Elbox dispels rumours on MEDIATOR PCI
 [04 September 2000]

The breakthrough product developed by us: the MEDIATOR PCI, has caused many changes in the Amiga world. Changes for better, one has to admit.

People who cannot approach this excellent product with honour and respect due to its design, spread rumours, which give false information to Amiga users.

In order to make this situation clear and show our respect to all those dedicated users of Amiga computers, we feel obliged to clarify the information.

Below you find our answers to such rumours:

1. *** MEDIATOR PCI 1200 can only have access to 8 MB address
   area, so the latest Voodoo III cards with 32-64 MB address
   area could not be used. ***

   Answer: Not true.
   Elbox MEDIATOR PCI 1200 enables access to the entire 4 GB
   PCI Memory Space and to all the required I/O space.
   Execution of access to the full memory area in PCI (4 GB)
   through the 8 MB Amiga memory window is done with MEDIATOR's
   hardware on the basis of the MEDIATOR offset registers.

2. *** Designing MEDIATOR PCI 1200 in such a way that
   it works with all the existing turbo cards for Amiga 1200
   (i.e. within the 8 MB address window) will result
   in modern graphics cards major crippling in the transfer rate
   between the processor and graphics card. ***

   Answer: Not true.
   Data exchange between the processor and graphics cards
   within the 8 MB address window does not affect transfer rate.

   E.g.: Writing to a graphics card of 32 MB of data within
   the 8 MB address window means execution of just 3 additional
   writing operations for over 8,000,000 writing operations.
   In practice, transmission over 8 MB of data to a PCI graphics
   card is very rare, as majority of modern PCI graphics cards
   memory is allocated for storing textures.
   Current data exchange is thus executed within the one 8 MB
   window, anyway.

3. *** PCI graphics cards themselves are now increasingly hard
   to obtain and will be obsolete in a few months time. ***

   Answer: Not true.
   Many new graphic chipsets are and will be produced in both
   the PCI standard and the AGP Intel standard.
   This is clear, as PCI (Peripheral Component Interconnect)
   is an industry standard independent of the processor platform
   by definition. Graphic cards in this standard may work
   equally well in PC, Mac or Amiga computers.

4.  *** Elbox will produce a PCI/AGP busboard to be directly
    connected to the expansion connector on the BlizzardPPC.
    It will come equipped with 3xPCI slots, 1xAGP slot and a
    socket for SDRAM. ***

    Answer:
    Who came up with this one?
    Preparing such a busboard, connected directly to the
    BlizzardPPC card in the place of the BVisionPPC card,
    would require redesigning the BlizzardPPC card.
    Replacing one PCI slot with an AGP slot in the busboard
    for A1200 does not result in any major benefits.

    Instead of SDRAM memory in the busboard, we will offer
    a far better solution, to which MEDIATOR PCI 1200 is
    totally ready, of which we will write more in one of our
    coming announcements.