Fitzsteve’s Amiga Journey – Part 5

fitzsteve

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If you’re new to these posts please see part 1-4 at the below links, if not – read on =D

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4



Well I hope I didn’t keep you in suspense too long?

As you may remember my journey continues with the arrival of these awesome upgrades for my Amiga 1200 Tower project:

IMG_8028.jpg


Straight away I was much more excited by these items than the Micronik Zorro board that I had such epic fail with. The Elbox Mediator looked in a whole other league!

I robbed these parts out of an Elbox Tower I found on ebay, I was even lucky enough to have it delivered to my door by the seller whose Mum lived around the corner from me – how spooky is that!

The seller didn’t know much about it as it belonged to a friend who emigrated so it was always going to be a bit of a gamble, however being the risk taker I am, I went ahead!

Also amoungst these goodies was a Blizzard 1230MkIV:

IMG_8014.jpg


Cracking little card which would find its way to my Desktop A1200, but for now that’s another story! The job at hand was to get all the all the Mediator goodies installed in my A1200 Tower.

Here’s a closer look at the Mediator and FastATA MkIII:

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I was really impressed at how the modern upgrades integrated with the A1200 and I was very lucky because (and this was not noted in the listing) all the original boxes, manuals and drivers were also included.

Firstly I thought since the items were unknown working order I’d better test them outside the case so I setup my work bench (dining table) and started to put the jigsaw puzzle together.

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Motherboard and FastATA checked out as working fine, setup CWB ADV SP and added the FastATA drivers. My IDE CDRW was working fine also.

Next step was to install the Mediator its self. Although a tight fit everything does go together fine!

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Now to test it all out =D

Damn, something was wrong, just when I thought everything was going well – This was the only display I was getting out of the Voodoo 5:

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As you can see the second pic is the test screen something was very wrong here!

Back to the forums it was for advice. As I was using Classic Workbench I was asked to disable some of the options like Copper & FBlit but this did not help.

I thought it was all happening again, was I doomed to be without an RTG setup?

After some strip downs and rebuilds and at the advice of my buddy CosmicFrog I started to setup a simple Workbench from scratch as he was sure something in CWB was causing this, and maybe the reason I couldn’t get the CV64/3D to work! But no time to dwell on that now, I had a lot of work to do.

I decided to install WB3.1 and then the FastATA drivers and on top of that OS3.9, this all seemed to go well:

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Before long I was back at the trusty Mediator setup screens:

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Bingo – we have RTG!

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And there it was! My very first RTG setup =D

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So it was time to get this badboy all back inside the Tower! I whipped out the old Motherboard and started installing the new setup.

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This time as you can see the case is made to measure, all the PCI slots match up just fine, no adjustment needed!

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And everything installed, ready to rock and roll!

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In the end I replaced the standard OS3.9 with Classic Workbench P96, unlike the ADV SP and although it was made with WinUAE as the target it of course did not have any issues with Picasso96 and therefore as with my basic OS3.9 setup was quite straight forward to get up and running.

There she was, all finished! Well at least for now!!!

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Click here for Part 6
 
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Hi my friend.

Another great setup buddy (y)

The accelerator board is 040/xx ?

Nice stuff, really nice. :)

Best wishes
 
Sadly Pablo my friend this Apollo 1240 (25mhz) is dead :(

This is my setup as it was about 6-7months ago, and these posts are telling my story since I returned to the Amiga scene about 18 months ago.

The Apollo is in Zetr0's workshop now, so maybe one day it will live again :bowdown:

Steve.
 
The Apollo is in Zetr0's workshop now, so maybe one day it will live again :bowdown:

I will "pray" for that :)

Reading posts Mr. Zetr0 is plenty of jobs, but is a Jedi Master. Wait and you HQ tower, alives again.... (y)

Best wishes
 
wibbile err I mean ribbits :)

humm wish zetro would do something with that Apollo 040 as I keep pestering steve on and off as its got a mach 131 on it where as mine only has the 130 so no easy 68060 upgrade for me, oh well hehehehehhe

while I`m thinking about it steve the radeon card I got don`t seem to work ....

looking foward to the next part M8 :)
 
Great to see how all that stuff got put in Steve mate! I like the dining table "workshop" too , its very similar to how I have to work :D
 
wibbile err I mean ribbits :)

humm wish zetro would do something with that Apollo 040 as I keep pestering steve on and off as its got a mach 131 on it where as mine only has the 130 so no easy 68060 upgrade for me, oh well hehehehehhe

while I`m thinking about it steve the radeon card I got don`t seem to work ....

looking foward to the next part M8 :)

Thanks mate!

I did see the Apollo in Zetr0's work shop - he has stripped it down and has an evil plan to make it work ;)

Great to see how all that stuff got put in Steve mate! I like the dining table "workshop" too , its very similar to how I have to work :D

Glad you enjoyed it! Wait till you see me fumbling to get the Warp3D working :whistle:

The Workbench lol, yeah Mrs Fitz hates that one :coffee:

We'll call this half time for the story, I'll get back to them in a few weeks...

Steve.
 
Lovin all the pics in these stories Steve :) Youve got some great systems (y)
 
also nice to see the castle backdrop, haven`t seen that for a while :)
 
Hi my friend

Looking pics of your boards (post #1)....

The sound board is from SoundBlaster 2 or ZX family? You can work with DSP functions? New drivers available?

I have several SBlaster Audigy boards, but only standard play functions are available.... no mp3 decoder, etc......

Best wishes
 
Hi my friend

Looking pics of your boards (post #1)....

The sound board is from SoundBlaster 2 or ZX family? You can work with DSP functions? New drivers available?

I have several SBlaster Audigy boards, but only standard play functions are available.... no mp3 decoder, etc......

Best wishes

Hey Pablo,

Thats a Terratec soundcard that came with the Mediator but I never got it to work, it should be compatible and even surround sound works with it, but as I say it just didn't work for me. I still have it in my drawer lol but these days I use Soundblaster 128 and only then for the few games that support AHI and listening to MP3's :)

There is a list on the elbox site of the supported Sound Cards:

I think you have 4000Di?

http://www.elbox.com/mediator_driver_guide.html

[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]Creative Technology Ltd.[/FONT][FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]Sound Blaster Audigy[/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]in development[/FONT]​

All the best. :cool:

Steve.
 
Hi Steve,

Is one towerised A4KD with Mediator 4000D.

Time a go I installed one of my Audigy's and works, but only "standard" sounds and some AHI games/apps works.

Do you know if new drivers are available?. Elbox ones are older...

From Elbox site:

[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]Creative Technology Ltd.[/FONT][FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]Sound Blaster Audigy[/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]in development[/FONT]​
[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]Creative Technology Ltd.[/FONT][FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]Sound Blaster Live![/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]in development[/FONT]​

Also I tested one Audigy USB on my DENEB, but same results.

OK, I think is better to continue with Z2 boards solution (no mp3, but very good quality).

Thanks in anyway m8 (y)

Best wishes
 
No probs!

There seems to be a fair bit of activity from elbox lately, I would not be surprised if they were planning to release something shortly (y)

Lets keep our fingers crossed :whistle:

Steve.
 
Hi my friend.

Well, the only activity I see from Elbox site from January 1, is a big increment of prices in all products. :nuts:

The "new" pci.library is a big step, but don't solves lot of issues with Radeon Boards.

Owners of Mediator 1200's family can use Radeon's 5v or "Universal" (3.3v-5v). But owners of Medator's 4000 family are limitated to Radeons "modded" by Elbox and..... some boards -from Elbox!!!!!- don't work :mad:

Voodoo boards works fine & without issues. But, why this problems with Radeons? Of course, they aren't Warp3D enabled -maybe one day/year?-, but the screen quality & speed are impressive....

........

Best wishes
 
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