Posted on 15-Sep-2000 18:52 GMT by Teemu I. Yliselä | 33 comments View flat View list |
Eyetech have a large update on the Predator expansion board, outlining amongst other things the technical merits of the product's chosen solutions. They say, "The Predator will be available in two different form factor designs, one for the A4000 desktop and one for the A1200. The A1200 form factor version will come with 3xPCI and 1 x AGP simultaneously usable slots and will fit in any tower capable of taking a Z4 busboard. The A4000 desktop form factor version will come with 2xPCI and one AGP slots plus one shared PCI and regular, Video Toaster-compatible A4000 video/Zorro3 slot (making 4 simultaneously usable slots altogether). Both form factor versions will also have provision for a G3/G4 PPC & SDRAM slot. Each form factor design will be available in two versions, the Predator-SE and the Predator-Plus. The Predator-SE will be a low cost version supporting PCI cards only, albeit over the high speed PPC local bus connector (see below). The Predator-Plus will be the fully featured version with AGP, G3/G4 and SDRAM slots activated. A trade-in/upgrade option will be available for purchasers of the Predator-SE who subsequently wish to add Predator-Plus facilities." The SE versions are planned to be released in November (A4000 version) and December (A1200 version) with the Plus versions following in early 2001.
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Predator update : Comment 19 of 33 | ANN.lu |
Posted by Neo on 17-Sep-2000 22:00 GMT | In reply to Comment 13 (raist): Ummmh - perhaps the solution is a little bit simpler. It is a lot easier, cheaper and quicker
to design a busboard (the Predator is not much more than that, as well as the Mediator)
which connects to an available processor card than to design a completely new processor
card in 6x-multilayer (it was very difficult for phase5 to find a company which could produce
those basic boards within Europe because of the 6x multilayer - there was exactly one!) with
a completely new kernel and the whole surroundings.
You could also ask "Why didn't Elbox do a new motherboard instead of using the ancient
A1200 boards?". It's a question of price/time/performance ratio. If they had chosen to do
a complete new busboard, it would have been ready by about 2002 and would have cost even more
than the available PowerUP-Boards. And then again some people would have criticized about
too late, too expensive...
So in the end it is indeed an economical question, but IMHO the decision has totally different
reasons compared to your speculation (which might have influenced the decision by a few
percent - but hey: There is no other processor card available (especially with available docs)
which could have served as alternative basis, simply because PPC-based cards are probably the boards
that have the highest number of installed units in the remaining Amiga market. |
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