| [Forum] Any interest in Zorro cards? | ANN.lu |
| Posted on 16-Dec-2001 01:32 GMT by Ian Stedman | 147 comments
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I am currently toying with the idea of designing a Zorro card for the Amiga. What would the interest be in a card with the following:
10/100 mbit Ethernet, 2 X High speed serial ports, 1 X ECP/EPP parallel port & IrDa?
There is some preliminary information on my website
I am also looking at the possibility of adding a Zorro to ISA bridge and making the card work in Zorro 2 and Zorro 3 Amigas.
Are there any other features you would like?
If you are interested, please email me. If there is enough interest I will look at making some prototypes and if feasible, a short production run.
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| Any interest in Zorro cards? : Comment 1 of 147 | ANN.lu |
| Posted by Jaeson Koszarsky on 16-Dec-2001 02:44 GMT | My first request for a zorro3 card is something that isn't
available.
A Z3 memory card that accepts the cheap off the shelf sticks
currently available. The 72pin simms are past their prime
and the current memory capacities of the accelerator cards
are too small.
For another card wish, USB support. |
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| Any interest in Zorro cards? : Comment 2 of 147 | ANN.lu |
| Posted by Francois Prowse on 16-Dec-2001 03:21 GMT | Well, a 100mbs ethernet card would be great. However the pricing would have
to be viable also :)
Keep us posted here!
Cheers
Francois |
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| Any interest in Zorro cards? : Comment 3 of 147 | ANN.lu |
| Posted by Harald Frank on 16-Dec-2001 04:07 GMT | Hello Ian,
tell us with what kind of dma controller woll you do this ?
100mbit nic do not work withount dma, and ecp needs it also
to get full speed over it.
afaik, there is no current non pci 100mbit nic available, so
what is your solution here ?
Best regards
VMC Harald Frank |
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| Any interest in Zorro cards? : Comment 4 of 147 | ANN.lu |
| Posted by Mad Dr. Z on 16-Dec-2001 08:19 GMT | | I would love to see a ZII card that could ge |
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| Any interest in Zorro cards? : Comment 5 of 147 | ANN.lu |
| Posted by Mad Dr. Z on 16-Dec-2001 08:19 GMT | | I would love to see a ZII card that could ge |
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| Any interest in Zorro cards? : Comment 6 of 147 | ANN.lu |
| Posted by Anonymous on 16-Dec-2001 08:27 GMT | In reply to Comment 3 (Harald Frank):
I beg to differ |
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| Any interest in Zorro cards? : Comment 7 of 147 | ANN.lu |
| Posted by Steve on 16-Dec-2001 08:33 GMT | We need a true usb .Not the hybrid that is with pcs now.
What is needed most is a powerpc G4/G6 card. It would also use the current ram.
This way having the power to go on ahead. Also the same type of board but with multiple coldfire chips or 68060s. Personally I would make the Powerpc boards and make the others on special order. |
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| Any interest in Zorro cards? : Comment 8 of 147 | ANN.lu |
| Posted by Trizt on 16-Dec-2001 08:43 GMT | | It would be nice to see a such product for the Amiga, lets hope that all those uae users who claims being supporting Amiga, buying your card. |
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| Any interest in Zorro cards? : Comment 9 of 147 | ANN.lu |
| Posted by Grzegorz Kraszewski on 16-Dec-2001 09:52 GMT | In reply to Comment 1 (Jaeson Koszarsky):
Well and You have 512 MB of this modern incredibly fast SDRAM DIMM-s, but what? Memory transfer is 10 MB/s? What a crap really! ;-). While your outdated SIMM-s on CSPPC give you 100 MB/s... Sad but true - Zorro III is far too slow to handle additional memory. Even VM on UW-SCSI disk can outperform it... |
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| Any interest in Zorro cards? : Comment 10 of 147 | ANN.lu |
| Posted by Bill Hoggett on 16-Dec-2001 10:19 GMT | Where is the market for such a card?
With so many PCI bus solutions now available, and new hardware supposedly round the corner, why develop yet another I/O card for Zorro slots? Unless you're talking about some kind of study project, I don't see the point.
I have a towered A4000 and a towered A1200, neither of which has PCI at the moment, but I don't envisage myself ever buying another Zorro card. |
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| Any interest in Zorro cards? : Comment 11 of 147 | ANN.lu |
| Posted by Björn Hagström on 16-Dec-2001 10:26 GMT | In reply to Comment 10 (Bill Hoggett):
Perhaps he should consider building a PCI-card with all those features instead then :) Who knows, maybe some linux or windows users might find it interresting as well.
/Björn |
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| Any interest in Zorro cards? : Comment 12 of 147 | ANN.lu |
| Posted by Ian Stedman on 16-Dec-2001 10:38 GMT | In reply to Comment 3 (Harald Frank):
In Reply to Harold's queries
> tell us with what kind of dma controller woll you do this ?
I can easily implement a DMA controller in VHDL. I've done similar things before.
> 100mbit nic do not work withount dma, and ecp needs it also
> to get full speed over it.
I've interfaced 100 mbit Ethernet to a CPU without DMA but it is slow.
The main bottleneck is the Zorro III bus, realisable speeds are only 12-14 mbytes/second.
100 Mbit Ethernet would use 12.5 mbyte/second.
> afaik, there is no current non pci 100mbit nic available, so
> what is your solution here ?
I know of 4 solutions. On my website I state that I will be using the SMSC 91C111,
an all in one 10/100 ethernet chip.
Bye,
Ian |
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| Any interest in Zorro cards? : Comment 13 of 147 | ANN.lu |
| Posted by Elwood on 16-Dec-2001 10:39 GMT | | There's no interest at all for this, I'm afraid... |
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| Any interest in Zorro cards? : Comment 14 of 147 | ANN.lu |
| Posted by Ian Stedman on 16-Dec-2001 10:45 GMT | In reply to Comment 1 (Jaeson Koszarsky):
In response to Jason's comments,
>My first request for a zorro3 card is something that isn't
> available.
> A Z3 memory card that accepts the cheap off the shelf sticks
> currently available. The 72pin simms are past their prime
> and the current memory capacities of the accelerator cards
> are too small.
> For another card wish, USB support.
I have looked at the feasibility of using an SDRAM controller, which would allow
the use of DIMMS. I have the VHDL model I need for a controller but there are
some technical issues.
1) The current Zorro 3 bus is too slow, 12-15 mbyte/second. SDRAM can transfer
400-600 mbyte/second with overheads, from experience.
2) DIMMS have a 64 bit bus interface, the Zorro 3 bus is 32 bit, so I would need
a fast multiplexer and extra control logic for this.
3) The SDRAM controllers I have are designed for one memory type. I need to
be able to auto detect the DIMM type and configure accordingly. At the present
time, I do not know how to do this.
Relating to USB.
I am looking at this. I am in the process of learning about it and I hope to have a solution soon.
Bye,
Ian |
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| Any interest in Zorro cards? : Comment 15 of 147 | ANN.lu |
| Posted by Anonymous on 16-Dec-2001 11:05 GMT | In reply to Comment 13 (Elwood):
Ian, take note of Elwood. Apparently, he speaks for everyone. |
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| Any interest in Zorro cards? : Comment 16 of 147 | ANN.lu |
| Posted by Ralph Schmidt on 16-Dec-2001 11:18 GMT | In reply to Comment 12 (Ian Stedman):
Ian, Zorro3 DMA is a nightmare...it's not about a normal dma buscontroller
but about design problems/not documented behaviour of Zorro3.
Then you have to deal with the general problems like Buster11 locks up
with more than 1 busmaster.
That means if somebody has a 4091,Fastlane,DVB it will lock when you
add your 2nd dma busmaster.
So you better forget that idea...you may do some zorro3 PIO ethernet
controller with a lot fifo to work around the lack of DMA.
But if all that is worth it...i have my doubts.
That only 3 Zorro3 DMA units were ever developed for the amiga
should speak for itself. |
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| Any interest in Zorro cards? : Comment 17 of 147 | ANN.lu |
| Posted by John Block on 16-Dec-2001 11:45 GMT | I'm looking towards the next gen amiga where hopefully I'll most of
the extras included in the box, without patches, workarounds etc.
Certainly not spending money on something with a life expectancy of a
few months.
The battery on my accellerator has gone, it's soldered on and as the
board is heat sensitive would need expert treatment.
Not even bothering about this.
Suggest you do something cool to go into the next generation amigas.
Maybe a pc on plug in board. |
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| Any interest in Zorro cards? : Comment 18 of 147 | ANN.lu |
| Posted by 4pLaY on 16-Dec-2001 12:19 GMT | | Hmm only thing i see as very interesting is a 100mbit nett card! and it should be both for zorro2 and 3 if it can be done :). But the best thing would be if someone designed a pci card for A2000 machines also :-). |
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| Any interest in Zorro cards? : Comment 19 of 147 | ANN.lu |
| Posted by Anonymous on 16-Dec-2001 13:19 GMT | In reply to Comment 18 (4pLaY):
Go buy the Wildfire then.. |
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| Any interest in Zorro cards? : Comment 20 of 147 | ANN.lu |
| Posted by Anonymous on 16-Dec-2001 13:57 GMT | A super expansion card is exactly what is needed. The addition of USB would pretty
much bring Zorro Amigas up to date on all popular I/O possibilties. |
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| Any interest in Zorro cards? : Comment 21 of 147 | ANN.lu |
| Posted by Anonymous on 16-Dec-2001 14:29 GMT | Ethernet100 with USB2 would be great... an UDMA IDE and clockports would come handy too. An IDE interface seems quite easy to add (even if it doesn't autoboot or has dma it would be useful) Take a look at the A500IDE project in Aminet. I say usb2 because if you use zorro3 it would allow the use of higher speeds (in contrast with the clockport usb interfaces, which only allow you to use slow speeds)
I think that a card with UDMA IDE, Ethernet100 and USB2 would be interesting even for those who have PCIs because these cards only have few pcis and that would free some slots. I wouldn't like to waste pcis in a usb2 interface for example. Let's say you buy a MediatorZ3/Prometheus and you plug Voodoo3, a TV card, a SoundCard and you want to add a g3/g4 accelerator (a normal SharkPPC) you will not be able to add an ethernet100, ide, dvd card, symbios scsi, usb card... if you free pci slots it always helps.
You also talk about an isa-zorro bridge... it would be nice, but the price should be quite cheap due to compete with pci interfaces. I think that it should include something that cannot be plugged in a isa slot to make it interesting. Maybe usb? autoboot ide? IrDA?
Or maybe making an all-in-one zorro2/3 card with:
-usb2 (slow speed mode for zorro2)
-isa bridge (with dma support it would help to use isa soundcards)
-ethernet 100 (10Mb/s for zorro2, I know ethernet 10 isa are available but it's still better than nothing and maybe it may make use of dma and the isa cards not)
-autoboot udma ide ports (slow speed for zorro2 but still useable)
-IrDA
-A1200 compatible clockports
For the isa bridge:
-If you remove the ide ports would it be too hard to autoboot from the multi I/O cards?
-The multi I/O card may be fitted in one of the isa slots.
-A sound card like 16/vibra/AWE32/64 isa may be fitted in one of the isa slots.
-Graphic cards... erm they are slow (as zorro2) but if the card allowed overclocking the isa bus it would give easily 9mb/s in Zorro3 (like a Pixel64). Making a graphic driver would be difficult, finding the right svga card wouldn't be very easy.
-make an isa.library/device or something similar to code drivers...
the second option if you go zorro2 only would be an ultra cheap isa bridge with IrDA, USB2 and some A1200 clockports. There should be drivers for Ethernet 10, multiIO (including ide, if it autobooted it would be great) and sound cards.
I say ultracheap because if you take out the udma ide ports and the ethernet100 it will not be much special.
If you go zorro3 and decide to take out the isa bridge you should include the serial and parallel ports. |
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| Any interest in Zorro cards? : Comment 22 of 147 | ANN.lu |
| Posted by Brent Santin on 16-Dec-2001 14:30 GMT | Actually, what I would like to see is some sort of adaptor for the AmigaONE and Zico spec computers that will allow people to use old Zorro II and III cards with the AmigaOne and Amiga OS4.5 to 5.0+....
This will allow people who have cool cards like the Repulse audio card, Sunrize AD516, OneStopMusicShop, MaestroPro, Delphina, and other neat hardware such as graphics capture cards, (perhaps even the Video Toaster) etc. to use them with the AmigaOne.....(of course these cards are slower than modern ISA cards, but they often have advanced features you can't get on run-of-the-mill PC cards).
Would it be difficult to make such a thing?
Brent |
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| Any interest in Zorro cards? : Comment 23 of 147 | ANN.lu |
| Posted by anon on 16-Dec-2001 14:53 GMT | In reply to Comment 3 (Harald Frank):
Herr Frank, wie wäre es einfach ihn Privat anzumailen und ihm Hilfe anzubieten statt öffentlich den Dave Haynie raushängen zulassen?
Sie sind bestimmt mit mir einer Meinung, das das viel effektiver wäre als darauf zu hoffen vielleicht mal irgendwann hier in den Kommentaren eine Antwort zu erhalten.
Danke. |
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| Any interest in Zorro cards? : Comment 24 of 147 | ANN.lu |
| Posted by Ger on 16-Dec-2001 16:08 GMT | In reply to Comment 23 (anon):
Hi Jens! |
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| Any interest in Zorro cards? : Comment 25 of 147 | ANN.lu |
| Posted by redrumloa on 16-Dec-2001 16:46 GMT | I think with the current state of Amiga hardware, quality zorroIII cards are still
VERY important! I have a Prometheus, but in the near future it looks like all 4
slots will be full. I like your idea of I/O and 10/100 ethernet on one card.
However to get 100Mb you'd have to use DMA right? I understand that DMA on Zorro
III is a nightmare. The only DMA board I have ever tried on my A3000 didn't work
at all(A4091). If you could pull off this, my hat will be off to you:-)
Then again if you really think you could tackle DMA and make it work, what I'd
like even more is either a ZorroIII UDMA IDE card, or UW-SCSI that would DMA in
the A3000. That is something that does not exist at all. The Power FLyer4000 IDE
card does not dma, and eats up 100% CPU load during transfers, no good. There are
no UW-SCSI Zorro cards, the closest thing is the SCSI-II A4091, but like I said
it does not work at all on the A3000. I would buy one of these boards if made.
Regards,
redrumloa |
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| Any interest in Zorro cards? : Comment 26 of 147 | ANN.lu |
| Posted by Steff on 16-Dec-2001 16:48 GMT | In reply to Comment 22 (Brent Santin):
Why not just network your old amiga tower solution to your new Amiga One instead.
Save you a lot of trouble yourself and even more for developers to concentrate
on more modern design solutions.
:) |
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| Any interest in Zorro cards? : Comment 27 of 147 | ANN.lu |
| Posted by Ian Chapman on 16-Dec-2001 18:04 GMT | In reply to Comment 1 (Jaeson Koszarsky):
I would have to agree with this. One card I would really LOVE would be a Zorro III
memory card which supported DIMMs. I would definately buy one and Im sure a lot of
people would. It would be great to be able to whack 4 x 256MB DIMMs onto a ZIII card.
I don't know how practical or feasible it would be to do, but if one is released it would sell |
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| Any interest in Zorro cards? : Comment 28 of 147 | ANN.lu |
| Posted by Ian Chapman on 16-Dec-2001 18:07 GMT | In reply to Comment 9 (Grzegorz Kraszewski):
The issue regarding the speed of DIMMs for the Amiga is a moot point for me
and probably a lot of people. Of course the Amiga can't use the RAM anywhere
near it's maximum throughput, but what I do care about is being able to add
large amounts of RAM a damn sight more cheaply than SIMMs. There may be
technical reasons why it's not practical to use DIMMs and if so, fair enough,
but if it is possible then bring it on! |
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| Any interest in Zorro cards? : Comment 29 of 147 | ANN.lu |
| Posted by Steve on 16-Dec-2001 18:19 GMT | In reply to Comment 9 (Grzegorz Kraszewski):
The zorro can . it just wont use the speed given to use becasuse it cant. If that is what you meant, fine. Otherwise it works for both and its true on the pc more then the AMIGA . Just make a beter zorro card/slot and it will fix the problem. The pc you need to fix the whole system which is impossible considering the current technology with the pc. |
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| Any interest in Zorro cards? : Comment 30 of 147 | ANN.lu |
| Posted by Steve on 16-Dec-2001 18:25 GMT | In reply to Comment 10 (Bill Hoggett):
Zorro is slower but better .One zorro type two slot handles 4 pci and 2 agp slots.Get one pci to do that. You cant. That configuration is what eyetech is making. Then there is the point earlier that AMIga people wanted powerpc zorro soultions and still do. Pci and AGp open up a whole can of worms. We are just begining to see it.
Slow and steady wins the RACE . Its really not that much slower thankfully to the AMIGA itself. |
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| Any interest in Zorro cards? : Comment 31 of 147 | ANN.lu |
| Posted by Brian on 16-Dec-2001 18:27 GMT | In reply to Comment 13 (Elwood):
elwood go back to the rock you hae crawled out from . You havent read any of the posts yet have you. Plus not to mention one is from VMC .
So get a life and go back to your pc world. |
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| Any interest in Zorro cards? : Comment 32 of 147 | ANN.lu |
| Posted by Brain on 16-Dec-2001 18:29 GMT | In reply to Comment 15 (Anonymous):
NO you take note of everyone else there are only two of you that can't seem to grasp the idea that zorro is still great and people want to buy them including VMC. |
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| Any interest in Zorro cards? : Comment 33 of 147 | ANN.lu |
| Posted by DanDude on 16-Dec-2001 18:32 GMT | | Ethernet and 2 USB ports is a must, please. |
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| Any interest in Zorro cards? : Comment 34 of 147 | ANN.lu |
| Posted by Bill Hoggett on 16-Dec-2001 18:33 GMT | In reply to Comment 30 (Steve):
That's completely wrong. The Eyetech AmigaOne board is a self-contained motherboard which connects to the A1200 using the latter as the expansion board. Since the only data going through the Z2 slot is calls to the I/O and AGA chipset, the bottleneck isn't too significant. The Z2 slot does NOT handle "4 PCI and 2 AGP slots". The CPU, memory and PCI/AGP slots are all on the AmigaOne side of the Z2 bus, and don't have to use it.
Where did you get this "can of worms" business from? Shawn the bus arch troll? |
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| Any interest in Zorro cards? : Comment 35 of 147 | ANN.lu |
| Posted by Steve on 16-Dec-2001 18:42 GMT | In reply to Comment 17 (John Block):
It, pci/agp is not an alternative . There aren't any Agp slots except on a few cards . So right there these weak idea is still behind the times in the pc world. That world is stil behind the tech times. The pci/agp solution didnt get to where it was today becasue of it being better. It got there becasue it was set to open source by IBM. It was orginal on thier mainframes. AMIGA and Atari didnt open source thiers. If Amiga and everyone else had , AMIGA would still be way ahead. Since AMiga did the foolish thing of being closed source we are where we are today. The people that started off with Amiga and went to pc becasue they said there was software for the pc when there wasnt ie 95 ,98 . Those kind where bought ought and like you still some are being bought out . This might include Amiga. We will find out. WE will also find out who deserves to carry the name AMIGAONE soon. |
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| Any interest in Zorro cards? : Comment 36 of 147 | ANN.lu |
| Posted by Brian on 16-Dec-2001 18:54 GMT | In reply to Comment 16 (Ralph Schmidt):
Ralph it is much less a nightmare then pci/agp. Plus the fact you are wrong zorro 4 was made and a zorro5 was going to be made,but legal issues entailed. The reason why more werent done is becasue people like you didnt understand it and or belived the wintel community saying that the answer was pci/agp. That answer if you know anything is a faslehood its not even a shorterm answer .
The truth is out there and it doesnt come from the pc world. |
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| Any interest in Zorro cards? : Comment 37 of 147 | ANN.lu |
| Posted by Brian on 16-Dec-2001 18:56 GMT | In reply to Comment 22 (Brent Santin):
Yeah brian, like real-time and mutltisking capabilties.
Right on target. |
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| Any interest in Zorro cards? : Comment 38 of 147 | ANN.lu |
| Posted by Brian on 16-Dec-2001 18:56 GMT | In reply to Comment 22 (Brent Santin):
DOAH meant.. Brent |
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| Any interest in Zorro cards? : Comment 39 of 147 | ANN.lu |
| Posted by Anonymous on 16-Dec-2001 18:58 GMT | In reply to Comment 26 (Steff):
naw the so called amigaone that you speak o is a mac clone plain and simple.
besides he was talking about zero wait states and multitasking and the maigaone you will lose all of this. |
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| Any interest in Zorro cards? : Comment 40 of 147 | ANN.lu |
| Posted by Teemu I. Yliselä on 16-Dec-2001 19:06 GMT | In reply to Comment 34 (Bill Hoggett):
He is shawn. The guy's come up with another 2 new personalities it seems... |
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| Any interest in Zorro cards? : Comment 41 of 147 | ANN.lu |
| Posted by priest on 16-Dec-2001 19:33 GMT | I think Z3 is "dead".
- there are not that many z3 capable Amigas
- some of those z3 Amigas have the buggy buster soldered in the motherboard
- even if someone would implement a bug free z3 motherboard, it could not compete with PCI/AGP bus in price or in performance.
And z2 is too slow for many moder needs. But still a lot of z2 Amigas exist. Almost "healthy" niche exists.
What I would most like to see for z2 Amigas are some kind of adaptor cards for other bus technologies, to enable the use of ISA/PCI/etc. cards.
Also BeBox's GEEK port for z2 -bus Amigas would be nice.
I really have no hope for seeing any state of the art / revolutionary Amiga specific HW in near future, but sometimes it is fun to dream:
Perhaps the Amiga developer community could spec a future bus standard.
Something that would be more flexible than the current ones.
Future motherboards could then have the most common PC standard slots for generic cards and the special "ADC" slots for simple low cost cards, DIY cards as well as for some bandwith hungry cards.
When the bus spec is done, we could have Z3/PCI adaptor cards to enable the development of future cards and drivers. As well as enable Z3 / PCI slot owners to use those as well...
I bet Dave Haynie could have a few ideas...
Imaginary motherboard:
1 AGP slot
3 PCI slots
1 ADC EC slot (low performance (8/16bit), reliable, simple, great for HW geeks & DIY, expandable with ricer card)
1 ADC HP slot (high performance 128bit, possible to use also as CPU card slot, expandable with ricer card) |
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| Any interest in Zorro cards? : Comment 42 of 147 | ANN.lu |
| Posted by jonas on 16-Dec-2001 20:08 GMT | | A NLE? |
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| Any interest in Zorro cards? : Comment 43 of 147 | ANN.lu |
| Posted by gunnar on 16-Dec-2001 20:10 GMT | | gunnar var her |
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| Any interest in Zorro cards? : Comment 44 of 147 | ANN.lu |
| Posted by Amifan on 16-Dec-2001 20:20 GMT | In reply to Comment 36 (Brian):
AFAIK ZorroIV is just a split up A1200 edge connection..... |
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| Any interest in Zorro cards? : Comment 45 of 147 | ANN.lu |
| Posted by Bill Hoggett on 16-Dec-2001 20:28 GMT | In reply to Comment 40 (Teemu I. Yliselä):
Shawn, Martin ,Brian and Steve, all residing in one tiny mind. It must be really crowded in there - no wonder he's having trouble keeping track of who he's replying to, he can't even figure out who he is.
Oh well, at least he's entertaining, even if utterly stupid. |
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| Any interest in Zorro cards? : Comment 46 of 147 | ANN.lu |
| Posted by Henrik Mikael Kristensen on 16-Dec-2001 21:00 GMT | I don't know if this is too far off topic, but since the discussion includes bus-architectures, I thought, I'd give a link to the HyperTransport architecture to be used in the next generation Macs and coming PC's. I think it's going to be very interesting. Maybe that'll satisfy Shawn/Steve/whoever. :-)
Read about it at http://www.hypertransport.org/ |
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| Any interest in Zorro cards? : Comment 47 of 147 | ANN.lu |
| Posted by priest on 16-Dec-2001 21:20 GMT | Anbother grazy idea...
Some people might want to use their nostalgic Z3/Z2 cards even though their "amiga-like" OS runs on pegasos (or on some else future motherboard).
Would it be possible to make SCSI-Zorro adapter/bridge?
You could then have the zorro busboard on another tower box that is connected to next gen box via SCSI bus. |
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| Any interest in Zorro cards? : Comment 48 of 147 | ANN.lu |
| Posted by Anonymous on 16-Dec-2001 21:27 GMT | In reply to Comment 21 (Anonymous):
>I think that a card with UDMA IDE, Ethernet100 and USB2 would be interesting even for
>those who have PCIs because these cards only have few pcis and that would free some slots.
>
Sounds like the SuperI/O PCI card DCE wants to release. |
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| Any interest in Zorro cards? : Comment 49 of 147 | ANN.lu |
| Posted by Ian Stedman on 16-Dec-2001 21:29 GMT | Taking a few comments onboard, here is my reply.
1) Cost. I need to get some manufacture costs but the 3 chips I need will
cost £40/$55. Connectors and other chips, another £5-10 ($7-$14).
2) Zorro2/3 compatibility. I am working on the interface design and within the
next month I should know what I can implement. I will investigate the Zorro 3
DMA issue.
3) USB. I am looking at this, using a Microcontroller I can probbly add USB.
4) Make a PCI card. I could not compete with any of the far east manufacturers on cost.
5) Clock ports. I have yet to find some timing information on this port. If I do, it is
feasible but unlikely.
6) Updated feature set. The information on my website needs an update. I am using a
single chip, PC Style 'Super IO'. This give the following:
2.88 Mbyte floppy (do these still exist?)
2 x 16C550 serial ports upto 430 KBaud + IrDa support,
ECP/EPP parallel port,
Standard mode IDE port.
All this in a $7 chip.
7) Zorro to ISA bridge.
The Super IO chip has an ISA interface so I will need to implement an ISA
controller, so I just buffer it for the ISA sockets in Zorro amigas.
8) Software. I wrote a working ethernet driver and IP stack in 2 weeks once
so this is not a problem. I am prepared to make the software source available.
In summary.
I will continue my research and intial development.
I realise I need a competitive price, I will have a good idea once I get some manufacturing quotes. |
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| Any interest in Zorro cards? : Comment 50 of 147 | ANN.lu |
| Posted by Anonymous on 16-Dec-2001 21:30 GMT | In reply to Comment 35 (Steve):
>There aren't any Agp slots except on a few cards .
>
You are such a troll and don't even know what you are talking about.
Do you actually _know_ what AGP means? I guess not... |
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