Hrm... Weird Amiga Idea...

[Teo Zenios]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Ethan Dicks" <ethan.dicks at gmail.com>
To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts"
<cctalk at classiccmp.org>
Sent: Tuesday, December 06, 2005 2:01 PM
Subject: Re: Hrm... Weird Amiga Idea...


> On 12/6/05, Adrian Graham <witchy at binarydinosaurs.co.uk> wrote:
> > On 5/12/05 19:56, "Roger Merchberger" <zmerch at 30below.com> wrote:
> >
> > > It looks like there's 1 slot on the 4000T motherboard that might be an
ISA
> > > slot - is it?
>
> Yes, but as many others have observed, it has power only, no signals.
> It's like the ISA slots in an A2000 or A3000, but really only designed
> for a single-slot bridge card.
>
> > > If so, will a plain-jane NE2000 compatible network card work
> > > on the thing? (I would think there's drivers for something like
that... but
> > > who knows at this point.)
>
> Not without some way to attach it to Zorro space.
>
> > It IS an ISA slot but you also need a Zorro bridgeboard to activate the
> > pins...
>
> Right, like a Commodore A2286 card.
>
> > I've never seen an ISA bridgeboard :)
>
> What, like the GG2 Bus+ (GoldenGate II Bridgecard)?
>
> http://www.penguincentral.com/GG2/
>
> I have to admit they haven't been popular in a few years, but I still
> have new ones on the shelf.
>
> The largest drawback these days is that because of how cacheing was
> implemented between the Zorro bus and most '060 cards, they don't play
> nice in fully-loaded machines.  The GG2 Bus+ lives in Zorro II memory
> space (the 8MB chunk) to be able to map ISA memory space over to the
> 68K in the Amiga.  Because C= intended for memory to live there, it's
> cached by default on machines like the A3000 and A4000.  While there
> are workarounds with C= processors (Enforcer disables cacheing in
> Zorro II space because C= expect you to be using 32-bit RAM), by the
> time the '060s started coming out, things got more difficult due to
> the design of the '060 cards.  It's possible to write an app to do the
> same, but I don't think anyone ever did.
>
> So personally, I only recommend the GG2 Bus+ to stock A2000, A3000,
> and A4000 owners.  I can't recommend it to anyone who has or who wants
> an '060-based machine.  Back in the day, those people could afford an
> A2065 or Ariadne anyway, so they weren't my prime customers.
>
> -ethan

How well does it run on A2000 with 68030/40 processor cards (Geforce 030
Combo by GVP)? How much do you sell them for?