Golden Gate 2 + ISA Video Drivers

[Zetr0]

(i always feel nervious when posting a new thread... why is that....)

okay the title is most certainly descriptive (especially for me) I have read upon www.amiga-hardware.com that this particular card



As you may know this card can be used to activate a passive zorro bus and thusly allow the amiga to use NON DMA ISA cards such like IO cards (ser/par and ide) as well as non-DMA varients of sound cards, network cards even tv in cards.

I have also read on www.amiga-hardware.com that this card can also allow the use of video cards, however, even after scouring aminet for a couple of hours i couldn`t find it in hardware/drivers

I wonder if such a driver exists... and if so what would it be for? (i have a lot of 2mb cirrus logic cards) it would be cool if i could use it as an RTG card!

[Jope]

I couldn't find anything about video cards when I owned one of those.

I only used it with an NE2000 board and it wasn't very good at that either. Hope you get better results..

[Zetr0]

@jope
Thanks for the hope... jope.,... hmm has a ring to it...

but fear not....

i have will

determination

and if that fails...

some good old blood sacrificing should do the trick

[alewis]

I recognise that card ;-)

[Zetr0]

Lol :d

[Magic]

I still have one of these. I was in contact with Ethan Dicks during the development of the drivers for this card when he lost the hard drive on the development machine. The project never recovered from the crash as far as I know. I don't recall any working video drivers ever being released, and I think I have/had everything that was available at the time including the last Beta network driver. Here is a picture of mine.


-Jeff

[Zetr0]

Thats awesome!

thanks for the hardware pr0n (my favourite ) and the info!!!!

Did Ethan ever allow open source development for this card? or did it get tied down with closed development contract ?

[Magic]

Ethan is a really nice guy. He would probably be happy to discuss it with you. I have lost track of him, you will have to do some searching to find him and ask.

[EDIT]
(Some more details as I remember them)The Golden Gate Bus card was originally developed by someone else, I can't recall his name. Ethan Dicks bought or acquired the rights to produce the card and develop the drivers for it.

[EDIT #2] I seem to recall some of the discussion about the card and drivers took place in Usenet about 8-10 years ago. I probably would have been comp.sys.amiga.? You might try searching Google for information. The web page still seems to be up here (note the mention about the crash of the development machine at the bottom of the page:-)

http://penguincentral.com/GG2/

About the Beta 2.0 IDE driver mentioned on the site. It was developed around the stock Seagate ST3144 120 meg IDE drive that came in the A4000D. Although it was working with that drive, he (Ethan) was having problems getting larger drives to work. I was testing for him at the time. It was in the middle of this that the A4000 he was working on went down.

-Jeff

@Zetr0 Could you please share information in detail about the soldering/desoldering equipment that you are using? It is time to update my equipment and it sounds like yours is working well.

[alewis]

I reviewed the card for AUI, many many years ago, and was in close contact with Alan Redhouse as Eyetech were the UK distributors. If I can persuade the old tandberg (!) tape drive to work on this here PC, I'll see if I can block read any of the data off a backup tape, which might have some s/w.

Yeah, somewhere I had some mail correspondence with Ethan... hmmm

[Zetr0]

@Magic

I really appreciate the info and the links

Now the soldering equipment I am using is a KADA 852D SMD Rework startion.

It has Hot Air, and a Soldering Iron, this combined with flux paste / fluid works very well for soldering - desoldering.

I will say that I got mine from eBay, and had a lot of problems, firstly

After the second attempt to use the Hot Air, in turning off the unit the pump went into overdrive and tried to fred-astair across the table. although funny, hardly productive.

I am still trying to sort this out with the ebay sell whom, is ignoring me at present, even though our last correspondence he states that he will send me another unit.

Anyway. I have had this unit fixed and the element replaced while waiting and now its a god send.

However, I would suggest this heres a link to the unit i would recommend 852D+ its not from the same seller as i got mine. its not a bad price to be honest, as it includes a selection of tips as well as nozzles

Its one i would definitely buy with what i know now.

hope that helps

@alewis

that would indeed be awesome!

[Magic]

@Zetr0

The ebay link is dead. Is this the same thing, and which seller should I avoid? http://cgi.ebay.com/SMD-KADA-852D-Di...QQcmdZViewItem

What are you using for suction when desoldering?

Thanks,
-Jeff

[Zetr0]

@Magic

Thats link is the unit i would recomend.

heres the seller i would not recomend lol

for suction at the moment, I am using a manual spring loaded solder sucker, it works, but i have been eyeing up some models, for around the £50 mark.

[Magic]

Thanks!

-Jeff