CompuServe Thread

Vicki, The name "Zorro" is the name of the Amiga bus which all Amiga plug in cards plug into. Different computers have different bus. Macs have the NuBus, and PCs are switching over to one called PCI, (The next Amiga is supposed to have this as well). The fastest one is the Zorro III bus which is 32bits wide. An Amiga which is a full 32bit computer and uses cards, (A3000, A3000T, and A4000) has the Zorro III bus. The different numbers refers to the version. Since you have the A2630 accelerator by all means add RAM there. That way the 68030 does not have to run through the slower 16bit pathways to access the RAM. The base A2000 like the A500 and A1000 is a 16bit machine so in order for a 68030 accelerator to make much of an impact on speed, it needs to access RAM at full speed. I can't say much about the A2091, most of the time the factory settings assume you are buying the card without any RAM hence the 0K setting. If the card is fully loaded, maybe the jumper will add the RAM. The worst that would happen is the computer wouldn't boot, then just switch the jumper back. Your hard drive would be OK, just the 2091 wouldn't work so you couldn't boot from the drive. Richard -> On the A1000 AutoPilot, the only Amiga not to have the C= logo.

VJ >>Please tell me more about the Zorro slot. I've read messages in this thread that have attached a number to the word zorro.<< As Richard mentioned… Each computer type has some form of slot expansion. The IBM/Clones have their AT-slots & XT-slots, also known as EISA & ISA slots. The MacIntosh has their NuBus slots. The Amiga's expansion slots have been named 'Zorro'. The first Zorro slots were added to the A1000 using an expansion box. An upgraded version called Zorro-II, was built into the A2000/2500. The lastest version is Zorro-III, which is in the A3000/4000. The Amiga's Zorro-II cards are 'autoconfiguring'. It doesn't matter which slot you plug them into, neither do you need to set jumpers to tell the Amiga were the cards are support to be placed. (There can be jumpers to set user controlled options.) — VJ >>Is every slot a Zorro slot?<< Nope. Their are five types of slots in your Amiga. The Video Slot, is in the right-side corner. This slot allows for special video boards, such as genlocks, Video Toaster, de-lacers, etc. The CPU-slot (co-processor slot), is in the middle of the motherboard. This slot can hold a card that has a new CPU, that actually turns off the 68000 CPU on the motherboard, and takes over. This CPU card, could also have extra RAM, HD interface, and any feature you can add to a Zorro-II card. Your CPU-Slot is holding the A2630. The Zorro-II cards, this are the cards used by the Amiga to expand itself. These can be RAM, HD interface, networking, Amiga modems, etc. One of your Zorro-II slots is holding the A2091. The XT-Slots, & AT-Slots, are IBM slots used in the expansion of the IBM emulators, such as the BridgeBoards. Normally, you can't use this IBM slots to expand the Amiga mode of the computer. — VJ >>Is it a good idea to bypass the adding of ram to the 2630 or 2091 and just add another card?<< It appears that the maximum amount of RAM your Amiga can have is 8-megs of FAST memory, no matter how many Zorro-II cards you add. Adding the RAM to the A2630, would be best, since the RAM will be run at the same speed as the A2630 card and would be 32-bits wide, instead of the Zorro-II's 7.14-Mhz, 16-bits wide RAM. After adding the 2-megs of RAM to the A2630, and if the A2091 already has 2-megs, that leaves only 2-megs left to be added. If you can. Add the memory to the A2630, and activate the A2091 memory, and don't worry about getting the last 2-megs of RAM added, until you replace the A2091 or A2630 card. — VJ >> The 2091 board's place for chips is completely filled with chips. […] The "Jumper 1" pins are set to "0 Kilobytes" –the manual says that is the factory setting. Can I move the jumper up to the 2 megabyte setting since all the chip recepticles are filled?<< Change the jumper, and see if you get an extra 2-megs at bootup. This should give you 5-megs total (1-meg CHIP, and 4-megs of FAST). If it fails, the worst that can happen is, the machine won't boot until the jumper is moved back to 0K. Ron. – ap'ing with AP. (Eagles may fly, but weasels aren't sucked into jet engines.)