Mediator vs Prometheus

[tjaoz]

@downix

Don't be too sure there. The promethius I have happens to have a 8139 on it.

It is nothing interesting to have the not-working card fitted in the PCI slot

[tjaoz]

@Crusher

Busmastering, TBA :-P

The next announcement about the Prometheus busmastering? :-D

Prometheus producer was well known for advertising not-existing Prometheus features and not-working Prometheus drivers. Now Anachronism/Redrumloa goes the same way.

Prometheus busmastering has always existed in the Prometheus advertisements. Unfortunately, it has existed in the advertisements ONLY. In the Prometheus hardware this feature has NEVER worked correctly.

1) In five days will be exactly THREE YEARS from the first announcement (from March 29, 2001) about the Prometheus busmastering. You can read there:

'Real transfer rates between PCI cards - up to 120 MB/s.
Together with the "Prometheus" card we bundle a CD-ROM with:
Drivers for a sound card and a network card.'

As in the Prometheus transfers between the PCI cards (= busmastering) do not work, the real transfer rates are rather nearby 0MB/s than 120MB/s. Also this sound driver is still a fiction.    

2) The second official announcement about the Prometheus busmastering and about not-existing-up-to-today drivers is from January 8, 2002. You can read there:

'From now on, "Prometheus" can operate more PCI cards, and especially Fast Ethernet cards, TV tuners and soundcards. The drivers for these cards will appear very quickly after we do the upgrade. The first one will probably be available in this month.'


3) The current status of the Prometheus hardware and Prometheus driver support was accurate described in the Prometheus ML. You can read there:

'There is no working on prometheus drivers for usb pci cards.
There is no working DMA support and Busmastering.
Also OpenPCI is not working too..

Still only Voodoo3 and Ethernet 10M/Bit are supported !'    

[redrumloa]

See what I mean about waking the FUD master?

Oh well, he will be in court soon :roflmao:

[downix]

@tjaoz

Seems to work to me.  Unless you're saying that telepathic powers are typing this into aorg.

[NightShade737]

Apparently the 8139 drivers are "highly unstable", but still...

So, are there ever likely to be any drivers for any of the things I have, and is there ever likely to be Bus Mastering support? I am really not interested in "TBA" statements as that means nothing. I want to know if it will have it or not, and roughly when, end of. I need to make a decision on one or the other, and I would not be impressed to buy something, only to find that what I need is never going to happen, as that would be an expensive mistake, and one that I will not make.

The main thing that has me worried is the constant conflicting information, and the slow, if even barely existant progress on OpenPCI/Promo drivers.

Though aside from all that, it would still be interesting to see Promo/Mediator 4000D side by side comparisons in the same machine, though I doubt anyone has ever or would ever do it.

[tjaoz]

@downix

Seems to work to me. Unless you're saying that telepathic powers are typing this into aorg.

You do not distinguish reality from dreams.

Last time (in the 'Re: PCI for genuine 4000T' thread) you insisted on that 200 Polish zl, for which Grzegorz Kraszewski (Prometheus designer) was offering the Prometheus boards, was equal 160 EUR. As I proved you, 200 zl was equal 45.18 EUR.

[tjaoz]

@NightShade737

Though aside from all that, it would still be interesting to see Promo/Mediator 4000D side by side comparisons in the same machine, though I doubt anyone has ever or would ever do it.

I found the website of someone, who has Prometheus and Mediator A4000D.

He describes his opinion about both PCI busboards at www.skolbe.de/PCI.html and at www.skolbe.de/PCI1.html
The sites are in German so you need to use the translation service e.g. http://babelfish.altavista.com.

[NightShade737]

Ok, I agree with his driver statement, but it doesn't get me any further. He doesn't benchmark either of them, nevermind against each other, so its pretty useless. Infact he doesn't say much other than his oppinions.

[tjaoz]

@NightShade737

He doesn't benchmark either of them, nevermind against each other, so its pretty useless.

The only benchmark comparison between Prometheus and Mediator I found in the Prometheus ML. See here.

[Kronos]

Yeah, comparing a 3640 relying on the A4000's f###ed-up
RAM-interface with a Blizzard (or Apollo) makes soooooo
much sense .....

[redrumloa]

@tjaoz

 :roll:

Stop it, you are killing me :lol:

[NightShade737]

Yeah, but as I said, that comparison is still useless as they are completely different machines, to quote:

>> Prometheus with 68040/25 MHz (A3640) + Voodoo3 800x600x32,
>> Mediator with 1240/25 + Voodoo3 800x600x32.

that accounts for some of the difference.
The Blizzard 1240/25 has _much_ faster memory access than the crippled 040/25 on
an A3640.

Some functions in our Voodoo3 driver have no hardware acceleration yet.
Draw() and RectFillPattern() mainly. Also you should take into account,
Apollo 1240/25 is much (about 50%) faster than A3460. A3640 hasn't its
own memory, it uses memory placed on A4000 motherboard, which is very
slow compared to memory on Apollo. Also Mediator is connected to
Expansion Slot, which is faster than Zorro III, especially with Apollo
cards.

ETC. Any useful references?

[Karlos]

tjaoz wrote:
@NightShade737

He doesn't benchmark either of them, nevermind against each other, so its pretty useless.

The only benchmark comparison between Prometheus and Mediator I found in the Prometheus ML. See here.

ROFL!

Sure an A1200 040 card (complete with local memory) versus an A3640 - like that's a fair contest :lol:

[Crusher]

Oh man, here we go again. :flame:

[Karlos]

@NightShade737

Totally off topic, love the avatar. Syndicate is one of my all time favourite games ;-)

[adolescent]

downix wrote:

    Realtek 8139 NICs

Mediator only.

Don't be too sure there.  The promethius I have happens to have a 8139 on it.

I took all of the driver info from the "official" driver pages.  Beta/test drivers weren't listed for download, so I didn't include them.