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Amiga News and Community Announcements => Amiga News and Community Announcements => Amiga Hardware News => Topic started by: mboehmer_e3b on January 20, 2007, 07:38:07 PM
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E3B is informing users on potential software problems when using USB controllers together with products of Elbox (especially after Elbox software upgrades).
All USB controllers using the standard USB stack Poseidon might be affected.
press release (http://www.e3b.de/usb/main_press_e.html)
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IIRC there were similar threats before, too, so I can't say I'm surprised about this.
Way to go elbollox...
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Watch those RDBs!
Did Elbox's alleged unlicensed use of Poseidon (http://www.platon42.de/poseidonreg.html#elboxsucks) ever get sorted out or resolved satisfactorily?
- Ali
EDIT: I guess not seeing as the last comment on that page is from December 2006...
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Just lovely, it's like the old PowerUp/WarpUP days. Ah, nostalgia....
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Why can't we just be friends :boohoo:
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I wonder if Elbox is getting concerned with the news that someone here got a $5.00 ALi5273 USB card working with Mediator and the Poseidon demo through ArakAttack and OpenPCI? No more $70 rebadged NEC USB card market for Elbox? :idea:
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I was pretty close to souping up my A3k with a Mediator (and custom case) - the news about the RDB trashing came just in time, and I'm not going to buy anything made by Elbox.
Anyone willing to sell his/her Prometheus? ;-)
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I wonder if Elbox is getting concerned with the news that someone here got a $5.00 ALi5273 USB card working with Mediator and the Poseidon demo through ArakAttack and OpenPCI?
Can anybody already confirm this for the Mediator 1200 LT4? If yes, it would be a great alternative.
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Who would have more than one USB controller anyway? It would only affect those people. I still think Elbox should abandon that poseidon junk and make their own. I also still don't see why people with the elbox usb stuff can't just register poseidon pretending to have one of those other non-elbox cards.
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I`m proud to say that all my Amigas are absolutely Elbox free (though I have an old Mroockeck in the spareparts drawer I got from somewhere). Statements like this (from Elbox) tell me that this is a good thing
I also still don't see why people with the elbox usb stuff can't just register poseidon pretending to have one of those other non-elbox cards.
Fine you would have a registered stack then, that will not talk to spider.device by default. So where is the point.
If it is true what Argus says the question should be: Why is there a need for Spider ?
Just make no softwareupdates for your Elbox stuff and you are on the safe side. It isn`t like there are weekly updates incorporating groundshaking enhancements anyway.
I think this will totally backfire. People that have Elbox stuff aren`t affected as long as they don`t update their drivers and potential new customers will be scared away by this.
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Surely this cannot be legal under EU laws? There are anti competitive laws right ?
Not that it will make a difference. Remember the RDB trashing business (And it was real, and proven).
The way to sort Elbox out once and for all, is STOP supporting them.
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@buzz
The way to sort Elbox out once and for all, is STOP supporting them.
Congratulations kill one of the last few Amiga classic hardware developers.:roll:
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Congratulations kill one of the last few Amiga classic hardware developers.
Oh, so the fact that they're one of the last remaining hardware companies means it's OK for them to treat their customers like sh*t?
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Congratulations kill one of the last few Amiga classic hardware developers.
Oh shut up. Don't you dare sit there and defend this absolutely reprehensible behavior. Elbox *should* be driven off if this is how they're going to act. I'd rather see the Amiga supported by Individual Computers and maybe a handful of garage-based hackers with a sense of ethics instead of this bunch of jerks. To hell with Elbox.
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Just to be clear, these elbox bashers do not represent the Amiga community as a whole. I whole heartedly support Elbox, and am a very happy customer.
Now this thing with E3B not supporting the use of a particular piece of hardware is what I consider to be childish. Even if it requires a seperate registration, the fact that it works is reason enough to support it... For the sake of US, the Amiga users.
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@Dr_Righteous (what a fitting nick .... )
So you are also on the list of people thinking Chris Hodges is employeed by E3B ??
Tell you he is not, and the problem was (and still should be) between him and Elbox.
It wasn't him who sold rebadged 5Euro cards for a fortune.
It wasn't also him who left costumers in the dark bout the unregistered nature of the Poseidon-stack with said cards.
It was surely not him putting RDB-trashing code into drivers running on a MP-free OS.
And no he didn't advocate prirating like someone else.
People who bought a Spider in the past (and were honest enough to register Poseidon) can still use it. People buying them now should complain to Elbox cos they didn't get told beforehand that Elbox can't deliver SW to make them of any use.
Why Elbox (again) insist on bringing E3B into it is beyond me.
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humppa wrote:
Can anybody already confirm this for the Mediator 1200 LT4? If yes, it would be a great alternative.
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As soon as I get my ALi card, I'm going to try it on my Mediator 1200LT4. Stay tuned....
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@ALL
Can someone please summarise this into a sane newspost?
Something along the lines of why using USB with Elbox products is a problem? And Who is causing the problem?
Is it Elbox drivers? The Poseidon USB stack that was at the heart of all those arguments between Elbox and Chris? Or something from E3B.
Because i'm too hungover and confused to think it all through.
Andy
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I think it goes something along the lines of.
Elbox made USB drivers for the Spider card which work with the Poseidon USB stack. Chris Hodges confirmed the existance of malicious code in the Elbox driver, which some other guy found by reverse engineering the device.
According to Elbox this code would only become active if the drivers were hacked and pirated.
A big argument ensued and Chris Hodges decided to limit his potential customer base by cutting Elbox users out of the deal.
Now Elbox have allegedly decided to help Chris in his mission not to make money from Poseidon by stopping other people's USB hardware working when the have Elbox's drivers on their system.
Disclaimer.
"This may or may not be an accurate representaion of what really went on."
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> Chris Hodges hacked the drivers
I never "hacked" those drivers. I merely confirmed the existance of the malicious code in the Elbox driver which some other guy found by reverse engineering the device and later on, the pci.library.
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Okay I changed my post to reflect that. Would you ever reconsider supporting Elbox hardware, for the sake of Amiga users.
Would I be able to use Poseidon with Amithlon if get it registered.
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Elbox customers need to talk to Elbox about the USB stack.
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@Rob
According to Elbox this code would only become active if the drivers were hacked and pirated.
Or if any random code in the system accidentally jumped there, or if something in the system corrupted the driver enough to execute the code, or, or, or, or, AmigaOS is a system without any Memory Protection, these are scenarios entirely possible to happen. The "only if the driver is cracked" stuff is a wish, not reality.
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The way to sort Elbox out once and for all, is STOP supporting them.
So what then are the alternatives? Elbox is one a very few who still produce hardware for the classic, without them the amiga market would have been much more dead than now.
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@AmiGR
Or if any random code in the system accidentally jumped there, or if something in the system corrupted the driver enough to execute the code, or, or, or, or, AmigaOS is a system without any Memory Protection, these are scenarios entirely possible to happen. The "only if the driver is cracked" stuff is a wish, not reality.
Did this ever happen to anyone? Didn't Elbox remove the code due to public pressure anyway.
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Who knows, if my RDB suddenly disappeared, I wouldn't be thinking that a driver erased it, it's pretty hard to make the connection. They did remove it, the problem is their whole stance during that period, towards Chris Hodges and pretty much everyone else who dared talk about this.
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Did this ever happen to anyone?
It's impossible to tell. The destruction code does not show any message or other indication that it has wiped out the RDB. All partitions are just lost on next reboot.
If your HDD just suddenly lost all partitions, how would you know to blame some driver? Wouldn't you just assume the HDD has died horribly?
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@Piru
It's impossible to tell.
Yes it's all very theoretical, no proof the code was ever prone to being accidentally released or indeed nothing to say it hadn't neither.
Probably in the end why Elbox bowed into criticism and removed the code to rule out such possibility's.
If indeed no RDB code is still being used in Elbox software, it's all rather sad that it still made into such a big issue by some.
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If indeed no RDB code is still being used in Elbox software
Well, here lies the problem: Elbox drivers are encrypted. There is no way the end customer can check for this, without breaking the license (which says decompiling is prohibited).
So you are forced to trust Elbox's word.
If you trust elbox's word on that, then this must be taken seriously aswell:
This option is not excluded, that in revenge for not registering the Poseidon stack for Mediator/Spider users all our products will refuse working when any of competitive USB controllers using Chris Hodges' Poseidon stack are present in the computer. This would apply to E3B USB cards (Highway, Subway, Algor). But, if any other USB solution will use Chris Hodges' Poseidon stack, this solution would be affected as well.
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If you trust elbox's word on that
I see no reason not too, unless you know something?
I have included the rest of the message so it may be seen in it's full entirety.
But this is a last resort. I still hope that Chris Hodges will restore registrations of the Poseidon stack for Mediator / Spider users. His current posistion is absolutely mindless and is counter-productive, to everyone, most of all to users.
It's so sad that Elbox and Chris Hodges need to have these tit for tat exchanges at all. :roll:
I can however understand why Elbox might take such action, after all isn't it the Poseidon author that is so morally apposed having his stack associated with Elbox hardware?
Well hopefully they can both come to some sense and and set aside their egos and pride.
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Elbox is responsible for their product. It is their responsibility to handle the situation, not their customers.
Trying to use customers as leverage is outright lame. If Elbox believes they have a case, why don't they take this to court instead of these silly games?
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All parties involved are a part of the Amiga community. We are all family. Pull your heads out of your backsides and cooperate with eachother, for the sake of the family.
EVERYONE needs to quit the flamewars and lawsuits. Every company, every developer of hardware and software, drivers, etc.
As a user, I have to buy hardware, buy / register software... The Amiga community isn't large enough anymore for crackers and pirates to run rapant with your product, so that is no excuse. And if two companies can't work out a deal to sell something together, sell it seperately... But for f***s sake sell it anyway! We'll buy it because we need / want it.
And if this "I see that guy's drivers on your system so I'm gonna erase your harddrive" crap is actually true, then oh yeah there's gonna be backlash. But unless it becomes more than hearsay, I'm not about to start flaming companies for it.
But I will flame for having something people can use, and refusing to allow access to it. That's lame. There are thousands of PCI-USB cards on the market... How about supporting something I can actually run down to Fry's and buy if you don't want to support Spider?!
And if Elbox wants to shut down my Mediator support because I'm using a Hodges Posiden stack, I say go right ahead. Not only will Elbox be sued to oblivion, everyone personally involved with that decision will be in court ordered debt to me and everyone else affected for the remainder of their lives.
SO GROW UP YOU IDIOTS!!!!!!!
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Did this ever happen to anyone? Didn't Elbox remove the code due to public pressure anyway.
Let's assume that some stalker had been pointing a gun at you and your friends for, say, a few years. All this without telling you anything.
Then this guy gets caught aiming the gun at you, as he's being doing for a long time. The police takes away the gun, and notices it's a quite unreliable type that's known to fire sometimes by accident without anyone pulling the trigger. It's also clear that this stalker knew how unreliable it was, but he never intended to shoot you (and -luckily- the gun didn't shoot you accidentally either)
So, what you would think of that guy then? That it's all perfectly ok, as you yourself survived through it, and the police didn't find any murder victim, that was definitely killed by the stalker (or his unreliable gun)
Later, when the guy gets set free, he just tells you there's no use stalking you anymore, as you knew about him. No apologies or anything.
And last but not least, one thing I've been wondering about this thread, where's tjaoz? :-D
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What's really pissing me off in this whole situation is that elbox is dragging 3rd parties in this conflict who have nothing to do with it in the first place. Say you use a mediator; and have a subway with poseidon, Elbox drivers would render parts of your system useless. Same goes if you have a thycasomething USB card.
The one and only acting childish here is Elbox. They need to get their act together. For now I am dropping all my Elbox support and will get (probably more expansive) zorro counterparts from E3B and Individual Computers.
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Elbox can go to hell. I have my drivers that work at the moment and I'm never going to upgrade them. So if it is possible to get an el cheepo USB card working then I can.
Although I've been mainly happy with my mediator, I will never buy another Elbox product.
It's dog eat dog, I hope Elbox go under and we see Darek Smietana having to get a job cleaning poo off of toilet seats.
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This press release is incomplete. It should start: In the Mediator ML post from 3 Jan 2007 Darek Smietana (Elbox) is threatening to modify drivers of all Elbox products so that they do not work with E3B products... in revenge for not registering (since 18 Nov 2006) the Poseidon stack for Spider users by Chris Hodges.
I think, if Chris Hodges can make his Poseidon stack not work with an Elbox product, Elbox can do the same in revenge, right? If you blame Elbox, blame Hodges first - he started that game. :pissed:
Fortunately I don't have any E3B product.
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@ Andrea
Well there is a huge difference.
Chis simply decided no to sell it's product to certain customers. Thats perfectly legal. It's his product and he can decide whom he sells it too, weather you like it or not.
Elbox on the other side says "We will render our hardware ( that you allready have paid us for !!) useless if you also use Chis software."
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I think, if Chris Hodges can make his Poseidon stack not work with an Elbox product, Elbox can do the same in revenge, right?
Sure they can. They can also make their drivers not work with Amiga accelerators manufactured by Commodore (RIP), clock port clocks made by any manufacturer, fail on 12th day of each other month or anything.
I agree that there's slightly stronger connection between Poseidon author and "manufacturers of competiting USB hardware" than with f.ex. Commodore. But that does NOT mean that there would be any connection other than hardware manufacturers using *third party* usb stack for their product. You know, just like with Elbox, except that unlike with Elbox, some of them came with registered Poseidon. But that's just a deal between 2 different parties, nothing less, nothing more.
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@Andrea:
Of course they CAN'T !
Maybe this will help:
Dell has a dispute with Microsoft; Microsoft no longer sells Windows to Dell. Now Dell in their turn says: if you own a HP printer; we will no longer support the printer; because Microsoft still sells Windows to HP.
Once and for all: Chris does NOT work for E3B; nor for the Australian company selling USB cards. E3B does offer a registered Poseidon with their card because they have a normal agreement; unlike Elbox.
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@ Lemmink
Well there is a huge difference.
Chis simply decided no to sell it's product to certain customers.
I see no difference. Elbox simply threatens that if Hodges does not restore Poseidon stack registration for Spider, Elbox would decide not to sell (or give away) further versions of their drivers for certain customers (those who use the Poseidon stack with cards other than Spider USB).
Thats perfectly legal.
Maybe yes, maybe not. But for sure it is unfair for users and Elbox. Chris has not paid Elbox for writing Mediator USB drivers for his Poseidon stack. So Chris has some obligations towards Elbox. You can read about this here (http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/Amiga-Mediator/message/18150). It is also unfair for users because Chris stopped selling Poseidon without any warning.
It's his product and he can decide whom he sells it too, weather you like it or not.
So you must give the same right to Elbox, because their drivers are their products and they can decide whom they sell them (or give away), right?
Elbox on the other side says "We will render our hardware ( that you allready have paid us for !!) useless if you also use Chis software."
As I understand you can still use current drivers. You have not paid for future drivers, right?
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@ Tahoe
Of course they CAN'T !
Maybe this will help:
Dell has a dispute with Microsoft; Microsoft no longer sells Windows to Dell. Now Dell in their turn says: if you own a HP printer; we will no longer support the printer; because Microsoft still sells Windows to HP.
Then Chris is a Microsoft here. What an appropriate simile... :-D
Once and for all: Chris does NOT work for E3B; nor for the Australian company selling USB cards. E3B does offer a registered Poseidon with their card because they have a normal agreement; unlike Elbox.
No-one says that Chris works for E3B or for the Australian company selling USB cards.
Chris made an agreement with E3B and Chris made an agreement with Elbox. The first agreement, as I understand, is that his Poseidon stack is selling with E3B cards, and the second agreement is that Chris sells Poseidon for Mediator users himself. I think, both agreements are normal, even though their conditions are different. If I remember correctly it was Chris' condition to sell Poseidon to Mediator users himself.
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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.
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Chris has not paid Elbox for writing Mediator USB drivers for his Poseidon stack.
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.
Have you seen Microsoft pay Invidia for making Direct X drivers for their cards ? Have you seen the CGX-Team pay DCE for making drivers for VooDoo G-Rex ?
It seams you have quite a twisted view of reality. Or you are (as I think by now) just a simple troll or in some way connected to Elbox. Or has Tjaoz forgoten his passwort :lol:
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If I remember correctly it was Chris' condition to sell Poseidon to Mediator users himself.
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. It's understandably impossible to "force" Poseidon purchase with every standard USB card that just happens to be sold for use with Amiga (no, it's for windows). And to force something like that in EVERY single computer shop in the world. See the problem? :-)
Also it would be totally unfair to force every Mediator user buy also Poseidon, whether or not they're interested in USB at all. That wouldn't make any sense, it would be like selling Samantha board only with OS4, no matter if the person buying it is interested in it or not :-D (I know they will happily sell "bare board" to anyone willing to buy one)
Anyway, considering this assumed scenario, there's no (fair) way to force every Mediator+USB owner buy registered Poseidon.
Of course Elbox did something totally different, but that's a different story.
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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.
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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 (http://elbox.com/products/spider_usb_20_pci.html) on their site, telling potential buyers that they can still register Poseidon ?
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@ 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.
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@ 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
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@ 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.
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@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).
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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.
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@ 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.
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@ 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.
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I think you're going round in circles now, basically there's no way to defend the behaviour of Elbox.
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[/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)