Yokemate of Keyboards
Posts: 2720 from 2003/2/24
Quote:
Zylesea wrote:
Tha Sam follow up _is_ the Tabor:
Ah, for some reason I got the impression that the follow-up to the Sam would be a second piece of HW.
Quote:
priced between 700 EUR and 1000 EUR
The Sam460cr is €539 (was it ever really available BTW?). So it's not at all "at the same price", far from it.
Quote:
unfortunately with an incompatible and slow fpu.
Yes,
the e500v2 has been confirmed by Christian. He say the FPU is fast, at least on a Linux where the OS and applications has been specially compiled for it. This is of course completely impossible in the case of OS4. And he say that regular PPC Linux works but that the OS must emulate a normal FPU then. Then it won't be fast at all. This is how it must be done by OS4 as well. Anything he say in that post about performance in DebianPPCSPE is irrelevant for OS4.
He say he is surprised by the performance. Probably his specially compiled Linux setup also makes extensive use of the RadeonHD GPU for offloading things like video and whatnot. But isn't the "e500" kind of a slightly evolved/souped-up "G3" and running at higher clock? No Altivec, and in this case no usable HW FPU as well (for OS4). Nothing you do heavy rendering on, in other words?
Speaking of GFX cards, what about the PCIe slot? Pavlor say it's v1.0 (250MB/s per lane). I get as much as the x16 slot only has a few lanes connected, but how many? Pavlor claims 4 lanes. But the data sheet (linked to by Pavlor
) speaks about many controllers but *not available simultaneously* (depends on HW configuration perhaps?), so with the known other features of the Tabor, does x4 lanes for graphics sound reasonable? If so, it should offer about the same GFX bandwidth as the AGP 4x available in most of the decade old Mac HW that most of us use with MorphOS, right?
Well, all in all I think this could have been a nice machine. Had it had a proper FPU. At half its price. And had it been 10 years ago. As it stands, "our" Macs still seem like a far better option in all aspects; power, price, bang/buck, the versatility of models, etc. And MorphOS of course!
"We" have made the most and the best out of what the PPC platform has to offer and are enjoying it fully, "they" are still "chasing the dragon".
Ah, well...
MorphOS is Amiga
done right! 
MorphOS NG will be AROS
done right!
