Dragon Coldfire latest

[Boot_WB]

For those interested, and with all caveats as to the reliability of release dates, etc here's the e-mail reply I got form Elbox last week regarding the Dragon Coldfire, questions and answers:

Hello,

> Have you decided yet the trade-up terms for mediator owners?

These terms will be send to all registered Mediator users
as soon as Dragon sales starts.

> Is there an update on the expected price of the Dragon?

Nothing changes. The suggested retail price will be 349 EUR + local VAT.

> How much longer before expected reelease to market?

Dragon 1200 boards should be in sales in October 2005.

The current info about DRAGON 1200 is being published at
http://www.elbox.com/news_04_12_17.html

Please do not hesitate to contact us if you need further assistance.

Thank you for using Elbox's online support services.

Best regards,

Support Department of ELBOX COMPUTER
Web site: http://www.elbox.com
Online Store: http://buy.elbox.com


>
> Thanks
>
>
>
> Richard

[Boot_WB]

Don't like replying to my own thread but

:bump:

Elbox?

Nearly the middle of november now... did the coldfire chips arrive or not?

How come the website hasn't been updated since the end of september (the Elbox site says end of october, but damned if I can find anything which has changed).

I know Elbox has delivered in the past: mediator, powerflyer, USB.....    I just want to know :-)   :-?  :-x  :boohoo:  Wahhhhhhh!!

[c64_d0c]

it smells vapor...
________
UGGS

[SHADES]

Perhaps they mistyped and meant to say October 2006.
Anyone tried to confirm the date given?

I have done this by mistake sometimes too. The date thing.

[Argus]

And even if they ship, how is it going to run the OS? Which version of the OS?  I thought Coldfire was missing quite a few necessary 680x0 hardware registers.  A co-processor perhaps??

[Lando]

I think Elbox are really starting to lose credibility now - SharkPPC, Dragon, MPEG-2 hardware decoder drivers for Mediator (been waiting 5 years for that one).

If you make an announcement, stick to it.  If you aren't 100% sure that you can stick to it, keep quiet until you are.  Look at Apple's example.

[Argus]

Lando wrote:
If you make an announcement, stick to it.  If you aren't 100% sure that you can stick to it, keep quiet until you are.  Look at Apple's example.

Agreed. Noone faults them for trying, but no updated pictures ever since the original carefully cropped ones appeared six months ago (or more).  I sure hope this isn't vapor though it seems more so than the SharkPPC, which at least has precedent in the Mac world.  Maybe it's just a ploy to sell their new 'Dragon-ready' D-Box tower.  Who knows?  On the software side, the USB Poseidon/Spider fiasco makes one wonder how they could be competent enought to code the OS to properly work on Coldfire; assuming they have a license to the source code.

[_ThEcRoW]

I lost hope on the dragon long time ago.
Seems like vapor now...

[Argus]

Mythical hardware somehow reminds me of a Morrissey ditty from an old Smiths' song:

"I want the one I can't have and it's driving me mad..it's written all over my face."

[metalman]

In this case the problem is Freescale! Freescale is still shipping only samples, not production units yet.

The coldfire runs 680x0 code (less a couple of needed instructions)

[MskoDestny]

metalman wrote:
In this case the problem is Freescale! Freescale is still shipping only samples, not production units yet.

I can buy the very chip they are using from Digi-Key. Freescale has been past shipping production units for a while.

Back in September, Elbox posted an update to their Dragon page saying they were going to be getting a batch in by the end of September and they hoped to put Dragons up for sale by the end of October. If the shipment of processors slipped you would think they would have said so (especially since someone asked about it on the Mediator list) and so far they have been silent.

It seems to me that they are stalling, the question is why.

[boing]

You call DigiKey and see if you can *actually* get a ColdFire chip (now) that's the same type used in the Dragon.


What concerns me is the inability of the Dragon crew to respond to simple questions in a way that English-speakers can understand.

For example, they said they have 68060 compatibility, via emulation of instuctions not native to the ColdFire (addressing mdoes too I'd guess).  The reason I don't have a 68060 card now, or a 68040 card for that matter, is that I want to keep broad compatibility with all Amiga software and that means that a 68030 was the chip for me. (I've seen too many things fail with a 68040 [I couldn't even find a patch to get arp.library and related ARP commmands to work reliably with a 68040]).

So I asked them about the 680x0 emulation they would be creating for their Dragon. Would it only emulate the 68060 with it's inherent incompatibilities and other issues? Or, since they're already using some emulation, would it offer fuller compatibility with the 68000 through 68030 and 040?  Or would there be selectable modes for which processor type you could most closely emulate?  

They never gave me an intelligible answer. Maybe they didn't understand me.  If you want to support a machine you really ought to have a person on staff who can ttranslate English for you.  I wish them the best and am eager to learn more about their Dragon.  But they need to get their act together when it comes to dealing with the English speaking world and answering basic technical questions.

[Lemmink]

The Dragon is intendet for the poweruser, that is at least using an 68060 or 040/PPC now. Those kind of users don`t give a damn about software that doesn`t like the 68040/060, its too old / slow / obsolete anyway.
To make ist short the Dragon is not for you, as the compatibility even to an 68060 will be quite poor or, with an exact emulation, not much faster then the 68060.

This is all asumeing that the Dragon ever existed / will exist, what I highly doubt.

[MskoDestny]

boing wrote:
You call DigiKey and see if you can *actually* get a ColdFire chip (now) that's the same type used in the Dragon.

They have them in stock. 76 of them to be precise. That's not a whole lot, but that number is typical for Digi-key. They only stock a whole bunch of a part if it's very popular.

They're probably using CF68KLIB which emulates all of the missing instructions. However, a few instructions have slightly different behaviors (the multiply instructions don't set flags for instance). CF68KLIB also does not emulate floating point (the floating point on coldfire is the standard 64-bit rather than the 80-bit provided by earlier 680X0 chips) because there's no way for an exception base emulation to account for the differences.

The people at Elbox probably can't answer the technical questions because they farmed out all of the design work.

[B00tDisk]

The Dragon won't ever be released.  It will be interesting, however, to see what excuse Elbox comes up with next.