The state of Prometheus Development...

[justthatgood]

It kinda pains me a little bit to think about it, but I think I'm going to have to get rid of my Prometheus. I'm not sure that it's well worth it to keep it as I'm not sure the drivers are well developed enough to make any use of it..

Does anyone know if anyone found the fix for the DMA problems.  The one individual that I knew that was working on that moved out of my state because it's a hick infested cornfield.

[Plaz]

Maybe one of the developers will reply directly with better info, but the last news we had (and it was many,many months ago) was that a flash update was going to be available to enable DMA when all the work and testing was done. Prometheus in it's current state is still very usefull. If you get the supported nic and video cards, you have a net speedy classic Amiga with a very pretty display. Voodoo 3,4 or 5 video with a realtek chip based nic card. Can't recall the realtek chip off the top of my head right now.

Plaz

[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

[yogisumo]

mboehmer_e3b wrote:

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

Thanks for your work and the progress updates.  I have 2 of these boards and am looking forward to the update.  

[Robert17]

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

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

Robert

[Crumb]

@Robert17

AFAIK yes, we'll have to send him our cards

@Michael Boehmer

Thanks for the update :-)

Could you give us the estimated upgrade price?

[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

[alewis]

Hmm

I also have two cards (unused, sacrilige!). What will the update provide/fix?

Brgds
Alan

[Crumb]

@mboehmer_e3b

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

[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?

[Plaz]

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.

Ah yes, you sent me some documentation last year and I was going to build one to use with my prom burner. I need to check my old mail and docs and see if I still have that info.

BTW, congratulations if you've finished your thesis and thanks for the updates.

Plaz

[mboehmer_e3b]

Do you mean something like this:

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

[Crumb]

@mboehmer_e3b

Do you mean something like this:

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

Yes! that's it :-)

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

(although I guess that I'll live without a TV card and will just use USB, Ethernet, Sound and Voodoo3.

[keropi]

so, if this riser work, will it actually fit on the case???

[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