hull@hao.ucar.edu (Howard Hull) (01/03/88)
In article <913@sbcs.UUCP>, root@sbcs (Root) writes: > In article <1064@hao.ucar.edu>, hull@hao.ucar.edu (Howard Hull) writes: > > > > Not the point _I_ would have raised, Mr. Spencer. ... > > [stuff on how one might run ENET on an A1000 with Ameristar boards > > if one could only find and buy the _known to at one time exist_ boards, > > the ones that work on the Amiga side of the system, and which are > > Zorro-I format boards, I believe...] > Simple. Just tell the boss man's wife to go out and purchase > one of those after market Zorro-II slots on an A1000 box. Ok, ok, I surrender. I apologize for trying to be funny instead of asking a question that might have a useful answer. Darn. You have the first question in the midst of your above comment. Who makes Zorro-II boxes for the Amiga 1000 and can ship same in say, six weeks time? Information I have from ASDG indicates that the "A2000 and 1" will have Zorro II slots when it is finally shipped. So far my data indicates that it has not shipped. I am starting to wonder if it ever will ship, as I have not heard anything recent about it. With respect to that, there was the recent net brouhaha which began with Andy Finkle's comments in 2696@cbmvax and later involved several others at CBM, including Robbins (2756@cbmvax) (2786@cbmvax), all trying hard to be helpful without violating anyone's rules. A forceful summary of the situation was submitted by Craig Hubley (1559@unicus.UUCP); it spelled out the options and listed all sorts of things that CBM ought to offer (for less than $40 [Canadian!], yet). It's pretty clear at this point that CBM won't offer those things, never mind the price. It is also pretty clear that the A2000 upgrade offer for A1000 owners was the solution they did offer, and that everyone who bought an A1000 should have appreciated it, and taken advantage of it. I would have, were it not for the rumors about the Fat Agnus 1 Megabyte blitter address space that could be out as early as March 1988. If ASDG cannot do the A2000 and 1, then I would be satisfied to wait until Amiga advances actually made possible running something I could not run on the A1000. One thing that would _not_ be, for example, is a 21.477Mhz 68020 board - that's feasible with the A1000 as is. One thing it would be is an integrated machine readable schematic capture and surface mount CAE-CAD-CAM package that needed 1 megabyte of blitter address space. I am still watching the net for news about the ASDG 2000 and 1. Given the effect of the CBM upgrade offer and certain dealer buy-back programs, if I were working in ASDG marketing, I would be looking at the numbers with respect to setting corporate priorities for A2000 products v.s. the ASDG A2000 and 1. Not to mention that several tough problems face the designers of the A2000 and 1. To name a few, how do you add the video slot - there's nothing of that sort on the A1000 expansion connector; how do you handle the fact that many of the external interrupts are not brought out on the A1000 connector, though it does have some from the blitter: Dave Haynie (2807@cbmvax) mentions that the A1000 had /ILP0 through /ILP2 and /INT2 plus /INT6; earlier (2640@cbmvax) Dave said the A2000 has EINT1, EINT4, EINT5, and EINT7. More questions: Is the ASDG MiniRack C a Zorro-II box? I got the impression that it was Zorro-I format (shape) and Zorro-II pin-out. But that impression is probably somehow WRONG. Maybe Perry (ASDG) would like to comment on some of this. (Then again, maybe he wouldn't). > Ameristar sold a tack on the side A1000 product for quite a > while. Aside from costing a small fortune in (low volume) sheet > metal and UL/VDE/CSA approved power supplies, it just wasn't a great > seller. But while you're asking questions, what you really want > to know is this: "Why did Commodore change the Zorro spec?" > Enough said? No, no, I don't wanna know that. I already know that. As far as I'm concerned, CBM can change whatever they want whenever they want. They have to make money to stay alive, so I'm sure they'll do whatever they think is necessary to do that. I was sort of hoping that some bright soul would pop up an article that said something to the effect of (To me:) "Ok, you nerd. You could have called Ameristar, and they would have told you that SuchnSucha Distribution Company has 150 of 'em in stock, and if you can get up a Chase Manhattan draft for $134,850.00 you can have all of 'em delivered to your door by UPS tomorrow." That's a lot easier than finding a diaper service in these days and times... > > Rick Spanbauer > SUNY/Stony Brook (& Ameristar) Thanks for the info you've contributed so far, Rick... [But I want MORE :-)] Did someone ask - "Is there a Zorro-II Ameristar card for the Amiga side?" "What's its part number and list price?" "Is there an IBM compatible Ameristar card for the IBM side?" "Is it 8088, XT, or AT compatible, or all three?" "What's its part number and list price?" "Anything worth doing right with an IBM PC... is not worth doing at all with anything else." Howard Hull hull@hao.ucar.edu
root@sbcs.sunysb.edu (Root) (01/03/88)
In article <1069@hao.ucar.edu>, hull@hao.ucar.edu (Howard Hull) writes: > think is necessary to do that. I was sort of hoping that some bright > soul would pop up an article that said something to the effect of (To me:) > "Ok, you nerd. You could have called Ameristar, and they would have > told you that SuchnSucha Distribution Company has 150 of 'em in stock, > Thanks for the info you've contributed so far, Rick... [But I want MORE :-)] Noone has stock on the card. T'aint sold through distributors. > Did someone ask - "Is there a Zorro-II Ameristar card for the Amiga side?" Huh? Ameristar sells a Zorro-II Ethernet card for the [AB]2000. Do you mean a Zorro-II form factor card that plugs into an adaptor which plugs (somehow) into the A1000 card edge connector? Such a beastie could be done, as the card is setup to fake enough of the expansion architecture to run in such a mode. > "What's its part number and list price?" xyzzy-1 :-). > "Is there an IBM compatible Ameristar card for the IBM side?" No, you can buy IBM Ethernet card from about 10 different manufacturers. That market is well covered. > "Is it 8088, XT, or AT compatible, or all three?" All three. There are PC Ethernet cards for the XT bus (buys you AT automatically), and even ones for the PS/2 bus. > "What's its part number and list price?" The one I've used in my PC/AT is the 3Com 3C501. > > "Anything worth doing right with an IBM PC... > is not worth doing at all with anything else." > > Howard Hull > hull@hao.ucar.edu Anyways, enough of this. Howard, if you *really* want an A1000 card, I think we can dredge up one of the cards we use in the lab and sell it to you. Me thinks this is a dead issue. Rick Spanbauer
grr@cbmvax.UUCP (George Robbins) (01/03/88)
In article <1069@hao.ucar.edu> hull@hao.ucar.edu (Howard Hull) writes: > > I am still watching the net for news about the ASDG 2000 and 1. Given the > effect of the CBM upgrade offer and certain dealer buy-back programs, if > I were working in ASDG marketing, I would be looking at the numbers with > respect to setting corporate priorities for A2000 products v.s. the ASDG > A2000 and 1. Not to mention that several tough problems face the designers > of the A2000 and 1. To name a few, how do you add the video slot - there's > nothing of that sort on the A1000 expansion connector; how do you handle > the fact that many of the external interrupts are not brought out on the > A1000 connector, though it does have some from the blitter: Dave Haynie > (2807@cbmvax) mentions that the A1000 had /ILP0 through /ILP2 and /INT2 > plus /INT6; earlier (2640@cbmvax) Dave said the A2000 has EINT1, EINT4, > EINT5, and EINT7. A) video slot - well you pretty much have to forget this one... B) EINT's - can't really do these, but then I don't know of any boards that do use them. They were added mostly to provide future expansion and aren't supported by the Amiga interrupt processing software. C) By presenting the 86-pin connector in female form, you can emulate the MMU/Coprocessor slot. Of course this presents the usual "unbuffered pass-thru" problems, probably requiring the manufacture to include a sheet on how to tune-up your Amiga to work reliably with our expansion and somebody else's coprocessor board. > More questions: Is the ASDG MiniRack C a Zorro-II box? I got the impression > that it was Zorro-I format (shape) and Zorro-II pin-out. But that impression > is probably somehow WRONG. My understanding is that the Mini-Rack C is just an unbuffered card cage for "Zorro I" form factor cards. The ASDG(/Micron) cards contain special circuitry enabling them to work in this environment or the "Zorro I compatible" bus in the Mini-rack D and other products. > > Ameristar sold a tack on the side A1000 product for quite a > > while. Aside from costing a small fortune in (low volume) sheet > > metal and UL/VDE/CSA approved power supplies, it just wasn't a great > > seller. > I was sort of hoping that some bright > soul would pop up an article that said something to the effect of (To me:) > "Ok, you nerd. You could have called Ameristar, and they would have > told you that SuchnSucha Distribution Company has 150 of 'em in stock, > and if you can get up a Chase Manhattan draft for $134,850.00 you can > have all of 'em delivered to your door by UPS tomorrow." I suspect if that if you offered them a draft for $134,850.00 they would be more than willing to have 150 (or some $134K/n 8-) of them at your door in 2-4 weeks. As far as I understand it, their problem was just that there was never any really volume for the A1000 product, especially with the A2000 being just around the corner. > Did someone ask - "Is there a Zorro-II Ameristar card for the Amiga side?" > "What's its part number and list price?" > "Is there an IBM compatible Ameristar card for the IBM side?" > "Is it 8088, XT, or AT compatible, or all three?" > "What's its part number and list price?" There is a "Zorro II" product, we even bought serveral of the first ones to hurry things along. As far as I know, they don't offer a product for the XT side, but there's plenty of PC type hardware out there that should work, although sombody would need to do some real work to get any degreee of Amiga software integration. Seriously, the Ameristar people have been living on the painfully pointy leading edge for a while. They might appreciate some product inquiries and orders. Perhaps if the people intersted in the A1000 product could get together and order at the same time, Ameristar might be able to accomodate them. (just guessing folks!) -- George Robbins - now working for, uucp: {uunet|ihnp4|rutgers}!cbmvax!grr but no way officially representing arpa: cbmvax!grr@uunet.uu.net Commodore, Engineering Department fone: 215-431-9255 (only by moonlite)
peter@sugar.UUCP (Peter da Silva) (01/05/88)
In article <1069@hao.ucar.edu>, hull@hao.ucar.edu (Howard Hull) writes: > Ok, ok, I surrender. I apologize for trying to be funny instead of asking > a question that might have a useful answer. Darn. You have the first > question in the midst of your above comment. Who makes Zorro-II boxes > for the Amiga 1000 and can ship same in say, six weeks time? Have you tried Pacific Peripherals? They are advertising a pair of boxes (one for the 500 and one for the 1000) that each hold 2 Zorro-II cards and a power supply. -- -- Peter da Silva `-_-' ...!hoptoad!academ!uhnix1!sugar!peter -- Disclaimer: These U aren't mere opinions... these are *values*.