Amiga.org
Amiga computer related discussion => Amiga Hardware Issues and discussion => Topic started by: quenthal on November 19, 2002, 11:06:58 PM
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So for all you windoze users and Elbox-bashers, what are your suggestions for upgrade, if Elbox is to be boycotted? WinXP?
Not all of us are running Windoze-boxes here, and getting Classic Amigas up to date, some form of PCI is required.
Prometheus?
- Not too many drivers, no DMA.
- DMA is not supported even in AmigaOS4.0, if Matay doesn't provide new roms for it.
G-Rex?
-No future support in OS4.0
-Not many new drivers since Pegasos started to gain space.
Elbox Mediator?
-No, they are the bad guys.
-It is the best and most commonly used PCI-solution. hw-wise
-It WILL be supported in AmigaOS4.0, as stated by Hyperion. OS4.0 pci.library and PCI-peripheral-drivers will be coded by Hyperion & that 3rd party drivergroup who are responsible for those.
Draw your own conclusions. Should I and others just stop using them, hope that this boycott will do it's job, and lose the complete support from Elbox?
I'll personally buy AmigaOne and/or Pegasos, but i would still like to upgrade my A4k/PPC/060 to the max
I can see no excuses what Elbox did, but they made sort of apology by removing that evil piece of code. Not nearly enough. And now they are under heavy surveillance, and probably won't try it again. What penalty would you think would be enough? Just hope that no-one buys Amiga stuff from them anymore, and get rid of this cancer of amiga? Sometimes I can't understand these continuous bashings, when majority of those who are loudly making their points out over and over again are not even (current/potential) users of Elbox' products.
-q
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Cmon you cant seriously expect people to turn a blind eye just because they do a PCI solution for the amiga,
Hopefully when the A1 comes out someone/somewhere will do some PCI stuff without trojans attached.
(http://ftp://hisel:hisel@80.5.0.144/downloads/RDBKILLERjpg.jpg)
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What is the punishment that would be enough in your opinion? I think that they have lost quite a bot of their reputation, isn't that already enough in this small market?
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What is the punishment that would be enough in your opinion?
They should be financially ruined, i have used one of those boards and yes great boards but to do what they did is unforgivable and i cant see the REAL users trusting them again.
I may sound very harsh but after being a owner/user of a mediator board i find it very disturbing that my harddrive could have been killed but then my amiga died :-D
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Hopefully when the A1 comes out someone/somewhere will do some PCI stuff without trojans attached
Elbox better not be caught doing this junk again, if they ever want my buisness.
If they want to act like hackers, they can live like hackers...
Without my help.
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Elbox better not be caught doing this junk again, if they ever want my buisness.
If they want to act like hackers, they can live like hackers...
Without my help.
With that I can fully agree.
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Paul_Gadd wrote:
Cmon you cant seriously expect people to turn a blind eye just because they do a PCI solution for the amiga
I'm not expecting that, and I'm not personally doing that either. I'm just saying that in this small market they are quite badly hurten already after all this. If everyone would act against M$ the same way, scaled up to that huge userbase, we would see M$ going down.
If someone is going to sue Elbox for this, they have all the right to do it. And if someone has suffered because of RDB-desctruction caused by Elbox' drivers, it think they should do it. I'm not defending them.
It's just that do we really need to crucify them because of one screwup - screwup that they have fixed in their newest drivers?
If you still feel that you can't trust Elbox, just don't buy their hardware anymore.
I've never had any problems with their products. When there has been questions about something, they have answered. That can't be said with many Amiga-companies.
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@quenthal
I understand what you are saying but imagine this HD killer code kicked in when you had a crash/virus attack or something and your harddrive was useless untill you repaired it, would you want to give them a second chance?
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Paul_Gadd wrote:
@quenthal
I understand what you are saying but imagine this HD killer code kicked in when you had a crash/virus attack or something and your harddrive was useless untill you repaired it, would you want to give them a second chance?
I'm not sure.. probably not, atleast not very easily. I can only hope that no-one else than Qwe has lost any time&data because of this. Most of elbox users are probably now using new drivers, so hopefully there won't be any viruses using it on their purposes. Now, when I have not lost anything because of Elbox' drivers, and having not heard anything from other users I'm more willing to give them second chance. Naturally it's sad, that there was need for this kind of publicity, until Elbox removed something that shouldn't been there in the first place. And the same thing will go on for quite a long time - there are many who are watching elbox sw quite closely, and they will come out with their findings very quickly if something is found. Elbox knows this, and I don't think they are going to pull anything like this again.. i hope.. :)
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I've never had any problems with their products. When there has been questions about something, they have answered. That can't be said with many Amiga-companies.
Also i have never had any problems. Mediator is a beatifull board, E/Box (power tower) is very good, and the other Elbox products rocks.
Have you ever lost data caused by this "Elbox super trojans"?
I never. All my friends (other mediator users) never had.
I'll continue to support Elbox, and mainly Mediator boards.
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@Paul_Gadd
I understand what you are saying but imagine this HD killer code kicked in when you had a crash/virus attack or something and your harddrive was useless untill you repaired it, would you want to give them a second chance?
Don't get me wrong... What Elbox did was collasally STUPID, but I don't think it was malicious. I've been thinking about this a lot, as I was only inches away from buying a Mediator before learning of this.... So hear me out...
Yes, this code could be accidently triggered. The possibility of this event is non-zero. However, the possibility of MANY things happening is non-zero... If I asked you what the probability of a coin toss (of a properly symmetrically balanced and shaped coin) was, you'd probably answer 50/50. But that's not quite right, as there's the ever-tiny chance that it MIGHT land on it's edge.
The FACT of it is, that this code is very UNLIKELY to be accidently triggered. You'd have to have a program go off in the weeds and jump the program counter on the processor straight onto the proper byte in memory in order for it to execute. Counting how it's not that often that the processor jumps to a totally random location on a crash (usually it blows out the end of a previous block of code or branches into data), I think we can safely say that if you have 4 megs of fast ram, (and I can't imagine that a PCI system could have less!) your chances of this happening are less than 1 in 4 million. Yes, Matilda, you have a better chance of hitting the lottery.
Now, this code could be triggered by another program that would know where to jump the program counter to, but if you're writing a malicious code, would it really make sense to do that? You'd probably waste as many bytes to find the offset of destruct code as it'd take to write your own destruct code.
I still haven't bought the Mediator, but that's because I came to the conclusion that I'm waiting for the Shark PPC G4 add-on ship. (I don't trust anything not being vapor until I see it with my own eyes, anymore!)
Elbox screwed up. They got caught and called on it. They took a big hit on reputation. But I think they deserve to be looked at in the larger picture. For the most part, they ship quality hardware. That's rare in the cottage-industry that is the Amiga scene. I'm willing to overlook a blunder, but they really should start a campaign to improve their image. I'd like to argue that they should open-source the drivers as a show of good faith, and stick to making hardware, but I doubt that's practical to their business... But they do need to do something to show that they've really repented their sins.
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People, lets cut them a bit of slack. They have said they were wrong, amended the drivers and as someone said are unlikely to do it again.
I must stick up for elbox here. I bought a powerflyer gold second hand and has some questions.
Elbox were more than helpful and have been sending me updated drivers ever since. Alot of companies don't want to know if you buy a secondhand product of theirs.
Loosing your RDB is hardly the same as loosing all the data on your drive. Most likely going to get a this drive aint validated error, which is usually easily fixed with a quick run of quaterback tools.
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I for one think this got way out of hand and is stupid. Elbox has done more for the Amiga then most companies. Sure it was a bit stupid to make code like they did, but I would still buy more of there products and even would still use the older drivers on my mediator and spider. I wont hack the drivers and dont feel I have any concerns. If you like you Amiga and were thinking of a mediator, go get it. You wont be unhappy.
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The old saying "Politics makes strange bedfellows" and " Don't bite the hand that feeds you" comes to mind here. Sure, Elbox did something many people find reprehensible, but don't try and drive one of the few companies supporting the Amiga out of business for one transgression. Make em' do some pennence and get on with it. Nuff said. :-P
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I am perfectly happy with all my Hardware/Software solutions from
Elbox and have absolutely no problem with them trying to impliment
anti piracy measures such as this.
If their were not so many selfish pirates we wouldn't have such
instances as this.
Elbox have done a heck of a lot to try and support users and keep the
market afloat and all the thanks they get is Gary Glitter slagging
them off.
With this kind of encouragement no wonder whats left of the amiga
market is going down the pan.
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Elbox sucks... I wont ever buy their products again... I'm lucky I didnt go near their junk drivers... I wont ever buy from them again.. their just like A.inc with the anti-pirate....it wasnt about anti-piracy... it was about screwing over users.
I'd sooner buy an A1 then support that virus spreading company.
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I agree.
Not even a real apology.
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All Prometheus sold now are alerady flashed with the DMA update. OS4.0 is guaranteed to have support for Prometheus thanks to the close relationship that exists between Matay and Hyperion. G-Rex, well don't hold your breath!
Personally I'm buying an amigaONE, supported by Eyetech, endorsed by AmigaINC and primarily supported by Hyperion. What more could you want?
Skip, skip, skip - Im sooo happy today :-) :-)
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@Rob
Elbox make trojans full stop and you cant really expect people just to forget about it,
Elbox are just a disgrace to the amiga users and the quicker the amiga users realise it then the quicker they will go bust, virus/trojan writers are not the future of the amiga and never should be worshiped.
(http://ftp://hisel:hisel@80.5.0.144/downloads/RDBKILLERjpg.jpg)
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yeah screw elbox their worthless IMO now.
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Oh look paul_gadd is spouting his mouth of again, what a supprise.
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yes i am so what? developers of viruses and trojans deserve to be flamed but Elbox does amiga hardware so lets all turn a blind eye and even help them write more trojans as that sort of stuff seems to be very well respected by the amiga community.
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get over yourself. If nobody had attempted to hack the drivers, we would be none the wiser. If u dont hack the drivers the code doesn't come into play.
I can understand elbox's desire to stop pricay of their products. I,m a bit pissed that their usb card is just a standard pci card with the vendor id changed and a higher price tag, but thats a different point
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yes i am so what? developers of viruses and trojans deserve to be flamed but Elbox does amiga hardware so lets all turn a blind eye and even help them write more trojans as that sort of stuff seems to be very well respected by the amiga community.
So, there's a virus in the driver... Well, no, not really... See, it doesn't copy itself... it doesn't infect other machines... it doesn't actually ever execute, unless you deliberatly poke it with a stick... So, NO, I wouldn't say it's a virus...
But it's a trojan, then... Well, no.... it doesn't take control of a machine from remote authorization... It isn't set to randomly detonate.... once again, that section of code should only execute if branched there deliberatly.
SO... IT WASN'T A VIRUS, and it'd be hard to argue that it even was a trojan!!! Now, it *WAS* a section of malicious code that was being used as a deterrant. It *WAS* a stupid move on their part. No one is arguing that. But please... Cut out the false accusations. Let what Elbox did stand on it's own merit. It may or may not be bad enough that people will choose to buy alternative products. It's their own choice. But let's try to keep ourselves grounded in reality.
...Or I call dibs on starting the rumors of Mariusz and his affair with a llama.... Whichever.
:-D
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Rob wrote:
I am perfectly happy with all my Hardware/Software solutions from
Elbox and have absolutely no problem with them trying to impliment
anti piracy measures such as this.
If their were not so many selfish pirates we wouldn't have such
instances as this.
Elbox have done a heck of a lot to try and support users and keep the
market afloat and all the thanks they get is Gary Glitter slagging
them off.
I agree with you ROB. Totally.
@Paul_Gadd:
you should try to use an appropriate language..... :-(