Amiga.org Review of Poseidon USB

[mboehmer_e3b]

Dear Tjaoz,

> If you write about USB card prices maybe you should compare prices for
> all the USB controllers for Amiga or for MorphOS.

I fully agree with you in this point.
But you should do it the right way. Unfortunately, the Amiga does not have
a PCI bus, so you have to add at least a PCI busboard. According to Elbox
official price lists, you can take about 44EUR per PCI slot (total price of
bus board, divided by number of slots; averaged about the 1200 models).
And we will forget about the PCI graphic card you need for "DMA".
So, let's see...

> Spider II (5 ports) + Drivers + Poseidon ~= $70

You know, the exchange rate is 1 EUR = 1.17 US$ at the moment. Elbox prices are
in EUR. So we get:

Spider II (5 ports) + Drivers + Poseidon + PCI slot ~= 112EUR

Oops. I nearly made a mistake. Elbox omits the VAT, which is 16% here in Germany.
So, next iteration should give the correct number:

Spider II (5 ports) + Drivers + Poseidon + PCI slot + 16% VAT ~= 130EUR

The ALGOR price is also in EUR, and includes VAT.
So we have to correct another mistake of yours:

> Algor (3 ports) + Driver +Poseidon ~= $115

Algor (3 ports) + Driver + Poseidon ~= 115EUR

My god. Now the Spider II is 15 EUR more expensive... in your "comparison" it was
45 EUR *cheaper* ?!? What happened ?!?

BTW, I smell a Rat. At least, you leave out information if it doesn't fit into
your conclusion. The ALGOR has half meg of FlashROM which you can use for some
nice little things (e.g. ever tried to cold boot from a Spider II with some
flash card reader ?). So:

Algor (3 ports)     + Driver  + Poseidon +            512kB FlashROM ~= 115EUR
Spider II (5 ports) + Drivers + Poseidon + PCI slot +   0kB FlashROM ~= 130EUR

> You should add the part of Windows or Mac OS price to the Walmart card price
> if you compare it to Spider II + Drivers + Poseidon.

Ah ! Here you take something into account you have to buy extra, as it helps your
conclusion. In your own "comparision" above, you left these things out for the same
reason. Quite interesting.

> BTW. This $35 WalMart card is based on the old NEC USB chipset.

Yes, right. But with a 15MB/s bottleneck a 20% gain in bandwidth won't be noticeable,
unfortunately. This will only account if both USB controller and system CPU share the
same PCI bus.

Hope you don't have a job you have to calculate a lot

Michael

[mboehmer_e3b]

Dear Mr. Rat,

(don't mind, if I call your real name, it simply better fits)

I appreciate your effort how to find any faults in the summary I have given.
Little results, though.

Especially as you left out answers you can't give - nothing new for your behaviour.

I take $=EUR to simplify, like Targhan. This does not change price relationships

Simplification is indeed an important part of your world...

I do not even want to comment on your trick of adding the PCI port price to the
price for Spider.

Hey, Ratty, do you remember this sentences you wrote in your "comparison" ?
I may cite them to help you:

The USB stack is not included in the WalMart card price.
The USB stack, which is necessary for using this card is the part of the Microsoft Windows or the Apple Mac OS system.
You should add the part of Windows or Mac OS price to the Walmart card price if you compare it to Spider II + Drivers + Poseidon.

So, you yourself claim that things which are needed to run a product, but not
included in its price must be taken into the bill if you compare one product
against another. That's what I did.
It's not a "trick" of mine, it is what you yourself have proposed to make fair
comparisons.

As far as I am informed (im not very good with these hardware things, like you told
me several times) all Amiga 2000, 3000 and 4000 have Zorro included in their base
configuration.
Anyhow, I don't remember any Amiga shipped with PCI slots up to now...

Michael