There is apparently a PPC Laptop in the works:

Italian:
http://deliriotecnologico.blogspot.it/2014/10/linuxday-notebook-powerpc-da-costruire.html#more
Google Translate English:
https://translate.google.se/translate?sl=it&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=sv&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Fdeliriotecnologico.blogspot.it%2F2014%2F10%2Flinuxday-notebook-powerpc-da-costruire.html%23more&edit-text=
Homepage:
http://www.powerpc-notebook.org/

Even though this is a GNU/Linux project, I bet they would welcome a MorphOS port since it will raise it's sales. I obviously have no idea if it's a good idea or not but it's worth mentioning. I would buy one of these to use with MorphOS for sure. Especially if it's not too expensive or too underpowered.

[ Edited by Yasu 06.11.2014 - 10:57 ]

Excellent ! A new hardware for MorphOS

i go out...

Quote:

Note it is at an idea stage, with not even a board schematics,
and depending on "crowd-funding".
http://www.powerpc-notebook.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/LinuxDay2014_Mi_presentation_pub_en.pdf

While it would be nice to have a new laptop, possibly more powerful
then Mac G4s, we ll see how it will do. And we could participate in
crowd funding at least.

If it could out-perform a Powerbook G4 then cool, if not, then pointless.

I wouldn't say pointless, it just has to improve over the PBs in one way or the other.

Longer battery life, lighter, better (HighRes) LCD and a few other bits would be welcomed, even if it was a bit slower than a PB.

Quote:


I wouldn't say it's actually in the works, but rather that there's one guy who like to move such a project forward. Good luck to him, but others failed before, hence better don't hold your breath.


[ Editiert durch Zylesea 06.11.2014 - 15:18 ]

> Google Translate English:
> https://translate.google.se/translate?sl=it&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=sv&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Fdeliriotecnologico.blogspot.it%2F2014%2F10%2Flinuxday-notebook-powerpc-da-costruire.html%23more&edit-text=

There's a proper English article in the author's other blog:

http://techuman.wordpress.com/2014/10/17/gnulinux-powerpc-notebook-project-at-linuxday-2014/

> if it's not too expensive

If it ever comes to fruition, it will be relatively (not necessarily prohibitively) expensive due to low production quantities alone.

> or too underpowered.

Concluding from the announced specs, the processor to be used is the QorIQ T2080:

https://morph.zone/modules/newbb_plus/viewtopic.php?forum=3&topic_id=7001&start=737
https://morph.zone/modules/newbb_plus/viewtopic.php?forum=3&topic_id=7183&start=921
https://morph.zone/modules/newbb_plus/viewtopic.php?forum=3&topic_id=7183&start=945

Up to 1.8 GHz with AltiVec isn't too shabby I'd say. Of course, they may clock it lower because of power dissipation, heat and battery life.

> I wouldn't say it's actually in the works

The author claims it is:

"Our passion on innovation and for this project have already motivated a producer to start to design the mobo of this PowerPC Notebook."
http://www.powerpc-notebook.org/subscribe-powerpc-notebook-newsletter/

Quote:

Of course, but everything is relative. If it's a good design, made to last instead of forcing the user to buy a new laptop every 3 years then it might be worth it. It's not like the new versions of MorphOS is going to make it feel slower and slower

The project is open: anyone could contribute if he has necessary know-how.

Also we amigans can ask him to keep room on the motherboard for open-smart firmware chip...

Also as being open source hardware could be possible for A-Cube, A-Eon and bPlan members in help the project if they want to...

In the end, FYI the CPU used is not bad at all, as it is 64bit PPC core.
Even at 1.8 GHz it could outperform any 7447 G4 32bit design...

> we amigans can ask him to keep room on the motherboard for open-smart firmware chip...

What for?

> as being open source hardware

"The design at this stage is not open but we accept suggestions…"
http://www.powerpc-notebook.org/faq/

Quote:

In the beginning I believed they want to use EFI firmware that actually is not compatible with any Amiga-Like Operating System.

As long I read specs, this laptop will run with U-Boot that is good for AmigaOS only.

MorphOS instead uses Open-smart firmware to run and if I remeber well chip used for Open-Firmware is twice big as U-Boot. Am I wrong?

Quote:

In some docs they say they "intended" to open it... In the faq you pointed they say they are "considering" to but project is not open.

I hope it will not end in opening the project in the same way that Genesi promised with Pegasos II motherboard, when they disclosed pratically nothing...


[ Edited by Raf_MegaByte 07.11.2014 - 14:52 ]

post up when its more than just baby batter and an actual piece of running hardware.

@Raf_MegaByte

Choice of firmware is pretty irrelevant (as long as it's no bugridden POS...) as you will need to writer proper driver for the HW anyways.


All UBoot,OF,EFI,??? really do is scan PCI/AGP/... for devices, do some basic setup, create a device-tree of some sort and than load some OS image.

Putting the Quark-kernel + ABox into and UBoot compatible file is propraly trivial.
Adapting that kernel to traverse a UBoot device-tree instead of an OF one doesn't sound like that big of a task.
Writing drivers for all those components on the other hand....

>>> we amigans can ask him to keep room on the motherboard for open-smart firmware chip...

>> What for?

> this laptop will run with U-Boot that is good for AmigaOS only.

In addition to what Kronos said, MorphOS is being ported to Sam460 (and has already been shown running on it), which has U-Boot.

> MorphOS instead uses Open-smart firmware to run

MorphOS also runs with non-"smart" OpenFirmware (on PPC Macs), and has also run with other firmwares in the past.

> I hope it will not end in opening the project in the same way that Genesi
> promised with Pegasos II motherboard, when they disclosed pratically nothing...

Well, they have open-sourced the Pegasos II motherboard, but just "forgot" to do same with the CPU board ;-) (btw, was that ever given at a later point?)

> post up when its more than just baby batter and an actual piece of running hardware.

Not there yet:

"The manufacturer is going forward and defines the notebook specifications. So we are reaching step by step the next milestone. Finally we give publically the specification of the processor family that our notebook will adopt! It will use a Freescale processor based on a e6500 64-bit Power Architecture Core Technology that includes Altivec technology with 16 GFLOPS per core. It was decided like this because the manufacturer have found a new partner interested in this architecture. Thanks to the collaboration with this new partner there are now more opportunities to keep the price down for our Power Architecture Notebook. [...] The adoption of this processor family gives us access to interesting capabilities like energy management which is very important for a notebook. We’ll have access to 4 cores (8 virtual core thanks to the dual threaded cores) and Altivec instructions necessary for high performance multimedia applications. The notebook will have 2 memory slots for DDR3L RAM (low power). The notebook will have USB2 and USB3 ports. Freescale have supported us giving us an e6500 development board so we could start to test Debian PowerPC 64bit on the same processor core that will be in our notebook. [...] Soon we will start testing on the Freescale e6500 core processor, as soon as the Debian Powerpc 64bit install image is ready."
http://www.powerpc-notebook.org/2015/05/powerpc-notebook-new-specifications-and-development-status/

>>Well, they have open-sourced the Pegasos II motherboard, but just "forgot" to do same with the CPU board (btw, was that ever given at a later point?)

What indeed?

Still, a laptop with an e6500 cored processor sounds neat.
Then again, since MorphOS doesn't support SMP, isn't that overkill?

Quote:

Not if the MorphOS Dev. Team can work on 64bit SMP and memory protection for MorphOS on PPC, using the G5 PowerMac's and this new PPC laptop, before they try to move to another architecture.

About T2080...

When they later have time to tinker with configurations, it will be interesting to see how they can clock it for mobile use.
When the HW of 7 vcores are put to sleep, the last one most likely is able to be run at 1.8Ghz even in mobile device for single core using OSs.

(8 cores is a bit overkill, but when the main target users are Linux fans, it's understandable)


>using the G5 PowerMac's and this new PPC laptop

MorphOS team already use also the dualcore x5000.
But sure, to verify that the SMP design scales well, T2080 is good playground.
I believe when they have SMP MorphOS in testing, they do not have problem in getting their hands also on T4240 development board with 24vcores (costs below EUR2000).



[ Edited by KimmoK 01.06.2015 - 08:52 ]

Quote:

Well, these schematics just tell how it works the chip connections but are pretty and unuseful.

I had preferred they had released electro CAD gerber files, so anyone with electronic skills could had directly modified original Pegasos II project and upgraded it to make it born a new machine.

[ Edited by Raf_MegaByte 01.06.2015 - 11:40 ]

> since MorphOS doesn't support SMP, isn't that overkill?

It's not exactly like market is overflown by newly available Power Architecture laptops/notebooks/netbooks (let alone single-core ones) for users of a PPC-only OS to choose from, is it? ;-) And besides, this device is primarily targeted at Linux, which supports SMP.
If it comes to fruition, the MorphOS team can decide whether or not to support it. And if they do, they better make use of the SoC's ability to have unused cores/clusters (almost) completely switched off.

Gerber files are not as easily modified as you think.
When you are designing with devices that operate at high speed the length and location of every trace is important.
Modify a functional design and you risk introducing unwanted issues into the design.

Quote:

A built in keyboard and built in numeric keypad is welcome too.

And so is a two button touchpad.

Quote:

I request MorphOS have these features added even before an ISA change. And place ABox into an emulator. Thanks.

Quote:

Abox doesn't have to be placed into an emulator to implement these functions, but it won't benefit from them.


[ Edited by Jim 01.06.2015 - 13:38 ]