Amiga.org
Amiga News and Community Announcements => Amiga News and Community Announcements => Amiga Hardware News => Topic started by: mboehmer_e3b on October 30, 2008, 11:26:59 AM
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E3B is pleased to announce a new production run of the fastest USB2 controller for Amiga Classic, the DENEB.
Due to the (unexpected high) demand the first production run was sold out quickly, but now new cards are in delivery to all official distributors.
The DENEB is shipped with a fully OEM licensed version of the famous USB stack Poseidon in the latest version V4.2,
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It's great to hear that you guys sold out your first production run. I'm so glad that I took the plunge and bought a Deneb as it's the most exciting bit of kit to hit the Classic market for a long time. It really opens up the expansion possibilites of the "big-box" Amigas and it quickly pays for itself by allowing the use of cheap PC ethernet adapters and external CD/DVD+RW drives, plus the ability to quickly swap data between different computers using a USB pen drive.
I hope this next run sells out quickly for you too.
I'm looking forward to seeing what future products you have in store.
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"note to self, keep £100 aside for deneb. paying off the credit cards can wait.."
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DENEB USB 2.0 (http://amigakit.leamancomputing.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=795) is in stock now here:
http://amigakit.leamancomputing.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=795
We are an authorized E3B distributor
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I'm so glad that I took the plunge and bought a Deneb as it's the most exciting bit of kit to hit the Classic market for a long time.
Thanks for the flowers :-)
For us it is always nice to receive such a positive remark - it's an honor.
I hope this next run sells out quickly for you too.
Well, that's up to you :-)
Michael
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Deneb rocks! It's one of the best expansions I have ever used in my miggies :-)
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@ Mike,
Can I just make a couple of suggestions to make installation easier for users?
In the Deneb install draw, try including the following files:
Installer - latest version required to install software
LHA - for unpacking untilities such as MUI from Aminet
MUI - required for Poseidon prefs to work
It was a pain in the backside to try and track these files down initially, download them on the PC and then find a away to transfer them to the Amiga (USB wasn't working without them and my personal PCs don't have floppy drives - luckily my kids' do).
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@michael
That's awesome! I love my DENEB, and after reading the manuals ;-), setting it up was a snap.
@Darrin
I think that's a common complaint, although including all those bits (assuming they can be legally redistributed) would increase the size of the installation package considerably.
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@ Trev,
It really shouldn't be. MUI archived using LHA is relatively small, Installer isn't even worth LHAing and LHA isn't going to fill the Flash ROM either. ;-)
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I hope we see a working setup for the USB-to-DVI adapters one day - then the already grand Deneb will get totally awesome! ;-)
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USB wasn't working without them...
Well, not completely true. The normal user FlashROM of DENEB has included a full set of Poseidon, which will always start USB out of the FlashROM without the need of installing *anything* (except fat95, maybe :-)
So you can transfer everything you need to install easily. We did think of systems with broken disk drives, or missing CDROMs already.
Michael
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@ Mike,
Ah, so if I had FAT95 installed then I would have been able to use the USB pen drive to copy over MUI and Installer. Of course, without it I had to find a way to get Installer onto my clean OS3.1 setup.
Now I keep those files on a couple of floppy disks along side my OS3.9 emergency boot disk. :-D
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Can I just make a couple of suggestions to make installation easier for users?
In the Deneb install draw, try including the following files:
Installer - latest version required to install software
LHA - for unpacking untilities such as MUI from Aminet
MUI - required for Poseidon prefs to work
I don't want to argue here with you, but please consider this:
The available space for the rescue flashrom is 1.5 MB (1536 KB). The disk image is 1456 KB, the flashdisk mounter uses 2 KB and the boot loader and index psge use 3 KB. The disk image is 99% full (Poseidon, Luciferin and DenebTools) and has a mere 9 KB free space.
The installer is a standard part of the workbench distribution -- it is necessary for 95% of all harddisk installable tools and assumed to be available as standard commandos like List etc.
The DenebInstall image does come with "LhEX" that is used as fallback to unpack the lha archives for installation whenever C:LHA is not found.
With fat95 and LhEX on the installer disk, nothing stops you from using an usb stick to transfer MUI from your PC to your Amiga via USB.
The MUI 3.8 user archive is 1 MB in size alone. It would never have fit inside the DenebInstaller disk.
No MUI application comes with this archive included.
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I think what we have here is a failure to consider certain facts. :lol:
1) It should never be taken for granted by any manufacturer of computer upgrades that the consumer has another machine to use as well. Yes,most of us have PCs as well as 'miggys but this should not be presumed.... tut tut...how do you expect the Amiga to stand proud if you need a PC to use it properly huh?
2) If a program that is necessary for the hardware being sold requires another program to function properly it should be included. If it is not, is the product honestly fit for purpose? This has implications with such things as the UK 1976 sale of goods act that clearly states "goods must be fit for the purpose for which they are sold".
Food for thought perhaps.
Great product by the way, keep up the good work.
:-D
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It should never be taken for granted by any manufacturer of computer upgrades that the consumer has another machine to use as well.
Which we don't do. The DENEB can be installed without another computer being available.
If a program that is necessary for the hardware being sold requires another program to function properly it should be included.
Erm. Sorry. Everything you need to get a DENEB fully working is *included*. After installing (and the installer is part of the operating system!) you can easily read the AmigaGuide documentation. Even if you don't have MUI installed (and I guess many people have it as standard nowadays) you can startup the Poseidon USB stack from scratch in CLI, and with the included fat95 you can also mount USB sticks from PCs, in case your Miggy doesn't have Internet connection (which would also be possible with DENEB from scratch, BTW, but don't blame me now for not including a TCP/IP stack :-) )
I would understand your point in case you bought a certain "USB2 highspeed" PCI card for a certain PCI busboard from a certain retailer in Poland. In this case, really a crucial part of software is missing (and can't be added, so it is a real severe problem).
Just to give you an impression: for Fast Zorro II development I had to setup an A1200 from scratch, with only a diskdrive (for OS3.1 installation), and a DENEB. My PC doesn't have a disk drive, so all had to come in on either an USB stick or the DenebInstall: harddisk - which worked. And which was the goal - you should be able to get a virgin Amiga system completely equipped with working USB by just inserting the DENEB in user mode - that's opening all possibilities.
Michael
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Any possiblities of an A1200 version?
With the price of a deneb, I'd spring a bit more and get a mediator as that opens up the possibiliry for PCI cards.
BUT if there were a clockport A1200 Deneb version, I'd certainly consider it.
Sold off my A3000,A4000d,A4000T systems and have only 1200's now...:(
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They are already clockport usb cards.
Clocport would be far far far too slow for the deneb.
You could always get a zorro 2 busboard and tower your miggy, giving you loads more expansion possiblities
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Chris wrote:
I don't want to argue here with you, but please consider this:
The available space for the rescue flashrom is 1.5 MB (1536 KB). The disk image is 1456 KB, the flashdisk mounter uses 2 KB and the boot loader and index psge use 3 KB. The disk image is 99% full (Poseidon, Luciferin and DenebTools) and has a mere 9 KB free space.
The installer is a standard part of the workbench distribution -- it is necessary for 95% of all harddisk installable tools and assumed to be available as standard commandos like List etc.
The DenebInstall image does come with "LhEX" that is used as fallback to unpack the lha archives for installation whenever C:LHA is not found.
With fat95 and LhEX on the installer disk, nothing stops you from using an usb stick to transfer MUI from your PC to your Amiga via USB.
The MUI 3.8 user archive is 1 MB in size alone. It would never have fit inside the DenebInstaller disk.
No MUI application comes with this archive included.
I'll take that as a "no!" then. :lol:
That fair enough as I wasn't aware of those points. My experience of the initial install was that the Installer file on my OS3.0 and OS3.1 disks wouldn't work so I had to track down a newer version on Aminet and find a way to transfer it to the Amiga. I didn't start to use the Deneb at that point as I wasn't aware that it was "ready to go" without first completing the software installation and doing an initial configuration. Then I hit the MUI problem and the "how the hell do I unarchive this from OS3.1" problem... In hindsight, I should have installed OS.9 first and then started to configure the Deneb.
Thanks for the explaination. :-)
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Hi, great news on the new Deneb's. The card is top notch, not to mention the support from Chris and Michael, very, very good!
I highly recommend this card, as others have said it is an amazing piece of hardware.
Thanks to Chris and Michael for their support and amazing hardware. I hope more in the future :-)
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Thanks to everybody for their appreciation! Makes my day! :)
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Thanks to Chris and Michael for their support and amazing hardware. I hope more in the future
Well, I'm honored. It's good to read such a comment after a hard week of work :-)
Anyhow, without our users out there we couldn't do such developments - it's based on your ideas and wishes, and many people gave input during the development phase on a1k.org.
I enjoyed this time, really, and hope that our users will support us in the same way in the future!
Michael
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@HammerD
I second the motion. Its truly amazing that we can still buy cool new products such as Deneb for our old Amigas.
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Only reason I still haven't bought one is that I'm a bit broke right now. Hope to buy one in the future. Also hope that you guys make a PPC accelerator for the classic. Bet that would have unexpected high demand too given the prices old Amiga PPC cards go for on eBay.