Mediator PCI USB card

[Piru]

Maybe someone can tell you what chip set the Spider uses to get a similar card.

Won't work. "Spider USB" is regular NEC USB card with modified PCI ID so that you can't buy one from your local dealer. The elbox driver is locked to check for the modified PCI ID.

In order to f*ck up anyone attempting to modify the driver to accept regular NEC USB cards (available everywhere), the driver was made to wipe out RDB of the system disk if modified. While the RDB trashing code was removed under public pressure, the driver still is locked to only Elbox Spider cards.

So, your're limited to "Spider USB" card or using some other solution.

[Piru]

@adolescent

It was obviously a huge mistake for Elbox to do that. If you can't forgive them that's fine, but move on. It's been years since this happened and people still bring it up like it's in the current drivers.

It was the way Elbox handled this that demands constant reminding. No apologizes for wrongdoing, no remorse. Denial of the problem and outright lying.

http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=6302
http://www.elbox.com/news_02_11_13a.html
http://www.elbox.com/news_02_11_18b.html

I will continue to remind people of this as long as I see fit (I will stop when Elbox confesses the wrongdoing and apologizes). And if someone is thinking if I am the one who discovered this ('qwe'), no I am not.

@motorollin

Now that the RDB trashing code has been removed, what is stopping the driver from being modified to work with with non-Spider USB cards which use the same chipset but don't contain the Spider identifier?

It hasn't been impossible before either, and skilled hacker could have easily disabled the RDB trashing code, and also made the driver work with regular NEC cards.

It's copyright infrigiment to redistribute such hacked drivers, and in most countries it's illegal to distribute tool(s) that modify the driver to accept any such card. In some countries it's even illegal to "crack" the driver for your own purposes (it's illegal in Finland since jan 1st 2006, for example).

[Piru]

@adolescent

Apolgizes to who?

To their users for putting them at risk of RDB trashing. Unlike what Elbox says the code could have been triggered without any hack attempt. AmigaOS is not protected environment and proper memory poking would have been enough to zap the RDB.

Some part of the apology should go to the hacker who brought this to everyone's attention. Without him every Elbox user would probably still be at risk.

The 0 people that got a trashed RDB?

How can you tell there weren't any?

The code is quiet, it doesn't tell that "Hey there mate, I just zapped your RDB!". If someone lost his RDB for no apparent reason there is no way to tell if Elbox driver did it.

Another silly argument is that you can easily restore the RDB if it's lost. That migth be if you have actually backed it up before, and know what losing RDB looks like. If you have never seen it, you could easily assume you've just lost all your data for good, or assume the HDD is defect.

[Piru]

@Phonic

I know what reverse engineering is, and I've done it quite a bit myself.

However, to be legal here you'd need to rewrite the drivers completely. This might work in some country with lax copyright law.

This wouldn't work in Finland anymore though, the new Copyright law makes this illegal (at least if the goal is to circumvent a protection).