Mediator vs Prometheus

[NightShade737]

I am torn as to which of these two to buy for the main reason, which one is faster? For instance, the Promo states it has an interface speed of 12MB/s to the Amiga, where as the Mediator states that it is 50MB/s.

Now the reason I am torn is the fast that I would like to keep my ISA slots as well though, and buying a Mediator would kick out all my ISA slots.

Now the perfect soloution to this would be the ZIII Mediator which still states 50MB/s and only uses a single slot like the  Promo, and even better, it's actually smaller than a promo too!..... problem is that it is discontinued and no-where sells them, which sort of makes that useless.

But anyway, I think my question is - Has anyone actually benched various devices in the same machine on both a Prometheus and a Mediator? Preferably in an A4000 as that has native Zorro slots as opposed to using a mad array on an A1200.

I'm not looking for "well it should be" answers, just actual tests and results on the topic.

Cheers,
Ex

[Kronos]

Dunno bout the 12MB, but anything claiming 50MB/s for an
Zorro3 interface (which both Promo and Mediator use) can be
disregarded as pur marketing BS.

[NightShade737]

Yes, but the Mediator 4000D plugs into the actual motherboard itself on the daughterboard connectors, so I assume that is faster than the speed of a single Zorro III interface.

[Jose]

Out of curiosity, why do you want to keep your ISA slots?!

[NightShade737]

Bridgeboard and stuff. I just like "things" in my Amiga.

[f94sbu]

I'd guess that the 50 MB/s is a reference to the
PCI-PCI DMA access speed in case you are eg DMA'ing from
an ethernet board to the videoram of a PCI gfxboard.
Not that I see the actual use for it but the theoretical
figure is correct. Now you just have to figure out what
you can do with ethernet frames residing on the gfx board
without beeing to access them by the cpu at that speed

regards,
Stefan

[patrik]

@NightShade737:

As Kronos pointed out, the 50MB/Sec values are nothing more than a wet fantasy of the Elbox pr-department. Expect 9-10MB/Sec as a maximum with the Mediator Zorro3 solutions and an accelerator which interfaces well with the CPU-FastSlot. The Zorro3 bus is capable of more, but I have not seen any mediator solutions giving much better numbers than that (feel free to correct me if I am wrong).

The daughterboard connector on the motherboard is just a big connector holding the signals for the video-bus, the Zorro3-bus and some various signals for controlling the individual aspects of the Zorro3 slots. The datapath is the same as the one shared amongst all Zorro3 slots so it would be equally fast to interface the Zorro3 bus there as on the daughterboard itself.

The Mediator and Prometheus should be rather equal in performance.


/Patrik

[NightShade737]

Cool, thanks for clearing that up.
Just a few final questions then:

Has Bus-Mastering been sorted out on the boards yet?
and are there drivers available for the following:
Voodoo 3 and Voodoo 5
3com 950C Cards
Realtek 8139 NICs
SiS909 NICs
and SB128 cards (Ensonique 1371 chipset)

I mention the 3com cards as it would be a good idea, because the cards are very cheap to get, and are managed with checksum offloading, which would be very useful for the slower processors in Amigas.

[Crusher]

Here you have the Prometheus drivers. Busmastering is beeing solved soon.  :-)
Prometheus Drivers

[redrumloa]

@crusher

Shhhh.. You don't want to wake the FUD master;-)

re Prometheus DMA:
Announcement coming soon:-)

[adolescent]

NightShade737 wrote:
and are there drivers available for the following:

Voodoo 3 and Voodoo 5

Yes, both.

3com 950C Cards

Neither.

Realtek 8139 NICs

Mediator only.

SiS909 NICs

Neither.

and SB128 cards (Ensonique 1371 chipset)

Mediator only.  

Regarding the 3Com Nic.  Sure, they are cheap, but you can get a RealTech 8139 for $.99 on eBay.  Can't get cheaper than that.

[NightShade737]

Regarding the 3Com Nic. Sure, they are cheap, but you can get a RealTech 8139 for $.99 on eBay. Can't get cheaper than that.

Thats not the point, read my reason.

Hmmm, I don't think buying a promo would be the best thing to do then as it doesn't have drivers for anything I own, and still doesn't support BM  :-(

[Crusher]

redrumloa wrote:
@crusher

Shhhh.. You don't want to wake the FUD master;-)

re Prometheus DMA:
Announcement coming soon:-)

Woops sorry  :-D  Busmastering, TBA  :-P

[downix]

    Realtek 8139 NICs

Mediator only.

Don't be too sure there.  The promethius I have happens to have a 8139 on it.

[tjaoz]

@downix

Don't be too sure there. The promethius I have happens to have a 8139 on it.

It is nothing interesting to have the not-working card fitted in the PCI slot