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[Effy]

I own a nice A2000 and A4000. Me happy. Now I saw today on the belgian Ebay something that might allow me to use the two ISA slots in my A2000. The owner of that card says it's a 486 card for the A3000 and A4000 and refers to a url on the Amiga Book Of Hardware with this link ...
The starting price is 50 euro's which is close to 50 dollars. I've read that you need an adaptor for the A2000 to raise the processor ...
Any advice ?? Worthwile buying or wasted money ??

[Kronos]

It's NOT a 486 it's just a (very fast) 386SX, and it will give
you a "full" x86-PC in your Amiga.

There is SW that allows you to use ISA-cards from the Amiga-side
with a C=-bridgeboard, but I don't remember anything similar
from Vortex.

[Effy]

That same guy also sells a 286 board ...
a 386 SX board ...
and a 486 board as I already mentionned. The price for the 286 is 20 euro, for the 386 35 euro andf for the 486 50 euro ...

[Effy]

Sorry, this is the correct url for that 286 Zorro board ....

[Kronos]

The other 2 board could be the A2286 and A2386 by C= (or again Vortex),
but all those card are just worth for the curiosity of it, as they
do make a dead-slow PC (by todays standards), and even if you can use
the ISA, I would still suggest getting a decent Zorro-card for the job
you need to be done.

[redrumloa]

Bridgeboards are a neat novelty. But really they ARE a novelty nowadays. If you think you will really play arround with old DOS software, go for it. I had one at one time and found it just collected dust.

[JimS]

Effy wrote:
I own a nice A2000 and A4000. Me happy. Now I saw today on the belgian Ebay something that might allow me to use the two ISA slots in my A2000.

What you really want is something called the "Golden Gate" board. This was just a link between the zorro bus and the ISA bus. No pc involved. There was also a 3rd party bridgeboard with a similar name... this isn't it. I havn't seen one lately... even the link to the maker's web site seems to have gone. I thought I remembered a PD version that you could build yourself, but can't find a reference to that either...
I have to agree with the other posters, it's probably better just to get Zorro cards to do what you need.

-Jim

[Kronos]

@JimS

There was also the "Omnibus" which was sold as a GFX-card (came with an
ISA_ET4000), but drivers for I/O and ethernet-card also exist.

At sometimes the Vortex-x86-boards were also named "GoldenGate".

[Effy]

Okay, I get the picture. Guess I shall leave those ISA slots empty then and fill all the Z2 slots, which is easy bcoz I've got more cards than empty slots ... is there a way to add more Z2 slots ?? Just asking ...

[Kronos]

In Theory yes, as they are all just parallel to eachother, except
for the "config-in/config-out" which go from slot to slot.

But you would get problem with:
Bus termination (seen left of the Zorros).
Signal quality.
Mechanical probs.
Automatic skipping of empty slots (o.k. that no big one).

[Effy]

So I guess I shall stick to those 5 Z2 boards. At this moment that A2000 runs with a X-Surf, CV64/3D and a Buddha Flash, three cards that come out of my dead A1200 with Z4 board. I also connected my 20 Gb harddrive and it reall works with OS 3.9. The only thing is that my A1200 had 2 Mb chip and 96 Mb fast. This A2000 has got 1 Mb chip and 2 Mb fast and that's not much to run OS 3.9 ... so I got myself a Nexus scsi card with 4 Mb Ram on Ebay (Germany) for 25 euro including porto ... hope that will help ...
Actually I still need to send the money tomorrow and hope to get it end next week ...