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[News] Elbox Spider sales beganANN.lu
Posted on 25-Sep-2002 16:11 GMT by ELBOX COMPUTER16 comments
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We are glad to inform that the Spider USB 2.0 High-Speed card is on sale now from our distributors. To find the distributor near you, please go to our Where To Buy section.

We have also set up the official Spider USB 2.0 High-Speed card website.
Elbox Spider sales began : Comment 1 of 16ANN.lu
Posted by Christophe Decanini on 25-Sep-2002 14:25 GMT
"The minimum hardware configuration is: any Amiga with 68030 turbo card, the Mediator PCI busboard, the Mediator Multimedia CD and the Voodoo graphic card."
Why is the Voodoo required ?
Elbox Spider sales began : Comment 2 of 16ANN.lu
Posted by GMKai on 25-Sep-2002 15:03 GMT
In reply to Comment 1 (Christophe Decanini):
because of the mem on it!
Elbox Spider sales began : Comment 3 of 16ANN.lu
Posted by John on 25-Sep-2002 15:07 GMT
In reply to Comment 1 (Christophe Decanini):
IIRC the Voodoo's memory is used for buffering, to allow the PCI bus' hi speed ability of the cards to talk to each other. 1MB of the Voodoo's memory is the default setting.
-john
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Elbox Spider sales began : Comment 4 of 16ANN.lu
Posted by Christophe Decanini on 25-Sep-2002 15:26 GMT
In reply to Comment 3 (John):
OK. Thanks for the explanation.
That suits the Amiga tradition of using GFX memory for non GFX stuff.
Elbox Spider sales began : Comment 5 of 16ANN.lu
Posted by Johan "Graak" Forsberg on 25-Sep-2002 15:28 GMT
In reply to Comment 4 (Christophe Decanini):
It uses the graphics memory as a DMA buffer. PCI cards which use DMA wouldn't work otherwise (at least in Mediator PCI 1200).
Elbox Spider sales began : Comment 6 of 16ANN.lu
Posted by anon on 25-Sep-2002 15:48 GMT
In reply to Comment 5 (Johan "Graak" Forsberg):
That quite limits the usability of the mediator if it only works with a voodoo. Will other graphics cards also do?
I think Elbox should rethink this and provide onboard mem for PCI intercommunication.
Elbox Spider sales began : Comment 7 of 16ANN.lu
Posted by Crumb // AAT on 25-Sep-2002 16:32 GMT
In reply to Comment 6 (anon):
It should work with Virges too... anyway, the 4000 version is supposed to have direct mem access to the motherboard, do the drivers allow this? It's a bit silly to use the gfx ram and force the cpu to move the data to the fast ram if the mediator 4000 is really capable of accessing directly the A4000 motherboard...
Elbox Spider sales began : Comment 8 of 16ANN.lu
Posted by Anonymous on 25-Sep-2002 18:28 GMT
"To find the distributor NEAR you", bwahaha!
Elbox Spider sales began : Comment 9 of 16ANN.lu
Posted by Peter Gordon on 26-Sep-2002 06:35 GMT
In reply to Comment 7 (Crumb // AAT):
According to Elbox, the Mediator 4000 supports DMA from PCI cards to motherboard RAM, and vice versa, however you'll only get ~14Mb/sec transfers to that.
Elbox Spider sales began : Comment 10 of 16ANN.lu
Posted by joe on 26-Sep-2002 06:44 GMT
In reply to Comment 6 (anon):
> I think Elbox should rethink this and provide onboard mem for PCI intercommunication.
I think you haven't used a Mediator yet, because if you would have,
you should know how perfect that works. None would use a Mediator without
a gfx card. Doesn't matter if that is a Voodoo, any board with mem could be used, but why if you have a gfx board in anyway. With a Shark (??) this could be done into the on board mem, so no need for that gfx board buffer any more. This DMA buffer loads off bandwith from the cpu and works really perfect (even in slow machines)
Elbox Spider sales began : Comment 11 of 16ANN.lu
Posted by Ole-Egil on 26-Sep-2002 08:22 GMT
In reply to Comment 8 (Anonymous):
>"To find the distributor NEAR you", bwahaha!
And that is funny because?
I would say that's actually a required section of any manufacturers webshop. Very often it is easier to just order from a dealer in the same country than to go directly to the manufacturer.
Elbox Spider sales began : Comment 12 of 16ANN.lu
Posted by alan buxey on 26-Sep-2002 09:37 GMT
In reply to Comment 4 (Christophe Decanini):
as anyone who knows how these PCI boards work you'd KNOW that it
must use DMA local memory on the BUSBOARD - eg the voodoo memory
to get high transfer speeds - otherwise it'd have to use the trapdoor
port at 8MB/s and that would swamp the connection and slow down
the graphics, sound, network etc etc on the PCI BUS.
this problem gets blown away when the CPU and system memoey goes onto
the main PCI BUS (ie the SharkPPC plugin)
UNLIKE the old Amiga tradition, this DOESNT slow down the CPU or
system BUS
this is odl classic hardware, and certain things must be done
in certain ways.....unlike all the new systems coming out.
take it, or leave it.
alan
Elbox Spider sales began : Comment 13 of 16ANN.lu
Posted by miksuh on 26-Sep-2002 12:45 GMT
In reply to Comment 6 (anon):
Any gfx card with memory will do, if it has mediator drivers ofcourse :)
Elbox Spider sales began : Comment 14 of 16ANN.lu
Posted by Anonymous on 26-Sep-2002 17:55 GMT
In reply to Comment 12 (alan buxey):
Hmm sounds fishy.
You still need to transfer the data between the cpu and the vmem buffer, and that is as slow again.
What is the point in this vmem buffering in the first place, then?
Elbox Spider sales began : Comment 15 of 16ANN.lu
Posted by Ole-Egil on 27-Sep-2002 05:07 GMT
In reply to Comment 14 (Anonymous):
The point would be that you set the card to do DMA to gfx card memory and after a certain amount of data has been passed into the gfx card, you read it all in one block. If you would rather have 3 million interrupts every minute just go ahead and write your own driver. I would rather use DMA, though.
Elbox Spider sales began : Comment 16 of 16ANN.lu
Posted by Johan "Graak" Forsberg on 27-Sep-2002 05:58 GMT
In reply to Comment 14 (Anonymous):
Cards that requires DMA to function needs this fake-DMA, if I've understood correctly.
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