E3B - press release regarding potential software problems

[lorddef]

Well back then when Elbox was planning USB support, Chris Hodges probably thought (as everyone else, except Elbox) that it would work "normally", you know... Mediator owner walks into any computer shop, buys an USB card that has compatible chipset, plugs it into his Mediator, confirms that it works and THEN registers Poseidon.

Exactly. I purchaced my mediator on the premise that I could use it with bog standard PCI cards as long as there was a driver.

At the time I purchaced it there were voodoo3,sb128,realtek and bt848/878 drivers. And mpeg2 card + usb card drivers were "coming soon".

However Elbox decided they would lock their USB drivers down to only the USB card they were selling at an inflated price.

I would have paid elbox extra for a usb driver I could use with a well known USB card and a well known Amiga stack.

But pay for an over priced card, with a driver that would be useless on any other card with a different id, filled with malicious code and an illegal development licence for someone elses software. Elbox you be wrong.

[Doobrey]

It is also unfair for users because Chris stopped selling Poseidon without any warning.

But I suppose you think it's perfectly OK for Elbox to still be listing the Spider II on their site, telling potential buyers that they can still register Poseidon ?

[Andrea]

@ lorddef

Andrea, I guess you are affiliated with Elbox?

I read the whole email trail posted on planton42.de, and as long as that's all true (as I assume it is) it's clear Elbox tried to shaft Chris and paying Mediator uses.

It may be a shock for your intuition to learn that your guess is wrong, I am not affiliated with Elbox. :-D

I read emails posted on platon42.de carefully and I still find that it is Chris who plays unfair.

[Andrea]

@ Lemmink

Sure and why the hell should he It`s not like Elbox has done Cris any favor in writing the driver. They did it so they could sell hardware. Usually in this big big World it works the other way round. The manufacrurerer of hardware have to pay license fees to use an existing system and write a driver for it.

I think that all depends on the agreement between both parties. Chris and Elbox agreed that payment for the Poseidon licence fee is up to users,  developing drivers is up to Elbox, registering the USB stack is up to Chris.

Here is what Elbox wrote on Mediator ML about this agreement details:

It was Chris Hodges, the Poseidon stack author, who approached us
with a proposal to prepare support for Mediator by our programmers
for his Poseidon stack. Before final decision we negotiated some
conditions with Chris Hodges. One of them was that Chris Hodges
undertook to manage problem-free and comfortable registration of
the Poseidon stack for Mediator users and to ensure equal treatment
of users with various USB hardware supported by Poseidon. It means
he undertook to support Mediator users as long as he supports users
of other hardware supported by his USB stack. Chris Hodges accepted
this condition. Our programmer has written the drivers for Poseidon
and the USB stack author gained a group of new customers (Mediator
users) for his stack.

If it were Chris Hodges to provide the complete software for our
hardware (the Poseidon stack and USB hardware drivers) or if
Chris Hodges would have paid us for preparation of USB hardware
drivers for Mediator, then we would not object to his dropping
support for his whims. However, the situation is different.

Source: http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/Amiga-Mediator/message/18150

[Andrea]

@ Jupp3

Mediator owner walks into any computer shop, buys an USB card that has compatible chipset, plugs it into his Mediator, confirms that it works and THEN registers Poseidon.

I agree with you. This scenario would be best. But things are no so simple as it may seem. The problem is that the Poseidon stack is lacking one very important component - the driver for the USB PCI cards.

[platon42]

@Andrea:

> registering the USB stack is up to Chris.

Exactly. If I don't want to do this anymore for some users, this is up to me. The alternative would be stopping Poseidon development completely, but this is not so favored by most users.

> The problem is that the Poseidon stack is lacking one very important component - the driver for the USB PCI cards.

It's not "lacking" those. Poseidon was developed using E3B USB boards and the E3B card drivers were paid for. As I don't have a PCI capable Amiga, I cannot develop the PCI drivers myself.

There are third party PCI drivers such as the ArakAttack package for Amithlon, Prometheus and theoretically OpenPCI, which has turned out be working on Mediator too, recently. It was bundled with Poseidon and sold through IOSpirit some years ago but is now freely available. There are the MorphOS PCI drivers for uhci (Frank Mariak), ohci and ehci (Nico).

[Jupp3]

Poseidon stack is lacking one very important component - the driver for the USB PCI cards.

As the author pointed out, Poseidon supports many different PCI USB cards. But I guess you refer to USB PCI card for Elbox Mediator? Then I don't understand why use plural (cardS) as the support is artificially restricted to only one model.

[Andrea]

@ platon42

If you made an agreement with Elbox and they did their work, you should also keep your obligations. Otherwise, you seem to be the bad guy.

[Andrea]

@ Jupp3

As the author pointed out, Poseidon supports many different PCI USB cards. But I guess you refer to USB PCI card for Elbox Mediator? Then I don't understand why use plural (cardS) as the support is artificially restricted to only one model.

Poseidon supports many different PCI USB cards just as Picasso96 supports many different PCI graphic cards. But to use a specific PCI card, you need drivers for this very card.

Poseidon does not include drivers for any USB PCI card. There are 3rd party drivers for them only.

[lorddef]

I think you're going round in circles now, basically there's no way to defend the behaviour of Elbox.

[Jupp3]

[/quote]Poseidon supports many different PCI USB cards just as Picasso96 supports many different PCI graphic cards. But to use a specific PCI card, you need drivers for this very card.[/quote]
You don't need drivers for different cards, but for different chipsets (well, generally, that is...)
Elbox created one additional artificial restriction: All Spider cards are bog standard PCI USB2 cards, with a special "code" written in flash, that tells whether or not the card is one sold as "Spider" or not. Drivers could easily work with ANY card that has compatible chipset, but thanks to this additional check, it won't.

I challenge you to show me ANY other PCI USB2 card that Mediator supports, all that without any 3rd party hacks (obviously that simple "IsCardSpider()" check could be disabled somehow, I think some people were working on this a while ago)