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Hi..

I've just acquired a zorro busboard for my Amiga 1200!! I'm so excited - at last, my aging but loyal A1200 has ZORRO SLOTS!

The question is, my dear Amiga is housed in the less than salubrious accommodation of a cardboard box. I intend to upgrade the case to a PowerTower / Elbox job, and was wondering if the Micronik busboard will fit (i.e. zorro slots line up correctly etc.) And what about in the Eyetech case?

One more thing, does it take its power from the motherboard or will there be any issues about powering the thing?

Many thanks

TomScreamer

Oh yeah, I forgot to write the details of the board.

It's a 5 zorro slot busboard, with 2 inactive PCI slots. I believe it's the 6860 revision 5.44.

Hope this helps.

Thanks

Tom

[lempkee]

ok here is only what i know..

Infitiv towers (both models) Fits it fine (plastic and metal ones)
(totally horrible towers!!!!)

the Rbm Towerhawk towers (all makes) doesnt fit at all, i had to lay all the parts wideopen on the desk to use the thingu just got,
so in the end i bought an mediator and rebulided my towerhawk 2c to fit it.

anyway , dont have any high hopes for zorro in your a1200, yes its nice and all but VERY slow.
I would recomend you to test a mediator system just to see the difference.

good luck

[lempkee]

arrgh i forgot this, you must MAKE a special connector for the power, as explained in the manual.

its a while since i did this, but iirc it was that you had to power the zorro board trough the board and then a1200 (ie connect main power to zorro2 board and the a1200 will drain power from there.... but i aint too sure as its a while ago)

Ugh. This is sounding a bit complicated. I have my 1200 powered from a PC power supply, which I did myself. Does the busboard have terminals or something on it which you can screw in the various wires for the power?

Also, just how slow is it? Slower than normal zorro II systems (i.e. an Amiga 2000)? Would it be feasible to use it with a Picasso II card and an ethernet card, for example? Pah. I knew I should have just tracked down an a4k.

Tom

The Infinitiv towers look lovely!

[gnarly]

The Infinitiv towers look lovely!

IIRC the metal ones were lovely. The plastic ones however, were made of processed cheese :-)

Oh heavens! I hope i'm not going to be forced to stick my 1200 in a tower made of processed cheese. Please someone come to my rescue and tell me I can use a PowerTower.

And please - are these busboards REALLY that slow? I've dreamt of owning one since the mid nineties - and now i've finally got one coming you've all burst my bubble.

[lempkee]

Dont expect to use it with games or such, they work but horrible slow, i had a picasso4 on the videobus.

the mediator is 90times faster (i think i aint exaggurating even)

1meg vs 8meg ...

if you have a pc psu, then there aint that much of a problem, but u must stick the AT/AT connector onto the zorro2 (and not into where u have it now)

[Ryu]

the busboard will fit in a powertower fine, I had one for all of err 2 months. The power things is a bit different, its not like an AT or ATX socket, so you might have to do a bit of hacking, once you have it powered though you wont need to power the motherboard seperatly. check out www.amiga-hardware.com if you want more info

Great. That's a relief.

Now I just need to track down a copy of the manual or a pin-out of the power supply so I don't blow it (and my Amiga) up :/

Thanks all

To

[odin]

Hiya,

I've got a A1200 with the micronick Z2 busboard too (actually it's a Micronik built A1300 or whatever they called their 'A1200 in a tower'). So far I've only used an Ariadne II in it, works like a charm.

What you wouldn't want to put in there is SCSI/IDE cards I think. The Z2 busboard doesn't allow DMA so it would be dead slow.

I've just had another thought.

Is it compatible with 3.0 roms? I haven't got 3.1 yet! I don't have a lot of money unfortunately (i haven't even got an accelerator, only an 8meg ram upgrade
)

I wasn't intending to use it with IDE/SCSI cards so that's ok. Ethernet and Gfx (a cheapy Picasso II probably, that sought of thing).

Thanks

Tom

[odin]

"Is it compatible with 3.0 roms? I haven't got 3.1 yet! I don't have a lot of money unfortunately."

I honestly don't know. As I understand you already have the parts, just try it out.

I don't know how GFX cards will perform on it. Another option for Ethernet is using an NE2000 PCMCIA card, as Amiga Ethernet Z2 cards tend to be a bit expensive (I bought my Ariadne II for ~60 EUR (second hand)).