RapidRoad USB starts shipping oct-20-2014

[demolition]

Originally Posted by wmsteele

I suspect the Vampire will eventually lead to a standalone product, hopefully in a couple of form factors with at least one fitting the original a1200 case. Would render the reloaded and its numerous required ‘upgrades’ obsolete.

Probably not obsolete as such - I think many people like the idea of having a machine using original Amiga chips for maximum compatibility. A standalone Vampire would have a market but for people who just wants to play some old games, they would probably still be better off using a more plain Amiga or an emulator like they are today.

[McTrinsic]

Folks, why don't you calm down a bit.

Jens is just a human who needs to make money with his products.

It would be nice to put things into perspective a bit more.

Thanks,
McT

[roomeo]

I dont see a reason to "calm down"... I have been very patient. Heck, i offered to bugtest, send my machine for testing and be willing to do extensive testing if testcases could be provided from the dev. If the issue could be resolved it could have been fixed over a year ago!!

The fact is that he is misleading customers with pretending this isnt a issue. look at the RR wiki and the resellers information about the product. How many customers have bought it, and realized its a crippled system (for the time being)
He is not being honest with potential new customers buying RR... THIS has been my point all the way.

Let Jens speak for himself rather that defending him!

I think im being quite reasonable in my remarks. I can understand that fanboys could find this uncomfortable.

[McTrinsic]

I agree that the RR issue is not a great thing, don't worry.

What I am referring to is remarks like that all he wants to do "is squeeze money out of the Amiga community" ...

Icomp is a really small company. I am concerned that we are taking inappropriate comparisons to what we are used to from bigger companies.

The Amiga part of his small activity is effectively a part-time job for a one-man show.

Compare that to Kipper2k answering no eMails for days and weeks...

Is the whole thing managed well considering the communication? No it isnt.

Thanks,
McT

[dirkies]

People having this issue should be refunded after sending the hardware back. That's the only good thing to do here. And when it gets fixed they can still decide to buy it, with some extra price reduction to make up for the snafu. IMHO that's the only correct way a vendor should deal with such situation.
Pretending nothing is wrong (officially) and taking the cash anyway is very disappointing from Individual, I concur. But seemingly a situation which is sadly still possible in the Amiga community...

[roomeo]

I asked the reseller for a refund, but did not even get a reply. Now i dont want to do that because of spite. I dont care how small a business is. Icomp is a commercial business, and not a hobby project (maybe in the early years). He has employees. A year ago, he claimed that he had hired a new guy, so he thought the issue would be solved within weeks. What happened; he "shelved" the problem without letting customers know.. Kipper is surely a one-man show, but delivers and has great support online and communicate with his customers activly. Icomp dosent even have a ticket system. (correct me if i am wrong)

[McTrinsic]

That's an interesting perception. But as Bishop Berkeley said, perception is reality.

Kipper answers eMails after _weeks_. Sometimes he is quicker. It took me ages and a lot more patience to get his SVideo-adapter.

But that's exactly what I mean.
My impression is:
Its reverse fanboy-ism. Kipper to some may not be criticized. The same people seem to need a target and have selective perception about iComp.

Is the RR-topic handled well? No it isnt! Does it work for a lot of people? Yes!

What I was asking for is to put things into perspective. Blaming him for the destruction of the Amiga market because of the ACA500 appears a far stretch for me.

Afaik Jens has managed all RR-cases directly with anyone who has an issue with his hardware. Alt the same time I really am wondering why you didn't return it to your seller.

Thanks,
McT

[roomeo]

i didnt return it because Jens said it would be sorted out in a couple of weeks.
This is now 14 months ago.

If i where to return it... who will cover my import tax for example? I will loose money. and so will the reseller.

i want a product that works as advertised.

On the other hand, the system works great except the zIII issue.. but that is not an excuse.

Kipper is a hobby manufacturer (for time being), Icomp is a professional company with employees. so thats comparing apples and oranges.

Cheers
Aksel

[Marmes]

@roomeo
Import taxes are not Icomp problem. If you live outside EU, you must obbey your country's laws. When you buy something abroad you are considered the importer, you know you have to pay taxes, in this case you know if something goes wrong, you are responsible. If the product has a problem and you know it from the begining, you are also responsible for your purschase. If seller says he would fix it in 2 weeks and he doesn't, it's your responsability to return the product if you are not happy with it. Coming here and complaining with Jens publically, won't help you at all, as you , he must have a full hand of complaining people. I'm sure there is a solution for your problem, you won't find it here.
He will continue to sell his products as he was .
Despite the fact of his hard temper, he was for some time one of the few guys that supported the amiga community with new hardware, having good and not so good products. So, open a support ticket and wait for his answer. It worked for me in the past. It will work for you for sure.

[demolition]

Like Marmes writes, import taxes are your concern as the importer. It is a pity, but it wouldn't be reasonable to expect the manufacturer/reseller to cover that part.

You can always sell it locally, and due to the customs wall, perhaps the local used value is as high as the new price (excluding customs taxes).

[roomeo]

Well... I agree with most of what you say. My tax isn't the resellers problem. It's just a bummer if I would.want to.return it. I do have opened a support ticket with my reseller. Contacted him a soon as the problem was discovered. He himself couldn't help nor had any knowledge about the issue before I informed him.

About complaining in public. Had icomp been more open about this issue I probably wouldn't do this. This is a public forum, and not icomp's advertisement channel.

Cheers

[Amon_RA]

Phew, almost bought a X100 + RR for my A4000 with A3640... glad I didn't. This issue should pop up as a warning in big red letters at resellers web shops.

[zharn]

I wish i checked the forums first.


Whats the licence arrangement with the RR x-100 usb driver? can we get the source and fix it ourselves?

[wXR]

zharn, very good and important question!

[demolition]

Just installed a RapidRoad in my 600 and it seems to work fine with a Mouse and a USB stick, but I am having trouble with a USB Ethernet adapter. I have set up AmiTCP to use usbasixeth.device and I have been able to log on to my NAS through ftp.
When I start AWeb it seems to crash the USB stack and I get the error 'Eth transmit failed: nak timout(10)' in Trident. When it happens, I also lose the mouse and can only fix it by setting the controller Offline and then back online.

Have anyone else gotten this kind of USB Ethernet adapter to work successfully? I am not sure if it is related to the A4000+X-Surf problem that people seem to be having which is also nak timeouts.

[SkulleateR]

Have you tried pinging on CLI ? Tried other browser ?

If you´re able to get onto NAS you should have a working setup ...

[demolition]

Originally Posted by SkulleateR

Have you tried pinging on CLI ? Tried other browser ?
If you´re able to get onto NAS you should have a working setup ...

Yes, it does work for a little while, but it is unstable. It can pinging, but at some point it crashes with the above mentioned error, and then the ping loop stops. Starting AWeb seems to trigger the error, but it can also crash at other times when not doing anything but pinging. If I boot the Amiga with the ethernet adapter connected, it also crashes. Removing the ethernet device is not enough to make it work again, but I have to restart the RapidRoad device.

[McTrinsic]

I have it running with an USB2Eth adaptor. Unfortunately I can't remember which brand or type. Its an asixeth device in poseidon.

I have it connected to an XSurf-clockport.

Works flawlessly sind robust except that it is a bit slow but that can be credited to the 030@50 als well.

USB is working great as well at ~ 900 kb.

Stack is MiamiDX.

Cheers,
McT

Originally Posted by demolition

Just installed a RapidRoad in my 600 and it seems to work fine with a Mouse and a USB stick, but I am having trouble with a USB Ethernet adapter. I have set up AmiTCP to use usbasixeth.device and I have been able to log on to my NAS through ftp.
When I start AWeb it seems to crash the USB stack and I get the error 'Eth transmit failed: nak timout(10)' in Trident. When it happens, I also lose the mouse and can only fix it by setting the controller Offline and then back online.

Have anyone else gotten this kind of USB Ethernet adapter to work successfully? I am not sure if it is related to the A4000+X-Surf problem that people seem to be having which is also nak timeouts.

Hello. I had the same problem with usbasixeth-based Ethernet adapter (namely the Apple USB-Etherner adapter). In my case, after the "nak timeout" message appeared, the USB stack was pretty much frozen (not even a flash drive worked) and I had to remove the adapter and restart the stack.

In order for the set up to work, follow this procedure: disconnect the adapter from your Amiga (if it's connected), disconnect the ethernet cable from the adapter, if your adapter was connected you will need to restart the Poseidon stack, plug the adapter into the USB port (without the ethernet cable), wait for Poseidon to discover the device, plug in the ethernet cable and start the TCP stack. Despite the fact that Poseidon doesn't log the cable being plugged in, the connection will work.

I tested this with AmiTCP and Miami. When connected this way, both stacks work just fine. IBrowse, AmIRC, AmFTP and even twittAmiga work reliably, too.

[demolition]

When it hangs for me, I can only get it working again by disconnecting the device and restarting the Amiga and then reconnect the device after it has booted up and then restarting AmiTCP. If I just restart Poseidon, it will crash immediately after using the Ethernet connection again. It may be due to AmiTCP not shutting down properly when running 'stopnet' though since it complains when I run 'startnet' that something already exists.

I will try disconnecting the cable and also see if Miami works any differently. With the 3c589 PCMCIA device I could never get Miami to work at all, but will try again on this one.