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Amiga News and Community Announcements => Amiga News and Community Announcements => Amiga Software News => Topic started by: System on April 01, 2003, 01:37:07 PM
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Elbox Computer is pleased to announce completion of the development of the new Spider drivers. New drivers for the Spider USB 2.0 PCI cards extend the range of supported hardware with computers running AmigaOS under Amithlon.
'Amithlon users have overwhelmingly and repeatedly told us they absolutely wanted the features of the USB 2.0 standard as soon as the Spider USB 2.0 card entered the market,' said Darek Smietana, support manager at Elbox. 'We are proud to deliver our sophisticated and innovative USB hardware to Amithlon users. Now they can enjoy all the benefits of the USB 2.0 Hi-Speed functionality in their systems. Needless to say, we are again following our basic business rule with this step: to give to users more than they could expect.'
The new USB driver is enclosed in the Spider CD bundled with the new version of the Spider USB 2.0 card, whose availability will be announced in the coming days.
For more info about Spider, see the Spider USB 2.0 card website -- http://www.elbox.com/products/spider_usb_20_pci.html.
Mariusz Wloczysiak
ELBOX COMPUTER, Press Department
contact: press@elbox.com
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WOW! Great!!
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Now what a pile of BS .... (no suprise)
Why didn't they just write a driver for the onboard USB
that every mobo has (only 2 possible chipsets) ?
Well, because they want to sell us their overpriced and
dongled HW, which is just a relabeled OEM-card worthe 20$ ....
Priracy ain't the cause, as I would still need to buy a licence
for Poseidon, oh wait I forgot Elbox are only interested in
their IP, and have no respect for someones elses......
The whole point of Amithlon was an is to get away from over-priced
"special" HW, but this is just insane !
Don't get me wrong, I would like to buy Poseidon for it, and I
would even be prepared to pay some extra $$ for the low-level
driver, but no way I would put such a card in my sys when I
allready got USB in it ....
/sorry for ranting, but has to be done has to be done :-x
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Yes....but...Kronos...this thing is ment for Amiga PCI users right? And not a single Amiga has built in USB......so there is a point in this thing. (Although why it's not possible to stuff a standard PCI USB card in an Amiga PCI busboard is beyond me......).
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DOH...didn't see the Amithlon bit....feel free to ignore me ;).
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April fool.
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@Kronos
Theoretically not all X86 computers have built in USB. Actually just a few years back many motherboards didn't have it standard. This theoretically is just one more option, and options are good.
Elbox did the work, now people can pay them if they like. If no one else has an alternative it's not Elbox's fault.
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April fool.
DOH! :-o
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@Bill
:-D
But it really sounded like a typical Elbox-PR-stunt .....
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It is a April fool :D
AmiDelf
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@Kronos
But it really sounded like a typical Elbox-PR-stunt .....
It is a typical Elbox PR stunt, in that they highlight a feature that their products support and Amithlon does not and also the apparent lack of driver development and support for the emulation product.
...not that I have any inside knowledge about it being a joke. It's just that any announcements made on the morning of April 1st need to be treated with extreme suspicion, specially if they lack important details (in this case, which pci library would it use and which USB stack is it tested with?).
Since the story got an airing here and on the amithlonopen list too, I guess the PR stunt worked. :-)
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Well it is also on amiga-news.de .....
Petra's april-joke for the last year was an add-banner,
switching between AmigaDE and MicroSoft .....
oh oh
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Who gives a damn about Elbox, we have seen their true colours and they clearly DO NOT deserve support from the Amiga users.
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Well, I reckon this is no april's fool. However, I think Kronos is right about most people having USB onboard already anyway. So why not wait for Titan or me (now that I've got a Pegasos, I actually could do some PCI driver development) to write a PCI driver which is not bound to the IMHO overpriced hardware Elbox is selling.
Heh, does anyone mind Elbox not having a licence for using Poseidon? Their development keyfile has been revoked and they never registered the program.
Does anyone mind Elbox not stating anywhere that they only provide the low-level hardware driver and that the USB support only available through Poseidon?
Well, I guess not.
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I don't know what to say. Here's the facts, as I know them... Even
though most of them are personal facts :-)
1. Platon42 has a legitimate gripe.
2. Elbox is a sponsor here.
3. The Spider isn't that badly priced ($10 more than a normal USB 2.0
card).
4. I'm getting a Pegasos.
5. At the same time, I happen to like my Amithlon. (which only has
USB1.1 built onto the m/b)
6. I really don't give a rip about USB until someone writes a driver
to run my TDK USB-based CD-burner.
7. I don't want to give up my A1200 (w/ Mediator either).
Golly, does everything Amiga have to be morally confusing?
:-( :-? :cry: :-? :-( :-? :-?
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Elbox did the work, now people can pay them if they like. If no one else has an alternative it's not Elbox's fault.
Right. Stop flaming against Elbox.
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@platon42
Well, I reckon this is no april's fool. However, I think Kronos is right about most people having USB onboard already anyway. So why not wait for Titan or me (now that I've got a Pegasos, I actually could do some PCI driver development) to write a PCI driver which is not bound to the IMHO overpriced hardware Elbox is selling.
Well, you may well have better info than I have, but my guess was based on logic. Technically, Elbox may well be capable of writing this low-level driver, but in practical terms this means making use of a PCi library. The original Amithlon library would require them to get a SDK off HF, with whom they have very bad relations, or else use the OpenPCI library, which they don't want to support. Both are possible, but unlikely.
Heh, does anyone mind Elbox not having a licence for using Poseidon? Their development keyfile has been revoked and they never registered the program.
Does anyone mind Elbox not stating anywhere that they only provide the low-level hardware driver and that the USB support only available through Poseidon?
Well, you'll notice that I did raise the issue of the USB stack earlier. We're not insensitive to the situation between Elbox and you, you know.
I will continue to treat this announcement as an April Fool until someone proves me wrong.
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forget you saw this....
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Hi Bill, well this is officially on elbox's site now. So perhaps it is real.... take a look:
http://www.elbox.com/news_03_04_01.html
HammerD
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@HammerD
Yes, it's been there all along. (The link should have been posted with the news article IMHO).
Everything I've said about it so far has been said in the full knowledge that the "news" was posted on the Elbox site.
The date is still the 1st of April, and the news item went up prior to 12:00 PM. To be honest, I haven't seen anything at all to indicate that it isn't an April Fool joke.
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(replying to myself again... must stop that)
Just to put a little more meat on the "April Fool" theory, the last days of March saw a considerable anti-Amithlon feeling building up on the Mediator mailing list after a remark from the OpenPCI author. My guess is that this is Elbox's little way at getting back at him and Amithlon users.
Forget it folks, this news article is not real!