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?

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

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

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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.

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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 09:29 AM.

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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.

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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).

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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...

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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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

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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.

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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?

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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?

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