Dalamar@cup.portal.com (E H Mahler) (10/19/88)
Has anybody tried the BusExPander from Bill's Boards (distributed by Comp-u-save)? It claims to be an expansion board with at least 6 Amiga 2000 style slots and 6 IBM style slots. This configuration can be expanded to 8, I believe, and is supposed to work on the Amiga 500 and 1000. It doesn't have the 86-pin co-processor or video slot that the 2000 has. It comes as a kit and is to be installed in a baby AT case with one of those whopper power supplies. Is this actually fully compatible? Would it be trustworthy? How about some technical input? Dalamar Portal: Dalamar UUCP: ..!SUN!PORTAL!CUP.PORTAL.COM!DALAMAR (or) E H Mahler
mp1u+@andrew.cmu.edu (Michael Portuesi) (10/20/88)
> *Excerpts from ext.nn.comp.sys.amiga: 19-Oct-88 BUSEXPANDER from Bill's* > *Boards E H Mahler@cup.portal.co (645)* > Has anybody tried the BusExPander from Bill's Boards (distributed > by Comp-u-save)? It claims to be an expansion board with at least > 6 Amiga 2000 style slots and 6 IBM style slots. This configuration can > be expanded to 8, I believe, and is supposed to work on the Amiga > 500 and 1000. It doesn't have the 86-pin co-processor or video slot > that the 2000 has. It comes as a kit and is to be installed in a > baby AT case with one of those whopper power supplies. > Is this actually fully compatible? Would it be trustworthy? > How about some technical input? Included in this message is an excerpt of a review of the BusExpander from "Ahoy! AmigaUser", a consumer-oriented Amiga mag. Printed without permission. BTW, the Subsystem 1000 from Pacific Peripherals is slated to be introduced in "mid-december" according to the spokesperson from Pacific Peripherals. If you have an A1000 (like me) and are looking to use A2000 cards, this may be the only game in town (especially if the 2000-and-1 box never gets made). Quote from review: > We tried the BusExpander on both the Amiga 1000 and Amiga 500 using the > expansion cards we had on hand. The electrical slot order in the BusExpander > is opposite the arrangement used in the Amiga 2000. In the BusExpander, the > first Amiga 2000 slot is to the left. This is important, as some peripherals, > such as the Commodore A2090 DMA controller, should be installed in the first > Amiga 2000 slot. > With the Amiga 1000 we installed a Bridgeboard in slot number 1 followed by a > Pacific Peripherals OverDrive DMA hard disk controller and a Commodore 2 MB > RAM card. We tried moving the OverDrive card to the higher numbered slots but > were unable to get it to work there. This arrangement left us with three > usable IBM expansion slots, one of the AT style and two of the XT style. > According to Bill's Boards, we could have placed the Bridgeboard in any > overlapping slot and we still would have been able to install Amiga 2000 > boards on either side of it. This could have let us put the OverDrive is slot > 1 and the Bridgeboard in slot 3, leaving up to four slots open for IBM > peripherals and four slots for additional Amiga 2000 peripherals. > We then substituted a Supra DMA hard disk controller card for the OverDrive > card and found that it would work in any of the expansion slots. As a final > test we installed a C Ltd aMega 1 MB RAM expander with pass through between > the Amiga 1000 and the BusExpander, but we were unable to get this arrangement > to function properly. > With the Amiga 500 everything functioned properly when we used the same > initial setup consisting of Bridgeboard, OverDrive, and 2 MB card. We were > unable to get the Supra DMA hard disk controller to work in the BusExpander > with the Amiga 500. > The BusExpander appeared well-made. The motherboard withstood some pretty > rough handling during the installation and testing as we tried the various > cards in different slots." Michael Portuesi / Information Technology Center / Carnegie Mellon University ARPA/UUCP: mp1u+@andrew.cmu.edu BITNET: rainwalker@drycas "my friends say she's a dumb blonde, but they don't know she dyes her hair"
ca063@unocss.UUCP (Thomas Davis) (10/22/88)
From article <10169@cup.portal.com>, by Dalamar@cup.portal.com (E H Mahler): > > Has anybody tried the BusExPander from Bill's Boards (distributed > by Comp-u-save)? It claims to be an expansion board with at least > 6 Amiga 2000 style slots and 6 IBM style slots. This configuration can Me and a good friend bought one of these boards at AmiExpo in Chigaco in July. We also decided to buy the baby AT case and power supply deal they offered JUST for AmiExpo customers. Upon finally arriving home, (after being out of town for close to 2 weeks), I found out the power supply was bad. I called Compu-u-Save, who said to call Bill's Boards. I called and left a message on their answering machine. No reply. I called again. Same thing. I called Comp-U-Save, and they called Bill's Boards for me. The next day, I finally got a reply. I shipped the power supply back to them, to have them declare it ok (problem was the damn thing had some loose component in it), and they shipped it back. It still didn't work. I promptly called them back, and got a some girl, who took my name, number, and said they would call right back. They did, and I talked to Tom Olsen. I installed the power supply back in, with doing as Tom said to do. I ended up shipping the WHOLE system back to them. They returned it, with a replacement power supply. It worked, BUT, it didn't like my Amiga. The Amiga would boot with JUST the Expander plugged in, BUT as soon as I added the 2 meg RAM card, it died. I took the whole system over to my friend's apartment, and it worked like a champ on his system. (for those interested, my 1000 has the slow pals, and grounding them didn't help it any.) I wanted soo much to have an Amiga with 3.5 megs of memory. I even went as far as removing the internal 1 meg add-on memory card, (it's Squeeze RAM..) to see if it was any cause of the problems. (it helped, some, but not much..) It worked till about 2 weeks ago. I picked up the system Sunday, looked at again, and from everything from before, and the fact the power supply worked after I moved it (it then stopped working when I moved it back), it looks to be another bad PS. I called Bill's Boards on Tuesday I believe, and talked to the girl again. I have yet to hear anything back from them. In conclusion, I regret buying the powersupply from Bill's Boards, not because they ignore my phone calls, but it's over 2,000 miles to get it serviced. The system looks like it will work ok, and when the power supply works, my friend just LOVES the 2 megs. Now if I can just get a hold of GOOD powersupply.. As for the board itself, it's well built, and solid. You should have no problems with it other than finding space to the board, powersupply and case for it.. -- Internet : ca063%unocss.unl.edu@RELAY.CS.NET | Thomas Davis BitNet : conslt16@unoma1 | Consultant, Campus Computing UUCP : uunet!btni!unocss!ca063 | U. of Neb. @ Omaha, NE