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[News] Pictures of Mediator in ActionANN.lu
Posted on 04-Sep-2000 08:11 GMT by Henrik Mikael Kristensen49 comments
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In an ANN Mediator article discussion a link to http://www.elbox.com/press is mentioned (for those of you who missed it). It contains pretty good pictures of the Mediator in action. Unfortunately it will probably suffer from the competition from the Predator AGP-board.
Pictures of Mediator in Action : Comment 1 of 49ANN.lu
Posted by Rafo on 03-Sep-2000 22:00 GMT
Wery interesting pictures, especially one, the first on the list : there is an accelerator board with a processor (couldn't identify it) on a ZIF socket (Socket7 ? FPGA370 ?)
What the hell is this ? A next-gen amiga axel board ? hehe...
Pictures of Mediator in Action : Comment 2 of 49ANN.lu
Posted by m0ns00n on 03-Sep-2000 22:00 GMT
Is it possible to setup a mirror? I am sure every Amigan out there, with a net connection ofcource, is tuning in to this site ;o)
Pictures of Mediator in Action : Comment 3 of 49ANN.lu
Posted by Mark Olsen on 03-Sep-2000 22:00 GMT
In reply to Comment 1 (Rafo):
My best guess would be a homemade board. I wondered about it too.
Pictures of Mediator in Action : Comment 4 of 49ANN.lu
Posted by Amifan on 03-Sep-2000 22:00 GMT
In reply to Comment 1 (Rafo):
erm...the name of the pic starts with a1240....so the cpu is most likely a 040...maybe it's a test board of the appolo1240 before it went into production
Pictures of Mediator in Action : Comment 5 of 49ANN.lu
Posted by Amifan on 03-Sep-2000 22:00 GMT
In reply to Comment 1 (Rafo):
Take a look at DarekSmietana_tests_A1200_Mediator_PCI.jpg...... you can see AIBB running on the left monitor.... It shows the speed of the current CPU which is the same as a 40Mhz 040
Pictures of Mediator in Action : Comment 6 of 49ANN.lu
Posted by Artur Pietruk on 03-Sep-2000 22:00 GMT
In reply to Comment 1 (Rafo):
Elbox makes Apollo boards. I guess they have build one with a socket for a testing purposes (they can easily replace processors).
--- Artur Pietruk
Pictures of Mediator in Action : Comment 7 of 49ANN.lu
Posted by Frank on 03-Sep-2000 22:00 GMT
The AGP board will only work with PPC boards AFAIK, so I think there is quite a market for the Mediator. I and most of my friends do not want to buy a PPC (especially the ones that have 060s) so the Mediator is the way to go.
Frank
Pictures of Mediator in Action : Comment 8 of 49ANN.lu
Posted by Frank on 03-Sep-2000 22:00 GMT
The AGP board will only work with PPC boards AFAIK, so I think there is quite a market for the Mediator. I and most of my friends do not want to buy a PPC (especially the ones that have 060s) so the Mediator is the way to go.
Frank
Pictures of Mediator in Action : Comment 9 of 49ANN.lu
Posted by Mike on 03-Sep-2000 22:00 GMT
In reply to Comment 8 (Frank):
what's wrong with ppc and "especially" the 060's?
Pictures of Mediator in Action : Comment 10 of 49ANN.lu
Posted by Snakeyes on 04-Sep-2000 22:00 GMT
Nothing is wrong with PPC and 060's, but I agree with Frank: in a recent press release, they said that a cheap PCI ppc card *could* be attached in the Mediator, so I'm waiting for it, because the current 060+PPC cards are just too expensive for what they are :-\
Pictures of Mediator in Action : Comment 11 of 49ANN.lu
Posted by tihuana on 04-Sep-2000 22:00 GMT
hehehe, look at that picture DarekSmietana_tests_A1200_Mediator_PCI.jpg... it looks more or less like what my a1200 will look with the Mediator, 'cause I really don't have money to buy a decent tower for it and I don't care about the crap way it'll look :P
Pictures of Mediator in Action : Comment 12 of 49ANN.lu
Posted by Trizt on 04-Sep-2000 22:00 GMT
In reply to Comment 9 (Mike):
There ain't anything wrong with it, more than the price of the 060 and the preformance of the 603e (compared with 604/G3/G4).
Pictures of Mediator in Action : Comment 13 of 49ANN.lu
Posted by Anonymous on 04-Sep-2000 22:00 GMT
If it works, it's great. But why wasn't this piece of hardware released 6 years ago?
Pictures of Mediator in Action : Comment 14 of 49ANN.lu
Posted by Kay Are Ulvestad on 04-Sep-2000 22:00 GMT
In reply to Comment 13 (Anonymous):
Yeah, that would have been great! If you find some way of releasing the Mediator
6 years ago, email Elbox immediately ;-) Personally I'll be happy if I can get
one before the end of the month. Altough I have a BlizzPPC 200/060, I'm
defineately going for the Mediator rather than the Predator. It's cheaper, will
probably be more sturdy, as it connects directly to the motherboard, and if it
provides an upgrade path which does not involve putting even more weight on my
already unstable BlizzPPC connectors, it's an easy choice.
Pictures of Mediator in Action : Comment 15 of 49ANN.lu
Posted by Frank on 04-Sep-2000 22:00 GMT
In reply to Comment 9 (Mike):
Ehm well I guess you misunderstood my statement. I meant that people who have spent a fortune on 060s are not willing to pay as much for a PPC board that does not have *that* much to offer in terms of software (no pro-PPC flames please).
And of course, as others have said, the PPC/060 cards are very expensive.
Frank
Pictures of Mediator in Action : Comment 16 of 49ANN.lu
Posted by Anonymous on 04-Sep-2000 22:00 GMT
In reply to Comment 10 (Snakeyes):
>...a cheap PCI ppc card *could* be attached in the Mediator...
Cheap? Where? Those I seen were $2k+.
Pictures of Mediator in Action : Comment 17 of 49ANN.lu
Posted by Chris Kelley on 04-Sep-2000 22:00 GMT
In reply to Comment 16 (Anonymous):
http://www.cc-inc.com/macmall/shop/detail.asp?dpno=82466
Is that cheap enough? :)
Pictures of Mediator in Action : Comment 18 of 49ANN.lu
Posted by Kojak on 04-Sep-2000 22:00 GMT
Why did they change the color of the PCB from beautiful green to yellow (puke)?
Pictures of Mediator in Action : Comment 19 of 49ANN.lu
Posted by Anonymous on 04-Sep-2000 22:00 GMT
In reply to Comment 17 (Chris Kelley):
Hmm, it has a nice price! Just it seems it has *no* memory slot... (So it would fit better in the Predator.) And I wonder how Mac-specific it is.
Pictures of Mediator in Action : Comment 20 of 49ANN.lu
Posted by Ben Hermans/Hyperion on 04-Sep-2000 22:00 GMT
In reply to Comment 17 (Chris Kelley):
Are you sure this thing fits into a PCI slot and not into some custom Mac slot?
The reference to "PCI" seems to mean that this card is intended for Macs with PCI slots, NOT that the card actually sits on the PCI slot.
Pictures of Mediator in Action : Comment 21 of 49ANN.lu
Posted by Typh00n on 05-Sep-2000 22:00 GMT
In reply to Comment 20 (Ben Hermans/Hyperion):
You're right about that Ben...
But there are PPC cards that are REALLY fitted in PCI slots, take a look at this:
http://www.totalimpact.com/G3_MP.html
http://www.synergymicro.com
They feature memory sockets, up to 512mb SDRAM, etc etc. Pretty cool, but I don't think they're so cheap.
Pictures of Mediator in Action : Comment 22 of 49ANN.lu
Posted by Typh00n on 05-Sep-2000 22:00 GMT
http://www.totalimpact.com
PowerPC™ G4 Available Now
"The PowerPC G4 with its AltiVec™ 128-bit vector unit can deliver in excess of 1GFLOP! We put 4 of them on a single PCI board."
Sounds cool, isn't??? Ok, it's confirmed now, it plugs in a PCI slot, I just wonder how WarpOS will deal with such thing :P
Pictures of Mediator in Action : Comment 23 of 49ANN.lu
Posted by Mart on 05-Sep-2000 22:00 GMT
In reply to Comment 22 (Typh00n):
Any comments from Haage & Partner ?
Maybe we should send them a mail.....
Mart
Pictures of Mediator in Action : Comment 24 of 49ANN.lu
Posted by Anonymous on 05-Sep-2000 22:00 GMT
In reply to Comment 23 (Mart):
The cards from Total Impact start at 2500 USD.
They are not intended for consumers.
Ben Hermans/Hyperion
Pictures of Mediator in Action : Comment 25 of 49ANN.lu
Posted by Mark Olsen on 05-Sep-2000 22:00 GMT
In reply to Comment 24 (Anonymous):
But those who have the money will by it anyways. If they want it, that is :)
I don't know that much about the internal layout of WarpOS, but is it ready for SMP, or would that require too many changes ? Also, it would like another scheduler, preferably one which works like exec's does.
Pictures of Mediator in Action : Comment 26 of 49ANN.lu
Posted by StormLord on 05-Sep-2000 22:00 GMT
In reply to Comment 15 (Frank):
well... I thing that nowdays ppc IS necessary but a 060 not...
I will explain my thought.
040 (coming with ppc boards) is enought for OS functions and programs relating on this.
but ALL new software that NEEDS power is working ONLY on ppcs and I belive that this will be continue as long as the classic Amiga exists..
of course there are some errors in this complexity but thats the way it is .. And if you want your amiga Up to Date you MUST follow...
Yes i agree that there is no much software for PPC because PPC for amiga is new *BUT* All software companys that support the amiga platform nowdays when they want POWER supports PPCs.
Frank hope to see u nad speak for these again. (are u going to come to Salonika this year?)
Pictures of Mediator in Action : Comment 27 of 49ANN.lu
Posted by Sinan Gurkan on 05-Sep-2000 22:00 GMT
Hi
I looked at the pictures, it looks like Mediator needs a ATX-style
PSU (it has a 20-pin power connector)...I have an AT-style PSU in my Micronik Tower, so they should convert ATX-PSUs to Amiga.
Anyone know if there is a guide about converting an ATX psu Amiga ?..it would
be nice if there was some commodity to turn on/off the ATX psu from WB..
Pictures of Mediator in Action : Comment 28 of 49ANN.lu
Posted by XDelusion on 05-Sep-2000 22:00 GMT
I am curious, everyone is talking about those PPC boards that fit in PCI slots...
Well one, does that mean I could in theary run Mac OS on my PeeSea!? And two even if we were able to use those cards on the Amiga, wouldn't it be slowed down by the fact that the PCI slots are not being used at there full speed, without first being plugged directly into an accelerator?
Pictures of Mediator in Action : Comment 29 of 49ANN.lu
Posted by Björn Hagström on 05-Sep-2000 22:00 GMT
In reply to Comment 27 (Sinan Gurkan):
http://www.elbox.com/press/A1240MediatorPCI_&_S3ViRGE_&_Ethernet.jpg
This looks like an AT power connector to me.
/Björn
Pictures of Mediator in Action : Comment 30 of 49ANN.lu
Posted by Martin Baute on 05-Sep-2000 22:00 GMT
In reply to Comment 25 (Mark Olsen):
The problem is probably not (or not only) WarpUP not being "ready for SMP",
but the applications.
Existing applications would not benefit from a multi-CPU system, just like
"Classic" apps don´t benefit from a PPC, because they simply cannot use it.
And the most power-hungry apps today are game ports, most of which aren´t
designed for multi-CPU systems either.
So don´t hold your breath for it, the obstacles for anything from the "Classic"
line are most likely way to high to be even considered, from a business point
of view.
Pictures of Mediator in Action : Comment 31 of 49ANN.lu
Posted by Michael Jantzen on 05-Sep-2000 22:00 GMT
In reply to Comment 22 (Typh00n):
My guess is that a) the Mediator probably has PCI compliancy issues being that it doesn't look like its based on any real PCI chipset... and not to mention B) the totalimpact boards I saw were 64 bit PCI (longer slot) which you usually find on Dell PowerEdge system's and Alpha motherboards.
Not to mention sticking a PowerPC upgrade card into a PCI socket would be like sticking a Turbo board into a Zorro 2/3 socket.
Pictures of Mediator in Action : Comment 32 of 49ANN.lu
Posted by XDelusion on 05-Sep-2000 22:00 GMT
In reply to Comment 29 (Björn Hagström):
That is a AT power supply, that other guy is on crack.
Pictures of Mediator in Action : Comment 33 of 49ANN.lu
Posted by XDelusion on 05-Sep-2000 22:00 GMT
In reply to Comment 29 (Björn Hagström):
That is a AT power supply, that other guy is on crack.
Pictures of Mediator in Action : Comment 34 of 49ANN.lu
Posted by XDelusion on 05-Sep-2000 22:00 GMT
In reply to Comment 29 (Björn Hagström):
That is a AT power supply, that other guy is on crack.
Pictures of Mediator in Action : Comment 35 of 49ANN.lu
Posted by XDelusion on 05-Sep-2000 22:00 GMT
In reply to Comment 34 (XDelusion):
Woops, how did that hapen?! :) Well anyhow...
Pictures of Mediator in Action : Comment 36 of 49ANN.lu
Posted by Mark Olsen on 05-Sep-2000 22:00 GMT
In reply to Comment 28 (XDelusion):
The PCI bus itself is running at full speed. It is just the PCI<->CPU slot bridge that isn't.
Pictures of Mediator in Action : Comment 37 of 49ANN.lu
Posted by Mark Olsen on 05-Sep-2000 22:00 GMT
In reply to Comment 30 (Martin Baute):
Well, i can easily encode multiple MP3's or play mpeg's while doing other stuff on the other CPU's, PPC raytracers could easily be modified to render a frame per CPU etc etc. The hardest part _IS_ to make an SMP kernel.
Pictures of Mediator in Action : Comment 38 of 49ANN.lu
Posted by Mark Olsen on 05-Sep-2000 22:00 GMT
In reply to Comment 31 (Michael Jantzen):
Except that the PCI bus is a hell of a lot faster than the Zorro 2 4MB/sec. And how many things on the motherboard is needed anyways ? We are starting to get a computer based around a PCI bridge. Cool :)
Pictures of Mediator in Action : Comment 39 of 49ANN.lu
Posted by Mark Olsen on 05-Sep-2000 22:00 GMT
In reply to Comment 37 (Mark Olsen):
Well, maybe not the hardest part, but it isn't easy, and it is required for anything SMP at all.
Pictures of Mediator in Action : Comment 40 of 49ANN.lu
Posted by Michael Jantzen on 06-Sep-2000 22:00 GMT
In reply to Comment 38 (Mark Olsen):
Yeah, but just because its PCI doesn't make it faster. You're forgetting that this board is basically just a Zorro2 <-> PCI bridge.
I had a 5x86-133 (486 really) PCI motherboard once - it had PCI and it was a lot faster then ISA, but it was at least 4 times slower then even the old Intel VX/HX430 chipsets.
Pictures of Mediator in Action : Comment 41 of 49ANN.lu
Posted by Typh00n on 06-Sep-2000 22:00 GMT
In reply to Comment 24 (Anonymous):
$2500 ??? Really too expensive..
But I found another crappy CPU card that fits on a PCI slot, this time cheaper:
"The result is an affordable, state-of-the-art upgrade solution that delivers new PC performance via an easy-to-install, standard PCI card."
http://www.evergreennow.com/accelerapci/
It costs around $500, but instead of a PPC cpu, it uses an Intel Pentium Celeron at 533MHz :)
Weird, isn't? :)
Pictures of Mediator in Action : Comment 42 of 49ANN.lu
Posted by Amifan on 06-Sep-2000 22:00 GMT
In reply to Comment 40 (Michael Jantzen):
This is not true...what he ment was that the amiga hardware is only needed for booting the system and compatibility with the old software....
Add a PCI based PPC accelerator with on board memory sockets and the PPC card will have the full PCI bandwidth available. The PPC can theoreticaly communicate with the PCI soundcard/GFXcard/network card with the full 132MByte/s
So after booting you can have a PPC amiga with 3 (4 minus 1 of the cpu board) PCI slots and a slower but still faster as zorroIII interface to the amiga mainboard.
So from a CPU board point of view there is a 66Mhz or 100Mhz bridge to the fast SDRAM on the CARD. And three PCI cards and a classic-amiga-on-a-card fitted in the PCI bridge (amiga expansion slot. This card has his own 2 cpu's (BlizzardPPC) and as an extra bonus it runs the software for the mediator too.
There are also some restriction: The HDD interface is on the wrong site of the bridge.
You can add a cheap PCI UDMA 100MB/s IDE card or even an UWIDE3 scsi PCI card , but this means the occupation of another PCI slot.
So the best sollution is a an amiga-like solution like a scsi ot udma interface on the PCI CPU board, but I don't know if any of those exsists.
Remember most of the mediator customers wants a PCI gfx card ( I allready brought a voodoo 3 3000 for just $150) a 100Mbit ethernet card, a faster cpu (G3/G4 card) and then there's only one slot left for a soundcard or a HDD interface card or a TV card.
Pictures of Mediator in Action : Comment 43 of 49ANN.lu
Posted by StormLord on 06-Sep-2000 22:00 GMT
I don't want a CO-processor AGAIN on my migy....
It is silly to run software on the old cpu just to *start* the other on pci..
I just want a new classic processor board with a REALLY fast CPU like G4 with an add-on pci board (and even agp)
I also want the board comms with DIMM sockets ('cause I cant find anymore simms)
it is simple..
ofcourse there might be a completely new solution (say me BOXER)
But....
Any develop are *WELCOME*
Pictures of Mediator in Action : Comment 44 of 49ANN.lu
Posted by Michael Jantzen on 06-Sep-2000 22:00 GMT
In reply to Comment 42 (Amifan):
Yeah - but there's a big difference between the amiga's cpu fast slot (like with PowerUP) and a PCI socket. Why would an adapted Zorro slot be able to do something my PC's (duron 650/Abit KT7) native PCI certified PCI 2.1 compliant system can't?
What your talking about are single board computers - and unfortunately dood you'll need one of those backplane cases (which will cost you well over 1200$) to use one of those.
Let me theorize for a few seconds - I'm guessing this PCI board for the 1200 is really just the logical part of the system that allow you to interface a S3 ViRGE like the CV643d (which is in every way a PCI chipset) to a zorro 3 slot. I don't see why its not possible (I mean after all they were adding PCI devices to the Picasso 4...). Thing is - its not a fully fledged pci slot. Its probably not intelligent, and I'm guessing that PCI compliancy has to be written into the Amiga driver directly - which is not how the Intel PCI chipsets do that.
Quite honestly - how do you map IRQ's from the PCI device to the Amiga?
Pictures of Mediator in Action : Comment 45 of 49ANN.lu
Posted by ehaines on 06-Sep-2000 22:00 GMT
In reply to Comment 31 (Michael Jantzen):
: Not to mention sticking a PowerPC upgrade card into a PCI socket would be like : sticking a Turbo board into a Zorro 2/3 socket.
Which is exactly what the Escena PPC board does (plug into a Zorro 3 socket,
that is).
But then it isn't exactly in production (yet?)....
Pictures of Mediator in Action : Comment 46 of 49ANN.lu
Posted by Mark Olsen on 06-Sep-2000 22:00 GMT
In reply to Comment 45 (ehaines):
According to the Escena homepage, the Brainstormer has been out since end of '99 ! Incredible.
Pictures of Mediator in Action : Comment 47 of 49ANN.lu
Posted by Amifan on 06-Sep-2000 22:00 GMT
In reply to Comment 44 (Michael Jantzen):
What a b*llshit! Your probably disappointed that an amiga can be faster then your duron with a fast bus system too...
You can use G3 cards in a PC PCI slot BTW. Why not? just write a driver and make sure that you can write a MAC emulator which uses the beast.
What do you expext??? A couple of pci slots on a PCB???? there's a complete firmware on the thing that handles the IRQ mapping......there's probably some kind of PCI.library or PCI.device too which recognizes the PCI cards......just write a driver for the library......as simple as it can be....
Sorry, but isn't a Powerup board or another accelerator a computer-on-a-board too??
The PCI G3/G4 just fits in another slot with one huge difference: it's connected directly to the PCI bus and therefore has access to the full 132MB/s bandwidth of the PCI bus. People like you forget that booting LinuxPPC or MorphOS is done by the 68k too....Morphos disables the 68k and reboots, LinuxPPC uses the 68k for some drivers.
What about booting the amiga with the 68K, install the libs and reboot like Morphos does (OS35 has to reboot anyway to apply some patches), and run a 68K emulation.
$2000!??? yeah sure....were not talking about quad G4's here. There are much cheaper PCI accelerators available....but they don't ship all with DIMM sockets....
Read the Elbox announcement?? They said they would offer a much better sollution then the DIMM socket on the busboard (Predator).
Just wait and see...instead of whining that you don't want this to be possible because it would be a beast which leaves your Duron far behind in speed.......
Pictures of Mediator in Action : Comment 48 of 49ANN.lu
Posted by Mark Olsen on 06-Sep-2000 22:00 GMT
In reply to Comment 47 (Amifan):
> like you forget that booting LinuxPPC or MorphOS is done by the 68k too
> ....Morphos disables the 68k and reboots, LinuxPPC uses the 68k for some
> drivers. What about booting the amiga with the 68K, install the libs
> and reboot like Morphos does (OS35 has to reboot anyway to apply some
> patches), and run a 68K emulation.
Linux/APUS isn't using the 68K for anything except for boot stuff.
Pictures of Mediator in Action : Comment 49 of 49ANN.lu
Posted by tronman on 07-Sep-2000 22:00 GMT
Hey
Actually, irq's and dma's are X86 ONLY!!! The PCI bus itself is not limited and actually doesn't need these to function in and of itself. Its autoconfig mechanism is more akin to Zorro than to ISA. I said akin to, not the same. It is actually more thorough than Zorro, but most PC expansion card makers don't really use all of what's actually there in the PCI configuration space. So I don't think that IRQ's and DMA's are the big issue here. PCI is actually not limited at all by the nr. of IRQ's in an X86 PC. It was designed to be processor neutral, it can work with any architecture. What you see on the PC is X86/M$ legacy based ability to be expanded, not the limitations of PCI.
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