Teron CX "consumer version" soon for sale

[Seehund]

Mai Logic press release

Mai will be selling their Teron CX boards in a "consumer version" (as opposed to the "evaluation version" sold until now, distributed as "developer boards" by Eyetech). The initial target price will be about USD 500.

Since the public press release is out by now I guess I'm free to say that Bill Mueller, the Mai engineer who designed the Teron CX / "AmigaOne", has told me that this "consumer board" will be equipped with the newer VIA 686B southbridge (ATA100 interface et c.) and that the shared AGP/PCI slots on PCI bus 1 will be simultaneously usable. This is the same board Eyetech will be redistributing under the "AmigaOne" trademark, apart from that Eyetech's boards will ship with a modified firmware. The Teron CX will be on sale in "a couple of months", and Mueller did not yet know what firmware their boards will be shipped with.

Since no official response has yet been given to the AmigaOS distribution petition, we can only assume that AmigaOS users will still only be allowed to buy our hardware  in a "special" version from one dealer...

[Elektro]

Es ist so schön
mal geistes krank zu sein...

[Seehund]

Elektro spake thusly:

Es ist so schön
mal geistes krank zu sein...

Heh. Sounds familiar. Either it's Jung or a Pankow song.

Pankow summed up the Amiga situation nicely:

This is time for orphans, time to wipe out all the morals
This is time for masochists, for devils, and for clowns
All you broken hearts
All you broken fools
Follow me in suicide oh
Follow me into ####

"Total quality experience!"

[Seehund]

Follow me into ####

What, are people too sensitive to read about bodily functions described in vulgar terms?

"Faeces" then.

[Elektro]

It's Oliwer Kalkoffe in one of his shows.

[jd997uk]

@Seehund: You failed miserably to remember this PREVIOUS press release from MAI. If you read it carefully, you will see that Eyetech have been appointed as a DISTRIBUTOR for the Teron boards.

FREMONT, CA. July 9, 2002. Mai Logic Incorporated, a technology design house of integrated circuits/systems, today announced an agreement with Eyetech Group Ltd. to distribute the Teron CX and PX development systems in Europe, and to distribute production systems based on the Teron CX and PX designs to the Amiga market worldwide. Terms of the agreement emphasized both companies' long-term commitment to foster an unshakeable partnership and to create a bright future for the Amiga customers and partners

So, in effect, there is one distributor, but dealers have been appointed all over the globe to sell the Amiga-tized version. IMHO, very little in that is unusual. A brand name company appoints a single company, entrusting it to source a quality bit of kit and sell it through appointed retail channels. Hardly ground breaking or unique is it?


-john

[Seehund]

jd997uk:

You failed miserably to remember this PREVIOUS press release from MAI. If you read it carefully, you will see that Eyetech have been appointed as a DISTRIBUTOR for the Teron boards.

I remember the "AmigaOne" and that press release very well. Eyetech will be selling Mai's hardware. And? What are you talking about? What's that got to do with this?
AmigaOS users will still only be allowed to buy hardware via Eyetech (or another purely hypothetical "licensee"). Nothing has changed there.

[Elektro]

This only speaks of amiga.

Furthermore why should we pay more (if we will) for the same board?

[Seehund]

Ah, I think I see what you're hinting at, jd997uk:

... only be allowed to buy our hardware in a "special" version from one dealer...

Yeah, "distributor" might have been more literally accurate than "dealer", but it makes no practical difference, since those dealers will only be allowed to sell us hardware from this distributor, after whatever silly modifications have been applied. Just one more link in the chain that needs to be payed...

[anarchic_teapot]

Seehund burbled, in response to jd997uk:

I remember the "AmigaOne" and that press release very well. Eyetech will be selling Mai's hardware. And? What are you talking about? What's that got to do with this?

One might pose the same questions, with rather less lack of perception/bad faith, re your own remarks.

Remember that this is a limited-interest mobo for the moment, and IMO it is highly unlikely that any other dealer for Europe actually exists. So you'll still be buying from Eyetech.

Remember that the firmware, which basically enables the mobo to boot, and the Amiga ROM are not the same thing, neither conceptually nor physically. I suspect that when they talk about not necessarily using the same firmware as the A1, they mean that there may be a few differences in the code, eg default OS may be Linux rather than AOS.

Incidentally, I'm pretty sure it's the debugging etc work on the A1 which now enables MAI to market their board in this way. This is good news, since it has spread the costs of A1 development and should also reduce the final cost of the boards to users since more are expected to be sold.

And at "around $500", the Teron board is in the same price range as the AmigaOne anyway, based on the current GBP to USD exchange rate.

I do wish you'd think things through before kneejerking out this sort of emotive nonsense.

[DaveP]

I do wish you'd think things through before kneejerking out this sort of emotive nonsense.

Never happen, like a bad lobbyist he uses any vague link
to promote his anti-Amiga Inc stance on PPC hardware. Fails
to realise that the audience is bored.

With this item and the crowing about MorphOS running on
the AmigaONE ( no it isnt ) the childish tactics are back
in season. There is *no way* that MorphOS COULD
be running on an A1G3SE at the moment.

So what are they (Thendic) trying to say, oh yes that old one that
is supposed to put everyone off - that Eyetech are using
and adapting an already designed, produced and tested board
from Mai called the TeronCX rather than being a custom design
with a custom slot for expansions that no third party supports
or produces modules for. Yeah, real benefits. Oh no watch
me start crying because it isnt made by a German/French
cartel that claims to have some intangible sense of
Amiganess that everyone else lacks.

Frankly I think that the ROM dongle mechanism has one
prime overriding reason to use it. Does anyone left have
a memory greater in capacity than a nanoseconds worth?

Without the certification scheme we would again be wide
open for the con schemes from illuminaries such as
IWIN, AntiGravity and all the others. Hardly a legacy you
want to take forward into the mainstream.

Grow up!

[Kronos]

@DaveP

According to this news-item both A1 and the new Teron are
identical on the HW-level.

I see no reason why MOS shouldn't run on the Teron, and if
you believe Alan&Ben it's no problem to boot other OSes from
PCBoot. All that needs to be done are some minor adjustments to
the boot-file.

Trying to bring Thendic into the light of IWin or Antigravity
is simple childish as the Pegasos has been proven to be
working (including MorphOS) and is allready in the Hand of
(few) users, something that never happened with the other two.

I've also not seen Thendic collecting any pre-payments.

So if you really need to call someone a "con-artist" in
the current market I would suggest starting somewhere else.

AInc has taken pre-payments twice.
Eyetech sold "A1-ready"-towers right to the announcment of
the A1.5.

Elbox is selling Mediators with the promise of the Shark.

No I don't call them "con-artists", but those
are the ones that still have a chance to fall in that category.

[anarchic_teapot]

Kronos wrote:

the Pegasos has been proven to be
working (including MorphOS) and is allready in the Hand of
(few) users, something that never happened with the other two.

Kronos, you know that's untrue: there are users (betatesters, like the Pegasos) with AmigaOnes.

Me, for example. Ole-Egil, Justin... There are others, but they haven't publicly identified themselves, so I can't name them.

I've also not seen Thendic collecting any pre-payments.

I seem to remember 50% being asked upfront at one point. OTOH, Eyetech didn't cash my cheque until my board was ready to ship.

[Kronos]

@teapot

Learn to read  :-P

The "other two" are iWin and the BoXeR ....

And yes Thendic asked for 50% from dealers but not endusers,
and thats not absolutly uncommon.

[Seehund]

anarchic_teapot wrote:

Remember that this is a limited-interest mobo for the moment, and IMO it is highly unlikely that any other dealer for Europe actually exists. So you'll still be buying from Eyetech.

Mai themselves will sell it (just like they did with the "evaluation" Teron CX) and most likely Terrasoft and Total Impact will be among the initial distributors, as well as Inguard since they already sell the "evaluation" version. With this nifty Internet invention I don't care any more about which continent my vendor is located on, than I care about which trademark is used for the stuff I buy from him. (The firstly mentioned concern could however be a valid concern for me, in contrast to the trademark nonsense.)

Remember that the firmware, which basically enables the mobo to boot, and the Amiga ROM are not the same thing, neither conceptually nor physically. I suspect that when they talk about not necessarily using the same firmware as the A1, they mean that there may be a few differences in the code, eg default OS may be Linux rather than AOS.

If the "anti piracy" (hardware-licensee confirmation) code will be in a separate ROM or in the board's firmware is irrelevant. It has the same technically irrelevant purpose either way.
When Bill Mueller says he doesn't know what firmware will be shipped with the boards, he means that he doesn't know what firmware will be shipped with the boards. "Default OS" has nothing to do with it, Mai is a hardware vendor. There is no "default OS". Since I can't think of any firmware suitable for this kind of hardware that can't boot Linux (other than a custom-written solution, which there is none from Mai), and Linux is the predominant "POP OS", it'd be kinda silly to flash the boards with a Linux-incompatible firmware. Third party distributors like Eyetech, Terrasoft et c. as well as end-users can of course reflash them with whatever they like.

Incidentally, I'm pretty sure it's the debugging etc work on the A1 which now enables MAI to market their board in this way.

WTF? Eyetech has nothing to do with any hardware development of neither this board nor the "evaluation" version (the "A1 developer version"). What Mai's customers, like Eyetech, do with software like the firmware has nothing to do with hardware design or Mai's marketing of their own products. Bill Mueller is the sole developer of the Teron CX / A1, and he is one of the two developers at Mai who do all motherboard designs and signal integrity development. He does not "know what or who we do our contracts with".

This is good news, since it has spread the costs of A1 development and should also reduce the final cost of the boards to users since more are expected to be sold.

Yes, it's good news. Even better news, following your reasoning above and common sense, would be if AmigaOS users could directly benefit from larger sales, more competition and unrestricted vendor options. Extending this reasoning further, AmigaOS would benefit from being sold to a wider hardware base, instead of not running on it at all or as pirated copies.

I do wish you'd think things through before kneejerking out this sort of emotive nonsense.

Please point out the emotive nonsense in the above news item, so we can let Mai know the truth about their products...