Haag / Munich, 07.05.2008
Six years after introducing USB to the Amiga Classic, E3B (Michael
Böhmer) and PCP (Chris Hodges) are pleased to announce the new USB 2.0
Zorro II/III DMA controller DENEB.
As the next consequential development the DENEB implements an USB
ost controller with three ports (two external, one internal). Each
of them support both USB 1.1 and the 480 MBit/s USB 2.0 highspeed ode.
The DENEB USB card is dedicated for all Zorro equipped Amigas and
supports Zorro III, Zorro II and Fast Zorro II. The integrated Zorro
III busmaster allows real Zorro III DMA transfer and reduces the CPU
load significantly, leaving resource for multitasking. As additional
benefit high data transfer rates are made possible.
Developed especially for classical OS3.x systems, the DENEB
additionally works nicely on new Amiga OS4 Classic (JIT) and MorphOS
(native) operating systems. As with previous E3B products a full OEM
licensed version of Poseidon V4.0 (PCP) is included. The version V4.0
for Amiga Classic is licensed excusively for customers of E3B and not
available for USB controllers of other vendors.
Poseidon already provided versatile support of USB devices like
keyboards, mice, graphic tablets, mass storage (sticks, harddisks,
CD/DVD, card readers, etc.), printers and many other devices in the
past. The new Poseidon V4.0 version extends this further by adding new
drivers for serial and ethernet adapters, the famous 3D Space
Navigator, webcams, digicams with PictureTransferProtocol (PTP) and
MP3 players with MediaTransportProtocol (MTP) and --last but not
least-- USB multi-outlet power strips.
As world's first Amiga Classic USB controller the DENEB supports real
time isochronous data transfer and hence allows using inexpensive USB
sound cards with a new audio class driver available in Poseidon V4.0.
AHI is supported with all sampling rates and resolutions up to 32bit.
The hard- and software design has been carefully optimized to give
the highest data transfer rates of all current USB solutions for Amiga
Classic. With rates exceeding 8MB/s (DMA) and 6MB/s (PIO) on Zorro III
the DENEB unleashes the real power of USB 2.0 on Amiga computers,
making the DENEB the ideal choice for fast USB mass storage devices.
The DENEB outperforms the internal IDE controler by factors.
A large integrated [48MBit] FlashROM (4 MegaByte User, 2 MegaByte
Firmware) allows integration of Poseidon during cold startups and
enables direct booting from USB medias (like USB SATA harddisks or
sticks).
For further boot time reduction the FlashROM may be populated with
ROM updates or custom made Kickstart files. The well-known Luciferin
software with its easy-to-use GUI has been improved and optimized for
DENEB. It is now even possible to cold boot into MorphOS PUP right out
of the FlashROM without using harddrive accesses. The 4MB FlashROM
offers enough resources to allow similar features for Amiga OS4
Classic given the release of the necessary software.
The use of a modern FPGA and special boot logic enable firmware
upgrades of all bus interface logic in software without needing to
send in the board. New features and bug fixes can be provided easily.
As bonus the DENEB features a clockport for connecting existing
clockport cards.
With the DENEB USB board by E3B and PCP, the Amiga Classic can reclaim
a good piece of modern technology and opens the access to affordable
USB devices for all Amiga users. To emphasize this we are proud to be
able to deliver the DENEB with the "Still Alive" animation by Eric
W. Schwartz initially in the FlashRom.
The DENEB has been manufactured according to RoHS specifications. For
long endurance of the Zorro connector has been refined with hard gold
plated contacts.
We want to thank all our loyal customers for providing us with
encouragement and continuous demand for our products. Your support
motivated us to finish this new development over the last three years!
DENEB is available for a recommended end user price of 139.95EUR
(incl. VAT) directly at E3B (
http://www.e3b.de/usb/) as well as at
selected Amiga dealers.
Our distributors:
Vesalia Computer
http://www.vesalia.de/
Amiga Kit
http://www.amigakit.com/
Voxel Informatique
http://voxelamigashop.free.fr
Relec
http://www.relec.ch/
It's time again!
The german issues 40 of the Amiga Future are out of stock. Because of that you can read the magazines (amongst many other issues) online at 
A news that i read on a french web page, x-com (perhaps) will come back and this seems to be the team which did the excellent bioshock who should do the new one, wait and see 
I've havn't got a Minimig yet, but I'm getting more interested. Just read on Amiga.org that Dennis has released new firmware for the Minimig,
.
Another game discovered:Fatal Impact,year 1994.
