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Amiga computer related discussion => Amiga Hardware Issues and discussion => Topic started by: DaNi on November 20, 2003, 09:10:25 PM
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Message-ID: <3FBCF155.195B1BAD@elbox.com>
Date: Thu, 20 Nov 2003 17:52:37 +0100
From: ELBOX
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|^DaNi^| napisa³(a):
>
> Hello
>
Hello,
> I`m client of us, i buy a lots of your product and the quality/prize is very
> good. Thanks for all your hard work
Nice to hear you words. Thank you for this opinion.
> I have a question about sharkppc... i think buy one when have on stock but i
> dont know nothing of information about your card ppc for mediator.
>
> If you can reply me with aproximate launch, is compatible with Amiga OS4 or
> MorphOS?
We have openly informed that the production of SharkPPC G3/G4 cards will start
when AmigaOS4 for A1 is released. Not earlier. As soon as AmigaOS4 for A1 is
released we will follow all procedures required by Amiga Inc. in order to
bundle AmigaOS4.x with SharkPPC cards.
Please do not hesitate to contact us if you need further assistance.
Thank you for using Elbox's online support services.
Best regards,
Support Department of ELBOX COMPUTER
Web site: http://www.elbox.com
Online Store: http://buy.elbox.com
************ Spider II USB 2.0 in Mediator! ***********
The best USB host controller for Amiga is ready for you.
Get it NOW! Special USB bundle offer:
Click here: http://buy.elbox.com/cgibin/shop?show=7US
*********************************************************
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Äh yes, and yesterday we had 5 inches of pure whit snow here in hell :-o
Facts:
Claiming that OS4 would run on the Shark without major modifications
is pure BS.
Noone has seen a working Shark (you know that would have needed atleast
a working Linux-kernel to proove that it works).
They have sofar refused to send doku and a card to Hyperion, and even if
they have only 1 single card it would still be the most logical think to do.
Sending it after the release of OS-A1 would mean:
Hyperion would need to work out how to redirect any Amiga-HW-accesses
through the mem-window on the Voodoo-card (with correct timing).
They would need to rewrite drivers for kbd and IDE so they will work in
such a odd setup (there is no point in having a Shark., when all you can
access are the PCI-devices).
It's quite likely that Hyperion allready has a "what next" plan for the time
after the initial OS4-release, and I somehow doubt they would change that for
a rather limited number of users who are actually willing to invest serious
amounts of money in a =>10 years old system when they could buy a new for
less or little more.
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kronos: what about all of us who bought a mediator then? its more than all pegasos systems sold and that you know so well but still bleh.
anyway as kronos stated hyperion still havent got a card to mess with and still linux aint even shown running on it.
oh and btw the price on the shark is 199 quid and up to 340 quid... , last i checked that was an pretty decent price to pay if you allready have a mediator and btw many want to keep that ..
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@lempkee
Prices:
The cheap "normal" Shark has no AGP and misses alot of other features,
something that just can't compete with the A1.
The + model has those, but will probraly cost more than an A1-lite
(well there is hope, cos a lite at >300 would be suicide), which would
be more or less comparable.
Numbers:
You can keep your cheap shot as that has NOTHING to do with this topic !
Most of the people who have such a beefed up system seem to be thinking
that they reached the end of the flag-post, and won't invest anymore in
old (and often problematic HW). Thats my personal observation.
So we might very well look at a potential costumer base below 600.
What would be hurdles ?
A SharkPPC+ would most likely be based on MAI's MikroServer, a system
that is still far away from being ready for production, and that won't change
until such times when someone sees a market for sveral 1000 of it.
The PPC_on_PCI would not be able to see the attached Amiga, only the mem
window on the Vodoo, so one would need to write a MMU-setup that redirects
those areas to it. And than what ? You would need an minimal OS on the
Amiga-side, to answer any request posted in the Vodoo-mem with the
fitting hits to the HW. Should be possible with something simple as a kbd
or serial driver, but try to access the IDE or SCSI (on accel), or something else
that needs serious bandwith or excat timing .....
Coding and testing such a system would atleasttake several months if not
a whole year, time that would have users switching to other alternives, and
time that (partly) could have been saved by sending a card to Hyperion earlier
this year (plus hireing one developer to closely work with Hyperion on
Shark-specifics).
Doesn't take much to smell "vapor" in here.
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about me, the only advantage to take a Shark, is keeping your Amiga1200 and continuing using it for Old chipset dpendent programs.
You never will be able to use old progs with AOS4, so you will have something like 2 computers on the same tower.
In this situation, the best thing to do is keeping your hold amiga for nostalgic software and buying a new computer "PEGASOS or amiga1" for serius progs.
Pegasos is realy a sweet,it is very stable lke a rock, 100% AmigaOS 3.0 compatible, not a lot expensive, fun like all amigas.
Amiga1 would be nice to, but I need see, to belive.
have fun
Serge in pegasos land
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Elbox doesn't like making licensing deals with anyone.. Something tells me that they're going to try to make the drivers themselves. (That is, if the Shark really does exist past a pipe dream.)
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kronos: i am just so amazed over how anti amiga u can be at times, thats why....and especially elbox.
you are the first guy in every elbox post to comment how crap or how u want people to look the other way, though there is like ALOT of people still buying mediators.
as for the numbers with pegasos, i draw that into here because of the fact that you said there wasnt enough people interested, hence why i pointed out that its atleast bigger than the peg market.
and yes i agree that shark is vapor and it remains to be seen if it ever comes, most of all if it will be useable even.
when it comes to the mem window , i am on a ppc and i managed to get outside of the 8mb window (like the a4k people do without any tricks) ,
sure it will only see the first 8mb for os stuff and the rest of the card will be hidden but USED and that works here(finally) (thanx to elbox and their beta stuff).
anyway my amiga like many others will be built and built upon and some of us (i did) bought myself the new hw aswell, but i will always turn back to the real amiga and atleast for now since neither pegasos 1 or amigaone is enough to keep me busy.
btw the first shark is indeed only a cpu card, not like shark+ , and yes it has no AGP but that means nothing anyway since we all know that the mediator cant even use 30% of the potential of the voodoo3/4/5 pci cards we have in it today, a sharkppc and a ppc os will change that and sure it wont be an amigaone but did i say that it would ? , it wont even be the same mhz.
anyway i hope that helps, i just get very pissed that you always jumps in on upgrade questions like you did, but i agree with you on alot of this which u mentioned in the second reply.
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Hasn't Elbox stood up to all of their announcements until today? If so I think that they will be able to deliver the goods. One thing to question though, is how big the market will be, for such a product, so the software and hardware design costs can be justified.... how many sales is elbox targetting at? I'd say no more than 700 pieces.
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Claiming that OS4 would run on the Shark without major modifications
Perhaps, but all they claimed was that the SharkPPC will only be be launched into the market AFTER OS4.0 has been released. It may in fact need to be modified, they never stated that it would not need to be. Also, it's quite possible the SharkPPC has not been finalized, nor does it need to be until they are ready to commit to a production launch. If I was them, I'd wait until OS4.0 saw the light of day before investing more money into it. It's no big deal really, and I'm not sure why you're making it into one.
- Mike
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Well id buy a shark the moment they were up for sale since i have spent money on my 1200.
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lempkee wrote:
when it comes to the mem window , i am on a ppc and i managed to get outside of the 8mb window (like the a4k people do without any tricks) ,
sure it will only see the first 8mb for os stuff and the rest of the card will be hidden but USED and that works here(finally) (thanx to elbox and their beta stuff).
Hell, the memory on the BVision doesn't even show up in any of exec's memory lists as it is and it never stopped that working :-D
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The only thing I'd be interested in the SharkPPC PCI card would be if it were possible to stick it into an Intel machine and have it boot up AmigaOS4. That would be cool, and should be possible. Of course the OS would need to be specially modified, or perhaps have a special boot loader, but, whatever... It would be cool to have a PCI PPC Amiga card for my PC.
- Mike
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> Hasn't Elbox stood up to all of their announcements until today?
eFlash 1200 (PCMCIA)
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This good news, but nothing really new.
I'll have a Mirage Pro tower available for it.
And the cheapest SharkPPC could do the job. Mediator's are advertized with 266MB/sec bustransfer if you use a Shark.
And you can also use a floppydisk....without spending the money on a Catweazle.
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>about me, the only advantage to take a Shark, is >keeping your Amiga1200 and continuing using it for >Old chipset dpendent programs.
>You never will be able to use old progs with AOS4,
Why could it NOT be possible to switch of the SharkPPC and use your 030 / 040 / 060 accelerator again ?
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I _think_ I read somewhere, that it might be possible to use SharkPPC on "bare mediator with necessary cards" (So A1200 wouldn't be necessary at all)
Of course, next question is, could it be used on other PCI buses, like just about any PC, Micronik Z2/Z3 bus cards (They have passive PCI connectors)
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@lempkee
The question never was wether the Amiga-side can see more than the 8mb,
but if the PCI side can directly access the Amiga-HW. The answer to that is
a clear no !
And again, what has the number of sold Pegs to do with it ? Remember
that Hyperion claimed that it was far to low to justify a port ;-)
@Claucus
In a previous statement similar to this they claimed that the Shark would
be so similar to the A1, that it would run OS4 unmodified. One of the
few occassions where someone from Hyperion had to aggree with me :-P
@Platon
Don't forget their own CGX-compatible RTG-SW, the excuse for not buying
a P96-licence, or their allmost ready :lol: USB-stack.
One might even add their widely misleading benchmarks to the list
as their is no way to actually use those high transfer rates (only possible
with Shark), but only the rather down to earth rates that go through the Voodoo.
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Oh and I really doubt that Elbox is still selling a reasonable amount
of Mediators today, as most of those you want to keep their old systems
have allready bought one, or are just fed up with Elbox trying to force their
way without ever carring for anything else.
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karlos: hehehe yeah i know, but it aint the same thing...its a hack concept...long live ..:D
kronos:hyperion said that yes, but there is something which tells me that supporting the sharkppc with os4 wont go in a destructive way, and as far as elbox go ... it wouldnt need any modifications, anyway its vapor and it has been that since 2001 for me (i saw the card in 1999/2000 and held it in my hands...).
yeah there might not be a market anymore for building up their amigas but the weird part is that there is more people wanting to upgrade what they have to ppc and with the lack of ppc cards .heh.. (i know of people who paid over 450 Euro for a 060*603e card this year,used old stuff.)
anyway i will wait and see, as i am sure there is enough of things ready for me by the time the shark is out or in....
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@Kronos
>And again, what has the number of sold Pegs to do with it ? Remember
that Hyperion claimed that it was far to low to justify a port
Mediator support can only grow, but the Pegasos not as production is stopped. (nobody has a license for a new productionrun)
And on the Pegasos you have MorphOS, so it'll be a much smaller then the 600 IMHO.
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eFlash4000, no documentation, no support.
I cant say Elbox has "stood up" with
this purchase.
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@Bennymee
Mediator should have reached it's peak (or will soon) as the the users
retiring their real Amigas (how I hate the term "classic"), or be
forced to do so by dying HW will soon outnumber those you invest in
a Mediator.
Pegasos1 production has stopped, but the Peg2 will come "real soon now"(tm) ;-)
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@lempkee
yeah there might not be a market anymore for building up their amigas but the weird part is that there is more people wanting to upgrade what they have to ppc and with the lack of ppc cards .heh.. (i know of people who paid over 450 Euro for a 060*603e card this year,used old stuff.)
I can only agree, I sold some BlizzardPPC and CyberStorm cards last month's. I can only say from experience that a lot of people like too buy this stuff.
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Oh, speaking of Blizzard PPC cards, does anyone have a 040/240mhz Blizz PPC card they want to sell to me?
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Pegasos1 production has stopped, but the Peg2 will come "real soon now"(tm)
You mean "when it is done"(tm) ;-)
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@Kronos
>Mediator should have reached it's peak (or will >soon) as the the users
>retiring their real Amigas (how I hate the >term "classic"), or be
>forced to do so by dying HW will soon outnumber >those you invest in
>a Mediator.
The Mediator is available for almost every model Amiga, I see a large potential market (> 100.000 machine's) and not everyone is going to retire their Amiga immediatly after the new generation is out. I'll see another argument to buy an Mediator if the SharkPPC it out.
About dying hardware, after OS4 is consumer ready, our old hardware isn't immediatly falling apart...
>Pegasos1 production has stopped, but the Peg2 >will come "real soon now"(tm)
We know Kronos, but we discuessed about OS4 for SharkPPC and Pegasos I.
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@Kronos
>....have allready bought one, or are just fed up with >Elbox trying to force their
>way without ever carring for anything else.
Elbox is controversial.
But I owned an G-Rex and I can only say the support, professionilism of the company (for 2 years I intervieuwd them) is behind that of Elbox, they are much better.
to go offtopic...
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our old hardware isn't immediatly falling apart...
My Amiga's are certainly on their last legs, I run them as little as possible (and use Emulation when needed)... I wan't to keep my machines alive (switching them on on special occations), rather an use them just for the sake of it...
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@Bennymee
>100000 machines ?? Sorry but ....
:roflmao: :roflmao: :roflmao: :roflmao: :roflmao: :roflmao: :roflmao:
You would be hard presses to gather 10000 active Amigians, and only
a minority of those run beefed upt "classics". Just ask anybody who actually
sells Amiga-HW/SW, and when he managed to sell >1000 units for the last
time .....
And no, we haven't discussed OS4 for Shark or Peg1, but wether the Shark
is real or just vapor (until someone pulled it OT).
Oh and Amigas are falling apart everyday, they just don't care wether OS4
is ready or not. Just have a close look through forums like this, and you will
find lots of questions bout such systems behaving strangly.
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Kronos always attack Elbox or things that he don't like...... don't care guys.
I'm going to order my A1 next week, and if Shark will be out, and OFFICIALLY supported i'll buy one for my 1200. Elbox hardware i had buy in the past is "state of the art", and them are the only reason why i can use my Amiga everyday, also for work.
Some my friends had chosed Shark instead of an A1 or both.
There is a Market, Mediator always sell very good, probably the best sell classic upgrade ever, and Shark have a good start point if it are good.
We'll se, but Kronos, you don't need to flame every Elbox post/news.
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Ok guys, time to tune into Sanity FM.
The Shark is VAPOR. It can't work in an Amiga PCI board, it doesn't work in an Amiga PCI board. It won't run OS4, it can't run OS4, Elbox have no intention of licencing OS4. It's just a Mac CPU board and there is absolutely no software, not even the lowlevel drivers, available for it. Not even Linux will run on it. You really must get over this.
Even if by some sweet miracle it wasn't vapor, what do you really gain? An old machine with a fast CPU dragged down by all the old Amiga bottlenecks and legacy. A G3 or G4 simply cannot perform to its abilities in this environment. What you'd get is the equivalent of a CPPC with no support. It's pointless.
If you call common sense anti-Amiga (@ ikir in particular), then your Amiga is not my Amiga. My Amiga is progressive. Yours is just pipe dreams and fluff and useless petitions.
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For me is good the launch of SharkPPC/sharkPPC+ when OS4 is finished. We can have 3 new hardware amigas, AmigaClassic with Sharkppc, pegasosI/II and AmigaONE, its good for amiga comunity for choose one of other. The shark have a little diference, you can have os4 on a g3/g4 with you 1200 board, on this case you can have new cpu new os and access to the original custom chips without any emulation, its is good, for games, demos etc and of course, i personality later buy a Amigaone but first, sharkppc for my amiga classic =)
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The Shark PPC WILL come out and WILL run Amiga OS 4. So there! The future looks bright for Amiga.
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@Kronos
"And no, we haven't discussed OS4 for Shark or Peg1, but wether the Shark
is real or just vapor (until someone pulled it OT)."
Below was the discussion I placed an reply on:
>And again, what has the number of sold Pegs to do with it ? Remember
that Hyperion claimed that it was far to low to justify a port
@Kronos
>You would be hard presses to gather 10000 active >Amigians, and only
>a minority of those run beefed upt "classics". Just >ask anybody who actually
>sells Amiga-HW/SW, and when he managed to sell >1000 units for the last
>me .....
I didn't write that, I said that I see a large potential market of machines and parts... to keep the scene year's a life - potential Medaitor users.
@Kronos
>Oh and Amigas are falling apart everyday, they just >don't care wether OS4
>is ready or not. Just have a close look through >forums like this, and you will
>find lots of questions bout such systems behaving >strangly.
I see dozens of machines for sale on Ebay, Amibench, Amiga-news.de, perfectly working even with CyberStorm's or BlizzardPPC. :-D
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It's just a Mac CPU board and there is absolutely no software, not even the lowlevel drivers, available for it.
:-?
How do you figure it's a Mac CPU card? Mac's have thier own CPU slot, and do not use a PCI slot for CPU upgrades.
As for the rest of the things you state as fact.... well, that is your opinion. I mean, I could shout those exact things about the PegII, but that doesn't mean that some company will not strike a deal for an OS4 license on that hardware.
Although, I have my doubts about how Elbox are going to accomplish this, they do seem determined that they will get an OS4 license, which is more than we've heard from another certain company.
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how fast can the shark cards go?
so an Amiga 1200 with a shark card and Mediator would be the equivalent of an AmigaOne?
If the price is cheaper than an A1 then I think a lot of Amiga owners would upgrade their machine. If its not cheaper then wont most people rather buy an A1?
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Herewegoagain wrote:
How do you figure it's a Mac CPU card? Mac's have thier own CPU slot, and do not use a PCI slot for CPU upgrades.
Older Macs also used a PCI upgrade card, AFAIR.
As for the rest of the things you state as fact.... well, that is your opinion. I mean, I could shout those exact things about the PegII, but that doesn't mean that some company will not strike a deal for an OS4 license on that hardware.
Opinion, yes, but one tempered by bitter experience of the Amiga market. In general, where something promises too much and has too little evidence to show, it's vapor. Look at the BoXer, the Walker, the Brainstormer G3, the original Escena A1... all had the same problem. Lots of promises without any explanation of how the practical side might work.
Something smells distinctly rotten about Elbox's explanation that "we'll release the shark when OS4 is ready". It sounds like Amiga Inc.s "we'll send your vouchers when OS4 is ready" when they are 2 million in debt. Either prospect really happening is remote.
Although, I have my doubts about how Elbox are going to accomplish this, they do seem determined that they will get an OS4 license, which is more than we've heard from another certain company.
Elbox and licences don't mix. Where are their own RTG software and USB stacks, after they refused to licence CyberGraphX or Poseideon?
@mantisspider
There's no way a mediator + shark + amiga will ever be nearly as powerful as an AmigaONE.
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CU_AMiGA wrote:
The Shark PPC WILL come out and WILL run Amiga OS 4. So there! The future looks bright for Amiga.
Er...right. You're our resident fortuneteller I gather? Please disclose if I'll win the lottery next week ;-).
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mantispider: the sharkppc normal model (the first one to come if any will come) will not be equilliant to amigaone nor amigaone micro, it will have less cpu power + diffrent thinsg will make it slower also, mostly because you add it to your cpu bus on the a1200 etc and that has its limits.
its just an addon wich will hopefully let you have a G3 or a G$ cpu on it (upto 500 mhz).
and it will cost less than the other ways and most of all you will keep your old hw intact, so for people like me i could use my fav machine all the time and dont care about emulators like uae to get my stuff running.
but ofcourse i will get an amigaone Micro when it comes aswell and maybe a peg2 but it remains to be seen what will happen , peg 2 was announced to come in october and now we are in december soon and if i was a troll i would have made alot of noise of it on ann.lu or here on this board , and also a1 micro wont come before quarter 1 2004.
as a last note in this, hyperion have had successfull contracts with elbox before (warp3d) and they are in contact with elbox about the shark but last time i bothered to ask they concluded it was just a big mystery to them as its to us how elbox will pull of the SW stuff to make it boot and work ..
if it really worked it would have been for sale since linux ppc worked on amigaones, and i know of alot of people who would have bought this card even if its only got linux for now..
cheers
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Older Macs also used a PCI upgrade card, AFAIR.
None that I know of ever used a PCI slot. Some did use the cache slot but that's different altogether. All of the others had their own CPU slots.
Many people thought that the Sonnet Cresendo PCI was a CPU upgrade on a PCI card, but it simply was just the name indicating it was for the original PCI based Macs. Those macs had thier own CPU slot. I know, I have a PowerMac 8500 with a Cresendo PCI (http://www.sonnettech.com/product/crescendo_pci.html)G3@450, and it definitely plugs into a CPU slot, not a PCI. That was a common misconception about that product due to bad naming.
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You would be hard presses to gather 10000 active Amigians, and only a minority of those run beefed upt "classics". Just ask anybody who actually sells Amiga-HW/SW, and when he managed to sell 1000 units for the last me .....
I'm estimating here, but I've owned 3 mediators (2 1200 versions and an A4000 one) and, having spoken with other people who own mediators and comparing serial numbers, it seems that cards are numbered sequentially, so you can work out how many they sold. When I got my first mediator (about 9 months after they came out) my board was numbered in the 3000 range. When I got another a year later it was around 6500. That was a year ago. My mediator A4000 had a serial number around 350.
So, going from what I can work out, sales figures for the Mediator (all versions) are at least 10,000.
Considering that these people have spent so much money on their Amigas (mediators aren't cheap) it's reasonable to assume that a lot of them would also be willing to spend an extra couple of hundred quid to buy a Shark. Even if only 25% of mediator owners bought a shark that's 2500 copies of Amiga OS 4. This is a big enough market for Hyperion to want OS4 to run on the Shark, and for Elbox to make sure it works.
If and when OS4 does appear and runs on the Shark, I'd expect a surge in people buying mediators and Sharks
I have to say though, I sold my last real high-spec Amiga (A4000 PPC + Mediator) almost exactly a year ago, and I couldn't see myself going back to classic now. It would cost the best part of a grand to get everything needed, and when I can get a higher performing Peg2 for just over £200 with OS included it just isnt worth it. For people who already own mediators though, it's certainly an interesting prospect.
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Is the SharkPPC supposed to be working with a G-REX or a Prometheus or whatever else busboard? I'm sorry if this question have been asked before.
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So, how about the PM7200.
The sonnetcard for this MAC looks exactly like the card Elbox once showed (although is hat a shark logo on the cooler)
http://www.sonnettech.com/product/crescendo_7200.html
And judjeing from the looks of this picture the card is at last physically compatible to a PCI-Slot. The other PCI-MACs had the notch in the middle of their processorslot (I have one PM7600 right before me), this card as you can clearly see has the notch at exactly the same place as a PCI-card would.
On Top this acceleartor is the only that has the possibility of adding RAM directly to the card as due to a "fault" in the design of the 7200 the onboard-RAM could not be accesed from this accelerator.
I do not doubt that you could hack this card to work in an Mediator but I really doubt that Elbox will do it.
There is simply no point in doing it, it would cost less then an AOne: right, it would cost less then an AOne lite: maybe.
But it won`t come close to the power of even the discontiued AOne SE, especially since the + will never come `cos Sonnet doesn`t produce such a card.
You don`t belive Elbox will really design or even redesign a processorcard, do you ?. Since the end of P5 no one did design a Processorcard for the Amiga. If it would have been that easy do you think DCE would have simply replicated the P5 PPC-cards without enhanceing it even only in terms of clockspeed an RAM-interface ? If they, who had quite some knowledge on those things and the productionhardware didn`t do it, how do you expect Elbox to pull that stunt ?
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lempkee wrote:
as a last note in this, hyperion have had successfull contracts with elbox before (warp3d)
Yes,but only after Elbox tried each and every possible option to get W3D
without paying for it. Miles of flamewars can still be found in the ann-archives.
@Lando
Serial numbers are not a geat way of measuring, as these are often used
to make the company look bigger than it is. My boss for example decided
that we should start at 3000, and now we are 3550 ;-) another part of the
company even started at 20000 .....
Such numbers are also often used to have the exact model tagged into them.
From discussion I had with a certain dealer (no names, no fingerprints)
I would guess that a total of 2-3000 units were sold worldwide.
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Van_M wrote:
Is the SharkPPC supposed to be working with a G-REX or a Prometheus or whatever else busboard? I'm sorry if this question have been asked before.
I doubt it very much. Even if it technically worked, I'd be extremely surprised if they "allowed" it to work on anything but a mediator.
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if 2000-3000 mediators only was sold then i find the DCE official numbers to have been totally biased!, 1000 cards was produced and compared to the mediator the grexx aint anything you want unless u really gotta have it (or have a ppc).
8-10000 is a number i am willing to speculate in, mediator is now 3 years old and i still see people buying it every month.
and i doubt elbox would have made all thr models they did if they only sold 300 units of every model...
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And judjeing from the looks of this picture the card is at last physically compatible to a PCI-Slot. The other PCI-MACs had the notch in the middle of their processorslot (I have one PM7600 right before me), this card as you can clearly see has the notch at exactly the same place as a PCI-card would.
I stand corrected. That is definitely a PCI card and does bear an almost exact layout of the Elbox card. Not that it is a bad thing, mind you. The 7200 was a very odd machine and as I recall was made not to be upgradable, but was quickly replaced with the 7500. (actually they were introduced about the same time) and the 7200 was alot cheaper, but non-upgradeable.
You don`t belive Elbox will really design or even redesign a processorcard, do you ?.
Well, they are obviously capable of designing products. It would be a far reach for me to claim that they "couldn't" design a processor card.
But it won`t come close to the power of even the discontiued AOne SE, especially since the + will never come `cos Sonnet doesn`t produce such a card.
I would presume that they have a deal to make the cards based on Sonnets design, but adding faster processors as needed. But, that is speculation on my part. But you definitely cannot say that the Shark+ is a Mac card, because it has too much extra stuff listed on it (and it also doesn't have a pic). And you saying it will never come is speculation based on past occurances. It may or may not... time will tell.
I do not doubt that you could hack this card to work in an Mediator but I really doubt that Elbox will do it.
There is simply no point in doing it, it would cost less then an AOne: right, it would cost less then an AOne lite: maybe.
At least we agree on that last part. It will be too costly for most people. For one, I would have to buy a Mediator for my A3000 @ $289.00, then the Shark @$299.00 (est.), then because in all of their wisdom Elbox designed the A3000D version to require a tower (HINT: IT IS NOT AN A3000D AT THIS POINT!) So that requires me to spend another $200.00 on a custom A3000 tower (which is HUGE and bulky and ugly as hell).... Well, already I'm at $788.00, and you know what? At that point I'm buying an AmigaOne. If all I had to purchase was the Mediator and the Shark and plug it into my A3000 to run OS4, I would jump on it right away. But the above senario is basically building a new system with a 13 year old motherboard, power supply etc. Not a wise investment, however fun it may be.
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If you call common sense anti-Amiga (@ ikir in particular)
?????????????????????' :-?
We are not speaking of common sense. I SAY: if Shark will be out, i'll buy one for my 1200. Where is the common sense? Mediator is a fantastic products, Elbox sell a hign number of them, probably the best seller amiga classic product with the Power Tower (EBox from elbox), so it is possible Elbox will try to finish them and sell them.
If Shark will be not officially supported i'll not buy one.
Probably, As by now there is many more mediator users that pegasos+amiga one togheter.
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f it would have been that easy do you think DCE would have simply replicated the P5 PPC-cards without enhanceing it even only in terms of clockspeed an RAM-interface ?
Why should they? I mean, what motivation did they have for investing more time in a product that was going to be replaced in the near future? Most of all, what kind of benefit was there to be expected?
Those cards where hillariously expensive already, no need to beef up the price by modifications.
About designing CPU cards, I actually know someone that did (no, not Escena; no I'm not going to tell), it's not like this is rocket science or black magic. The question is, does the gain you'll get justify the effort? Given the limitations of the current classic Amiga hardware, this seems to me like riding a dead horse. The only advantage I could see is compatibility with old software.
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@odin
odin wrote:
CU_AMiGA wrote:
The Shark PPC WILL come out and WILL run Amiga OS 4. So there! The future looks bright for Amiga.
Er...right. You're our resident fortuneteller I gather? Please disclose if I'll win the lottery next week ;-).
Yes i am the fortune teller. And as for the chances of you winning the lottery, outlook points to very unlikely! :-)