Hmm What's so special about this card?

Or is it just that this is the first new graphics card for classics
since Phase5 folded?

_________________
/Harry

[SOLD] µA1-C - 750GX 800MHz - 512MB - Antec Aria case

Avatar by HNL_DK!

@Samwel
It is no Graphics card... it is a Zorro III --> PCI adaptor (with DMA)

_________________
Best regards,
hnl_dk - Henning Nielsen Lund [Denmark]

Please send no PM to me, email me if you want to contact me. See you somewhere else.

Looks like a Zorro III to PCI bridge with a PCI GFX Card added...

_________________
Rev 1D3 Amiga 1200, Apollo 1240 (40Mhz '040, 64MB RAM), Indivision MKII, Fast ATA MK V, Rapid Road USB, PCMCIA WIFI & OS 3.14

Quote:

Looks like a Zorro III to PCI bridge with a PCI GFX Card added...

Basically that's correct, we call it a graphics card because it comes bundled with a PCI Voodoo3 card.

Ron van Herk
AHT International

wow - that looks complicated....could you fit anything else in that box!? lol

This is really good news. A company that isn't afraid of producing Classic stuff. Good work guys/girls.

This solution is great for those who have alot of Zorro-cards and just need to upgrade the graphiccard and perhaps the nic, or a faster scsi-card and so on. The potential is huge.

_________________
Mainframe: Amiga 3000 Tower, CSPPC233/060, 128+2MB, 36GB hd, Prometheus, Voodoo5 5500, 10Mbit
A1G3XE 800MHz, 768MB, 150GB Raptor, 9250, OS4.1

Is it a market for any more PCI adaptors? GRex amd Mediator already exists, and the classic market most be declining now

Last edited by NutsAboutAmiga on 09-Jul-2005 at 10:29 AM.

_________________
http://lifeofliveforit.blogspot.no/
Facebook::LiveForIt Software for AmigaOS

@Palpatine

We are overwelmed that a man of your stature would visit us here, senator.
How's the dark side these days?

Seriously, what's the speed of this thingy? Faster than CyberVisionPPC?
It shouldn't be really as CyberVisionPPC is connected directly to the CPU and
memory.
You have a max speed of 16.6MB/s theoretically. This is not high speed for
graphics.

_________________
/Harry

[SOLD] µA1-C - 750GX 800MHz - 512MB - Antec Aria case

Avatar by HNL_DK!

Quote:

You have a max speed of 16.6MB/s theoretically. This is not high speed for graphics.

If you have correctly working mem -> vmem DMA using the VGA chip, then you can offload the CPU, thus even 10mb/sec can be enough for quite a lot of things. The VGA card copying the frame, while the CPU can render the next one. For example. The biggest problem, that the slow video bus bogs the CPU down can be more or less avoided using this way, because it's not the CPU which does the actual copy. But it needs well written drivers, and of course applications optimized for it. Eg. all movie players using direct rendering need to be changed to use an OS function (to allow them to use the DMA functionality implemented into the driver, mentioned above).

_________________
MorphOS, classic Amiga, demoscene, and stuff
"When a bridge is not enough, build a Viaduct!"
"Strip the Amiga community of speculation and we can fit every forum on a 720k floppy" (by resle)

Quote:

How's the dark side these days?

Bright-looking

@Chain-Q:

The problem is: if the DMA was working at full throttle, then the CPU would not get enough access to the main RAMs either...

_________________
Álmos Rajnai

Why would one buy this board? There is already the Mediator which is far more supported (because it's older).

_________________
Philippe 'Elwood' Ferrucci
Sam460 1.10 Ghz
AmigaOS 4 betatester
Amiga Translator Organisation

Well, if this board is cheaper then it's enough. I'm sure there will be people that just wants 2 extra PCI-slots. If there is drivers then it will sell.

_________________
Mainframe: Amiga 3000 Tower, CSPPC233/060, 128+2MB, 36GB hd, Prometheus, Voodoo5 5500, 10Mbit
A1G3XE 800MHz, 768MB, 150GB Raptor, 9250, OS4.1

Quote:

Poster: elwood Date: 9-Jul-2005 8:24:16 Why would one buy this board? There is already the Mediator which is far more supported (because it's older).

Well, I would. It's bound to be cheaper since it's smaller, and it will fit inline with the desktop cases, as opposed to having to replace the daughterboard, and keep the case open and have stuff sticking out.

_________________
Lord Steven
http://www.zcrew.org
----===============----
To Strive, To Seek, To Find, and Not to Yield

Cool. I'd like to see something like this for my old 2000 though. I'd probably want to have it connect to the 32-bit bus on the accellerator card rather than the Zorro II slot. I suppose they're all different designs and you'd have to pic one to support. GVP most likely...

But sometimes I think it would make more sense to skip the FPGAs to PCI interface and just program some big FPGA to be a graphics card.

_________________
It's got 32 bits and it uses them all. It's overclocked, watch the bouncing ball!

Quote:

But sometimes I think it would make more sense to skip the FPGAs to PCI interface and just program some big FPGA to be a graphics card.

That's a thought. But a huge amount of work. There's free cores for some very basic VGA 2d framebuffer stuff out there, but nothing to the feature set of a Voodoo3 or Radeon. You'd be better off with AGA or ECS that at least have blitter support in them.

At this point I think it's best to concentrate on the easy parts such as Zorro->PCI for anything custom to Amiga, and use industry standard parts for the end-user features like graphics or sound or network or whatever.

_________________
All glory to the Hypnotoad!

@ LordSteven

Quote:

Quote: Quote: Poster: elwood Date: 9-Jul-2005 8:24:16 Why would one buy this board? There is already the Mediator which is far more supported (because it's older). Well, I would. It's bound to be cheaper since it's smaller, and it will fit inline with the desktop cases, as opposed to having to replace the daughterboard, and keep the case open and have stuff sticking out.

I'd like one NOW for my A4000 desktop. If an A2000 version was available I'd probably spring for that also.

Now someone bring out a new, fast accel. card for the A4000. Please folks, don't tell me to buy an AmigaOne. I already have an A1 XE.

___________________________________

Moxee

_________________
Moxee
AmigaOne X1000
AmigaOne XE G4
I'd agree with you, but then we'd both be wrong.

I welcome any company that produces hardware for the classic or new Amiga line.

Coder

_________________
Can't get enough of me?
The Bucket Diary Blog
The Bucket Diary Twitter Account

Quote:

Basically that's correct, we call it a graphics card because it comes bundled with a PCI Voodoo3 card.

Impressive, most impressive.

Zorro III? did you work around the zorro bug or will it default to ZorroII?

Now, would you like to work on the A1?

_________________
"The system no longer works " -- Young Anakin Skywalker

Quote:

Impressive, most impressive. Zorro III? did you work around the zorro bug or will it default to ZorroII? Now, would you like to work on the A1?

What?

_________________