ID #3156

Software Results: Golden Gate 2+

Connection: ISA, Zorro II

gg2_small.jpg

Hi Res Version - 83K

The GG2 is a bridgeboard with a difference. Usually a Bridgeboard refers to an emulator card which is able to use the 'Inactive' ISA slots found in big box Amigas. The GG2 is not an emulator card but it does allow the use of certain ISA cards directly by the Amiga, effectively giving it an active ISA bus. The GG2 supports almost all non-DMA AT-compatible ISA cards. Unfortunately DMA cards can't be used because the ISA specification requires a real X86 CPU in order to use DMA, which of course the Amiga does not have. Via the GG2+ you can use such items as internal modems, multi-I/O boards, IDE hard drive controllers, non-DMA ethernet boards, VGA boards, A/D boards, etc. Access to the PC cards is at full Amiga Zorro II bus speed unless wait state support is turned on. Of course, a driver for the Amiga is still required to operate the cards.

ISA Card drivers

ibmser.device (included with card)

A replacement serial device for internal modems and multi-I/O cards. Includes automatic use of the 16550 FIFO buffer when available. Support for up to 4 serial ports at once, equivalent of COM1-4.

ibmprint.device (included with card)

A new parallel output-only driver for printing through IBM LPT compatible parallel ports on multi-I/O cards. Support for up to 3 printers at once, equivalent of LPT1-3.

ibmIDE.device (included with card)

A driver program to allow the use of IDE, RLL or MFM hard drives.

gg_ne1000.device (included with card)

SANA II Driver to use 8bit ISA network cards which conform to the NE1000 standard. The ethernet cards must not use DMA.

gg_ne2000.device (included with card)

SANA II Driver to use 16bit ISA network cards which conform to the NE2000 standard. The ethernet cards must not use DMA.

In addition to the standard drivers listed above which are supplied with the card there are also the following known 3rd party drivers:

MNI Driver for NE2000 compatible 16bit ISA network cards. The driver also supports ISA-PNP and is supplied with Miami.
MNI 3c509 Driver. Driver for 3c509 (3Com Etherlink III) ISA cards. The driver is supplied with Miami
SANA II Driver for 3c503 (3Com Etherlink II) ISA cards.
SANA II Driver for SMC/WD 8003/8013 and compatible ethernet cards
(There is believed to be a couple of drivers for other models of 3COM ISA network cards, but I'm not sure which)
Sound driver for the TrueSound MP3 decoder card
A driver for a scientific oscilliscope device

Many ISA expansion cards can also be used under a software emulator such as CrossPC or PCTask using the native PC drivers. DMA however is still *NOT* supported. Amongst other IBM peripherals that have been successfully operated are, ROM programmers and PC-television cards from within PC-Task or CrossPC.

The GG2 occupies one Zorro II slot aligned with a PC-AT slot in any big box Amiga. It has essentially the same form factor as a Commodore bridgeboard. The GG2 requires 1 Megabyte of available AUTOCONFIG memory space to correctly map all of the PC memory locations. All address and data lines to the PC bus are buffered to avoid loading-down Amiga bus lines. Most of the software requires 2.04 or higher. The actual device drivers themselves (ibmser.device, ibmIDE.device...) will probably work under Amiga Dos 1.3, but the support programs (like SwitchControl and SerPrefs) don't.


Letzte Änderung des Artikels: 2009-01-25 14:22
Revision: 1.0

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