From: dkm@col.hp.com (Dave K. Martin)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.emulations
Subject: Vortex 486SLC has arrived!
Date: 18 Dec 1992 14:14:35 GMT
Organization: HP Colorado Springs Division
NNTP-Posting-Host: itchub10.cs.itc.hp.com

The Vortex Golden Gate 486SLC board that I ordered finally arrived.  After 
playing with it for a few hours, I was going to try to post my initial 
impressions of the board.  After a couple of abortive attempts, I realized 
that there is just too much to cover without doing a full review.  After I get 
a little more time with it, I will write a full review for c.s.a.reviews.
Until then, here are the major highlights;

 ~ The board is well made, all surface mount components with no cross connects
   or wires.    
 ~ The 486SLC has a small heat sink but it never got more than mildly warm
   (my A2000 has a fan that blows down the card slots however)
 ~ The manual is for the 386SX and 486SLC boards and has German, English and 
   French sections.  Each section is about 117 pages.  The diagrams and 
   photographs are execllent.
 ~ For use in A2000's, a small adapter is included that goes into the 68000 
   socket and the 68000 is plugged into the adapter.  The adapter only has a 
   capacitor connected across two pins, nothing else.
 ~ Hardware installation was easy, plug the card in and connect the floppy 
   drive cable.
 ~ The Amiga side software has a hard disk install icon, click and go.
 ~ After installing the software, the setup program was used to define the 
   486SLC configuration.  I used the optional floppy disk controller and 
   connected a Cannon dual drive (5.25 and 3.5 hi-density drives in one) as 
   drives A: and B:  (There are 31 possible options for each of the three 
   floppy drives that can be configured!)  Setting up all of the possible 
   options in SETUP could be a challange.
 ~ The 486SLC seems to co-exist peacefully with my Mega-Midget Racer (I did not
   install the adapter), A2091, Microbotics 8-UP memory card and 2320 display 
   enhancer on a rev 4.3 motherboard with ECS Agnes and Denise chips.
 ~ So far, I've only used the CGA video emulation.  There are 27 different 
   emulated video modes that can be configured ranging from four color CGA to 
   gray scale VGA with sixteen shades of gray.  Four and eight color text only 
   VGA modes are also emulated.  The basic VGA card from my 2088 Bridgeboard 
   works fine with the Golden Gate (it would not work with a 2286 Bridgeboard 
   though).  Inserting a video card in any of the ISA bus slots automatically 
   disables the emulated display.
 ~ I connected a 42M IDE drive to the built in controller on the Golden Gate 
   board.  The drive was formatted as a boot device and seems to work ok.
 ~ I did not try using the Amiga drives on the GG but the manual says that 
   they work as normal Amiga drives unless the Golden Gate window is active, 
   then the floppy acts as a IBM drive (no connecting cable is used, the Amiga 
   still controls the disk from commands passed from the GG board over the 
   Zorro bus.
 ~ I have not tried to share RAM between the Amiga and 486SLC yet.
 ~ There is a 'server mode' where the Amiga can directly access the ram and 
   disk drives of the Golden Gate board but this appears to only support 
   diskettes that have been formatted on the hi-density drives in AmigaDOS.
   Does not appear as if hi-density MS-DOS disks can be read.  (Major bummer!)
   So I'm back to hoping Consultron's AMBASSADOR will be released soon.
 ~ I have not had a chance yet to install any software or try any real speed 
   tests.  A quick check revealed 17+ times faster than a 4.77 MHz XT, 6 or 8
   (I forgot which) times faster than a 8 MHz 286 AT system and 2.5 times  
   faster than an unspecified Compaq 386 system.  

These are my initial impressions, careful configuration (and a thorough review
of the manual) may change some of these observations.  So far though, I am 
quite pleased with the board, its quality and the way it installed.

Dave Martin - dkm@col.hp.com