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[News] Elbox responds to Eyetech's Amiga challenceANN.lu
Posted on 31-Oct-2000 00:10 GMT by Christian Kemp27 comments
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Darrin writes: Elbox have posted an article comparing their Mediator to the new Eyetech A1200/A4000 boards. They seem to claim that their product can do all the things that Eyetech's can... and more!... AND it's available now! The Shark PPC+ add-on is also supposed to deliver an AGP slot and USB 2.x.
Elbox responds to Eyetech's Amiga challence : Comment 1 of 27ANN.lu
Posted by James on 30-Oct-2000 23:00 GMT
"The hardware compatibility from the side of G3/G4 processors in
both solutions guarantees that the entire range of software written
for the new AmigaDE operational system will work on MEDIATOR PCI."
Eh? Are they saying you can run the AmigaDE on the Mediator + SharkPPC?
Elbox responds to Eyetech's Amiga challence : Comment 2 of 27ANN.lu
Posted by Eagle One on 30-Oct-2000 23:00 GMT
In reply to Comment 1 (James):
>Eh? Are they saying you can run the AmigaDE on the Mediator + SharkPPC?
Exactly. I even thought the same thing a few days ago when reading the Eyetech announcement...the AmigaONE 1200/Predator/whatever sounded too similar to the Mediator because, now, both are plugged directly in the A1200 edge connector, and both can take a G3/G4 addon card. They're becoming very close products, and two very good solutions after all!
So let's hope that Elbox start a nice talk with Amiga Inc. now, or something similar to the Voodoo drivers issue could occur again :P
Elbox responds to Eyetech's Amiga challence : Comment 3 of 27ANN.lu
Posted by bbuilder on 30-Oct-2000 23:00 GMT
More importantly: can mediator be used as stand alone, like AmigaONE.
Elbox responds to Eyetech's Amiga challence : Comment 4 of 27ANN.lu
Posted by Kojak on 30-Oct-2000 23:00 GMT
Ok, why hasn't Amiga Inc. announced an agreement with Elbox than? I think I know why, because of their attitude. They seem to have impressive products lined up, but they have to be careful not to be arrogant. Having a big ego easier than being humble...
Elbox responds to Eyetech's Amiga challence : Comment 5 of 27ANN.lu
Posted by Tony Gore on 30-Oct-2000 23:00 GMT
I do hope that Elbox talks with Amiga to gain official approval of their product. It will make users more secure with thier purchase.
Elbox responds to Eyetech's Amiga challence : Comment 6 of 27ANN.lu
Posted by Alan Watson on 30-Oct-2000 23:00 GMT
I`m starting to wonder about Elbox.When you read their latest press release
they go on about the fact that the AmigaONE doesn`t have logic for supporting
68k accelerators and the fact that it doesn`t have Zorro-slots.The whole point
of the AmigaONE is that it doesn`t need a 68k accelerator,as it is emulated
using the G3/4 card.And as far as I know the Mediator doesn`t have any Zorro slots unless you`ve bought the Z4 busboard and connected the Mediator to that,although they claim it has in the press release.They also say that `This means that AmigaONE 1200 in the Amiga Classic mode will provide calculation capacity of the 68020 14 MHz processor at the most.`
Somehow I think they`ve got their facts wrong.
Elbox really need to take a good look at their marketing strategy,stop attacking
other developers and concentrate on getting drivers out for their products.At
the end of the day,they can moan all they want but slagging gets you nowhere
these days,especially in business.
Just my opinion....
Elbox responds to Eyetech's Amiga challence : Comment 7 of 27ANN.lu
Posted by John Block on 30-Oct-2000 23:00 GMT
Just to make sure i'm following the plot: "A1200 edge connector" is the ridge in the hole under the amiga where accellarotors and extra memory go.
Both solutions will mean taking the amiga out of the keyboard and putting it into a tower with new keyboard.
This will mean that the pcmia slot on the outside will be left clear so squirrels etc can still be used.
So what happens to existing accellerator and memory?
Elbox responds to Eyetech's Amiga challence : Comment 8 of 27ANN.lu
Posted by Anonymous on 30-Oct-2000 23:00 GMT
Just when will Elbox realise that attacking other developers will make
them look dumb and unprofessional? Instead of posting press releases
they should rather take care of the software side. I would not buy an
Elbox product (though I have no doubt they are technically competent)
unless I would know exactly which software it uses. Unless they port
WarpOS (therefore they have to PAY to license it) OS 3.9 won't be able
to take advantage of their PPC. But if they handle the WarpOS license
the same way they handled the VooDoo license, well, goodnight. This
press release said nothing new (everyone is able to compare specs), I
think it was just meant to attack the other company.
Elbox responds to Eyetech's Amiga challence : Comment 9 of 27ANN.lu
Posted by John Block on 30-Oct-2000 23:00 GMT
I think I've got it about accellerators: elbox has some form of pass through.
Elbox responds to Eyetech's Amiga challence : Comment 10 of 27ANN.lu
Posted by Jools (BuZz) on 30-Oct-2000 23:00 GMT
In reply to Comment 6 (Alan Watson):
>I`m starting to wonder about Elbox.When you read their latest press release
>they go on about the fact that the AmigaONE doesn`t have logic for supporting
>68k accelerators and the fact that it doesn`t have Zorro-slots.The whole point
>of the AmigaONE is that it doesn`t need a 68k accelerator,as it is emulated
>using the G3/4 card.
but it would nice to have a solution where you dont NEED to emulate a
680x0 and have one present for backward compatibility. for those that still
like the 680x0 architecture its a good solution.
>And as far as I know the Mediator doesn`t have any Zorro
>slots unless you`ve bought the Z4 busboard and connected the Mediator to that,although they claim it has in the press release.
they state clearly in brackets they are referring to the ZIV version of
the mediator . read it again
>Elbox really need to take a good look at their marketing strategy,stop attacking
>other developers and concentrate on getting drivers out for their products.At
>the end of the day,they can moan all they want but slagging gets you nowhere
>these days,especially in business.
i dont see this as an attack. no more than any other company trying
to show that they have the best product. do you consider telephone
companies comparing tariffs attack on each other? no, its just competition.
and i think after the business with the v3 drivers, they have every right
to show the world that their product is best. certainly for me
as a `proper` amiga user elbox are offering me the best upgrade routes.
i already have 2 products of theirs, which have worked really well.
(and continues software driver updates all the time also)
Elbox responds to Eyetech's Amiga challence : Comment 11 of 27ANN.lu
Posted by Ian on 30-Oct-2000 23:00 GMT
In reply to Comment 8 (Anonymous):
I don't think Elbox were trying to "attack" anyone, they were just doing the usual thing manufacturers do by publishing charts of features carefully designed to show theirs best. At no point do they say any other hardware is inadequate, they are just advertising their own.
AFAICT, there may be some minor technical limitation over why the boards need to be plugged into an A1200 motherboard, perhaps it's still capable of accessing the AGA hardware if you don't use a gfx card. Generally speaking the thing is very localised. A whole new computer. You plug a PCI/AGP gfx card into it and an IDE drive and it works. I wont be at all surprised to see something very similar looking appear as a standalone motherboard when Amiga are ready to license those type of systems.
The emulation of 68K will operate under AmigaDE, but maybe what they're getting at is with other systems (so far) your existing accelerator will not operate *at all*. So if you wanted to run a real Classic Amiga (ie: what you`ve got now) as opposed to an emulated one, you couldn't. Maybe. :-/
C'mon guys, last week we were bitching at DCE. This week its Elbox. Give it up and get some facts in here, can we please?
Elbox responds to Eyetech's Amiga challence : Comment 12 of 27ANN.lu
Posted by Kay Are Ulvestad on 30-Oct-2000 23:00 GMT
I don't think this press release is meant as an attack. It is simply a
biased comparasion between their product and a competing product.
Nothing wrong with that. I hope Elbox manages to work out a deal with
Amiga to license their new OS, or at least make them support their
hardware in a retail version of AmigaDE. If the Mediator+SharkPPC
combo doesn't run AmigaDE, Elbox has a serious problem.
Kay
Elbox responds to Eyetech's Amiga challence : Comment 13 of 27ANN.lu
Posted by m0ns00n on 30-Oct-2000 23:00 GMT
In reply to Comment 11 (Ian):
LEARN! Please, miggy-men and women. Going on with these moralizing speaches doesn't help a bit. Try having everything in perspective for a while before posting. Look at me moralizing. See this as a little comment I do to ease my head.
The products are coming. Or not. Buy them. Do not buy them. If we were to talk about all the immoral ppl out there - it is important to have in mind that each culture has its own morals. Please, do anyone in here believe in a "natural law" of ethics? Look at the outcome.
.end.of.moralizing.speech
Elbox responds to Eyetech's Amiga challence : Comment 14 of 27ANN.lu
Posted by Hans Wezenberg aka MazzelSiD on 30-Oct-2000 23:00 GMT
Elbox arrogant? Critising other developers? Mmm dunno about that, seems to me
that Elbox is delivering. And on time, something which seems impossible in the
Amigaworld (Phase5/DCE). I respect them for accomplishing that.
Lets see how the three (Elbox/DCE/Eyetech) will compare when all solutions are
out.
Elbox certainly has my moral support.
Elbox responds to Eyetech's Amiga challence : Comment 15 of 27ANN.lu
Posted by Darrin on 30-Oct-2000 23:00 GMT
I'm sure the reason behind Elbox's press-release was to reassure owners of the Mediator that they haven't wasted their money and to let the rest of us know that buying a Mediator now won't mean that we will have to buy an Amiga1200 board from Eyetech too.
Elbox responds to Eyetech's Amiga challence : Comment 16 of 27ANN.lu
Posted by Bernd Meyer on 30-Oct-2000 23:00 GMT
On a completely different topic (seeing as the mud-slinging between Eyetech, DCE and ELBOX is nothing but sad):
Has anyone managed to get their Mediator to work with *two* (or more) Virge cards? I made a copy of the monitor file, but it simply gets ignored --- it never evem looks for a Virge on the PCI bus. And looking at the driver code, the Virge driver seems to assume that a single Virge is the only device being accessed through PCI memory space.
But surely that can't be right? I must be missing something obvious, I believe. Too many possibly desirable cards map into PCI memory space for this limitation to actually be there.
So, anyone managed to get it going?
Elbox responds to Eyetech's Amiga challence : Comment 17 of 27ANN.lu
Posted by Bill Toner on 30-Oct-2000 23:00 GMT
OK, can someone explain something to me? Elbox say "This means that AmigaONE 1200 in the Amiga Classic mode will provide
calculation capacity of the 68020 14 MHz processor at the most." in their posting. I was
under the impression that Eyetech's AmigaOne G3/G4 would emulate a 68K using H&P's
WarpOS 68K emulation software. This will allow us to use the "classic" AmigaOS and apps
natively, instead of using the DE's "Amiga Emulation Layer" stuff. Or did I misunderstand
something, and WarpOS will NOT be supported in this way, and we will only be able to
use the DE with these upgrade cards? I thought it sounded like these cards can run either
WarpOS/AmigaOS classic, or the AmigaDE, choosing at bot time or something.
Now, if they will support WarpOS (and I seriously hope they do), will a 500MHz+
G4 not emulate a 68K a tad faster than a 14MHz 020? I've heard that H&P's emulation
on a 233MHz 604e is comparable to a 25MHz 040. I have a feeling that a G3 or G4 will
be able to beat that at the higher PPC speeds. And I suspect that a 25MHz 040 is faster
than a 14MHz 020, so I'm not sure how Elbox came up with their AmigaOne complaint here.
I'm not bashing anyone at the moment, I respect Elbox for releasing something
like Mediator. But I would like to understand this issue better...
Elbox responds to Eyetech's Amiga challence : Comment 18 of 27ANN.lu
Posted by Ian on 30-Oct-2000 23:00 GMT
In reply to Comment 13 (m0ns00n):
>LEARN! Please, miggy-men and women. Going on with these moralizing speaches >doesn't help a bit. Try having everything in perspective for a while before
Huh? Is this supposed to be a response to my post?
I *want* stuff in perspective. Facts. Considered opinions. Not random slagging. Is that not what you'd like?
>The products are coming. Or not. Buy them. Do not buy them. If we were to talk >about all the immoral ppl out there - it is important to have in mind that
But we have to rely on posting on forums like this to discuss the pro's and con's of buying something. Saying "buy it if you like" doesn't help anybody decide, correctly or otherwise.
Elbox responds to Eyetech's Amiga challence : Comment 19 of 27ANN.lu
Posted by ElfKing on 30-Oct-2000 23:00 GMT
In reply to Comment 7 (John Block):
>> Just to make sure i'm following the plot: "A1200 edge connector" is the
>> ridge in the hole under the amiga where accellarotors and extra memory go.
>> Both solutions will mean taking the amiga out of the keyboard and putting
>> it into a tower with new keyboard.
I hacked my A1200 into a PC tower case long before there were pretty custom
fit towers for such. I beleive such a mind set is needed for dealing with
hardware that is this old. lol, I would put my *patched/hacked* hardware
if I got either of these products into a wooden box if I had to. Engineering
something is not that hard, and can still be made safe for the hardware, even
though it might not look to pretty. Get something *canned* and pretty later
when you know this stuff (Amiga as a whole) will be going somewhere.
>> This will mean that the pcmia slot on the outside will be left clear so
>> squirrels etc can still be used.
>> So what happens to existing accellerator and memory?
Elbox responds to Eyetech's Amiga challence : Comment 20 of 27ANN.lu
Posted by Amifan on 30-Oct-2000 23:00 GMT
In reply to Comment 17 (Bill Toner):
Elbox ment that you can't use your current accelerator fitted in the edge connector with the a1200 amigaOne sollution. It doesn't even have logic to support it.
This means that you can only use the 68020 14Mhz on the amiga's mainboard. If there's no WarpOs driver, then you have an original amiga1200 with a lot of PCI slots.
The Elbox sollution supports an amiga accelerator. It provides a pass-thru connector. So you can have best of both system.
A amiga 68K accelerator and a G3/G4.
You've seen the voodoo3 war.
Maybe a warpOS driver for the Predator's G3 isn't even possible.....
Ben?
Elbox responds to Eyetech's Amiga challence : Comment 21 of 27ANN.lu
Posted by Alan Watson on 30-Oct-2000 23:00 GMT
In reply to Comment 10 (Jools (BuZz)):
Sorry,my mistake.
Elbox responds to Eyetech's Amiga challence : Comment 22 of 27ANN.lu
Posted by Nian on 31-Oct-2000 23:00 GMT
Did everyone miss the entire last half of the press release?
Can anyone comment on the a4000 version having all those useful
Zorro3 slots, PCI slots and the Video slot? For I personally,
the very fact that I can keep my zorro3 slots and have an
internal scandoubler means that Elbox is the only choice.
If you want an AmigaONE buy the new motherboard they talked about,
if you want an amiga (real amiga) with the capacity to also run the
AmigaONE OS, then buy the Mediator. Atleast it supports existing
amiga hardware. And I'm sure all you VideoToaster, ScanSoubler, IOBlix
Catweasel, P5 PPC. Card owners should be happy to know you can keep
your expensive and still useful hardware.
Elbox responds to Eyetech's Amiga challence : Comment 23 of 27ANN.lu
Posted by victor # on 31-Oct-2000 23:00 GMT
Regarding the emulation question, I think we already have an answer. From Eyetech's site:
"...G3/G4 cpu upgrade module. This cpu module will be needed for both the Classic Amiga (via cpu emulation and or OS emulation) and for the Amiga DE."
"The system will be dual boot. The custom chips, kickstart etc of the original Amiga will be used for 100% compatibility in 680x0 emulation mode."
"With 680x0 emulation on the G3/G4 (which will be a boot option from the AmigaOne's flash ROM) the board will just look like an Amiga accelerator to the native Amiga, and will boot the Amiga's Kickstart ROMs etc."
Well, I think a fast G3/G4 can emulate the 68K at quite good speeds (and 1+GHz G4's are on the way...). (And, I wonder a bit if anytime soon there will be SW-system to use old PPC's with the new ones simultaneously...)
Elbox responds to Eyetech's Amiga challence : Comment 24 of 27ANN.lu
Posted by Markku Virtanen on 01-Nov-2000 23:00 GMT
In reply to Comment 17 (Bill Toner):
I agree with you concerning the emulation speed. 68020 at 14 mhz speed??? It must be crappy emulation if MorphOS manages 040 25mhz with only PPC603e!!!! Where did elbox came with these figures!?! And my opinion about the Zorroslots: dumb em! Its slow and expensive. I want AGP and PCI. I was wondering about 4 years ago why anyone havent done PCI expansions. I only have zorro 2, but I have used Z3. It goes so slow after 16 bpl.
If I remember right, the reason for not using 680x0 and PPC in the same time is slowing PPC because of the contex switches. In the 603/604 the L2 cache had to go because it would have slowed contex switching a lot. I would love to use for example MorphOS with a G3/G4 card. If the HPs 680x0 emulating is as good as Morpos then we can finally ditch the 68k and use fully the PPC. Ok, I might wandered off the topic, but lets just see what future brings us...
Elbox responds to Eyetech's Amiga challence : Comment 25 of 27ANN.lu
Posted by Chris on 01-Nov-2000 23:00 GMT
In reply to Comment 24 (Markku Virtanen):
Cmon man, read what you have in front of you. as far as I can see, there's
no word of any emulation in the first part of their text:
"The basic shortcoming of the AmigaONE 1200 project is that its
designers will not implement logic for AmigaONE 1200 working
with 68k and 68k/PPC turbo cards. Such implementation would require
expanding AmigaONE 1200 logic and, most of all, its designers
having knowledge of the technical intricacies of the design of all
the currently available turbo cards.
This means that AmigaONE 1200 in the Amiga Classic mode will provide
calculation capacity of the 68020 14 MHz processor at the most."
Get it? It means in classic mode (no ppc for emulation) you'll be stuck
using the 68020 on the
mainboard to run your classic apps in classic mode, as AmigaOne A1200 cannot
work with A1200 68K accel cards (or the phase 5 dual cpu things).
Emulation is referred to later on:
"In both solutions (MEDIATOR PCI 1200 and AmigaONE 1200), irrespective
of the Classic mode, running Amiga Classic programmes will also be
possible in the emulation mode in PowerPC G3 and G4 processors."
hope you do get it now
Elbox responds to Eyetech's Amiga challence : Comment 26 of 27ANN.lu
Posted by victor # on 01-Nov-2000 23:00 GMT
In reply to Comment 24 (Markku Virtanen):
I think they thought the EC020/14MHz (on the mobo) will be used in the "Classic Mode". So they didn't read that in this mode also a 68K emulation will be used.
Elbox responds to Eyetech's Amiga challence : Comment 27 of 27ANN.lu
Posted by Chris on 02-Nov-2000 23:00 GMT
In reply to Comment 26 (victor #):
Read their announcement once again:
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