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[News] Merlancia explains the Torro seriesANN.lu
Posted on 22-Oct-2000 10:02 GMT by Teemu I. Yliselä23 comments
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Here's an announcement from Merlancia answering to the doubts expressed towards their Torro series of computers.

Merlancia explains the Torro series : Comment 1 of 23ANN.lu
Posted by Teemu I. Yliselä on 21-Oct-2000 22:00 GMT
It does seem to appear that their products are for real, so I for one owe the Merlancia guys an apology.
Merlancia explains the Torro series : Comment 2 of 23ANN.lu
Posted by Chris Moore on 21-Oct-2000 22:00 GMT
They seem very genuine to me. Those machines sound pretty cool! :o)
Merlancia explains the Torro series : Comment 3 of 23ANN.lu
Posted by Mikey C on 21-Oct-2000 22:00 GMT
Yeah, not only that, but the products are exciting.
I would love a laptop. :)
Regards
Mikey C
Merlancia explains the Torro series : Comment 4 of 23ANN.lu
Posted by bbuilder on 21-Oct-2000 22:00 GMT
I owe them an appology too...
Merlancia explains the Torro series : Comment 5 of 23ANN.lu
Posted by Mathew on 21-Oct-2000 22:00 GMT
Makes me glad I didn't call it a hoax. ;)
It actually sounded very reasonable, since they didn't come out with insane specs or prices.
Suggestions/wishlist: I want a laptop too! And a parallel port network to my existing A1200, so I can transfer all my files to my new machine's drive. Personally at this point I'd be happy enough with a well-written UAE-type emulation of the classic Amiga on my new Amiga system if that's all I can get on a laptop (I'm not strapping a A1200 motherboard for classic compatability). Some sorta adapter for a classic Amiga external drive would be nice though, plugging in the parallel port or USB.
Merlancia explains the Torro series : Comment 6 of 23ANN.lu
Posted by Anonymous on 21-Oct-2000 22:00 GMT
Still I don't think that if you have such an unprofessional website
design you need to wonder that nobody takes you seriously. Even non
commercial sites like amiga-news.de, ann or amiga.org have much better
design...
Merlancia explains the Torro series : Comment 7 of 23ANN.lu
Posted by Anonymous on 21-Oct-2000 22:00 GMT
In reply to Comment 6 (Anonymous):
And so what ? It's still a question of getting information out. It's not a design contest
Merlancia explains the Torro series : Comment 8 of 23ANN.lu
Posted by Anonymous on 21-Oct-2000 22:00 GMT
In reply to Comment 7 (Anonymous):
Yes I agree that it isn't a design contest, but don't you think the
website (and the information) would be taken more seriously if it was
well presented? I don't mean it needs to be a contender for most
stylish site of the year, a simple, clean and professional layout
would be enough. And I do think the designer of that website would be
perfectly capable of that, he just opted for a typical beginner's
mistake: he TRIED to make the site futuristic and stylish. He failed
and now it looks cheap and unprofessional. That does not mean I don't
like the INFORMATION it contains! I like it a lot and I do wish them a
lot of success.
Merlancia explains the Torro series : Comment 9 of 23ANN.lu
Posted by South Side on 21-Oct-2000 22:00 GMT
I am thankful that a U.S. based company is committed to producing Amiga
hardware. All the innovation seems to come from across the pond. I am by
no means a technophile, but is it possible to emulate P.C. video and audio
card "registers?" so that the new AmigaDE machines can utilize PCI and AGP
drivers designed for Windows or MAC capatability. I would like to use many
manufacturers excellent Audio and Video cards right out of the box. A virtual
device chip that could emulate the Mac or PC would allow us to utilize their devices.
It is likely to be easier to get developers to write
for a virtual processor if it is connected to state of the art audio and
video hardware. Be got caught up in writing drivers for their O.S.
We no longer have the, advanced for its time, Amiga multimedia
Chipset as a standard.
Take it for what it's worth. I don't know. Just dreaming.
Merlancia explains the Torro series : Comment 10 of 23ANN.lu
Posted by gotz@amiga.com on 21-Oct-2000 22:00 GMT
In reply to Comment 9 (South Side):
Not sure what you really mean by "emulating" PC whatever registers.
All modern systems (PCI/AGP, USB, Firewire, even Plug&Play ISA if
you don't run it on Windoze) support more or less the same AutoConfig
that the Classic Amiga has for ZorroX. You pop in the card or connector,
the resource control part of the OS reads out the new device's ID numbers,
picks the proper driver for these (from disk or the web, whatever), and
there you go.
For graphics, there's one lowest common denominator mode that every
card supports in case you have no better driver installed, 640*something,
so you do at least have screen display and can see what happens when you
try to install and configure a better driver in place. This mode gives you
a similar trusty fallback as the common across all models OCS modes on the
Classic Amiga chipset.
What concerns higher spec functionality, this will not be accessed in
the Amiga DE by hitting any registers. You will politely hand over your
settings to the correct function in a proper driver, and only that one
is then allowed to hit the registers. This makes sure that changing a
cards won't result in the "tied to stuff no longer made on earth"
desaster that hit the Classics.
Ok, from there on, of course each card or other peripheral will need a
driver, and someone has to write them. Thanks to our sleek trick of
being able to run hosted on other OSs, this will not be anywhere near
as threatening an issue as it is to Be or any other OS dealer apart
from the evil one, though in the longer run we will probably build our
own collection of such drivers for a variety of stuff.
Uhm, ok .. hope I didn't cause more confusion than I planned to clear up. ;)
Merlancia explains the Torro series : Comment 11 of 23ANN.lu
Posted by Kelly Samel on 21-Oct-2000 22:00 GMT
This, brings up an interesting point. Would it be possible to use drivers written for other operating systems on AmigaDE through some sort of translation/emulation layer? If this could be done then drivers for linux or windows ect. could be used to add instant hardware compatibility with AmigaDE. I do not know if something like this is possible but it's certainly a cool idea and sounds quite feasible.
Merlancia explains the Torro series : Comment 12 of 23ANN.lu
Posted by Don Cox on 21-Oct-2000 22:00 GMT
In reply to Comment 7 (Anonymous):
Most business is a design contest.
A company's web site, catalogs, adverts, and products are all part of
this.
Merlancia explains the Torro series : Comment 13 of 23ANN.lu
Posted by bbuilder on 21-Oct-2000 22:00 GMT
In reply to Comment 10 (gotz@amiga.com):
Plug & prey vs AutoConfic ...
Anyway, for som astrange reason AutoConfig works better.
Can you load the driver from the card itself?
For example BuddhaFlash drivers are loaded on the fly from the card,
I do not need to install anything. Can that be done with plug & prey?
Merlancia explains the Torro series : Comment 14 of 23ANN.lu
Posted by Radfoo on 21-Oct-2000 22:00 GMT
Sounds interesting, they must be using the POP motherboard designs.
Merlancia explains the Torro series : Comment 15 of 23ANN.lu
Posted by Anonymous on 21-Oct-2000 22:00 GMT
When reading the "it's a hoax" posts, i was wondering whether Merlancia or Amiga would come out with a common sense module with a clue chip for all these posters to stick in their brains.
Amiga say that they are licensing Amiga Technology. this by extension means that any box shifter or part time tinkers can build amiga compatables, much as they do now with PCs.
It look like there will be AmigaOnes which have been through the "AmigaOne process" and amiga compatables.
These could include build it yourself or specify it yourself Amigas with better than AmigaOne ingredients.
Merlancia explains the Torro series : Comment 16 of 23ANN.lu
Posted by Anonymous on 22-Oct-2000 22:00 GMT
In reply to Comment 8 (Anonymous):
So what your saying is that I've invented the most revolutionary
machine in the history of the world, and I don't have the ability
to DRAW, then my machine is a sham because I've shown you a very
poor drawing?
If you think the website could be improved and you can
do it so much better then why not volunteer to make the web page
up to your own specifications, thus show us ALL what you can do.
You can talk the talk but can YOU walk the walk?
Personally I didn't think the web page was that bad. Besides that
they are selling computers not designing web pages.
Merlancia explains the Torro series : Comment 17 of 23ANN.lu
Posted by Andre on 22-Oct-2000 22:00 GMT
In reply to Comment 16 (Anonymous):
> Personally I didn't think the web page was that bad. Besides that
> they are selling computers not designing web pages.
Uh, check out...
http://www.merlancia.com/mernet/design.html
They DO sell designing web pages.
The rest of the site looks much better.
Bye,
/////ANDRE
Merlancia explains the Torro series : Comment 18 of 23ANN.lu
Posted by Ryan E. A. Czerwinski on 22-Oct-2000 22:00 GMT
Even I am not happy with the design of the site. It is meant to be quick and simple while our costly designer works on a layout thet screams cutting edge.
Please have some patience...Rome wan't built in a day, and a killer website won't be either. We are doing a different theme for the MISEL public announcement site then the rest of Merlancia.com, which has never received any complaints on it's design. The new site should be starting to go up by the end of the week.
Hope this makes everyone feel better. If, however, anyone does have any design ideas, we would be glad to listen to them. We beleive in making sure that the community is happy. Sorry, a site that only works in 800x600with green text on a blaque background is not a good idea in my opinion, though i know of others who have done it... Again, we are happy to hear from you, our family. The Amiga fmaily. We are glad to see concern about the design of our MISEL site, as it shows that you are paying attention and are expecting something better. There is nothing wrong with wanting something better. That is what being an Amigan is all about. I feel that the Amiga platform is better than anything else out there today, just as I feel that our hardware series is better than anything else that is being planned.
To answer two more questions that have been asked several times:
1) When we reference the PowerPC 7400 procesor, we are referring to the 7400 series, which includes the 7410. It is only logical that we will go with the best available.
2) The circuitry design for the 4700 based systems is based off of the POP designs, however, it is modified from the POP designs to our needs. We are not just taking off the shelf boards and slapping them in a fancy package. Thsese boards will be our own designs with the system name sreenprinted on them. We are trying to do something special here, not just another "PC Clone". Please remember however, that we ar enot doing a "BoXeR". These systems will not have the custom chipset on them. If AG didn't keep changing their minds, we would be modifying the BoXeR design right now instead of designing our own. We really wanted to provide a dual solution. That, however, is too far lost to be looked at again.
I hope this clears up a few more issues. Thanks again for your support.
P.S. The "sales@merlancia.com" e-mail address is broken right now. A critical database was corrupted on one of our server systems that is in charge of the e-mail handler. We are in the process of restoring that currently. Please report any dead links to webmaster@merlancia.com. Thanks.
Cheers,
Ryan E. A. Czerwinski
Merlancia@merlancia.com
Merlancia explains the Torro series : Comment 19 of 23ANN.lu
Posted by Kojak on 22-Oct-2000 22:00 GMT
Ryan, wouldn't it be more easier if your e-mail address was ryan@merlancia.com instead of merlancia@merlancia.com? Anyway, keep up the work! :)
Merlancia explains the Torro series : Comment 20 of 23ANN.lu
Posted by Spete on 22-Oct-2000 22:00 GMT
In reply to Comment 6 (Anonymous):
You call the site un-professional? I think you should look about a bit. Granted
that it could be refined by adding link lists an seperated content. The grafx are
clean and easy on the eye. Maybe your browser dosn't support JavaScript applets.
If you want to see un-professional look at the GTE site.
Merlancia explains the Torro series : Comment 21 of 23ANN.lu
Posted by Anonymous on 22-Oct-2000 22:00 GMT
Merlancia .... hmmmmm ..... wasn't there a connection with iwin?
Altavista gives 3 results searchin for "+iwin +amiga +merlancia" and the MISEL
site comes in 1st place but I did not find the word i?win (recently removed?).
OTOH I could be terribly wrong!
Merlancia explains the Torro series : Comment 22 of 23ANN.lu
Posted by Ryan E. A. Czerwinski on 22-Oct-2000 22:00 GMT
Surprisingly enough, searching for "amiga merlancia" yields the same results, EXACTLY the same results.
At one time we had requested distribution rates and information from the folks at iWin. After several long months of wasted time and money doing so, we simply gave up. We had to face the hard fact that iWin was not who they made themselves out to be. Their contact information led to nowhere, and their US Firm was a Delaware Corporation. Enough said there. They also had no past history with the Amiga, and were an "unknown" before they announced in c.s.a.m. We do have a track record as a US Amiga supplier, and if you have any doubts, attend one of the many Amiga shows that we exhibit at. You will notice that our booth is usually the largest, and has the most amount of Amiga items, dollar-wise. (Including about 10 A4000T systems at AmiWest and a rack of PowerPC cards at A2k-St Louis.) You can always recognize the booth buy the red/white checkered cloth on the tables full of expensive hardware and stacks of boxed (new) software. Also, there is usually some unique "artifact" on display, such as the A3000plus at AmiWest. Out of desperation from the announcements made by Amiga in August 1999, we had to believe in iWin. What else was there, BoXeR?
Cheers,
Ryan E. A. Czerwinski
Merlancia@merlancia.com
Merlancia explains the Torro series : Comment 23 of 23ANN.lu
Posted by bbuilder on 23-Oct-2000 22:00 GMT
In reply to Comment 11 (Kelly Samel):
> This, brings up an interesting point. Would it be possible to use drivers written for other operating systems on
> AmigaDE through some sort of translation/emulation layer? If this could be done then drivers for linux or windows ect.
> could be used to add instant hardware compatibility with AmigaDE. I do not know if something like this is possible but
> it's certainly a cool idea and sounds quite feasible.
I think that would be very difficult to implement.
But when you ran AMigaDe as hosted, you can use host's drivers.
When a driver is ported to VP, it can work on different HW configurations (almost) without modifications.
Have you heard about the consortium, which is planning platform independent derivers & plug & play?
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