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Amiga News and Community Announcements => Amiga News and Community Announcements => Amiga Hardware News => Topic started by: DJS on January 13, 2005, 06:16:22 PM
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Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) about DRAGON ColdFire are posted in the Elbox website.
FAQ can be found in the SUPPORT section (http://elbox.com/faq_dragon.html).
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I should point out that the soonest the board will be available is the end of January (which I'd doubt).
They are also asking a pretty high price for it if you ask me. Sounds like a 300% markup or more.
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But why should this be different? Isnt most Amiga hardware expensive?
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>They are also asking a pretty high price for it if
>you ask me. Sounds like a 300% markup or more.
Welcome to the Amiga platform. What have you been using until today?
Ah, I can clearly remember paying US$550 for my PicassoIV, the PC equivalent with the same Cirrus chip on it at the time cost about US$50. I'd say a 3x markup is actually making progess from teh 10x markups we were used to a number of years ago.
OK, the PicassoIV had more parts and did more stuff, things which were completely unnecessary on the PC cards which didn't need fancy flickerfixers, and some price increase was justified for this extra components and engineering. But its still about as equivalent as you can get comparing an Amiga Cirrus VGA card with 4MB RAM to a PC Cirrus VGA card with 4MB RAM... :)
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They consistently say that the SharkPPC won't go into production until OS 4 is officially released, yet they consistently fail to prove whether they actually have a license from Hyperion or not. Maybe Hans-Jorg or Thomas could comment on that?
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@jdiffend
I wasn't aware that they released a price for the DRAGON; can ye share the link please?
@Kaminari
We all know what Hyperion's response will be: that they haven't recieved a Shark yet.
Would Elbox need a license, if the accelerator is aimed at the BPPC/CSPPC version of OS4? Maybe they are planning on doing the hacking themselves?
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@Tangletown
http://www.elbox.com/news_04_12_17.html
"The suggested retail price is 349 EUR. (VAT excl.)"
Edit: In comparison, it´s actually pretty cheap, considering that the Dragon contains both a powerful accelerator and PCI/AGP..
I mean, otherwise you have to buy a Mediator ( Between 140 - 290€, depending on model ) and an accelerator ( like 2 - 300€, perhaps more, for an 060 or 060/ppc combo ).
So in comparison, 349€ is pretty ok.. Now, if they would only manage to write drivers for the GeForce AGP cards... :-)
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I agree I think the price is pretty reasonable for Amiga kit. Can't make up my mind about whether to buy this for 68k compatibility or the PPC expansion for 1200s which was in the news a while ago. Unlimited wants - limited resources -
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For myself, I can say that if I get the cash, I am most certainly interested in this piece of hardware.. It´s much cheaper than to buy an A1, and you get most of the stuff anyway..
Sure, you can´t run OS4, but you can play movies, surf the web, download stuff, use USB stuff, get a sound card, and so on... All depending on how many PCI slots it will have, ofcourse...
But it still sucks that you cant promote the original Amiga A/V to the graphics card.. Major drawback if you play classic games that hit the hardware... :-(
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Outstanding product!
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@ikir:
Cool you've already got one! Quick! Write a review!
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Odin, you little devil. :-)
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Hmm, the FAQ states that an A3000/4000 version will be available and will replace the existing Mediator card in a towered A3000/4000.
That migh be a decent solution and should cost less that the A1200 version.
Shaf
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@jdiffend
I wasn't aware that they released a price for the DRAGON; can ye share the link please?
@Kaminari
We all know what Hyperion's response will be: that they haven't recieved a Shark yet.
Would Elbox need a license, if the accelerator is aimed at the BPPC/CSPPC version of OS4? Maybe they are planning on doing the hacking themselves?
I would imagine that it would be quite simple for elbox to engineer the Shark to appear as a CSPPC/BPPC to any software that uses one of these cards. Why should OS4 be any the wiser about what Classic accelerator it is running on? A PPC CPU is a PPC CPU afterall.
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It doesn't say whether PCI IDE (ATA100/133) are supported or not. I hope they are, as 133MBps is a darn site faster than 16MBps! :-D
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must...have....one!
Pity I just gave my A1200 to a friend! :(
Guess I'll have to wait for the A4000 one.........
BTW, what other products (vaporware?) have Elbox announced but never released? They have a good rep, right???
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Don't be too enthusiastic about it. They've promised to sell it in the end of Jan, but still don't have any photos. Strange...
Another big doubt - the real compability of V4/V5 coldfire cores with 68k.
First, it has FPU incompatible with 68881/882/040/060 - so no more lightwave/etc.
Second, apart from heavy-trapped emulation (to what it lead, you can see running lightwave on 060 without oxypatcher), there are still fully incompatible commands - for example, some mul's (with 64bit result) just fail to trap and yield wrong result. Nothing to say about incorrect flags with mul's/div's and much more.
http://www.microapl.co.uk/Porting/ColdFire/Download/CF68KLib.pdf , page 25
There are no mentionings about real compatibility with 68k apps, they either haven't ever tested the prototypes or just have nothing to say. The best would be sharkPPC - as the correct JIT has more chances to emulate 68k fully and at higher speed.
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Elbox's press department reminds me of Soviet-era Tass reports. I can just see them releasing a black and white, heavily retouched photo of the Dragan in a couple of weeks :lol:
Seriously though, it's a very interesting piece of hardware. I am torn between future PC upgrades and buying this, but my advice to myself is "wait and see". I don't doubt Elbox's sincerity, as they were the ones who gave us PCI in the first place, along with the Power Tower, FastATA, PCI soundcards etc. I've also found their support team to be good too.
What's put me off was the controversy about code in the SpiderUSB driver which could damage the RDB of your harddrive if a hacked version was used on an off the shelf PCI card. There was also the controversy over P96 Voodoo drivers and the ongoing lack of info re OS4 and SharkPPC. On one hand we have Elbox saying "we're waiting for the software" and on the other we have Hyperion saying "we've not been approached, OS4 won't work with the SharkPPC".
However, I'd love to have a 266Mhz '060 compatible CPU running on my Amiga. It'll still be a tiny fraction of the power of my 2.5gig Athlon, but it would be many, many times faster than my 40Mhz '040 - provided that the new Coldfire is directly legacy compatible with '060 code, otherwise some of the performance may be lost with patched instructions etc.
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Elbox never announced any vapor yet.
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> Elbox never announced any vapor yet.
Shark PPC http://www.elbox.com/news_00_10_12.html
(I think announcing a product for over four years definately makes it vapor)
eFlash 1200 http://www.elbox.com/news_03_06_13a.html
Drivers for MPEG-2 Decoder cards http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Amiga-Mediator/message/16683
BTW: For a product that's going to ship in about two weeks, where are some pics of the hardware? Pics of the hardware actually running?
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Shhh! You'll wake up Tjaoz.
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(I think announcing a product for over four years definately makes it vapor)
By that rule, OS4 is vapor too. ;-)
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> By that rule, OS4 is vapor too.
Well, it has been seen running and there is a beta version. So there you can assume a nearly released product ;)
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> Shhh! You'll wake up Tjaoz.
Well, I guess that guy has found a new home for spreading his ridiculous conspiracy theories and lies on AmigaWorld (see "Apparently the A1XE/SE USB needs a HW fix" thread).
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platon42:
Hehe, yep. I saw it too. Very funny indeed.
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Even if they have a board that *appears* to be ok hardware wise they can't be sure till they have a working OS. And trust me... they can't make it work without major mods to the current OS... and that takes time.
They might be fishing. Just checking to see the level of interest in the product.
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BTW, the MCF5475 has a built in PCI controller... so adding PCI slots would be easy with this chip.
AGP however is a modified PCI slot and I don't know how easy it would be to add the circuit to adapt the internal PCI interface to it.
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We all know what Hyperion's response will be: that they haven't recieved a Shark yet
Erm... Exactly.
Maybe they are planning on doing the hacking themselves?
Ah, yes, the "magic compatibility" story... They can't hack it themselves. Even if they'd manage to make it run, it would be highly illegal...
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By that rule, OS4 is vapor too.
Except that it actually exists, and is used by people out there (although just as a prerelease).
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A PPC CPU is a PPC CPU afterall.
Quite the contrary. The CSPPC and BPPC kernels lack the support for any other CPU but the 603/604. The Blizzard and Cyberstorm have unique interrupt controller logic. Plus, anything like that Shark would be a PCI card and I doubt it will have direct access to the custom chips. This will not run unmodified.
And even if they'd manage to build a complete Cyberstorm-Lookalike, the L2 cache and special features of a G3 (or G4) CPU would be unavailable, because, as I said, the classic kernels lack the CPU support for these, and the AmigaOne version will require an AmigaOne mainboard (complete with VIA southbridge, Intel interrupt controller and ArticiaS north bridge).
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There was also the controversy over P96 Voodoo drivers and the ongoing lack of info re OS4 and SharkPPC. On one hand we have Elbox saying "we're waiting for the software" and on the other we have Hyperion saying "we've not been approached, OS4 won't work with the SharkPPC".
I don't know if Hyperion has been approached or not (I think I would know if we have, but I don't need to know all the details ;-) ). However, either Thomas or myself would be the person to make the adaption, i.e. the guy that gets the prototype hardware to stick into an existing Amiga to actually make it run.
No, it won't run automatically. You cannot just put the AmigaOne version on the thing (unless you adapt the boot loader, it would fail with such trivialities as the layout of the U-Boot data structure). Even if it would be made to run, it would be completely illegit unless there is a license for it.
Bottom line, no, unless we get a SharkPPC to actually do some work, nothing will happen. If they want to wait until OS 4 is finished, that's OK with me, but it will surely take some time to make any sort of adaption (one months is the rough estimate I've given before) so I don't really see the point in waiting for a final release.
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By that rule, OS4 is vapor too.
You can actually buy it.
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Quite the contrary. The CSPPC and BPPC kernels lack the support for any other CPU but the 603/604. The Blizzard and Cyberstorm have unique interrupt controller logic. Plus, anything like that Shark would be a PCI card and I doubt it will have direct access to the custom chips. This will not run unmodified.
Sounds like Elbox are full of crap to me then.
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You can actually buy it.
I know, and I very nearly bought a uA1 last week.
Mac Mini got the better of me though. :-D
I'm waiting for the ACK board now.
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ACK board????
(Edit) Found it here... another board that may or may not appear.. similar to Dragon!
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Ok, adapting the built in PCI interface to AGP involves some signal and voltage switching and is definately possible. Gigabyte is doing this on one of their motherboards, the GA-8I915P Duo-A and they are calling a G.E.A.R. slot.
And on page 17 of it's manual it warns that it's a temporary solution until PCI Express X 16 cards become available because it may shorten the life of AGP cards.
Which raises the question... so did they just adapt the AGP port to the PCI buss like Gigabyte or did they do it separate from the built in PCI controller? If they just added the AGP to the PCI buss controller it might not be a good thing.
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Before saying they're full of crap, consider the fact tha the various owners of "Amiga technology" have produced what exacly so far? Not a whole lot of real hardware. Contrast them to Elbox who has shipped improvements to the Amiga hardware capability.
So maybe a heapin' bowl of STFU and just wait and see what happens before calling names.
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hmmmm now 3.5 years later and still no Dragon... great job Elbox.. NOT