Elbox upgrade .... PPC? Amiga?

[Tiago]

I went to Elbox website to take a look at their upgrades....
I am a bit

I never looked before to a convertion from a standart A1200 to tower but
it looks very very very expensive ....

From Elbox website (20-11-2007):
Box+psu+pc keys+cpu+ide+fast ata

D-BOX 1200 (350W ATX PSU ) + PC-Key 1200
Tower system for Amiga 1200 and the PC keyboard interface.
EUR 199.95
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Mediator PCI 1200 LT4
Busboard with four PCI slots for towerised Amiga 1200.
The Mediator PCI 1200 LT4 busboard is designed to enable expansion of towerised Amiga 1200 with a wide range of high-performance, low-cost PCI cards.
EUR 199.95

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SharkPPC G3/G4
PowerPC PCI card for any Amiga with the Mediator PCI busboard.
The most powerful PowerPC accelerator for Amiga 1200
EUR 390.95

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Fast ATA 1200 MK-III
Fast ATA MK-III controller for Amiga 1200.
EUR 90.95
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We have a total of:
881.8 Euros
just this 4 items ....
Is there other solutions as good as elbox but... not so expensive....


and..if we put a PPC (SharkPPC G3/G4) ... do we still have an Amiga? Can we call it Amiga? What processor is doing all the stuff? The PPC? the 68k?
To connect HD,cdroms is it necessary to have a Fast ata? or a normal IDE A1200 interface is enough?

What should be the minimum price to make a tower conversion (PPC) to run OS4?
OS4 will run on a non amiga PPC right? And going from a tower convertion? any Amiga PPC will run OS4?
Big mess in my head.... can anyone try to explain... imagine that i am a 6 year old child....

[Harrison]

What should be the minimum price to make a tower conversion (PPC) to run OS4?

Well, to keep costs down you wouldn't actually need to add a PCI expansion to the A1200 tower conversion, although by converting the Amiga into a tower, having PCI slots gives a huge upgrade potential as you can then us much cheaper PC PCI expansion cards for graphics, sound, USB, networking etc...

A basic conversion, that would be good enough to run OS4, would be:

1. An A1200 motherboard in a tower case (buying a case designed for an A1200 conversion is best as it will have the correct holes at the back for the ports, and the correct mounting holes, but you could convert a standard PC case, as long as it is large enough to fit the motherboard). Also remember a pc psu conversion would also be needed if you don't buy one designed for the conversion.
2. A PPC accelerator with some fast ram installed (128MB+ recommended), which is the hardest and most expensive part to locate and buy.
3. A buffered IDE interface. So you can connect an HD and CD-Rom drive at once.
4. A keyboard adaptor to use either a standard PC keyboard, or an A4000/Amiga keyboard.

And that would actually be all you would need to run OS4 well. But with this setup you would be restricted to AGA graphics which will be slow. To get the best performance you would also need to add a PCI expansion board and a Voodoo graphics card.

OS4 will run on a non amiga PPC right?

No, Amiga OS4 requires a PPC CPU as standard and will not run on the old 68K processors.

And going from a tower convertion? any Amiga PPC will run OS4?

Again No, and here is the bit that can get very confusing. OS4 needs to directly support the PPC accelerator, so currently not all PPC equipped classic Amigas will actually be able to run OS4. Blizzard based PPC accelerators are the current only supported classic Amiga upgrades that will run OS4.

[Buleste]

If you look on the Dragon Coldfire post then you can save money on the mediator by spending a lot more on an expansion board with a Coldfire CPU which will still allow it to be a "Classic Amiga" although if you go down the Shark PPC and mediator route you'll still need an accelerator for the Mediator to work so you can use the Shark.
Confused?? Unfortunatly this is due to the neglect the Amiga has suffered and all the 3 party developers who think that speciallised electronics is a good idea. To be honest a Graphics card, IDE interface and tower are needed if you want to carry on with your Amiga and they do bring life to it and to have a graphics card you have to go down the Mediator route as the Zorro Graphics cards were terrible even when they came out. Unfortunatly the Amiga is a Specialist Hobby computer now and that means expensive.

[Stephen Coates]

You don't even need a Tower conversion. You can run a Blizzard PPC in the desktop case, but due to temperature reasons, you might not be able to run the faster ones, or the 040 version. You ca also stick in a BlizzardVision graphics card, which connects to the BPPC, which will be better than AGA, but might not be as good as a PCI graphics card.

If you want a tower, you could get a second hand one if you are not that bothered about the appearence of it, or you could modify a PC one, or build your own.

[Tiago]

but i still don't understand about the CPU.... you have the 68k of the A1200, them you put a PPC expansion.... so are they both (CPU) working at the same time?
witch one in the man CPU.... or am i to comfused? the PPC card expansion has a CPU right? so....

[Harrison]

With the A1200, when an accelerator is present it will take over from the original one on the A1200 motherboard and will be used instead. Many accelerators can be disabled, which will then revert the system to using the original 68020 CPU in the A1200.

[Tiago]

haaaaa, ok, now i makes sense.

And if you put one of those "Mediator PCI 1200 LT4" to have pci slots and you put a greaphics card, will it disable the standart amiga video ? you canot have 2....
so the ecs/ocs/aga will be disable and a vga video mode (pc) will be available?

[Buleste]

haaaaa, ok, now i makes sense.

And if you put one of those "Mediator PCI 1200 LT4" to have pci slots and you put a greaphics card, will it disable the standart amiga video ? you canot have 2....
so the ecs/ocs/aga will be disable and a vga video mode (pc) will be available?

Graphics cards are different. Basically it depends on what screen mode is needed at the time. To use a Graphics card you need either CyberGraphix or Picasso96. If you run a game which does not support rtg (most games) then it will use the native amiga video.

[Harrison]

Both will still work, much the same as if you have a Zorro graphics card in a standard box box Amiga like the A4000. All standard Amiga display output generated by the AGA chipset will still be sent to the standard Amiga graphics port. To see anything from the graphics card you need to be using the specific graphics devices that are for the graphics card. Then the display will be seen on the graphics card instead of the standard Amiga output.

This is why some people use a TV card in their Amiga tower conversions, so they can pass the output from the standard Amiga monitor port into the TV card so it can be seen on the graphics card display. Not sure how well this works though.

[Buleste]

Good news!! I've just checked the specs on the SharkPPC+ and it has a EIDE controller built in. And a AC97 sound Sub system.
Bad News!! The SharkPPC does not.