E3B - press release regarding potential software problems

[Jupp3]

Did this ever happen to anyone? Didn't Elbox remove the code due to public pressure anyway.

Let's assume that some stalker had been pointing a gun at you and your friends for, say, a few years. All this without telling you anything.

Then this guy gets caught aiming the gun at you, as he's being doing for a long time. The police takes away the gun, and notices it's a quite unreliable type that's known to fire sometimes by accident without anyone pulling the trigger. It's also clear that this stalker knew how unreliable it was, but he never intended to shoot you (and -luckily- the gun didn't shoot you accidentally either)

So, what you would think of that guy then? That it's all perfectly ok, as you yourself survived through it, and the police didn't find any murder victim, that was definitely killed by the stalker (or his unreliable gun)

Later, when the guy gets set free, he just tells you there's no use stalking you anymore, as you knew about him. No apologies or anything.

And last but not least, one thing I've been wondering about this thread, where's tjaoz? :-D

[Jupp3]

I think, if Chris Hodges can make his Poseidon stack not work with an Elbox product, Elbox can do the same in revenge, right?

Sure they can. They can also make their drivers not work with Amiga accelerators manufactured by Commodore (RIP), clock port clocks made by any manufacturer, fail on 12th day of each other month or anything.


I agree that there's slightly stronger connection between Poseidon author and "manufacturers of competiting USB hardware" than with f.ex. Commodore. But that does NOT mean that there would be any connection other than hardware manufacturers using *third party* usb stack for their product. You know, just like with Elbox, except that unlike with Elbox, some of them came with registered Poseidon. But that's just a deal between 2 different parties, nothing less, nothing more.

[Jupp3]

If I remember correctly it was Chris' condition to sell Poseidon to Mediator users himself.

Well back then when Elbox was planning USB support, Chris Hodges probably thought (as everyone else, except Elbox) that it would work "normally", you know... Mediator owner walks into any computer shop, buys an USB card that has compatible chipset, plugs it into his Mediator, confirms that it works and THEN registers Poseidon. It's understandably impossible to "force" Poseidon purchase with every standard USB card that just happens to be sold for use with Amiga (no, it's for windows). And to force something like that in EVERY single computer shop in the world. See the problem? :-)

Also it would be totally unfair to force every Mediator user buy also Poseidon, whether or not they're interested in USB at all. That wouldn't make any sense, it would be like selling Samantha board only with OS4, no matter if the person buying it is interested in it or not :-D (I know they will happily sell "bare board" to anyone willing to buy one)

Anyway, considering this assumed scenario, there's no (fair) way to force every Mediator+USB owner buy registered Poseidon.

Of course Elbox did something totally different, but that's a different story.

[Jupp3]

Poseidon stack is lacking one very important component - the driver for the USB PCI cards.

As the author pointed out, Poseidon supports many different PCI USB cards. But I guess you refer to USB PCI card for Elbox Mediator? Then I don't understand why use plural (cardS) as the support is artificially restricted to only one model.

[Jupp3]

[/quote]Poseidon supports many different PCI USB cards just as Picasso96 supports many different PCI graphic cards. But to use a specific PCI card, you need drivers for this very card.[/quote]
You don't need drivers for different cards, but for different chipsets (well, generally, that is...)
Elbox created one additional artificial restriction: All Spider cards are bog standard PCI USB2 cards, with a special "code" written in flash, that tells whether or not the card is one sold as "Spider" or not. Drivers could easily work with ANY card that has compatible chipset, but thanks to this additional check, it won't.

I challenge you to show me ANY other PCI USB2 card that Mediator supports, all that without any 3rd party hacks (obviously that simple "IsCardSpider()" check could be disabled somehow, I think some people were working on this a while ago)