Big Book of Amiga Hardware

The Merlin is a Zorro II and III auto-sensing graphics card. It has a pixel clock of 130Mhz (8bit), 65Mhz (16bit), 43Mhz (24bit). The card also has an RGB IN socket (VGA type) which feeds an auto-switcher on the board. It has no scandoubling abilities but if the native screens are fed into a scandoubler, then into this connector, the Amiga's native graphics modes can be displayed through the card. There is a feature connector header on the Merlin to accomodate a video digitiser module made by Xpert called the Merlin X-Calibur. No matter how much ram is on the board only 2MB can be used in Zorro II mode. Please note that to get this board to work in the Zorro IV busboard for the A1200 you may need to change a jumper - "For Apollo 1240 accelerator card config 0 jumper should be closed, other ZIV jumpers should be opened."

The card also has an SVHS OUT and FBAS OUT. The board contains what appears to be 2 x 72pin SIMM slots for adding additional graphics memory. The 72pin SIMMs are not standard PS/2 SIMMs as used by most accelerators, but use a different control logic. It supports 1 x 2MB 32bit SIMMS, 1 x 4MB 32bit SIMMs or 2 x 2MB 16bit SIMMs for a maximum of 4MB of RAM. If you experience many bugs using the Merlin such as garbage when dragging the screen or using the menus, you may require a hardware update. Likewise, your Merlin may not be compatible with the 060 in which case you'll need the hardware update also, which is apparently still available from the original developer, see below. An FAQ written by the designer of the card, can be found here