Talk:Amiga Zorro III

"somewhat controversial"

Why was it controversial? Some explanation would be handy! 86.136.251.18 03:35, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

I concur. Being able to address devices directly as System RAM sounds extremely useful, not controversial. This should be explained. ---- Theaveng (talk) 11:36, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

I also agree. I have multiple issues with this statement. Were a lot of hardware developers upset that the Z3 bus could only handle memory mapped devices, or just a few people ranting in a Usenet thread? Also, memory mapped I/O is the norm with 680x0 systems since the processor series lacks ported I/O commands. So, why would it be expected on a 680x0 derived bus? This isn't Acutiator we're talking about. Dinjiin (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 05:18, 16 May 2009 (UTC).

I'll grab the quotes when I get chance, it was a usenet discussion with Dave Haynie. Essentially there was no way for a device to legitimately "hide" memory from being addressable and still get a decent transfer rate to it; It could not be DMAd. Wayne Hardman (talk) 16:19, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

"DMA transfers between two Zorro III cards (...) can be much faster."

This has been stated many times in the past. However, development of current Z3 hardware has shown that it's not really true. According to M. Boehmer (E3B hardware developer), the real life maximum is 13.5 MB/s (post on amiga.org). Objections for change? -- Zac67 (talk) 16:09, 13 June 2010 (UTC)

32-bit CPU required?

"Zorro III was never supported on 24-bit address or 16-bit data devices—it required a full 32-bit CPU."

Although this may be academic, it's not entirely true. The data bus needs to be 32 bit wide, the CPU doesn't really matter. Even a 16-bit CPU can be made to access a 32-bit bus. --Zac67 (talk) 12:38, 19 March 2013 (UTC)