The state of Prometheus Development...

[mboehmer_e3b]

Does anyone know if anyone found the fix for the DMA problems.

It's me ;-)


The status is that the CPLD firmware has been tested now intensively, and is ready for the release. We are evaluating details for the upgrade (mainly shipping issues).

Sorry for the long delay, my PhD thesis did eat up quite some time, and I have a "real" job beside this one.

Michael

[mboehmer_e3b]

Does the Firmware upgrade require our cards to be sent back to you?

Yes, as it is not feasible to have a JTAG chip programming operation being done by users. You need a special programming dongle, a suitable cable and a PeeCee for this.

Also, does it only fix the DMA, or are there any other goodies we should know about?

Prometheus supports PCI-PCI DMA in all four PCI slots, with fairness arbitration (no special ordering for PCI cards necessary) and high speed interleaving between PCI and Zorro accesses. Also supported are PCI-PCI bridges as being used on Multi-IO PCI cards (like ethernet + USB2 + Firewire / ATAPI cards) and modern PCI VGA cards, so you can save some PCI slots with ethernet and USB on one PCI card.

There are also quite some internal changes in the firmware which you won't see as user.

Michael

[mboehmer_e3b]

could we use "active" PCI risers to add more PCI cards?

Radio Eriwan says: in principle yes. But seriously, what is an "active" raiser card?

For PCI it must provide bus master signals for all cards on the raiser, so it must contain a PCI bridge somewhere, including the necessary DMA arbiter.

Do you have a link to a product in the web?

[mboehmer_e3b]

Do you mean something like this:

http://www.tmc-uk.com/images/products/enclosure/rackmount/optional/riser_cards/RS23-32a5.jpg

[mboehmer_e3b]

Yes! that's it :-)

Would that work? It could allow us to use more cards :-)

I guess yes, I have none of these devices here to test.
But as a combo card (NEC USB2 + RTL8139 behind a PCI bridge) did work fine, I see no reason why it shouldn't.

Michael

[mboehmer_e3b]

Are there actually going to be drivers so I can finally add a soundcard and USB card to my Amiga?

USB drivers are available since several months now (ArackAttack). Sound cards are in development, there were none because sound cards need PCI DMA for operation.

Michael