Official email info about sharkppc from elbox

[Herewegoagain]

It's just a Mac CPU board and there is absolutely no software, not even the lowlevel drivers, available for it.

 :-?

How do you figure it's a Mac CPU card?   Mac's have thier own CPU slot, and do not use a PCI slot for CPU upgrades.

As for the rest of the things you state as fact.... well, that is your opinion.   I mean, I could shout those exact things about the PegII, but that doesn't mean that some company will not strike a deal for an OS4 license on that hardware.  

Although, I have my doubts about how Elbox are going to accomplish this, they do seem determined that they will get an OS4 license, which is more than we've heard from another certain company.

[Herewegoagain]

Older Macs also used a PCI upgrade card, AFAIR.

None that I know of ever used a PCI slot.  Some did use the cache slot but that's different altogether.   All of the others had their own CPU slots.  

Many people thought that the Sonnet Cresendo PCI was a CPU upgrade on a PCI card, but it simply was just the name indicating it was for the original PCI based Macs.  Those macs had thier own CPU slot.  I know,  I have a PowerMac 8500 with a Cresendo PCI G3@450, and it definitely plugs into a CPU slot, not a PCI.  That was a common misconception about that product due to bad naming.

[Herewegoagain]

And judjeing from the looks of this picture the card is at last physically compatible to a PCI-Slot. The other PCI-MACs had the notch in the middle of their processorslot (I have one PM7600 right before me), this card as you can clearly see has the notch at exactly the same place as a PCI-card would.

I stand corrected.  That is definitely a PCI card and does bear an almost exact layout of the Elbox card.  Not that it is a bad thing, mind you.  The 7200 was a very odd machine and as I recall was made not to be upgradable, but was quickly replaced with the 7500.  (actually they were introduced about the same time) and the 7200 was alot cheaper, but non-upgradeable.

You don`t belive Elbox will really design or even redesign a processorcard, do you ?.

Well, they are obviously capable of designing products.  It would be a far reach for me to claim that they "couldn't" design a processor card.  

But it won`t come close to the power of even the discontiued AOne SE, especially since the + will never come `cos Sonnet doesn`t produce such a card.

I would presume that they have a deal to make the cards based on Sonnets design, but adding faster processors as needed.  But, that is speculation on my part.  But you definitely cannot say that the Shark+ is a Mac card, because it has too much extra stuff listed on it (and it also doesn't have a pic).  And you saying it will never come is speculation based on past occurances.  It may or may not... time will tell.

I do not doubt that you could hack this card to work in an Mediator but I really doubt that Elbox will do it.
There is simply no point in doing it, it would cost less then an AOne: right, it would cost less then an AOne lite: maybe.

At least we agree on that last part.  It will be too costly for most people.  For one, I would have to buy a Mediator for my A3000 @ $289.00, then the Shark @$299.00 (est.), then because in all of their wisdom Elbox designed the A3000D version to require a tower (HINT:  IT IS NOT AN A3000D AT THIS POINT!) So that requires me to spend another $200.00 on a custom A3000 tower (which is HUGE and bulky and ugly as hell).... Well, already I'm at $788.00, and you know what?  At that point I'm buying an AmigaOne.  If all I had to purchase was the Mediator and the Shark and plug it into my A3000 to run OS4, I would jump on it right away.  But the above senario is basically building a new system with a 13 year old motherboard, power supply etc.  Not a wise investment, however fun it may be.