DENEB Amiga USB Controller for Zorro-II/III Systems
Six years after introducing USB
to the Amiga Classic, E3B and PCP bring you the new USB 2.0 Zorro II/III
DMA controller card DENEB.
As the next consequential development, the DENEB card implements an
USB host controller with three ports (two external, one internal).
Each of them supports both USB 1.1 and the 480 MBit/s USB 2.0
highspeed mode.
The DENEB USB card is suitable 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 transfers and reduces
the CPU load significantly, leaving resources for multitasking.
As an additional benefit, high data transfer rates are made possible.
Developped especially for classic OS3.x systems, the DENEB
additionally works nicely on the
new Amiga OS4 Classic (JIT)
and MorphOS (natively) 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 even 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 the 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 hardware 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 8 MB/s (DMA) and 6 MB/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 controller by factors.
A large integrated 48 MBit FlashROM (4 MB user, 2 MB firmware) allows
integration of Poseidon during cold startups and enables direct booting
from USB media (like USB SATA hard disk drives or memory 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 hard disk accesses. The 4 MB 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 the need to
send in the board. New features and bug fixes can be provided easily.
As an additional bonus the DENEB features a clockport for connecting
existing clockport cards.
With the DENEB USB board, the Amiga Classic can reclaim a good piece
of modern technology and opens the access to affordable USB devices
for all Amiga users.
The DENEB card has been manufactured according to RoHS specifications.
For long endurance of the Zorro connector it has been refined with
hard gold plated contacts.
Technical Features:
- Zorro-II/III card with flexible FPGA bus interface
- Real Zorro-III busmaster (dependent on system configuration)
- Both Zorro-II and Zorro-III usage also possible in PIO mode
(AmigaOS 4.0!)
- Supports Fast Zorro-II on
Winner ZIV boards
- Real USB2.0 with full support for high speed mode (480 MBps)
- Integrated 3 port hub (one internal, two external USB ports)
- All ports are safe against overvoltage and overcharge
- Integrated power management
- Energy-saving 1.8V/2.5V/3.3V technology
- Compatible with all 68030/040/060 and PPC accelerator cards
- Integrated Flash ROM (4 MB) to host the Poseidon USB stack
- Additional Flash ROM (2MB) for firmware and installation software
- 22-pin expansion port, clockport-compatible (optional, dependent on firmware)
- Bus interface can be updated by software
Software Support:
- Fully compatible with
Amiga OS 3.1,
3.5,
3.9 and
4.0 (PIO mode)
- Fully integrated into the Amiga OS via system-friendly drivers
- Convenient control of the USB stack via GUI (MUI)
- Drivers for USB mice and keyboards (HID devices), printers,
cardreaders (SCSI emulation) and soundcards included
Package Contents:
- DENEB USB controller
- Slot bracket with two USB ports
- Detailed English installation manual
- Registration card
- Poseidon V4.0 OEM version (no keyfile required)
System Requirements:
- Amiga OS 3.1 or higher
- CPU 68030 (25 MHz) or better
- 100% compatible Zorro-II/-III bus
- Buster 9 or 11 for Zorro-III DMA
- Power supply delivering at least 1.5A @ 5V (max. 500 mA on every USB port)
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