After buying the rights back then for AHT Europe, I'm happy that hopefully now at last something useful will be created based on the Prometheus design.

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amiga-news.de

@Senex

what do you mean?

@wawa

With AHT Europe we tried almost a decade ago to bring AmigaOS 4 and AROS, respectively, to Set-top boxes:

Photos

But we had also other hardware plans. One of them was a reimplementation of the Amiga 4000 mainboard (as mentioned this was a long time ago, back then some local TV stations, etc., might still have been interested in it), both "as is" as well as an enhanced version with integrated PCI capability. For the latter I bought for AHT the Prometheus rights.

An immediate solution to use this for another product as well was a Zorro graphics card, essentially a Prometheus-based board with a Voodoo, called AmiVD or, later on, DaVinci, designed by E3B:

amiga-news.de

I do also have a photo of the DaVinci prototype here, but it's copyrighted by E3B, otherwise I'd have uploaded it to Photobucket as well.

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@Senex

What stop you in final phase?

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@Senex

is prometheus based on the design you mean??

anyway the sourcecode of prometheus drivers seems been lost (according to krashan) only binaries are preserved. i dont know if this is interesting nor do i want to hijack thread with an own agenda, but i think it would be nice to have open source drivers along the open source pci solution. currently only net-bsd for amiga provides such opportunity, but this isnt alas an amiga like os that can run amiga applications.

since some time i hoped for an open and maintained common amiga pci solution and therefore tended to aros since jasons and toni involvement. alas it seems it has been too much to expect, due to the load of work i think, this side of the project seems stagnating. would be great if there was someone to pick it up. it would be a shame to have free pci drivers for net bsd but not for an os that actually can run amiga applications.

@wawa

It's like Senex said - AHT Europe Ltd. bought license rights of Prometheus board back in 2004, and AmiVD, DaVinci was based on Prometheus design.

As for the drivers. I`m not sure which type of drivers you have on your mind? SDK, which was included on the original CD (and I have backup of that on my hd), had all what's necessary to write new drivers plus rtl8029 driver source code for reference. Drivers for OpenPCI and those made by Tobias Abt and Alex Kneer are different matter.

Cheers,

Filip

@Liluh

beg your partdon i cant find the sdk link, krashan told me on ppa, driver sources were lost.

good news.

best of luck to all involved and i hope this will bring some kick ass news soon to all of us.



PS: so by the looks of things this thing sold in the same amounts as the grex? (i know, that was both 1200 and a4k but still).

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@Liluh

Thanks for all your work. I'm going to have to see about your CPLD update. So it finally solved the DMA issue? Guess I need to go read all the details. Fond memories of working you you all on the Prometheus Dev/Mail list, great to see a "happy ending" after all these years.

Only 250 sold originally? Wow, didn't realize I was in such a small club. The rest of you need to figure out how to get some made. They really pump new life into a classic Amiga.

Pllaz

@Comi

Well, there were two levels. The Amiga link obviously was our unique selling point. Initially everything went smoothly in this regard, porting and software development was on the way and also the Amiga licence negotiations with Garry Hare (Google translation for those not familiar with him) were successful, just lacking the signature. At that moment all of a sudden Bill McEwen dropped in with new requirements that were simply not acceptable.

But besides this, there was some real money we were after of course. Therefore we had professional advice e.g. by PWC and other marketing experts, who's perspective of an outsider without any "Amiga bias" literally opened up our eyes after those new requirements were put on us. Basically they said: "Ah, okay, so you would like to revive Amiga Inc.'s brand, I see - well, so how much are they going to pay to you for this?"

So taking both experiences together, this was the time we changed our plans from OS4 to AROS and the Amiga 700 depicted in the sketch above became "Ariana".

The other thing was our actual aim. Malaysia back then was about to change to DVB. There we wanted to gain some piece of the cake, but while in the beginning negotiations went well also there, in the end the problem was that they finally decided for WMV9 instead of H.264. Therefore with our PowerPC 405-based device we would not only have had to licence that codec from Microsoft but also to negotiate & pay for porting it to PPC first to demonstrate it on our STB - and that of course would have required money we simply didn't have.

Thus right after CeBIT for various reasons I did quit AHT Europe and focussed on my real profession as a scientist instead. (By the way, just to explain "AHT" - we intentionally kept it's meaning open, so depending of the licence the "A" could have also stood for something else than "Advanced" Home Technology.)

Last edited by Senex on 09-Dec-2012 at 07:36 AM.
Last edited by Senex on 09-Dec-2012 at 07:35 AM.

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amiga-news.de

@wawa

I've got it all, so just PM me with your email and I can send it to you. Maybe we`ll be able to post it on the site in future (I didn't realize that no SDK or software sources survived in the net).

@Plaz

Ah, good times. We were really close back then (as you can see now). Well, better done later than never ;)

@Senex

its a shame this hardware, can't get off the ground..why now not start talks with shops like vesalia, and amigakit, or/and Jens Schoenfeld (individual computers) to get this project off flying? its not too late..

and please santa let someone in the world design a 060 turbocard for the amiga 1200, because ebay is way too expensive..

(sorry) just a wish...

@Uitgang

Nah, it's waaay too late, the hardware was low-end already a decade ago.

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amiga-news.de

@Senex

Low spec would be acceptable as for a hoppy machine, mean sales like 100-500, if price is acceptable.

I'm curious, what would have been price of you product for consumer?

@utri007

Sorry, no idea anymore, was too long ago and I don't have all that stuff at hand anymore. I just happened to be able to grab those photos above because once I did actually dig them up for Obligement to add Ariana to their list of prototypes.

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amiga-news.de

@Senex

Quote:

Well, there were two levels. The Amiga link obviously was our unique selling point. Initially everything went smoothly in this regard, porting and software development was on the way and also the Amiga licence negotiations with Garry Hare (Google translation for those not familiar with him) were successful, just lacking the signature. At that moment all of a sudden Bill McEwen dropped in with new requirements that were simply not acceptable.

I wonder if Garry Hare was getting the wrong memos or something since things seemed to be moving forward while he was in charge of Amiga Inc.
The various transcripts from the Amiga Parties v Hyperion case seemed to hint that Hyperion were frustrated with Bill M over the collapse of the AHT deal too.

All history now but it's still interesting to read from the people involved in these things.

@Uitgang

Quote:

and please santa let someone in the world design a 060 turbocard for the amiga 1200, because ebay is way too expensive..

who guarantees the development costs will not make your new board any more expensive?

oops

Last edited by wawa on 09-Dec-2012 at 01:02 PM.

@Liluh

Quote:

Liluh wrote: As for the drivers. I`m not sure which type of drivers you have on your mind? SDK, which was included on the original CD (and I have backup of that on my hd), had all what's necessary to write new drivers plus rtl8029 driver source code for reference. Drivers for OpenPCI and those made by Tobias Abt and Alex Kneer are different matter.

I guess he might mean the code that sets up the PCI slots (prometheus.library?). This might be useful in adding Prometheus support to AROS for example.

Regarding drivers for specific PCI cards, the RTL8029 driver was ported to AROS long ago, and I guess the graphics drivers were licensed from Picasso96. Were there any sound card drivers besides the OpenPCI ones?

I'll be happy to flash update my card

cheers

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