23-Apr-2024 17:08 GMT.		 UNDER CONSTRUCTION
Anonymous, there are 31 items in your selection
[News] Elbox is releasing their 100% compatible P96 driver todayANN.lu
Posted on 13-Feb-2001 21:46 GMT by Christian Kemp31 comments
View flat
View list
Christophe Decanini quotes VGR.COM: ELBOX Computer Development Department is proud to announce today's release of the new driver for graphic cards working with the MEDIATOR PCI busboard (..) Support for Voodoo4 and Voodoo5 cards is limited to 24-bit graphic mode. Here is the press release.
Elbox is releasing their 100% compatible P96 driver today : Comment 1 of 31ANN.lu
Posted by Kenny on 13-Feb-2001 23:00 GMT
You bastards are killing the amiga. Support ZORRO!!! Not the CRAP PCI interface. The mediator is BUGGY AS HELL GODDAMIT. you are all TRAITORS!!!
Elbox is releasing their 100% compatible P96 driver today : Comment 2 of 31ANN.lu
Posted by m0ns00n on 13-Feb-2001 23:00 GMT
?
Elbox is releasing their 100% compatible P96 driver today : Comment 3 of 31ANN.lu
Posted by Phil on 13-Feb-2001 23:00 GMT
Actually, I think that it's that kind of "philosophy" which put the Amiga as down as it is now....
Phil. [Oh my god ! They killed Kenny !]
Elbox is releasing their 100% compatible P96 driver today : Comment 4 of 31ANN.lu
Posted by Amifan on 13-Feb-2001 23:00 GMT
In reply to Comment 1 (Kenny):
If the mediator is buggy, then Elbox can simply release a new mach IC
Elbox is releasing their 100% compatible P96 driver today : Comment 5 of 31ANN.lu
Posted by the man in the shadows on 13-Feb-2001 23:00 GMT
I'm curious by Kenny's comments. Is that Terry Cooksey reincarnate? Seriously though, from what I've seen in a 1200 power tower it's pretty slick. If your setup is buggy Kenny, have you contacted Elbox for support?
Elbox is releasing their 100% compatible P96 driver today : Comment 6 of 31ANN.lu
Posted by Kenny on 13-Feb-2001 23:00 GMT
All i`m saying is: The Amiga had got a perfectly useable Zorro system, and more recently Zorro 4 from Power. Now, why would anyone want to use PCI when a fully 100% custom built AutoConfig interface is available. It`s madness. All that talk about "What is an Amiga?" well that question has taken on a whole new meaning. Amiga is ABANDONING it`s old virtues that made it different and now we are supporting the PC. It would appear that we have all accepted defeat and are going away with our tails between our legs, and a PCI card. The only viable argument is that PCI cards are cheaper. That`s true, but Amiga peripherals have always been more expensive than their inferior PC counterparts (and even then they COULD be made cheaper if Amiga developers weren`t tight bastards). I for one would sooner have a official Amiga AutoConfig 100% supported (no hacks!) board compared to a buggy as hell hack board, using the enemy devices. As for using a graphics card, new PCs dont even use the PCI port for this!! And Zorro 3 is more than capable for all other devices (serial, audio, ethernet) etc. So would someone please convince me that PCI is better, because I cant understand how it could possibly be.
Elbox is releasing their 100% compatible P96 driver today : Comment 7 of 31ANN.lu
Posted by Chris on 13-Feb-2001 23:00 GMT
In reply to Comment 6 (Kenny):
> It would appear that we have all accepted defeat and are
> going away with our tails between our legs, and a PCI card.
The Amiga has been defeated you moron. Try actually opening
your eyes for one second will you? Your argument is nothing
more than "A PC can play Quake 3 in 1024x768 32Bit at 60fps
but my good old Amiga with it`s ancient hardware, hacked
overexpensive expansions, rediculously slow graphics and
processor is better because its more elegant" FOR $*^&"
&^"$!%s SAKE WAKE UP! PPC expansions for the Amiga are
based on kludged, messy solutions and every, single
graphics card that has been available in the last 7 or 8
years has been based on PC graphics cards - directly or
indirectly- with kludged PCI-Zorro bridge logic and a
50% markup. That wouldn`t matter much if it wasn`t for
the fact that we are talking about OLD PC graphics cards.
Hell, things like the PIV ceased production simply
because the chips they used were so old they were no
longer made! The BVision has a fill rate lower than a
VooDoo1, it`s pathetic! The ONLY reason I can see for
continuing to use the Amiga is the OS. The hardware,
from start to finish, is a joke these days.
> The only viable argument is that PCI cards are cheaper.
And they give access to hardware that is remotely
new. But of course you won`t want that because it
might upset your fragile view of the Amiga`s
superiority..
> So would someone please convince me that PCI is better,
> because I cant understand how it could possibly be.
No, I won`t even try. You have already made up your
mind and there is no chance you will have it changed
by something as prosaic as facts.
Elbox is releasing their 100% compatible P96 driver today : Comment 8 of 31ANN.lu
Posted by Pleasurepill on 13-Feb-2001 23:00 GMT
In reply to Comment 6 (Kenny):
Funy you mention the Zorro IV...
Do you know that Elbox developed this Interface.
Yes you right, Bastards ;)
Elbox is releasing their 100% compatible P96 driver today : Comment 9 of 31ANN.lu
Posted by Phil on 13-Feb-2001 23:00 GMT
Kenny, You don't seem to be really aware of the market realities...
1) Is Zorro really better than PCI ? Could be discussed...
2) There are FEW zorro cards available and they are ooold
3) The Amiga market is shrinking, there are less and less hardware producers
4) Do you know how many it costs to design, produce and sell a Zorro card ? Much more than our poor harware producers can afford.....
5) There are thousands of very good PCI cards. Stunning 3d cards, fast ethernet, good music, ... Isn't it cool to have all that on our Miggy ?
6) RELAX !!! We're not in war ! There's no "enemy".
7) The AmigaClassic was the best some years ago, but not any more... The OS is still competitive, but the hardware is getting ridiculously old. So we have to move to a better hardware. I see Mediator as a temporary solution.
The AmigaClassic is dying ! Viva AmigaOne :-)
Elbox is releasing their 100% compatible P96 driver today : Comment 10 of 31ANN.lu
Posted by Francisco on 13-Feb-2001 23:00 GMT
The pci interface is good, and possible the best hardware for amiga in years
But........I think that zorro will not die, after all is zorro boards that make
autoconfig a true.so why not develop a zorro 5 with a bandwitch equal to pci or more
with no curren limitation of zorro but compatible with old zorro II/III.
then make a busboard (or better a new motherboard) with new zorro slots,pci and agp,
if you like cheap cards then plug pci ones but if you like more powerfull and
autoconfig card then plug zorro one.Yes zorro card will be more expensive but you
decide a cheap hardware or a powerfull but less cheap cards.
Zorro bus is good only need a major revision and update and it eates other buses (pci,agp)
and why not license the zorro bus so it could be a new standart.why not?
Elbox is releasing their 100% compatible P96 driver today : Comment 11 of 31ANN.lu
Posted by Kenny on 13-Feb-2001 23:00 GMT
In reply to Comment 10 (Francisco):
It`s funny that nobody disputes that no matter how good they say PCI is, everyone accepts that it isn`t an AutoConfig device, and no-one can beat that.
Of course Zorro should be updated, Zorro 5 would be very nice. In my mind a Zorro 5 interface would be unbeatable. the cynics might say, "Zorro 4 wasn`t well supported". That is irrelevent. Zorro 4 was never an official Amiga standard. If those guys at Amiga inc. included backwardly compatible Zorro 5 interfaces as part of a new amiga spec, THEN it would be more widely supported. Ten years ago, the Amiga had it`s own hardware, personality, image and style. Now? NO actual amiga hardware, NONE of the old commodore personality, NO associated image, who knows what an amiga is now? and no style conformity. Amiga`s need to be individual again. AMIGA case designs, the ORIGINAL AMIGA CHECK MARK, ADVERTISING!!!!! And a cusom case design, rather than a standard PC case. If we`re going to come back, lets do it right.
Elbox is releasing their 100% compatible P96 driver today : Comment 12 of 31ANN.lu
Posted by Nils on 13-Feb-2001 23:00 GMT
In reply to Comment 11 (Kenny):
Are you drunk or just plain stupid?
Elbox is releasing their 100% compatible P96 driver today : Comment 13 of 31ANN.lu
Posted by the man in the shadows on 13-Feb-2001 23:00 GMT
In reply to Comment 11 (Kenny):
> It`s funny that nobody disputes that no matter how good they say PCI is,
> everyone accepts that it isn`t an AutoConfig device, and no-one can beat
> that.
So you are saying that PCI is perfectly acceptible if the boards were autoconfig? The only shortcoming of PCI is autoconfig imho, everything else about it smokes Zorro 3 & 4 (Zorro 4 isn't as fast as Zorro 3 but it is a very close second)
> Of course Zorro should be updated, Zorro 5 would be very nice. In my mind
> a Zorro 5 interface would be unbeatable. the cynics might say, "Zorro 4
> wasn`t well supported". That is irrelevent. Zorro 4 was never an official
> Amiga standard.
That's a bit far fetched. The Z4 standard is more supported that you might think. Eyetech, bPlan, Elbox, and a few others support that format. When you think about it, all but two companies have supported the design. As for being as far from an "official" Amiga standard, it sure got enough attention. I believe that Ralph Schmidt proved this point of stating that there is no standards in Amigadom by creating MorpOS instead of updating PowerUP. However, that's an entirely different story.
> If those guys at Amiga inc. included backwardly compatible Zorro 5
> interfaces as part of a new amiga spec, THEN it would be more widely
> supported.
What I'd like to see: Z5 would be PCI with Autoconfig. Z6 would be AGP with Autoconfig. Let's take it a bit further and include some way to keep the driver for the PCI interface on the card itself like in a flashable ROM or something. When the card is plugged into the Z5/Z6 interface it communicates with the Host environment and loads the appropriate drivers or native drivers for the AmigaDE/ONE. THAT would be anything that the original Z bus ever had to offer. I think that Dave Haynie said it best when he stated the PCI bus was everything that Z4 was (Amiga 3000+ prototype) without Autoconfig. The whole point is, anything is possible with the Amiga. Regardless of the components being PCI, they can still be used to the advantage of Amiga users world wide. Another reason to use PCI, it's a standard. I wouldn't be surprised if it goes out the door be the beginning of next year though. With the advent of AGP and AMR slots starting to be found in systems, PCI could be a think of the past. If you don't know, AMR stands for Audio/Modem Riser. Before you condemn PCI into obliteration, look at the numbers and the capabilities, then have a look at how it could be changed to benefit the Amiga.
> Ten years ago, the Amiga had it`s own hardware, personality, image and
> style. Now? NO actual amiga hardware, NONE of the old commodore personality,
> NO associated image, who knows what an amiga is now? and no style
> conformity. Amiga`s need to be individual again. AMIGA case designs, the
> ORIGINAL AMIGA CHECK MARK, ADVERTISING!!!!! And a cusom case design, rather
> than a standard PC case. If we`re going to come back, lets do it right.
I'm going to ask a very serios question and I don't mean it to be offensive. Have you been stuck under a rock for the past years? Or for that matter, the past 6 months? The Amiga still has it's own hardware and they are developing a reference platform for hardware developers to use as a base to go on. Yeah it will have things like USB, FireWire, DIMM sockets, RIMM sockets (depending), PCI, AGP, AMR, and a whole slew of other _Industry Standard_ options. The point being is that the whole idea behind the "AmigaONE" is not to keep anyone from moving away from the Amiga, but offering an Amiga that would have the eight years or so of developement if it had that in a weekends time. After the AmigaONE has been released, I'm sure that further developement will be done on the reference platform to implement things like those above.
The only thing I don't understand, how can you say that DKB is not one of the "old commodore personality"? The one thing that I hope stays out of the whole advertising is the checkmark. That has always been my least favorite out of all of the images and logos that Amiga has had. I really like the 3D look of the Boing ball... but it's not the Joe Torre Boing Ball, but a different version instead. The "Joe T. BB" had 64 squares on it where as the current one only has 48. The 64 came from an old riddle that a few of the hardware gurus had... something about 8bits I know that.
Elbox is releasing their 100% compatible P96 driver today : Comment 14 of 31ANN.lu
Posted by Phil on 13-Feb-2001 23:00 GMT
In reply to Comment 11 (Kenny):
Look around you !!! The world has changed !!!
What was possible 10 years ago would be an economical suicide nowadays !
A custom hardware would figure about 0.0001 % of the market. A company can't survive in these conditions !
If we want the Amiga to come back, it'll have to follow the mainstream. If it ever comes back to a strong place, it'll be able to create its own standards. But in-between, the keyword is : SURVIVE !
The Good Old Days are over. It's plain and crude reality.
Elbox is releasing their 100% compatible P96 driver today : Comment 15 of 31ANN.lu
Posted by peter Heginbotham on 13-Feb-2001 23:00 GMT
Kenny are you thick?
PCI is the industry standard for cards. Full stop
Zorro is dead technology, wakeup and smell the coffee..!
Peter
Elbox is releasing their 100% compatible P96 driver today : Comment 16 of 31ANN.lu
Posted by HammerD on 13-Feb-2001 23:00 GMT
In reply to Comment 11 (Kenny):
Commodore had already decided to move to PCI for the next Amigas. There was never going to be any Zorro 4 and Zorro 5.
Even with Zorro 3 there are some serious bugs. It was good for its time, but even back in '93 and '94 it was clear PCI had pretty much everything C= needed for an expansion bus.
Elbox is releasing their 100% compatible P96 driver today : Comment 17 of 31ANN.lu
Posted by Frans on 13-Feb-2001 23:00 GMT
If you want the Zorro interface back, I guess you'd like everyone to get themselves a Betamax VCR too, right ? (I mean it beats VHS, but then again almost every other Videostandard does...)
Elbox is releasing their 100% compatible P96 driver today : Comment 18 of 31ANN.lu
Posted by Marcel on 13-Feb-2001 23:00 GMT
Since when isn't PCI/AGP autoconfig? I plug in the card, turn on the computer, and it works once the drivers are installed. What's different between that and the Amiga?
When I got my PicassoII, I plugged in the card, turned the computer on, installed the drivers and it worked.
Where is the difference? The only thing that makes autoconfig a bitch on the pc is the way windows does it, and that was only an issue with isa stuff. Get a pci only system, and you'll have no problems whatsoever.
Elbox is releasing their 100% compatible P96 driver today : Comment 19 of 31ANN.lu
Posted by m0ns00n on 13-Feb-2001 23:00 GMT
In reply to Comment 18 (Marcel):
Marcel, that is not correct. Most PC hardware sux. It is because the hw sold in shops is bad quality (special low price offers have destroyed computer hw offered in shops -> a computer guy has to utilize the internet and SEARCH for qual (i know: a different story)), but PC autoconfig is poor.
Elbox is releasing their 100% compatible P96 driver today : Comment 20 of 31ANN.lu
Posted by the man in the shadows on 13-Feb-2001 23:00 GMT
In reply to Comment 18 (Marcel):
A true autoconfig card has the hardware addressing schemes assigned by the bus rather than the cards determining the location that they need. A good example is to load up 5 PCI slots with nothing but a graphics card and 4 different SCSI controllers. I can guarantee that it will not work since most of the scsi controllers will try and take memory allocation from areas that the memory card already takes at boot. The result would be three long solid beeps with little or no output to the monitor. The only reason why the PicassoII card needed drivers is due to the fact that there are no native RTG layers available in the Amiga ROM. If you were to plug in a A2058 board on an Amiga it's instantly available at boot. On a PC, you have to tell it that the board exists with drivers and check to see what address it is taking on the chain. See the difference?
Elbox is releasing their 100% compatible P96 driver today : Comment 21 of 31ANN.lu
Posted by Mike on 13-Feb-2001 23:00 GMT
In reply to Comment 20 (the man in the shadows):
Isn't that because, essentially, there's rom info on the card?
What about PCI SCSI cards? They're available the moment you boot
Elbox is releasing their 100% compatible P96 driver today : Comment 22 of 31ANN.lu
Posted by Christophe Decanini on 13-Feb-2001 23:00 GMT
In reply to Comment 20 (the man in the shadows):
I just want to mention I use 7 zorro cards without any problem.
For a while I had 5 gfx cards + AGA working perfectly.
Does anyone tried 7 PCI or 5 Gfx cards on a PC without any problem ?
I'am sure you get problems before getting to this point.
I experienced many times issues on PC where all possible IRQ / adresses where taken and there were no possibility to have all cards working together.
M$ plug and play try to solve it and fail, you have a little more chance to do it by hand.
But I don't think it it is PCI specific as I never get this problems in a 6 PCI Macintosh clone.
What is missing to current Amiga PCi cards is a bootrom with code to get to the PCI devices.
I think Amigaone will do it so you can for example boot an SCSI drive attached to a PCI SCSI card.
I don't see how the mediator could do it.
I hope we won't need to ask adaptec to do a special bios to do it.
Elbox is releasing their 100% compatible P96 driver today : Comment 23 of 31ANN.lu
Posted by Darrin on 14-Feb-2001 23:00 GMT
Let's get back to the subject - Well done Elbox for producing more drivers to allow more graphics card models to be used on the Amiga. Keep the drivers comming.
Elbox is releasing their 100% compatible P96 driver today : Comment 24 of 31ANN.lu
Posted by Marcel on 14-Feb-2001 23:00 GMT
In reply to Comment 19 (m0ns00n):
What, you've never tried QNX RtP on a crappy pc? Does autoconfig pretty damn well, if I must say so myself.
But, no, 'cause Win 9X has/had some problems with autoconfig (mostly isa stuff), it must mean that pc hardware sux big ones, right?
And the people bitching that you can plug in the A2024 card, and it'll work right away on the Amiga, well that's cause support for it is in Kickstart. Plug in a Picasso, ..., into your Amiga and you need to install *drivers* just like in Windows to use it.
But wait, I hear, with Cybergraphx, it's all automatically recognized. What happens when you plug a card that is not supported by your version of cybergraphics?
Elbox is releasing their 100% compatible P96 driver today : Comment 25 of 31ANN.lu
Posted by Anonymous on 14-Feb-2001 23:00 GMT
In reply to Comment 24 (Marcel):
Taking neither side, but throwing this in for the hell of it:
PCI is based on ISA which is one of the worst godawful warped address protocols ever devised. PCI improves on it but tries to be backward compatible.
The PC hardware itself (ie: the gfx chips, etc) is the best the world can produce, but even then the manufacturers hate the bus protocol which is why we go from ISA to EISA to PCI and now AGP and so on. As with all PC legacy junk we ought to just scrap the lot and start again, recognising that legacy compatibility to an 8-bit IO space and 16-bit address space is just stupid.
Zorro is a technically better protocol than PCI, but due to Amiga motherboard historical limitations Z3 isn't as fast. Zorro does support true autoconfig, not the arbitrary forced hope-it-works remapping that the software is forced to perform on PCI. In fact, nothing in conventional PC hardware supports any kind of autoconfig, it all relies on software.
Elbox is releasing their 100% compatible P96 driver today : Comment 26 of 31ANN.lu
Posted by Elliott Olson on 14-Feb-2001 23:00 GMT
"...limited to 24-bit graphic mode."
Can we see better than 24-bit on current monitors?
Elbox is releasing their 100% compatible P96 driver today : Comment 27 of 31ANN.lu
Posted by Rafo on 14-Feb-2001 23:00 GMT
In reply to Comment 26 (Elliott Olson):
Well, 32-bit modes are just faster, because of byte-alignment stuff.
Never mind, I've always been (and an still) using 16-bit for my WB and appz (Overlay displays 24-bit on any screendepth) and it does it just fine.
Elbox is releasing their 100% compatible P96 driver today : Comment 28 of 31ANN.lu
Posted by Anonymous on 15-Feb-2001 23:00 GMT
I was thinking about getting a mediator and wondered:
1) Is the z4 version slower than the directly-connecting version (i.e does z4 become a bottleneck)
2) If I get the z4 version, will my z4 card still function as normal?
3) Will PCI cards block any of the Zorro card spaces?
4) Is the mediator STABLE. It seems a bit of a kludge to say the least...
Please answer these questions. Thanks in advance.
Elbox is releasing their 100% compatible P96 driver today : Comment 29 of 31ANN.lu
Posted by WinUAE user on 15-Feb-2001 23:00 GMT
In reply to Comment 6 (Kenny):
Hey Kenny! Do you know that NVidia will do a Zorro version of its new GeForce 3D card? No? I don't too.
Elbox is releasing their 100% compatible P96 driver today : Comment 30 of 31ANN.lu
Posted by Dave on 15-Feb-2001 23:00 GMT
In reply to Comment 28 (Anonymous):
> 1) Is the z4 version slower than the directly-connecting version (i.e does z4 become a bottleneck)
Elbox have said the Z4 version runs at the same speed as the normal version.
> 2) If I get the z4 version, will my z4 card still function as normal?
Not sure about this, you'd probably have to read the same press release that answered
question 1 - it sounded like one of the Z4 slots might be blocked, but I wasn't paying
attention. Have a look on vgr.com, it will have the press releases (might even be on
ANN or CzAN).
> 3) Will PCI cards block any of the Zorro card spaces?
See answer to 2.
> 4) Is the mediator STABLE. It seems a bit of a kludge to say the least...
I've got a Voodoo3 connected to it, and it seems stable enough, although there
are some doubts about the drivers and whether there are problems, since you get
display corruption after opening a few screens. There is an effort going on to
find out why this happens.
Elbox is releasing their 100% compatible P96 driver today : Comment 31 of 31ANN.lu
Posted by tronman on 17-Feb-2001 23:00 GMT
In reply to Comment 25 (Anonymous):
Uh, that's not entirely true. PCI does actually have ROM data in each card with a unique vendor ID nr. and each card tells the bus what it is/needs at boot time... Just like Zorro!!! The IRQ/DMA deal is the x86 legacy part of the interface. If PCI is good enough for a 64bit Alpha box, it sure can kick the shit outa ZorroIII. Can we PLEASE get off the Zorro bus now?? I can almost hear Amiga Inc. Laughing at the 'Zorro V' request!!! GET REAL!!! AINT GONNA HAPPEN!!!
At any rate, even x86 arch moves on. A look at the PC99 spec reveals that ISA and the FDC are pretty much verboten. A fully compliant system doesn't even have an FDC only a (now sadly defunct) LS120 on the IDE bus as the floppy. Even under Linux I have only ever had one card not auto-configure and that was a dodgy 3COM modem card (no, it wasn't a WINmodem either.) but I got rid of it before I got RH7.0 so I don't know if the newest KUDZU would have found it.
Anonymous, there are 31 items in your selection
Back to Top