Deneb VS Spider II USB Card

[Reflex]

Elbox is a crappy company.
The only goo thing the did for the Amiga Community is the Mediator busboards but, hey boys let's think about it...
1) no DMA support
2) troubles on the 3.3 volt power line (look at the Radeon 9200 mess)
3) bad driver.

they were only lucky that DCE didn't developed good drivers for their G-Rex as it was a much superior Hardware.

I bought a boundle consisting of Mediator 4000D and SpiderII and the day after it arrived to me Hadges stopped any support to the Spider board so now I have a nice piece of crappy hardware that has no use for my computer and no way to make it work.

Obviously Elbox doesn't reply to my emails neither.

[José Manuel]

And now the Big problem its the end of life of Deneb usb car,no stock now and not more production for this great piece of hardware

[Reflex]

And now the Big problem its the end of life of Deneb usb car,no stock now and not more production for this great piece of hardware

in 2011 with PCI slot widely avaible through Mediator, G-Rex, and prometheus, we shouldn't
look after old Zorro Cards, the reason why we wanted PCI was to use cheap and standard hardware. I don't want to buy Spider or Radeon from Elbox, I just want drivers.

But the project is a complete mess. No driver, no 3.3 volt power, moreover they let good programmers like Hodges go away preferring to talk about some vaporware that will never see the light (Dragon?).
Bad company :-(

[Boot_WB]

in 2011 with PCI slot widely avaible through Mediator, G-Rex, and prometheus, we shouldn't
look after old Zorro Cards, the reason why we wanted PCI was to use cheap and standard hardware. I don't want to buy Spider or Radeon from Elbox, I just want drivers.

But the project is a complete mess. No driver, no 3.3 volt power, moreover they let good programmers like Hodges go away preferring to talk about some vaporware that will never see the light (Dragon?).
Bad company :-(

Hmmm...

Zorro bus > Zorro USB card
vs
Zorro bus > Mediator > PCI USB card

methinks the KISS principle applies ;-)

Deneb is by far superior imho (and personal experience of both cards in A4KT). The lack of real DMA offered by the mediator cripples any chance of getting 'better' performance (faster transfers, less cpu overhead, etc) out of a PCI USB 2 card.
A lot of work (of which we were very well informed in the forums) went into the development of Deneb, including working around the various issues relating to different versions of Super Buster and testing with combinations of the (few) other cards which take advantage of Z3 dma.

@E3B
It truly was amazing to read the development given the lack of documentation available (15-year old proprietary chips of a dead company, etc), and set a high watermark of hardware development and testing for the classic Amiga platform. My hat remains off to you to this day.

@Chris - nice to see you back in the forums, I don't come to A.org that often these days so didn't realise you still posted here.

[Reflex]

In fact I believe that the right approach was the one that takes advantage from the CSPPC Bus, it's Faster and without imitations. Too bad it has not been developed properly

Zorro III is slower compared to the solution based on G-Rex Board, I think that you agree.
Is faster than Mediator, it's true, but Zorro3 boards are supposed to be more expensive than PCI ones.
Sadly Elbox made everything to make PCI boards more exensive on amiga

[Xanxi]

Mediator is still interesting for a towerized A1200 which has no native zorro slots. Zorro busboards for the A1200 won't garantee you that those expensive zorro cards will work fine on your setup.
For any other amiga computer, i agree that there are enough good zorro boards available.

[platon42]

And now the Big problem its the end of life of Deneb usb car,no stock now and not more production for this great piece of hardware

Not a surprise really.

"Better buy a USB board while it's still available. Stocks are running lower and there won't be another production run of the Deneb." (11-21-2010) http://www.amiga.org/forums/showthread.php?p=593370#post593370

All good things come to an end eventually.

[Darrin]

Mediator is still interesting for a towerized A1200 which has no native zorro slots. Zorro busboards for the A1200 won't garantee you that those expensive zorro cards will work fine on your setup.
For any other amiga computer, i agree that there are enough good zorro boards available.

The Mediator is also handy for big box Amigas.  When I installed a Mediator in my A4000 I ordered a 256MB Radeon card from Elbox.  While I was waiting I tried two ancient and dusty ViRGE cards I had lying around that were salvaged from old PCs and they both worked brilliantly and certainly felt as fast, if not faster than my Cybervision643D.  Another "junk" SB128 card also worked.  If you just add up what a good Zorro graphics & sound card would cost you then that certainly helps to offset the cost of a Mediator board.  Of course it would be nice if the software for the Spider card was available/worked.

[RMK305]

Not a surprise really.

"Better buy a USB board while it's still available. Stocks are running lower and there won't be another production run of the Deneb." (11-21-2010) http://www.amiga.org/forums/showthread.php?p=593370#post593370

All good things come to an end eventually.

That's why I bought mine after reading that post, and glad I did!

[esc]

The Mediator is also handy for big box Amigas.  When I installed a Mediator in my A4000 I ordered a 256MB Radeon card from Elbox.  While I was waiting I tried two ancient and dusty ViRGE cards I had lying around that were salvaged from old PCs and they both worked brilliantly and certainly felt as fast, if not faster than my Cybervision643D.  Another "junk" SB128 card also worked.  If you just add up what a good Zorro graphics & sound card would cost you then that certainly helps to offset the cost of a Mediator board.  Of course it would be nice if the software for the Spider card was available/worked.

I have a towerized a4000 with Mediator 4000D.  Now that I have finally gotten all of my pci cards working (voodoo3, spider II, fast ethernet, sb128) I have a fully expanded and very versatile computer  Granted, I have a cv64/3d with scandoubler for everything the voodoo3 can't do...basically, most things aside from workbench, actually, but at least my wb looks great.  The USB and fast ethernet are AWESOME.  I guess now all I need is a ppc board

But yeah,  I'm a believer in the mediator.  It makes the A4000 quite a bit more interesting, without taking anything away.

[Darrin]

I have a towerized a4000 with Mediator 4000D.  Now that I have finally gotten all of my pci cards working (voodoo3, spider II, fast ethernet, sb128) I have a fully expanded and very versatile computer  Granted, I have a cv64/3d with scandoubler for everything the voodoo3 can't do...basically, most things aside from workbench, actually, but at least my wb looks great.  The USB and fast ethernet are AWESOME.  I guess now all I need is a ppc board

But yeah,  I'm a believer in the mediator.  It makes the A4000 quite a bit more interesting, without taking anything away.

I'm trying to work out how to cram an Emplant II card and a PCI Catweasle into mine.  

[Reflex]

But.... after deneb there will be no USB hardware at all.
That is... just PCI hardware.
I don't know to smile or to cry, maybe this is the time that My Spider II will finally work.

[Heiroglyph]

That means no USB until the OS enables the PCI and the card too

I'm so glad I got my Deneb, I just wish I had bought a couple more of them.

[wawrzon]

we will see pci2usb support the likes of spider on mediator classics under aros68k some day im quite certain. it will not hurt eab since they are sold out nor chris whos bounty has been paid, so all is cool now, that poseidon is part of aros.

[mboehmer_e3b]

@E3B
It truly was amazing to read the development given the lack of documentation available (15-year old proprietary chips of a dead company, etc), and set a high watermark of hardware development and testing for the classic Amiga platform. My hat remains off to you to this day.

Put your hat back on :-)

The most amazing thing was to find a bug (believed to be killed from Rev9 to Rev11 changes) in the last Buster Rev11. Personally, doing the DENEB development gave me quite some experiences on designing in a hostile environment, so to say.

Even the developer group from phase5 seems to have stumbled on some Buster Rev11 issues while doing the FastLane Z3, but they couldn't solve the problem... the DENEB V11 firmware does fix that Buster bug in "hardware" and allows operating Zorro III RAM next to one (1) DMA master finally in a stable way.
That was the most surprising issue... even the schematics published in the patent stuff for Zorro III seem to reflect that problem :-)

As stated already, I'm open for licensing the hardware design to some guy willing to invest  money on production and product service. Anyhow, this guy should better check first if he is priviledged enough to acquire the Poseidon licences needed for legally selling the cards he has spent his money on in advance, and on his own full risk.

Michael

[Darrin]

@ Mike,

Thanks for your help via email with my Deneb issues.  Much appreciated.