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[News] amiga.topcool interviewed met@boxANN.lu
Posted on 23-Jun-2000 13:40 GMT by Daniel Orth13 comments
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amiga.topcool publishes in their first issue an interview with met@box. Met@box explains why the amijoe will release in 6 months: there was a bug in the Memory/PCI Bridge Controller. Now the card will be redesigned and will cost less then 1000 DM.
amiga.topcool interviewed met@box : Comment 3 of 13ANN.lu
Posted by Anonymous on 22-Jun-2000 22:00 GMT
In reply to Comment 1 (Anonymous):
"And 6 months to fix a bug in the memory controller?"
Yes, it's laughable!
amiga.topcool interviewed met@box : Comment 2 of 13ANN.lu
Posted by Darrin on 22-Jun-2000 22:00 GMT
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. :)
Danke in advance
amiga.topcool interviewed met@box : Comment 1 of 13ANN.lu
Posted by Anonymous on 22-Jun-2000 22:00 GMT
Man, somebody should dig up their original announcement where Metabox announced cards for A1200 AND A2000/3000/4000!
And 6 months to fix a bug in the memory controller?
Gimme a break!
amiga.topcool interviewed met@box : Comment 4 of 13ANN.lu
Posted by Martin Heine on 23-Jun-2000 22:00 GMT
In reply to Comment 1 (Anonymous):
Well, I do have their very own Flyer where they advertized the amijoe,
which does mention the amijoe2000 and the aj3/4k as well - so it's not
the truth they would never had announced any other versions than the
aj1200!
Bye, Martin.
amiga.topcool interviewed met@box : Comment 5 of 13ANN.lu
Posted by Cybes on 23-Jun-2000 22:00 GMT
yes they have said many times theyd have an a2k/a3k/a4k model, blittersoft the sellers of it also said this. but to quote a posting of their own 23rd feb this year:
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.
--------
amiga.topcool interviewed met@box : Comment 7 of 13ANN.lu
Posted by Jaeson Koszarsky on 24-Jun-2000 22:00 GMT
In reply to Comment 1 (Anonymous):
It might take six months if it's a back burner project for them.
Maybe DCE could be convinced to produce the P5 G4 boards.
Jaeson K.
amiga.topcool interviewed met@box : Comment 6 of 13ANN.lu
Posted by Jaeson Koszarsky on 24-Jun-2000 22:00 GMT
If everyone that is tired of waiting for Met@Box would
contact DCE, maybe they could be convinced to pick up
the P5 G4 boards and produce them.
amiga.topcool interviewed met@box : Comment 9 of 13ANN.lu
Posted by Malibann on 25-Jun-2000 22:00 GMT
In reply to Comment 8 (Its not of your business):
:If everyone that is tired of waiting for Met@Box would
:contact DCE, maybe they could be convinced to pick up
:the P5 G4 boards and produce them.
There is nothing to 'pick up' ! If the G4 card was in a
'ready to produce' state, DCE would produce it.
amiga.topcool interviewed met@box : Comment 10 of 13ANN.lu
Posted by Matt on 25-Jun-2000 22:00 GMT
In reply to Comment 7 (Jaeson Koszarsky):
I seem to recall that DCE couldn't produce the Phase 5 G3/G4 boards "for legal reasons".
amiga.topcool interviewed met@box : Comment 8 of 13ANN.lu
Posted by Its not of your business on 25-Jun-2000 22:00 GMT
In reply to Comment 7 (Jaeson Koszarsky):
Im sorry to tell you that P5 did not anything with the G4
cards. Thats why DCE is not going to manufacture any G4 card.
amiga.topcool interviewed met@box : Comment 13 of 13ANN.lu
Posted by Malibann on 26-Jun-2000 22:00 GMT
If any P5 G4 card was in 'ready to produce state' DCE would produce it.
I have worked for P5 for over a year. When a Card was in a prototype state,
P5 announced it will be produced in the next 2 weeks. When the theoretical
design was completed, they usually talked about 'delivery will start in one month'
When P5 talked about 'more than one month' it usually meant 'nothing is done yet' !
AFAIK Met@box has to do a complete redesign of their processor card. This will
take a long time to do.
amiga.topcool interviewed met@box : Comment 11 of 13ANN.lu
Posted by gary_c on 26-Jun-2000 22:00 GMT
There are probably other things involved besides the bug. Maybe Metabox isn't
convinced the current software possibilities for these boards are adequate. Maybe they're
waiting until there will be more software options (Amie and/or Neutrino?) to
give people more incentive to buy the cards. Introducing them in a splashy way
with new OSs makes good marketing sense, to sell more than just to people who
already know about them and are waiting. Anyway, that's my guess.
amiga.topcool interviewed met@box : Comment 12 of 13ANN.lu
Posted by MagicSN on 26-Jun-2000 22:00 GMT
In reply to Comment 11 (gary_c):
Hi!
And the guess is wrong. The reason is a serious bug in the memory-controller.
If they would have a working hardware, they would make a prototype *now*.
Doing the drivers will take an additional 2-3 weeks, so once they have hardware
they would not delay this any further. They would at least do a prototype
to make driver-developement possible as soon as possible. And of course every delay
on new hardware on the Amiga is BAD.
What I heard was that with the current state of the Board it was not possible
to access the memory on the Board. I just hope that the 6 months are a
"careful estimation", and not "it will take 6 months at least". It MIGHT be
the case that this is just a careful statement and that it
hopefully will take less than 6 months... let's hope so...
Steffen
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