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[News] Amijoe #4ANN.lu
Posted on 23-Jun-2000 12:58 GMT by Amifan30 comments
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Amijoe info is now on the amijoe website! It uses flash but it looks very professional. An FAQ section show that there will be NO A2000, A3000 or A4000 version of the Amijoe....."we only spoke of an a1200 version" The amijoe will due a bug in a memory/PCI bridge controller be available at the end of Q4 early Q1 2001

Specifications:

  • G3 300Mhz or more
  • 512kb or 1MB l2 cache running at 1/2 speed of the CPU
  • 1 SO-DIMM slot for a maximum of 128MB
  • 1 IDE connector for a HD (NOT master/slave capable so you can connect only 1 drive) -> elbox bring us a splitter!! :))
  • 1 non direct PCI slot (need a PCI backplane to use PCI cards)
The 300Mhz version will B far less then 500 EURO
Amijoe #4 : Comment 14 of 30ANN.lu
Posted by Anonymous on 22-Jun-2000 22:00 GMT
In reply to Comment 13 (Anonymous):
Hmm, if they really can't go below say 500MHz a G4 is a better choice.
Amijoe #4 : Comment 11 of 30ANN.lu
Posted by Cybes on 22-Jun-2000 22:00 GMT
I recall Bill McEwen said a month after G3s on sale theyd manafactur G4 versions
(this was a while back now). but even so, the blittersoft site mentions a1200/4000/2000 versions
i -really- would like to see an a4k ver, i do have an a1200 if necessary i could use for it
but id much prefer to use my a4k
Amijoe #4 : Comment 12 of 30ANN.lu
Posted by Darrin on 22-Jun-2000 22:00 GMT
I wonder if we'll have a chance to buy an AmiJoe board with one of the new super-fast IBM G3's installed which are supposed to leave the G4's far behind in terms of speed. Infact, I wonder why everyone keeps carping on about needing a Motorola G4 when IBM can build a faster G3. Anyone want to make a guess as to how we can make use of that PCI bus?
My cash is in the bank, waiting for Q4 and I'll pre-order as soon as Met@box is willing to take it.
Amijoe #4 : Comment 13 of 30ANN.lu
Posted by Anonymous on 22-Jun-2000 22:00 GMT
In reply to Comment 12 (Darrin):
"I wonder if we'll have a chance to buy an AmiJoe board with one of the new super-fast IBM G3's installed which are supposed to leave the G4's far behind in terms of speed."
I don't think they are really able to cope with such a high MHz's... (Maybe in another 2+ years.)
"Infact, I wonder why everyone keeps carping on about needing a Motorola G4 when IBM can build a faster G3."
After six months things can change...
Amijoe #4 : Comment 9 of 30ANN.lu
Posted by Jon Byk on 22-Jun-2000 22:00 GMT
EMail Metabox to let them know you will by an A2000, A3000, A4000 version.
Amijoe #4 : Comment 10 of 30ANN.lu
Posted by Bill Toner on 22-Jun-2000 22:00 GMT
In reply to Comment 8 (Jon Byk):
I agree, everyone who wants an A3/4000 version (I think it should be one
product that works in either 3000 or 4000, not sure why it wouldn't work that way)
and let them know you want one. Some months ago I nagged them until they
accepted by email my unpaid preorder for one for my 4000T, so they definitaly know I
want one. If anyone else is intrested, you might try getting preorder status as well.
(unpaid preorder of course, metabox doesn't seem to want our money until they have
something to ship to us)
Amijoe #4 : Comment 3 of 30ANN.lu
Posted by Ed on 22-Jun-2000 22:00 GMT
At this rate, We'll never see a CD32 version....
sigh.
-Ed
Amijoe #4 : Comment 4 of 30ANN.lu
Posted by Cartman on 22-Jun-2000 22:00 GMT
In reply to Comment 3 (Ed):
The CD32 user base is probably way too low, for them to even consider producing a version for it...
Amijoe #4 : Comment 5 of 30ANN.lu
Posted by Darin on 22-Jun-2000 22:00 GMT
In reply to Comment 1 (NihilVor):
Which website? I tried joecard.com, metbox.com, metbox.de, metaboxusa.com, and could not find
references to the amijoe.
Amijoe #4 : Comment 6 of 30ANN.lu
Posted by NihilVor on 22-Jun-2000 22:00 GMT
In reply to Comment 5 (Darin):
www.joecard.com Click on the German flag and then on the submenu for amiJoe.
Amijoe #4 : Comment 7 of 30ANN.lu
Posted by Ventzislav Tzvetkov on 22-Jun-2000 22:00 GMT
Sure they should try first Amijoe 1200, cause A1200 is the most popular now.
If the A1200 version isn't sold good why they should consider create A4000 version which will be sold even worse?
So that is mine opinion.
Amijoe #4 : Comment 8 of 30ANN.lu
Posted by Jon Byk on 22-Jun-2000 22:00 GMT
EMail Metabox to let them know you will by an A2000, A3000, A4000 version.
Amijoe #4 : Comment 1 of 30ANN.lu
Posted by NihilVor on 22-Jun-2000 22:00 GMT
...and they have nice picture of the card. Unfortunately the site is only in German. It sounds like any A4000 version would depend on A1200 sales? Well, I'll be buying an A1200 card as soon as they come out.
Amijoe #4 : Comment 2 of 30ANN.lu
Posted by Bill Toner on 22-Jun-2000 22:00 GMT
No 4000 version?? I hope that is some misunderstanding, as
I have been counting on an A4000 Amijoe, and have already bought
Heretic II, Wipeout 2097, preordered/prepaid FusionPPC and
Nightlong PPC, and have Shogo on non-paid preorder with my dealer.
If Metabox back out on the 4000 Amijoe then I've wasted quite a
bit of money supporting the software guys. (I won't buy a Phase 5 PowerUP
card, DCE or not)
Now I can accept they delayed things due to higher priority projects they'd make
tons of money from, but I really detest being outright lied to. I seriously hope
that the 4000 version will indeed be made and sold even if 6 months after the
1200 version. Someone please tell me I've misunderstood something in that announcement.
Amijoe #4 : Comment 25 of 30ANN.lu
Posted by Cybes on 23-Jun-2000 22:00 GMT
In reply to Comment 20 (Anonymous):
Hardly wasting anyones time, im sure the 1k extra hardly held up your day. And its relevant to just showing that they did say stuff and now going back on it.
Amijoe #4 : Comment 21 of 30ANN.lu
Posted by Martin Heine on 23-Jun-2000 22:00 GMT
In reply to Comment 19 (Cybes):
: Nothing spectacular, but I thought I might share some pieces of
: information given by Thomas Rudloff (met@box) in an interview
: printed in the latest issue of the german magazine "amigaOS":
And if someone from Met@box would say Thomas would have only spoken
for himself, not officially for Met@box, there's even more "official"
proof, since I could provide at any time a scanned JPG of their flyer
in which they not only present the amijoe1200 but also mention the
boards for A2000 and A3/4000 and their features...!
Bye, Martin.
Amijoe #4 : Comment 22 of 30ANN.lu
Posted by Martin Heine on 23-Jun-2000 22:00 GMT
In reply to Comment 19 (Cybes):
: Would a nice, kind, German chap please show that there is no bad
: feelings over losing 1-0 to England in Euro2000 and please translate
: the article into english and post it on this site. :)
Maybe Met@box will translate it for the english section of
their joecard-website - so I'll just translate the key sentences:
»The development department "CPU Upgrades" just has other projects
with higher priorities (than Amiga-hardware; MH)) as well.«
»Yes, indeed we thought some weeks ago the hardware would be ready
now. So we spoke with Haage&Partner about a port of WarpOS to the
AmiJoe and came to an agreement. But then we discovered a major
failure. The Memory/PCI-bridge controller of the AmiJoe 1200 has a
bug. Precisely this means that at the moment the SDRAM of the
amijoe is not usable, just the slow Amiga-RAM.«
Therefore this controller has to be redesigned.
»The frequently asked questions for boards for the Amiga 2/3/4000 I
have to give a rejection at the moment. We have decided - and
announced only this - to develop a G3-board for the Amiga 1200.«
(Which is not the truth, for example I do have a scan of their flyer
in which they also spoke about the amijoe2000 and the amijoe3/40000!)
He then says he expects the amijoe at the earliest at the end of the
year, rather in the first quarter of 2001.
Then he repeats the specifications for the amijoe1200:
CPU: PowerPC® G3 300Mhz and up
Cache: 512kb or 1mb Back Side Cache with 1/2 of the CPU clock
RAM: max 128mb SDRAM through a SODIMM-socket
HD: 1 IDE connector (not Master/Slave able)
PCI: no direct PCI SLOT (*)
Graphics board: planned, but not yet developed (**)
(*) the specifications of the PCI-Interconnect will be distributed to
interested developers to develop a PCI backplane
(**) the graphics board uses the PCI-Interconnect, so that no
backplane could be used then
Finally it is said the amijoe1200 with 300 MHz will be significantly
cheaper than 1000 DM (i.e. less than about 500 US-$).
Bye, Martin.
Amijoe #4 : Comment 23 of 30ANN.lu
Posted by Martin Heine on 23-Jun-2000 22:00 GMT
In reply to Comment 20 (Anonymous):
: This post from Martin Heine is from months ago.
Huh? And what's the problem with this? He posted it to show that the
recent claim from Met@box, they would have never announced any other
amijoe than the version for the A1200, is wrong. So no matter how much
time ago they did so.
Bye, Martin.
Amijoe #4 : Comment 24 of 30ANN.lu
Posted by Darrin on 23-Jun-2000 22:00 GMT
In reply to Comment 22 (Martin Heine):
Thanks Martin, I apprecaite the translation. I lived in Germany for over six years, but the best I can do is read a menu and order a large beer and chips :)
Amijoe #4 : Comment 20 of 30ANN.lu
Posted by Anonymous on 23-Jun-2000 22:00 GMT
In reply to Comment 19 (Cybes):
This post from Martin Heine is from months ago.
Stop wasting our time by reposting (third time) this damn mail.
Amijoe #4 : Comment 19 of 30ANN.lu
Posted by Cybes on 23-Jun-2000 22:00 GMT
As ive posted in another comment thread re this issue, ill quote here too.
(Besides Blittersoft/Bill McEwen/MEt@Box themselves/flyers saying there would be a2k/a3k/a4k units)
here is what they said themselves:
Add comment Ziggy writes: "Martin Heine posted some Met@box news in c.s.a.misc, saying that the 3/4k-boards will be available about one month after the aj1200, the 2k-version will take about three weeks longer." Read more below.
Nothing spectacular, but I thought I might share some pieces of
information given by Thomas Rudloff (met@box) in an interview printed in the latest issue of the german magazine "amigaOS":
in addition to the flyer I quoted January 31st, a further
difference of the amijoe for A2k and A3/4k from the amijoe1200 is that those for 2/3/4k will have a 100MHz-frontsidebus.
the 3/4k-boards will be available about one month after the aj1200, the 2k-version will take about three weeks longer.
the price for the "k"-boards will be about 100 DM more than the
same version of the aj1200 because of the bigger board and the more
expensive technology.
asked why they use a G3 instead of G4, Rudloff answered: "We can
offer today 500MHz-G3-boards, while the situation of supply of the G4 is still not clear. All I can say about this for reasons of NDA is, that the first quarter of this year will bring completely new
perspectives." (Original of the second part: "Alles, was ich aus
NDA-Gründen dazu sagen kann, ist, daß das erste Quartal dieses Jahres ganz neue Perspektiven bringt.")
regarding 68k-emulation: met@box has two emulations in development, optimized for the pipes of the G3/G4. The first one is in a Flash-ROM and will reach about the niveau of a 030 - 040. An update for this emulation will only be necessary in case of any bugs. The second emulation will be loaded from harddisk at booting and brings the full speed. For this one there'll be regular updates for improvement. Current calculations show, that a PPC needs about 3.5 cycles (? - german: "Takt") for the emulation of one 8/16-bit-68k-command; 32-bit-commands are emulated in ca. 1.5 cycles, so that, regarding Thomas Rudloff, already their entrance-model will be better than an overclocked 68060. Important would be the possibility to switch between 68k- and PPC-code, so that a partial port of AmigaOS and applications would be possible. The second generation of emulation is already planned and will be much faster.
Bye, Martin.
-
Amijoe #4 : Comment 16 of 30ANN.lu
Posted by Anonymous on 23-Jun-2000 22:00 GMT
I was hoping to see an A2000 version. My A2000 and I have grown up together,
so to speak. We've been together a long time, and I still rather enjoy getting
presents for it. I still have some empty slots to fill...:-)
Amijoe #4 : Comment 17 of 30ANN.lu
Posted by Nian` on 23-Jun-2000 22:00 GMT
Its not that the 3/4000 amigas wouldn't sell well, its that they first water down their first announcements then laster say they can't be bothered making the A1200 version. Think about it, the A4000 is for high end use, its the best amiga we have. High end use means high end uses, its got a larger % of sales for sure. Complete wankers the lot of them. I wish people would stop wasting our time.
Amijoe #4 : Comment 18 of 30ANN.lu
Posted by Ventzislav Tzvetkov on 23-Jun-2000 22:00 GMT
A1200/A4000 CPU slot adapter should be the best solution.
Then everybody will be satisfied.
But is it technicaly possible?
Amijoe #4 : Comment 15 of 30ANN.lu
Posted by MAS on 23-Jun-2000 22:00 GMT
In reply to Comment 12 (Darrin):
3 words - floating point performance. Without AltiVec you can probably kiss
Gigaflop level performance goodbye. Of course, only software written spec-
ifically to take advantage of AltiVec gets the FP performance boost, anyway.
Amijoe #4 : Comment 26 of 30ANN.lu
Posted by Iggy Drougge on 24-Jun-2000 22:00 GMT
How horrible. Why would they make a G3 accelerator only for the 1200? Seems about as useful as a jet booster on a VW bug.
The Zorro III machines are much better suited for this than that bundle of wires called the A1200.
Amijoe #4 : Comment 30 of 30ANN.lu
Posted by Tony Gore on 25-Jun-2000 22:00 GMT
Well, I'm one who has been waiting for the Amijoe for my A3k. I was sure hoping that I would get one and one of the replacement PCI daughter boards that have been talked about. It looks as though I will be running Amie on this PC hardware instead, because like someone else said, I will not buy one of the outdated P5 PPC's (if they were even available). Too slow, and too costly.
These are the kind of things I remember. Lies are hard to forget. And I will not go out and buy an A1200 (downgrade) just to run their G3 card. For the cost involved in converting to a tower, buying PCI slots, etc. I could be running Amie on a 1GHz Athlon with Geforce 2, etc..
Amijoe #4 : Comment 28 of 30ANN.lu
Posted by Darin Ritchie on 25-Jun-2000 22:00 GMT
In reply to Comment 27 (Dan):
Hi folks,
When I read that there would be no Amijoe for the A3000/A4000/A2000 it was very disheartening.
In fact I was really annoyed. I have been upgrading and saving for a PPC card
for my A3000 for a while now. All the previous announcements and comments had
included the A3000/A4000/A2000. Personally I think it's a bad move to not include them as it
leaves a fair sized portion of the Amiga market out of luck. This will also be
hard on the games developers as they now would loose a portion of their market. I
know I would be purchasing PPC games if I had an Amijoe.
But what can we do now??? I don't know if a poll would be much help. What we could
do is organize an email/snail mail/fax campain, to let Met@box know there is a strong
desire for an A3000/4000/A2000. Also we need to spread the word about this to other
news sites, mailing lists, news groups, get this info released into printed magazines, let the
companies the produce PPC software know, let the user groups know. The more people that know
will result in more people letting Met@box know that there is a need for a A3000/A4000/A2000
version and the more people who let Met@box know may increase the liklyhood of Met@box
changing their minds.
A new PPC card for the A3000/A4000/A2000 is important to the continued survival of these
models into the future. Let Met@box hear your voices. Let them know that there is
a market strong enough to support the Amijoe for the A3000/A4000/A2000.
Darin.
Amijoe #4 : Comment 29 of 30ANN.lu
Posted by Darin Ritchie on 25-Jun-2000 22:00 GMT
In reply to Comment 28 (Darin Ritchie):
Does someone have all the contact information for Met@box?
Email addresses, fax numbers, snail mail address, telephone numbers, who to talk to?
Darin.
Amijoe #4 : Comment 27 of 30ANN.lu
Posted by Dan on 25-Jun-2000 22:00 GMT
Hi All,
as for no Amijoe 4000, this really sucks, as I was really planning to purchase one of these cards. This is not just a kick in the nuts for users but a big kick in the nuts for Hyperion. I already own a CS PPC 604e-233Mhz w/ 68060, and it sucks big time, its too slow. I was really looking forward to G3 power in my A4000's. I really would of purchased 3xAmijoe's.
What can we do now? Can we get a POLL happening on how many of us would purchase amijoe's for A2/3/4k's?
regs
Dan
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