OK I have come to a major juncture with my A1200 project. I currently have it in the desktop case with no lid on, the keyboard shifted to one side about an inch nad the PCMCIA NIC stuck up out of it. It's awaiting a Tower Kit from Eyetech (taking forever to get it out but hey I'm not in a gasping hurry - and it was cheap!
).
When I get it into a tower I will still be stuck with the original AGA graphics in Workbench, which is really the only thing that i consider to be dragging about it ATM - I run 3.9 and it really deserves to look a lot better! I have a good 68k CPU (Apollo 040/40), enough RAM to get by (32MB) and a decent size hard disk (1.25GB), and even a CD-ROM. But still this issue of GFX is dogging me.
Whichever way I go I need a busboard. I am not really too fussed about a PPC in it, I have plenty of other powerful comuters for doing really heavy stuff. Thus I don't really want to go to the expense of getting a BlizzardPPC acompanying gfx board.
I see it this way:
MediatorPCI:- Expensive Initial Outlay (about GBP195.00 for a new one)
+ Greatly Cheaper cards (only likely to get even more so with PCs moving to PCI-X)
+ More 'modern' cards avaiable like 10/100 LAN, PCI128 sound cards, USB, fast PCI GFX chips etc...
+ all-round speed is much faster
- Elbox software is not reknowned for it's quality or releability
- Elbox have done weird things like blocking E3B stuff in the past, and seem to make it hard to get new drivers & software
ZorroIV:+ More Amigan (and thus more in keeping)
+ Busboard itself is likely to be cheaper
- a Graphics card of any significant power is going to be expensive
- Almost impossible to find anyone who wants to sell one
+ More compatible with Amiga hardware/OS??
- Most cards are dated by modern standards, although some new ones are around for things like USB
- Waiting for one to crop up may take so long I turn into a fossil and have to be excavated to use it
So I need help - does anyone agree or disagree with my views?
