Oh wow, I would not have expected that. Against the odds they succeeded after all!

Does that mean they will be able to produce and sell the board after the CE phase is done? I had a look at their homepage but it's not quite clear whether they would be an additional donation phase?

> Does that mean they will be able to produce and sell the board after
> the CE phase is done? I had a look at their homepage but it's not
> quite clear whether they would be an additional donation phase?

The certification phase has been the final phase and results in an open board design that can be manufactured by whoever has both the will and the means to. As it seems (see bottom of comment #223), there are plans by ACube (the board designers) to do this, but others (A-Eon?) may chime in.
Unfortunately, for the reasons detailed in the article linked to from comment #224 (summary: components shortage and absurd price increases, resulting in the need for sourcing alternative parts), the electrical schematics and subsequently the PCB design will have to be adapted once again. I'm not sure whether or not all or any of the subsequent phases (fast SI bus simulations, prototype production, testing, certification) will have to be redone, at least partly, after this.

Update:

> the electrical schematics and subsequently the PCB design
> will have to be adapted once again.

New schematics.

what a great move donating ten grand, thanx.

now there is hope this thing will come to live.

Yes, now it starts getting interesting.

Quote:

that's a bit concerning, tho.

all the 1000% price increases are probably going down again in the future, as they are demand related for sure.

Update:

>> the electrical schematics and subsequently the PCB design
>> will have to be adapted once again.

> New schematics.

New PCB design.

Interesting GPU choice.. It's an Radeon RX550 Polaris-v4 card. I was not aware these actually work on PPC-BigEndian Linux..

> Interesting GPU choice.. It's an Radeon RX550 Polaris-v4 card.

Yes, Lexa/GCN4. This choice has already been made in 2018 (see comment #140) and just upgraded from E9172 to E9174 and thus to 4 GiB VRAM from 2.

> I was not aware these actually work on PPC-BigEndian Linux.

Indeed. Let's wait for the prototypes with Linux to see how they cope with this.

Nice, they finally made it!

"Prototypes in production despite heavy chip shortages". Update 18.10.2022

Quote:

Rather "They are doing it", since they are not done?

But once they *are done* they will have ascended the project to the DRAGON ColdFire and Amiga Walker levels (two other vapor products)...

[ Edited by takemehomegrandma 21.10.2022 - 02:09 ]

Hey, where did that kind of pessimism come? Hard to imagine on the ever-prospering Amiga market with all its' positive vibes.

There simply isn't any way whatsoever that this would ever become self-sustainable outside the incubator, thus it will never be able to live and exist. Sorry.

> "Prototypes in production despite heavy chip shortages". Update 18.10.2022

"Considering all chips, the cost of each prototype resulted 1200 euros higher than what was initially planned"

That's disastrous. So the final product will either cost at least 1200 EUR (excl. VAT) more than planned just for the 4 mentioned chips, or yet another board redesign with reasonably priced replacement components is due.

Acube laptop is advancing, and hope it will really see light of the day.
Being PPC Linux only, it is viable platform for Linux PPC revival (Ubuntu has
stoppped supporting, OpenSUSE etc.), hopefully that Phoenix Moronix can be used.

Other then that, I dont have much hope for MOS (or OS4) on that, maybe we could do
AmiKit XE and some Linux rabbit hole for it, like those cancelled AEON Laptop,
that was stolen :)

Nice little Laptop, if Linux was optimized for it, and MOS released, would buy it to PowerBook, or LimeBook OS4 603 Class :)

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No it won't be even if it ever get released (which seems a more and more obscure outcome with every passing year).

8 years ago? Maybe, but in 2023 (or 24,25,.....)? It would sell in 3 digits and yes maybe someone somewhere will try to keep Linux updated for it just like it did happen with Pegasos and A1s and is now happening with the X5000.

> maybe we could do AmiKit XE and some Linux rabbit hole for it

Better use x64/AMD64 for this, really.

Quote:

It would've have sold in three digits 8 years ago. Now? Two digits perhaps.

Regarding the price: the prototypes are hopefully more expensive than the final, bigger, production. Still very expensive of course.

> Rather "They are doing it", since they are not done?

Prototypes ready now.

Update:

> The certification phase has been the final phase

Seems yet another phase may be required:

"We are trying to re-patch a recent version of U-Boot, quite some time has passed since we patched it to make it recognizing the graphic board we mounted on the PCIe port on the NXP T2080RDB board. Not just that, we must carefully customize the device tree to correctly map all peripherals available on the motherboard. [...] for setting up U-Boot it’s up to us to make it work properly, and more importantly, to make it correctly recognize all peripherals [...]. [...] we are still struggling to successfully customize U-Boot and to properly setup the device tree. Most of us already spent quite some time on the task during our spare time [...], so we are seriously evaluating to assign the job to a professional to get the job done in a reasonable amount of time, and to do that we need your financial support!"
https://www.powerpc-notebook.org/2023/02/prototypes-testing-results/

Update:

> Seems yet another phase may be required: […]

Not just another phase but an entire new donation campaign for another 16000 EUR:

- 5000 EUR: "customized U-Boot, the device tree and the AMD/ATI Radeon video driver"
- 1000 EUR: "JTAG debugger"
- 10000 EUR: "design of the heat pipes and production of 3 of them for the three prototypes"

https://www.powerpc-notebook.org/2023/06/ce-mark-certification-financed-new-campaign-for-the-software-part-and-heat-pipes/
https://www.powerpc-notebook.org/campaigns/development-of-software-components-and-heat-pipes-for-the-tyche-motherboard/

Overall, this means for all campaigns/phases:

I_0. 12600 EUR: Electrical schematics [accomplished]
I_1A. 19000 EUR: PCB [accomplished]
I_1B. 5000 EUR: Fast SI bus simulations [accomplished]
I_2. 13500 EUR: Prototypes [accomplished]
I_3. 14000 EUR: Testing [accomplished]
I_4. 12500 EUR: Certification [accomplished]
I_5. 5375 EUR: Prototypes and MXM graphics cards [accomplished]
II_1. 1000 EUR: JTAG debugger [10% done]
II_2. 5000 EUR: U-Boot [open]
II_3. 10000 EUR: Heat pipes [open]

If they keep their overall pace of 83% accomplishment in 6 years (= 14% per year) then it will be done in mid to late 2024.

Furthermore:

"We want to thank the dedicated small group of volunteers and especially Max Tretene for their precious spare time spent in trying to configure and compile U-Boot, we very much appreciate their availability and effort, even if a successful result is yet to comes. In addition, we greatly appreciated the offer made by a professional engineer – not to be disclosed yet- that is ready to work for us on U-Boot for a very reasonable amount of money."

I wonder who this is… ;-)

Quote:

If their goal is to not have a functional prototype within the 1st 10 years, then they are indeed at about 83%......

> If their goal is to not have a functional prototype within the 1st 10 years,
> then they are indeed at about 83%......

The maths behind this eludes me.

Quote:

Dunno, 1st post in this thread was made in 2014, it is now 2023, seems simple enough for me.....