Radeon drivers for Mediators

[Trev]

@Piru

They could be bootstrapping the BIOS with an emulator, similar to the way it's done in MILO on Alpha, U-Boot on the AmigaOne, and many other non-x86 platforms. If they *are* doing that, a generic VGA driver (or a VBE driver with emulation) is possible, too. It's something I started working on, but my PCI memory access emulation wasn't working properly. I haven't looked at the code in a couple years.

@amije

Elbox makes money by rebranding and upselling commodity hardware and the associated software. And sometimes, they just sell you the hardware without telling you that you can't actually use it in an Amiga.

EDIT:

It may be too little, too late. Radeon 9200 cards are already becoming scarce. What cards there are, however, are less than what Elbox charges. If the Elbox price included a bundled 3.3V riser and a modified back plate, then I'd consider the price competitive given what's available at this moment.

[Trev]

@kreciu

I don't know for certain, of course, but I doubt Elbox is making money on the Mediator. More likey, they take a slight loss (or break even) on the Mediator to attract sales of add-on cards. If you know something the rest of us don't, feel free to elaborate.

Regardless, my comment was half sarcasm. Elbox doesn't have the best reputation among hardware and software developers. Given Elbox's history, one has to ask whether their other products were developed in-house or by an outside source.

[Trev]

@kreciu

Easy, cowboy. English is obviously not your first language, and you've misunderstood the intent of my comments. Still, my own personal experiences with Elbox have not been good. Redrumloa's point regarding Spider is that it's a rebranded card modified to associate it with Elbox's software. There's plenty of documentation regarding that scandle. Google it.

I'd just like to see Elbox focus on more modern solutions. The Radeon 9200 has been discontinued by AMD/ATI, so the products in the pipeline today are all we'll ever see. What that means from a consumer standpoint is an inflated price for an obsolete product.

As a hobbyiest developer, I'd also like to see Elbox open up their documentation and do away with the non-disclosure agreement. I might have signed one, but Elbox didn't want to correspond with my attorney. (I'm sure they'll dispute that, but I have Malgorzata Binek's email saying as much.)

I don't think anyone ever expected the Shark to be released. Even if Elbox could somehow have sourced enough of the cards to meet demand at a reasonable price, I doubt Amiga, Inc. would have "authorized" its use. Now that OS4 for classics has been released sans Amiga, Inc, though, the ball is in Elbox's court. No one in the community is preventing them from following through on their promises.

Perhaps Elbox should work with Hyperion to produce a PS3 boot loader and PS3 device drivers for OS4. They could call it the "Multimedia CD PS3 Edition" and sell it to just about every Amiga fan boy out there. I'd even buy it. I don't know if Hyperion would go for that, but they don't seem to care too much about what Amiga, Inc. thinks these days.

EDIT:

I do own a Mediator Z-IV (and a Spider, which is completely useless in the Z-IV). If I can find a reasonably priced Radeon 9200 and make it compatible with my busboard, I'll give it a try.

[Trev]

English is my first and only language, so you've got me there. ;-)

[Trev]

I received the system update but not the MM CD update.