Six years after introducing USB to the Amiga Classic, E3B (Michael B?hmer) and PCP (Chris Hodges) are pleased to announce the new USB 2.0 Zorro II/III DMA controller DENEB.

Please read all details of the DENEB on our website in the press release and the product page.

DENEB is available from now on directly at E3B and selected Amiga dealers.

Why is this relevant for MorphOS? Because the card also works under MorphOS PUP and can be used to boot MorphOS PUP directly from FlashRom.

As the next consequential development the DENEB implements an USB host 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 mode.

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

keine Website verf?gbar

Relec

http://www.relec.ch/