Conference hydra::amiga_v1

    Yes, please.  Now that I've finally made the last payment on my baby,
    I'd like to give her a bit more memory to work with.  I'd like to also
    discuss card cages.  I'm particularly interested in cages which use the
    Zorro II form factor.  Anyone aware of small (3 slots or so) cages that
    fit that bill?  I know that ASDG is supposedly coming out with a cage
    for the A1000 to allow the use of Zorro I and II cards and IBM/XT cards
    (along with cutouts for disk drives) but I really don't need all of
    that.  Just a few slots for A2000 cards and a power supply would make
    me happy.  I want to add 2M to my A1000, but I don't want to be limited
    by a SOTS (Slap on the side) box or a cage with the Zorro I form
    factor.  Is this asking too much?
    
    Gary 

    I can tell you that the Amiga becomes a whole new machine with extra
    memory.  Once you install FAST ram, there is no more contention
    between graphics data and program code, hence, no slowdown due to
    cycle stealing.  I've had as many as a half-dozen custom screens
    up at once, and it just whizzes along.

    I bought a Starboard ][ almost a year ago, and i've never regretted
    it.  If you don't plan on upgrading to an A2000, the Starboard is
    a do-all box.  It is asthetically pleasing, and with the new SCSI
    board, you can buy any SCSI drive and just plug it into the Starboard.
    
    If you want, you can cascade two Starboards, using the SCSI board
    in one, and the 68881 math chip board in the other, and get four
    megs in the bargain.
    
    I don't know too much about the Spirit and Insider boards, but people
    have generally been very pleased with them.  As long as they are
    true FAST ram (autoconfig, and mapped in above 2.0 megs) they should
    work fine.
    
    Current prices for the 2 meg Starboard are under $450 from Abel
    Supply.  I personally wouldn't install an Insider type board, since
    I'd like to keep the option of installing a 14.3 MHz Hurricane
    '020/'881 CPU board.
    

Re: .0

Extended memory is the most important thing you can buy for your Amiga.
It makes it a completely different machine.

Pacific Peripheral has two slot Zorro II cages for the Amiga 500 and
1000 coming out RSN.  I saw a demo of the box at AmiExpo.  The cages
are boxes about 1 inch high and sit *under* the 500 and 1000.  I
could understand siting under the 500, but I was surprised the 1000 model
didn't sit on top of the 1000 and under the monitor like the old Pal Jr.
The guy from PP said that due the the Zorro II form factor, the box could
not be made exactly the same size as the Amiga 1000 system box.  They
decided that having the box overhang the 1000 was a bad idea since
people have put a lot of strange things into various Amiga ports that poke
up above the top of the Amiga.  "But no body has made anything that goes
below the desktop," the guy explained.

Find a Pacific Peripheral ad in any of the Amiga magazines and call them
up for more details.  Maybe they are even shipping them by now.  (Ignore
any references to Zorro I cages in the Pacific Peripheral ads.  They
no longer make any Zorro I products.  They were crossing out references
to Zorro I in the literature they were handing out at AmiExpo.)

Another way to add Zorro II products to a Amiga 1000 is to by an ASDG
or Micron Zorro II board.  (The Micron bought the design of the ASDG
board from ASDG.)  These folks will sell you a normal Zorro II 2 meg
memory board for about $500 and a slap-on-the-side adapter case for
about $50.  Thus, a Amiga 1000 could be given two megs of fast ram for
about $550.  You get a real Zorro II board at slap-on-the-side prices.

Micron may sell a SLOTS adapter for an Amiga 500.  I would only recommend
that you get this if you buy a bigger power supply for the 500.

    Re: -.1
    
    Thanks for your input.  I opened the Jan. `88 AmigaWorld to page
    95 and found a picture of the "Sub System" (tm).  2 Zorro II slots
    and a cutout for a � height floppy.  (And presumably a similiarly
    sized hard drive given an appropriate Zorro II controller card.)
    It does indeed sit under the A500.  There is no picture of an A1000
    model.  Its suggested list price is $249.  This sounds very much
    like what I'm looking for, assuming they really do make an A1000
    model.
    
    This ad *does* picture a 2 slot "Zorro" (I or II, they don't say)
    slap on the side box for the A1000 a la Starboard or Escort for $149.  
    Guess I'll just have to give them a call.
    
    Re: .2(?) (Ed's note)

    Yes, the Starboard is an attractive box.  I think if it were a Zorro
    II box, I'd plunk down my bucks RSN, but I want to keep my options
    open for an A2000 (or higher) in the future and it looks like Zorro
    II will be the "Standard" (Hate that term!  At least I didn't say
    "de facto standard" :-) for a few years.  
    
    A friend of mine has the Escort-2 SOTS box, and it's amazing how
    much of a difference it makes.  We were monitoring the CHIP and
    FAST RAM usages and it suprised me just how little CHIP is used
    for things like DPaint II.  We had several copies of it running
    and still had a lot of CHIP left.  He uses FACC very heavily, as
    well, and he brags about compiles measured in seconds instead of
    minutes.  He also said that FACC made a big difference with the
    Bard's Tale.

    Sigh!  Someday soon, I guess.  
    
    BTW, on Usenet, Eric Lavitsky(?) of ASDG talked about their Zorro
    II 8 megabyte board.  8M in one slot.  Drool.  He didn't mention
    any price or how much juice is required to power it.

    
    Gary

Re: .4

>    It does indeed sit under the A500.  There is no picture of an A1000
>    model.  Its suggested list price is $249.  This sounds very much
>    like what I'm looking for, assuming they really do make an A1000
>    model.

They didn't have a A1000 model at the show, but the guy told me that it was
under development.  I got the idea that the real reason that the 1000
cage sat under the A1000 was that it was a trivial design change for them
to produce the 1000 box from the 500 box.

    
>    This ad *does* picture a 2 slot "Zorro" (I or II, they don't say)
>    slap on the side box for the A1000 a la Starboard or Escort for $149.  

The tall thin slap on the side box is their discontinued Zorro I box.

>    BTW, on Usenet, Eric Lavitsky(?) of ASDG talked about their Zorro
>    II 8 megabyte board.  8M in one slot.  Drool.  He didn't mention
>    any price or how much juice is required to power it.

Just so happens I have an ASDG 8 meg Zorro II board.  That is why I
sold my Starboard 2.  A bare 8MI board is I think $425.  The expensive
thing is the memory chips to populate it.  The 8MI takes 1 meg dynamic
ram chips.  Currently, the chips are cost about $27.  So two meg of
chips (16) cost $432.  The chip prices have risen 30% in the last month
due to dollar/yen conversion rates, trade wars, and the like. 

I would guess that power requirements for the board is low compared
to a normal memory boards.  A two meg memory board uses fifty-six
256k chips.  An eight meg board with two meg installed only has
sixteen 1M chips.

    Re: .5
    
    Humor me.  Did you buy the bare board?  If so, where did you purchase
    your 1M parts?  If not, are ASDG's populated prices reasonable?
    According to my handy Abel hardware price list, which you so
    thoughtfully provided, (Thanks!) an unpopulated 8M board with a box for
    A1000, is $419.46.  It's not clear if this is a ZI or ZII board.
    ASDG's ad claims that they make both.  Is this the one you bought?  (I
    can't remember if you're one of the lucky ones who could afford to
    trade up to the A2000.)  I almost wouldn't mind paying $800 or $900 for
    2M if I had the option of popping in another 2M in a few months, and
    another, and another. :-)  I confess that I don't know much about how
    Autoconfig works.  I am *not* a hardware type.  Is it
    practical/possible to add memory in 1M chunks? 

    Gary

Re: .6

I bought the bare board.  The price I quoted of $425 is what I remember
was the regular price for an empty board.  I only paid $375 because I
ordered the board at AmiExpo and got the show price.

ASDG does make both Zorro I and Zorro II boards.  I have the Zorro II.

I believe that ASDG charged about $30/chip if you had them populate the
board.  I doubt that they will be able to maintain that pricing because
all the chip suppliers are raising their prices drastically.  (Buying
memory chips at the present time is a bit like playing the stock market
right now.  Prices are very unstable.)

They recommend that you populate the board in order for you to get the
best price.  I second that recommendation.

Autoconfigure works by the Amiga asking each board how much memory is
on it.  The reply protocol is limited to a set number of memory sizes
that range from the very small (16k?) for special purpose devices
to full size (8M).  The larger sizes that a board can reply with is
512k, 1M, 2M, 4M, 8M.  After the board replies with its size, the
Amiga then assigns the board a starting address in the Amiga memory
space.

Your typical 8M can be populated with 2M, 4M, or 8M.  You can not
have intermediate sizes like 3M, 5M, 6M, 7M.  The ASDG board is
unique in that it allows 6M to be installed.  It makes use of
an autoconfig feature that allows you to have multiple devices
mounted on one board.  If you install 6M on a ASDG board, the board
will first tell the Amiga "I'm a 4M board, with another device on
it."  When the Amiga asks about the other device, the boards says,
"I am another 2M board."

So, on an ASDG board, you must (and may) install memory in increments
of 2M.  Two meg is 16 one megabit chips.

I paid $27 per chip.  I forgot who I ordered from.  What I did was
bought an issue of the "Computer Shopper," made up a list of everyone
who advertised having 1Mb chips, and called them for price and availability.

By the way, the advertised prices ranged from $20/chip to $30/chip.
Once a week for about a month I called my list of chip merchants, and
found that most did not have chips is stock.  Those who did, were raising
their prices from week to week.  I suspect that that the places that
never had any chips in stock were simply refusing to buy from their
supplies while the prices were high.

The ASDG boards take one megabit by one dynamic rams.  They can take
any chips whose speed is 150 nanoseconds or faster.  Currently, I
believe, that only 120 and 100 nanosecond parts are manufactured.  The
100 nanosecond chip seems to be in more plentiful supply, but is more
expensive than the slower 120 nanosecond part.  There is no speed advantage
in the Amiga in having any part faster that 150 nanoseconds, so there
is no advantage in using 100ns parts instead of 120ns parts.

    
    
    	I have benn running a AMIGA with 5Meg of memory for a long
    time now. Lately I have been watching the memory that is used.
    First, before I bought a hard disk I was using a large RAM disk.
    But after a hard disk, I don't use that much RAM.
    
    	I find special uses for a RAM disk, but not that large. I
    run out of chip RAM long before fast RAM. I would suggest that
    before anyone buys more than 3-4 Meg of RAM, that they save
    for a hard disk and run a little while.
    
    
    Re .6
    
    	The ASDG add on boxes are all still Zorro I. They have not
    shipped a Zorro II box yet.  If you really want a LOT OF RAM
    the memory location is trying to sell *CHEAP* a ASDG box with
    a full 8 Meg. The box is 2 Zorro I slots and a FULL 8 Meg ZI board
    for $1500.00 .
    
    
    		Steve Peters