How did this connect to an A4000 motherboard?

And if its not connected, what do you do with it.

Anyone got a manual for one of these?