Elbox 'Dragon' ColdFire A1200 Accelerator + PCI/AGP Busboard

[Bamiga2002]

I on the other hand thought this was an interesting discussion. Digging the old "lost gold" has its appeal

[majsta]

@stachu100 I have following your work and always impressed with your projects but I have to disagree on your comments about this topic.
1. There is no way that price of Mediator is related to old new stock of IC's. Complete story behind that and told by Elbox, as I recall at the end of 2011. was only marketing trick.
2. Voltage level translators can be used to achieve anything, now days we even have voltage level translator with auto direction control sensing. I have written about 10 pages regarding to voltage level translators and Amiga and you have everything explained on my website.
3. Those codes can be easy translated into Verilog or VHDL and all of those devices on the Mediator can be replaced by single FPGA.

What is ELBOX for me, only company with few people in basement who don't care about Amiga community. There is no real information's about company, their further projects, and what we can say about company who does not maintain their website offering products who are not there and never will be in production. Instead of doing that and for respect of all Amiga community they had to provide some information's for us to be decent enough to say don't wait anymore we will not produce Dragon or SharkPPC and state few reasons for that and maybe point some engineering to not make their mistakes. I understand that they work for money but please just tell me do you really believe that they can survive just from earnings related to Amiga products. How much they sell Mediators per month 50 ? And if you calculate that is minimum that company need to survive with only 10 employees. Do you really think that they can sell 50 Mediators per month and to whom?

Anyhow for company who produced such brilliant pieces of hardware I have to say that they can improve so much things in Amiga scene but I think that their engineers left them long time ago and all of they are capable now is reproducing old designs and from time to time hiring someone to improve software support.

Haha look at this on the mediator support yahoo group official announcement

*********
Running this script generates a 'MedReport.txt' file (I am unsure on the save
position of this file as I dont have Amiga access anymore). Open this file and
copy/paste the output into the email that you sed to the list.

[stachu100]

@majsta,
I think that your judgement about Elbox is not correct.
And I think that sales figures are much lower than 50pcs per month now.
It's not Elbox leaving Amiga scene - it's Amiga users left Amiga.
As an example I'm using Android device at the moment.
And you - have you bought any brand new Elbox product recently - let's say within last year?

Better to produce current product without any change and earn money somewhere else.

Sure - Mediator can be adapted to lower voltage technology or even FPGA. This requires some time and money.
FPGA would be right choice. Maybe next generation Mediator will be FPGA.
But it will be still just ZORRO to PCI solution, nothing new. With lower price - for what reason?

And last:
Elbox is now doing some professional electronic for industry.
Products for Amiga are just "for fun and pocket money" now.

[majsta]

I didn't purchase any product from them and don't intend to. Once I successfully connect FPGA to Amiga motherboard PCI is just one step away. My judgment about Elbox was at that stage last year that I planed trip from Bosnia to Poland just to visit Elbox to clear my mind understanding whats behind the scene. Anyhow I m just frustrated to see that someone can but don't want to bring us forward.

[Mr B]

Originally Posted by stachu100

And I think that sales figures are much lower than 50pcs per month now.

Thats his point. There is no way Elbox is making any sort of meaningful revenue of the mediators.

Originally Posted by stachu100

Elbox is now doing some professional electronic for industry.
Products for Amiga are just "for fun and pocket money" now.

I cant find anything, on any activity, on their part, industrial technology, or other-ways.

[mfilos]

What a grave digging effort was that

[off topic]
Don't get me wrong, Mediators are nice products (I had one some time ago and it was just fine) but what made me sick about Elbox was the last FastATA CF/Sata series for A1200/A4000.
I'm not a huge fan of FastATA (I had also a mk3 model) but what Elbox did advertising the newer series as a controller without giving extra info or pictures about extra IDE2CF and IDE2Sata adapters was misleading.
I even asked for photos as the site wasn't telling anything and I never got a reply from them (I wonder why).

Anyway, I'm not expecting anything important from them anyway as most of the new hardware efforts of Individual Computers and homebrew stuff from Kipper2k and other guys like Ratte, Boboo etc compensate the loss

Majsta mate I can't wait to see your final product
[/off topic]

[Bamiga2002]

Elbox could have also dropped from the get-go: RDB-erasing code from Mediators, overpriced Spider-USB cashing, separate cashing with Mediator Multimedia CD's (MMCD's, spider.device included only here), exaggerate Mediator-capabilities on their webpage...

Now what they could have made was a separate Mediator for BlizzPPC's PCI-connector (like G-Rex) and also change the latest Fast-Ata not being in the way of Lyra 2.

My 2 cents damit!

[Akiko]

Originally Posted by Bamiga2002

Now what they could have made was a separate Mediator for BlizzPPC's PCI-connector (like G-Rex) and also change the latest Fast-Ata not being in the way of Lyra 2.

It would not have been possible for Elbox to make versions specifically for the Blizzard and Cyberstorm PPC cards, as DCE never released the necessary technical specifications to allow 3rd parties to do so, even in recent years they still refuse to make such details public.

[Bamiga2002]

Why do Elbox STILL have Dragon listed in their catalogue? It's been almost 10 years now it's damn vaporware!
Felt good to rant!

[DDNI]

It has kept people talking for 10years! No such this as bad publicity?!

[TCD]

Since the thread got bumped anyway...

Originally Posted by Joe Maroni

i´ve spoken personal with elbox and they told me that this board will be released in any way...

so if someone think it will never be released he is/was wrong...

Do you still have the email (if there was one) Joe? Would be a nice read now I guess

[BarryB]

At least they have pictures of the Dragon on their site unlike the TurboFlyer, maybe in 10 years time we might have pictures of that, who knows?

[vitux]

Even a game optimized for Coldfire Dragon made.
http://www.greyhound-data.com/gunnar...b_coldfire.lha

[emufan]

Originally Posted by vitux

Even a game optimized for Coldfire Dragon made.
http://www.greyhound-data.com/gunnar...b_coldfire.lha

this does work in winuae - so the "optimzed for coldfire" is bogus - or Toni W. got a spare minute

[vitux]

Originally Posted by emufan

this does work in winuae - so the "optimzed for coldfire" is bogus - or Toni W. got a spare minute

I do not know
It's what the "readme" says

[emufan]

well, maybe it is true - while thinking again about coldfire - it was said it has a subset of the 68000 processors commands.
if it is that "easy" to make it compatible for both coldfire and 68k, it is a pitty Elbox did not release what they made :/

[Loedown]

Originally Posted by Akiko

It would not have been possible for Elbox to make versions specifically for the Blizzard and Cyberstorm PPC cards, as DCE never released the necessary technical specifications to allow 3rd parties to do so, even in recent years they still refuse to make such details public.

They state they don't have the old documentation any more, I rang DCE directly. Alexh suggested they could find the old hardware and info if cold, hard cash were thrown their way and to be honest I am inclined to agree because I know Germans companies and their ways. The documents will still exist in a vault somewhere.

[yssing]

AFAIK the only coldfire that is close to compatible with the 68k is the v5. Which is not the coldfire version that the dragon is/was based on.

[Bamiga2002]

Bah! Let them bastards keep their precious blueprints locked in a damn vault if it keeps them happy. Couldn't care less anymore...

[hansel75]

If this ever got released, WOW, just WOW!!!