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Amiga computer related discussion => Amiga Hardware Issues and discussion => Topic started by: amiga1084 on May 02, 2011, 11:21:06 AM
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Hello All,
In my spare A4000T I have a Mediator PCI Busboard and wanting to get a fast USB 2 speed card for my Amiga. As I alrealy have a Mediator I was thinking the Spider II USB card would sute all my needs. But I hear good reviews on the Deneb card and nothing on the Spider card. If you used either card I would really like to hear from you.
Thanks in advance,
Merv Stent
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Deneb will give you the ability to create a custom kickstart in it's flash ram avoiding multiple reboots etc.
The creator of the Deneb hasn't ripped off the Poseidon USB stack creator either.
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I would recommend Deneb over anything Elbox. At least you don't need to scan the driver for code trashing the RDB (http://replay.web.archive.org/20031023195229/http://loota15.tripod.com/USB-Check.txt).
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I would recommend Deneb over anything Elbox. At least you don't need to scan the driver for code trashing the RDB (http://replay.web.archive.org/20031023195229/http://loota15.tripod.com/USB-Check.txt).
I forget. Was a patch ever released to get rid of this?
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The RDB trashing code was taken out many years ago to my knowledge.
The real issue now is that you can no longer register the Poseidon USB stack to use with the Spider.
Better of with Deneb I would say.
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The RDB trashing code was taken out many years ago to my knowledge.
Since Elbox keeps encrypting their driver it's a bit hard to tell for sure. Safest bet is to avoid anything Elbox.
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I think that in order to get Spider II working with Poseidon, you need to get a specific, older version of Poseidon (v2?) and use an appropriate Spider-compatible keyfile that works with that version.
Of course, registering a new keyfile for Spider is impossible today, so unless you find a used Spider II with a working keyfile provided + the old Spider-compatible version of Poseidon, you are out of luck.
Today, there is absolutely no sense in buying a brand new Spider card. I'd be surprised if Elbox actually still sell it, since there is no possibility of actually using the card...unless Elbox release their own custom USB stack or something.
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But isn't there another USB stack option besides Poseidon? Danged if I can't remember the name of it though...
Also, the thread's creator initial question was about the speed, so...
From what I understand, the Spider is the only card that can do full USB 2.0 speeds.
For what it's worth though, since this speed increase doesn't do much in the Amiga Classic machine world unless you are going from one USB device to another...
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There's absolutely nothing wrong with Elbox products and I have loads of them.
However, the statements above about getting Poseidon to work with the Spider are correct (good luck finding it), which is why I installed a Deneb in my A4000 (installing the software takes a couple of minutes as an older version is on the ROM and you just set a jumper, boot and then install it from Workbench - no disks necessary, and then let it update itself when you get online). You also get the FlashROM funtion which also comes in handy.
My Mediator takes care of my Radion 256MB card (providing extra system RAM) and a Sound Blaster 128. I intend to get arround to fitting my PCI Catweasle at some point as the OpenPCI stack is supposed to have drivers for it and will run alongside Poseidon.
Now that Poseidon has been released for free, I'm surprised that Elbox haven't created their own version for download.
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From what I understand, the Spider is the only card that can do full USB 2.0 speeds.
For what it's worth though, since this speed increase doesn't do much in the Amiga Classic machine world unless you are going from one USB device to another...
Not correct. The Deneb offers USB 2.0 Hispeed and unlike the Spider, really makes good use of it. On my A4000T I was able to get over 8.5MB/sec on mass storage devices. Somebody else recently posted a TCPSpeed result of over 1.2MB/sec with an USB 2.0 100MBit/s adapter, which AFAIK is unmatched by any other networking solution.
Now for the features: The Deneb is the only card that supports the use of USB 1.1 devices connected to an USB 2.0 Hub. It also supports the realtime ISO Extensions required to use USB Soundcards. Anyway, the stuff simply works...
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The creator of the Deneb hasn't ripped off the Poseidon USB stack creator either.
Uhm... How would you know?
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Uhm... How would you know?
I could swear that I read somewhere that they had ripped you off in some way or other.
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I could swear that I read somewhere that they had ripped you off in some way or other.
Undenied. But that's not what I quoted.
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Not correct. The Deneb offers USB 2.0 Hispeed and unlike the Spider, really makes good use of it. On my A4000T...
Well, if anyone would know it would be you, right? ;)
So I stand corrected. Now to pop off and get myself a Deneb for my A4000T! Sounds like it'll do everything I'd need a Mediator for minus the video. :)
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Undenied. But that's not what I quoted.
I see. Thanks for clarifying Chris.
edit:
You mean how do I know the Deneb creators haven't ripped you off.
I don't. :)
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It would be great, after all those years, that someone find a solution to this Elbox problem and that we simply can use those Spiders. I own one for about 5 years (i have sc**** by an amiga professional dealer that sold it to me while i was unaware of the situation).
We are so few of us left that it is just a pity.
I confirm that the Deneb is awesome, but how could i fit one in my Mediator A1200T? I can also confirm that Subway is a poor board compared to a Deneb and probably to the Spider too.
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Undenied. But that's not what I quoted.
I hoped that once your stack was being sold with the actual hardware that there was no way you couldn't get paid. That's a shame as Poseidon is worth every penny. I couldn't imagine using an Amiga without it now.
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I second that Darrin,
Poseidon is a brilliant piece of software, I own a Subway and a Deneb. Chris Hodges is one of the few remaining Amiga software developers that can still deliver a quality product. I hope he is getting paid for his work, and if he isn't - Aside from asking why not, I'd be happy to donate some money, as I'm sure many others would - as we don't want yet another amiga developer to call it quits.
Robert.
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Hello All,
In my spare A4000T I have a Mediator PCI Busboard and wanting to get a fast USB 2 speed card for my Amiga. As I alrealy have a Mediator I was thinking the Spider II USB card would sute all my needs. But I hear good reviews on the Deneb card and nothing on the Spider card. If you used either card I would really like to hear from you.
Thanks in advance,
Merv Stent
I use a deneb near daily in my 4000T/PPC/mediator setup, its worth its weight in gold. I get great speed from the transcend dma card readers on the 4000(for those of you using cheap,junk china card readers,get a good one,speed is night and day).
deneb also allows the use of USB mice,keyboards,ethernet dongles,etc.
If i had a complaint it would only be the pigtail cable supplied for the usb ports is too short for some tower machines.Other than that it runs flawless! being able to put the rom and patches in the flash is also a handy thing. one of the best investments ever.
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Somebody else recently posted a TCPSpeed result of over 1.2MB/sec with an USB 2.0 100MBit/s adapter, which AFAIK is unmatched by any other networking solution.
Nearly 1.6MB/s here. :drink:
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I'm happy to see Chris Hodges in this thread.
Chris, will you ever be willing to do something for us, poor Spider owners? :)
For Christmas perhaps? ;)
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Chris, will you ever be willing to do something for us, poor Spider owners? :)
For Christmas perhaps? ;)
I wouldn't hold my breath for this ;)
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I can also confirm that Subway is a poor board compared to a Deneb and probably to the Spider too.
No, you can't write that Subway is a lame device and can't compare Subway to another device!
Subway is a solid and compact usb solution for Amiga via the clockport.
(FYI, Spider is a PCI card and Deneb is a ZorroII/III card)
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No, you can't write that Subway is a lame device and can't compare Subway to another device!
Subway is a solid and compact usb solution for Amiga via the clockport.
(FYI, Spider is a PCI card and Deneb is a ZorroII/III card)
Hi Gilloo :)
Yes the Subway is a good solution for the clockport but unfortunately it is slow and i still have power trouble with it even with a powered hub. When someone has used the Deneb, it's hard to only have a Subway in its flagship A1200.
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Has anyone tried a bluetooth adapter to network with the Deneb? Reason being you can get them next for nothing on fleebay and I am thinking of getting a Deneb next month and looking for a good networking solution.. That or a usb lan adapter.. Not looking to do anything to intense ..
lost
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Hi Gilloo :)
Yes the Subway is a good solution for the clockport but unfortunately it is slow and i still have power trouble with it even with a powered hub. When someone has used the Deneb, it's hard to only have a Subway in its flagship A1200.
I will have to agree on this: the subway is too slow, even in Amiga terms. The only good part of the subway, is its software...
And I am not mentioning the lack of USB 2.0 highspeed mode and the power issues.
I still think an A1200 deserves a better USB solution than the subway. The Deneb is a great solution and the spider PCI card is still miles faster than a subway anyway.
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I'm happy to see Chris Hodges in this thread.
Chris, will you ever be willing to do something for us, poor Spider owners? :)
For Christmas perhaps? ;)
Poseidon V4.4, available since February last year, has no longer any keyfile protection or similar code in it. If you want to use it with the spider.device, I'm not stopping you from. If it doesn't work due to bugs in the spider.device, you should contact Elbox for an updated driver. Apart from removing the "compatibility hack" in the V4.x versions (which simply did not send the reset command to the driver at start), I do not see any reasons why it shouldn't work.
You won't get "proper" USB 2.0 support though (regarding split transfers and such), but rather the way it was in Poseidon V2.x/V3.x, because as far as I know Elbox has not updated their driver in that direction. The docs how to do this are in the AROS repository.
This is as far as my support for the Spider gets.
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Has anyone tried a bluetooth adapter to network with the Deneb? Reason being you can get them next for nothing on fleebay and I am thinking of getting a Deneb next month and looking for a good networking solution.. That or a usb lan adapter.. Not looking to do anything to intense ..
lost
There is no Bluetooth stack. The HCI interface, that the bluetooth.class provides will not be enough for you to PAN etc.
I would recommend a USB 2.0 LAN adapter, best with ASIX chipset (search the forum for recommendations).
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I will have to agree on this: the subway is too slow, even in Amiga terms. The only good part of the subway, is its software...
Note that the Subway is especially slowed down by waitstates on the clockport. It could go much faster. It is nearly up to par with the Highway on a Zorro clockport. If somebody would wire the _NET_CS (not on the clockport) to the _SPARE_CS, I guess the transfer would be the same as on a Zorro clockport.
Then again, the speed is amazing in spite of the clockport being only a 4 bit address bus and 8 bit data bus :-D
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Poseidon V4.4, available since February last year, has no longer any keyfile protection or similar code in it. If you want to use it with the spider.device, I'm not stopping you from. If it doesn't work due to bugs in the spider.device, you should contact Elbox for an updated driver. Apart from removing the "compatibility hack" in the V4.x versions (which simply did not send the reset command to the driver at start), I do not see any reasons why it shouldn't work.
You won't get "proper" USB 2.0 support though (regarding split transfers and such), but rather the way it was in Poseidon V2.x/V3.x, because as far as I know Elbox has not updated their driver in that direction. The docs how to do this are in the AROS repository.
This is as far as my support for the Spider gets.
How about the ArakAttack driver for amithlon? I purchased that driver, although it was for poseidon 3.x i believe. Have to see if it would work with poseidon 4.x on my amithlon system.
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Poseidon V4.4, available since February last year, has no longer any keyfile protection or similar code in it. If you want to use it with the spider.device, I'm not stopping you from. If it doesn't work due to bugs in the spider.device, you should contact Elbox for an updated driver. Apart from removing the "compatibility hack" in the V4.x versions (which simply did not send the reset command to the driver at start), I do not see any reasons why it shouldn't work.
You won't get "proper" USB 2.0 support though (regarding split transfers and such), but rather the way it was in Poseidon V2.x/V3.x, because as far as I know Elbox has not updated their driver in that direction. The docs how to do this are in the AROS repository.
This is as far as my support for the Spider gets.
That's very interesting, thanks :)
So, fellow amigans, you know where to direct your mails. My Mediator setup is not in working order right now but i will give it a try very soon and if it does not work i will spam out Elbox until they make their Spider 2 to work :D
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Note that the Subway is especially slowed down by waitstates on the clockport. It could go much faster. It is nearly up to par with the Highway on a Zorro clockport. If somebody would wire the _NET_CS (not on the clockport) to the _SPARE_CS, I guess the transfer would be the same as on a Zorro clockport.
Then again, the speed is amazing in spite of the clockport being only a 4 bit address bus and 8 bit data bus :-D
Hi, could you please elaborate a bit more on the hack/mod for a faster subway? Where can those signals be found? A simple wire between them and that is it?
Thanks in advance
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That's very interesting, thanks :)
So, fellow amigans, you know where to direct your mails. My Mediator setup is not in working order right now but i will give it a try very soon and if it does not work i will spam out Elbox until they make their Spider 2 to work :D
Hey, sorry to reopen an old thread...but has anyone had any success with this? I have an a4k with mediator and spider II card. I can't get it to work with Poseidon v4.
As far as I can tell, it can either be hacked together to work with v4 OR elbox needs to make a new driver. Any luck with either of these?
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Have you emailed Elbox? They were very helpful to me when I was trying to get my Radeon 256MB card running on my A4000.
Check their (Elbox's) support page for the latest Spider drivers and install them, and then make sure you have the latest Poseidon package from Chris' website.
I'd be interested to see if this works too. Currently I'm using a Deneb in my A4000 along with a Mediator, but if I could use a Spider card in there instead then I'd put the Deneb in my A2000.
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Yeah, if you look back further in this thread, basically it comes down to this:
spider.device worked with Poseidon v2/v3
spider.device does NOT work with Poseidon v4. The author of Poseidon says that elbox needs to update the driver, but the latest driver from elbox still doesn't work. :(
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Yeah, if you look back further in this thread, basically it comes down to this:
spider.device worked with Poseidon v2/v3
spider.device does NOT work with Poseidon v4. The author of Poseidon says that elbox needs to update the driver, but the latest driver from elbox still doesn't work. :(
Damn. How about trying older spider devices? I've got a older MMCD for the A4000.
I see that the last upadte on the Elbox website for the Spider device was in 2008 to v3.18.
I'm going to drop them an email and see if I can get some clarification.
Edit: Email sent. I'll let you know if I get an answer.
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........ if it does not work i will spam out Elbox until they make their Spider 2 to work :D
Good luck with that strategy! Let us know how it turns out.
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Thanks for the help :) I did a bit more research. Apparently, the author of the Poseidon stack (Chris Hodges) had a falling out with Elbox when he found out they were selling PCI USB cards with illegitimate keyfiles for Poseidon. So, v3.4 will work with spider.device for a spider 1 card, v3.8 will work with a spider II spider.device, but since then the support for spider.device has been removed :(
The kicker is that I can't find Poseidon 3.8 ANYWHERE, and it is probably illegal for me to go asking for a keyfile for 3.8 even if I do find the software...and it's impossible to get a new keyfile.
:(
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Thanks for the help :) I did a bit more research. Apparently, the author of the Poseidon stack (Chris Hodges) had a falling out with Elbox when he found out they were selling PCI USB cards with illegitimate keyfiles for Poseidon. So, v3.4 will work with spider.device for a spider 1 card, v3.8 will work with a spider II spider.device, but since then the support for spider.device has been removed :(
The kicker is that I can't find Poseidon 3.8 ANYWHERE, and it is probably illegal for me to go asking for a keyfile for 3.8 even if I do find the software...and it's impossible to get a new keyfile.
:(
Chris' "falling out" with Elbox predates the v4.4 update by a long way, so when he says:
Poseidon V4.4, available since February last year, has no longer any keyfile protection or similar code in it. If you want to use it with the spider.device, I'm not stopping you from. If it doesn't work due to bugs in the spider.device, you should contact Elbox for an updated driver. Apart from removing the "compatibility hack" in the V4.x versions (which simply did not send the reset command to the driver at start), I do not see any reasons why it shouldn't work.
You won't get "proper" USB 2.0 support though (regarding split transfers and such), but rather the way it was in Poseidon V2.x/V3.x, because as far as I know Elbox has not updated their driver in that direction. The docs how to do this are in the AROS repository.
This is as far as my support for the Spider gets.
I really don't see any deliberate attempt to make his stack not work with the Spider.
It is all rather confusing.
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Thanks for the help :) I did a bit more research. Apparently, the author of the Poseidon stack (Chris Hodges) had a falling out with Elbox when he found out they were selling PCI USB cards with illegitimate keyfiles for Poseidon. So, v3.4 will work with spider.device for a spider 1 card, v3.8 will work with a spider II spider.device, but since then the support for spider.device has been removed :(
The kicker is that I can't find Poseidon 3.8 ANYWHERE, and it is probably illegal for me to go asking for a keyfile for 3.8 even if I do find the software...and it's impossible to get a new keyfile.
:(
That sounds accurate, from what I can remember reading a long while ago. I think that is why anyone selling a "New-Old Stock" Spider USB2 card is in a difficult situation, as they can't get a valid keyfile for any version of the Poseidon stack that will work with it and apparently the Elbox stack (if there is one) does not work either.
I am not sure why the latest free version of Poseidon4.4 does not work with the Spider USB cards (and Chris Hodges seems not to know either), but I wouldn't be surprised to find out later that Chris Hodges has still left something in his stack that prevents it from working with the Spider USB cards, because of his lingering anger toward Elbox for what they were allegedly doing with illegal keyfiles for a while. Since I use Subway and Deneb and not any Spider cards, I don't have to worry about these problems and may not be accurate in my guesses, as I have not researched it thoroughly.
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That sounds accurate, from what I can remember reading a long while ago. I think that is why anyone selling a "New-Old Stock" Spider USB2 card is in a difficult situation, as they can't get a valid keyfile for any version of the Poseidon stack that will work with it and apparently the Elbox stack (if there is one) does not work either.
Interestingly enough...Elbox is still selling the Spider II. Without any Poseidon stack. Only the spider.device drivers. :(
http://shop.elbox.com/cgibin/shop?info=705S20&sid=1456ff06
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but I wouldn't be surprised to find out later that Chris Hodges has still left something in his stack that prevents it from working with the Spider USB cards, because of his lingering anger toward Elbox for what they were allegedly doing with illegal keyfiles for a while.
Quit the crap.
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I think that in this case, if it's a question of ethics, Chris doesn't really owe anything to anyone...but Elbox needs to make good on a product they're selling. A car manufacturer wouldn't sell a car that you need an obscure, old, outdated 3rd party key for.
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and for the record, Elbox haven't replied to my email... yet.
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Elbox is a crappy company.
The only goo thing the did for the Amiga Community is the Mediator busboards but, hey boys let's think about it...
1) no DMA support
2) troubles on the 3.3 volt power line (look at the Radeon 9200 mess)
3) bad driver.
they were only lucky that DCE didn't developed good drivers for their G-Rex as it was a much superior Hardware.
I bought a boundle consisting of Mediator 4000D and SpiderII and the day after it arrived to me Hadges stopped any support to the Spider board so now I have a nice piece of crappy hardware that has no use for my computer and no way to make it work.
Obviously Elbox doesn't reply to my emails neither.
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And now the Big problem its the end of life of Deneb usb car,no stock now and not more production for this great piece of hardware
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And now the Big problem its the end of life of Deneb usb car,no stock now and not more production for this great piece of hardware
in 2011 with PCI slot widely avaible through Mediator, G-Rex, and prometheus, we shouldn't
look after old Zorro Cards, the reason why we wanted PCI was to use cheap and standard hardware. I don't want to buy Spider or Radeon from Elbox, I just want drivers.
But the project is a complete mess. No driver, no 3.3 volt power, moreover they let good programmers like Hodges go away preferring to talk about some vaporware that will never see the light (Dragon?).
Bad company :-(
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in 2011 with PCI slot widely avaible through Mediator, G-Rex, and prometheus, we shouldn't
look after old Zorro Cards, the reason why we wanted PCI was to use cheap and standard hardware. I don't want to buy Spider or Radeon from Elbox, I just want drivers.
But the project is a complete mess. No driver, no 3.3 volt power, moreover they let good programmers like Hodges go away preferring to talk about some vaporware that will never see the light (Dragon?).
Bad company :-(
Hmmm...
Zorro bus > Zorro USB card
vs
Zorro bus > Mediator > PCI USB card
methinks the KISS principle applies ;-)
Deneb is by far superior imho (and personal experience of both cards in A4KT). The lack of real DMA offered by the mediator cripples any chance of getting 'better' performance (faster transfers, less cpu overhead, etc) out of a PCI USB 2 card.
A lot of work (of which we were very well informed in the forums) went into the development of Deneb, including working around the various issues relating to different versions of Super Buster and testing with combinations of the (few) other cards which take advantage of Z3 dma.
@E3B
It truly was amazing to read the development given the lack of documentation available (15-year old proprietary chips of a dead company, etc), and set a high watermark of hardware development and testing for the classic Amiga platform. My hat remains off to you to this day.
@Chris - nice to see you back in the forums, I don't come to A.org that often these days so didn't realise you still posted here.
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In fact I believe that the right approach was the one that takes advantage from the CSPPC Bus, it's Faster and without imitations. Too bad it has not been developed properly
Zorro III is slower compared to the solution based on G-Rex Board, I think that you agree.
Is faster than Mediator, it's true, but Zorro3 boards are supposed to be more expensive than PCI ones.
Sadly Elbox made everything to make PCI boards more exensive on amiga :(
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Mediator is still interesting for a towerized A1200 which has no native zorro slots. Zorro busboards for the A1200 won't garantee you that those expensive zorro cards will work fine on your setup.
For any other amiga computer, i agree that there are enough good zorro boards available.
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And now the Big problem its the end of life of Deneb usb car,no stock now and not more production for this great piece of hardware
Not a surprise really.
"Better buy a USB board while it's still available. Stocks are running lower and there won't be another production run of the Deneb." (11-21-2010) http://www.amiga.org/forums/showthread.php?p=593370#post593370
All good things come to an end eventually.
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Mediator is still interesting for a towerized A1200 which has no native zorro slots. Zorro busboards for the A1200 won't garantee you that those expensive zorro cards will work fine on your setup.
For any other amiga computer, i agree that there are enough good zorro boards available.
The Mediator is also handy for big box Amigas. When I installed a Mediator in my A4000 I ordered a 256MB Radeon card from Elbox. While I was waiting I tried two ancient and dusty ViRGE cards I had lying around that were salvaged from old PCs and they both worked brilliantly and certainly felt as fast, if not faster than my Cybervision643D. Another "junk" SB128 card also worked. If you just add up what a good Zorro graphics & sound card would cost you then that certainly helps to offset the cost of a Mediator board. Of course it would be nice if the software for the Spider card was available/worked.
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Not a surprise really.
"Better buy a USB board while it's still available. Stocks are running lower and there won't be another production run of the Deneb." (11-21-2010) http://www.amiga.org/forums/showthread.php?p=593370#post593370
All good things come to an end eventually.
That's why I bought mine after reading that post, and glad I did! :)
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The Mediator is also handy for big box Amigas. When I installed a Mediator in my A4000 I ordered a 256MB Radeon card from Elbox. While I was waiting I tried two ancient and dusty ViRGE cards I had lying around that were salvaged from old PCs and they both worked brilliantly and certainly felt as fast, if not faster than my Cybervision643D. Another "junk" SB128 card also worked. If you just add up what a good Zorro graphics & sound card would cost you then that certainly helps to offset the cost of a Mediator board. Of course it would be nice if the software for the Spider card was available/worked.
I have a towerized a4000 with Mediator 4000D. Now that I have finally gotten all of my pci cards working (voodoo3, spider II, fast ethernet, sb128) I have a fully expanded and very versatile computer :) Granted, I have a cv64/3d with scandoubler for everything the voodoo3 can't do...basically, most things aside from workbench, actually, but at least my wb looks great. The USB and fast ethernet are AWESOME. I guess now all I need is a ppc board :P
But yeah, I'm a believer in the mediator. It makes the A4000 quite a bit more interesting, without taking anything away.
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I have a towerized a4000 with Mediator 4000D. Now that I have finally gotten all of my pci cards working (voodoo3, spider II, fast ethernet, sb128) I have a fully expanded and very versatile computer :) Granted, I have a cv64/3d with scandoubler for everything the voodoo3 can't do...basically, most things aside from workbench, actually, but at least my wb looks great. The USB and fast ethernet are AWESOME. I guess now all I need is a ppc board :P
But yeah, I'm a believer in the mediator. It makes the A4000 quite a bit more interesting, without taking anything away.
I'm trying to work out how to cram an Emplant II card and a PCI Catweasle into mine. :D
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But.... after deneb there will be no USB hardware at all.
That is... just PCI hardware.
I don't know to smile or to cry, maybe this is the time that My Spider II will finally work.
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That means no USB until the OS enables the PCI and the card too :(
I'm so glad I got my Deneb, I just wish I had bought a couple more of them.
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we will see pci2usb support the likes of spider on mediator classics under aros68k some day im quite certain. it will not hurt eab since they are sold out nor chris whos bounty has been paid, so all is cool now, that poseidon is part of aros.
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@E3B
It truly was amazing to read the development given the lack of documentation available (15-year old proprietary chips of a dead company, etc), and set a high watermark of hardware development and testing for the classic Amiga platform. My hat remains off to you to this day.
Put your hat back on :-)
The most amazing thing was to find a bug (believed to be killed from Rev9 to Rev11 changes) in the last Buster Rev11. Personally, doing the DENEB development gave me quite some experiences on designing in a hostile environment, so to say.
Even the developer group from phase5 seems to have stumbled on some Buster Rev11 issues while doing the FastLane Z3, but they couldn't solve the problem... the DENEB V11 firmware does fix that Buster bug in "hardware" and allows operating Zorro III RAM next to one (1) DMA master finally in a stable way.
That was the most surprising issue... even the schematics published in the patent stuff for Zorro III seem to reflect that problem :-)
As stated already, I'm open for licensing the hardware design to some guy willing to invest money on production and product service. Anyhow, this guy should better check first if he is priviledged enough to acquire the Poseidon licences needed for legally selling the cards he has spent his money on in advance, and on his own full risk.
Michael
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@ Mike,
Thanks for your help via email with my Deneb issues. Much appreciated. :)
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Put your hat back on :-)
The most amazing thing was to find a bug (believed to be killed from Rev9 to Rev11 changes) in the last Buster Rev11. Personally, doing the DENEB development gave me quite some experiences on designing in a hostile environment, so to say.
Even the developer group from phase5 seems to have stumbled on some Buster Rev11 issues while doing the FastLane Z3, but they couldn't solve the problem... the DENEB V11 firmware does fix that Buster bug in "hardware" and allows operating Zorro III RAM next to one (1) DMA master finally in a stable way.
That was the most surprising issue... even the schematics published in the patent stuff for Zorro III seem to reflect that problem :-)
As stated already, I'm open for licensing the hardware design to some guy willing to invest money on production and product service. Anyhow, this guy should better check first if he is priviledged enough to acquire the Poseidon licences needed for legally selling the cards he has spent his money on in advance, and on his own full risk.
Michael
Hello.
Are you sure you want to end production of this board? I think it would continue to sell at a minimal amount in the future. I own one, but would like to know i can buy a spare anytime in case of problem, and i could even use a second one for another miggy in the future. I just don't have the money to stock them for now. And i guess those boards won't be easy to find on the second handd market.
Besides, you could also extend the Deneb life by offering an upgrade to owner of older boards like the Algor/Highway.
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Put your hat back on :-)
The most amazing thing was to find a bug (believed to be killed from Rev9 to Rev11 changes) in the last Buster Rev11. Personally, doing the DENEB development gave me quite some experiences on designing in a hostile environment, so to say.
Even the developer group from phase5 seems to have stumbled on some Buster Rev11 issues while doing the FastLane Z3, but they couldn't solve the problem... the DENEB V11 firmware does fix that Buster bug in "hardware" and allows operating Zorro III RAM next to one (1) DMA master finally in a stable way.
That was the most surprising issue... even the schematics published in the patent stuff for Zorro III seem to reflect that problem :-)
As stated already, I'm open for licensing the hardware design to some guy willing to invest money on production and product service. Anyhow, this guy should better check first if he is priviledged enough to acquire the Poseidon licences needed for legally selling the cards he has spent his money on in advance, and on his own full risk.
Since February 2010 Poseidon 4.4 works without a keyfile. What is the licensing issue then? Can't Deneb be sold without Poseidon?