We wait for the official announcement.
But I link back to my post a few days ago with a quote from Trevor's Amiga Blog
were he introduced me as a member of the A-Eon core Linux Support Team.

https://morph.zone/modules/newbb_plus/viewtopic.php?forum=11&topic_id=11137&post_id=121579&viewmode=flat&sortorder=0&showonepost=1

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@Spectre666 you have a Tabor board?

Why is Tabor being compared to a Raspberry Pi? Pricewise it surely isn't one!

the new sam followup Board will have a dual core processor and 1,2GHz Speed. the price will be the same as the current sam.

[ Edited by Cego 11.10.2015 - 09:36 ]

That's good - hopefully "soon" considering that Acube have been out of Sam460 boards for a while now.

> Why is everyone taking this so hard ?

Have you clicked the 2nd link in comment #138?

> I have one too and it is a very nice board.

...but not for OS4 nor MorphOS.

Time will tell.
WIth the joint resources of A-Eon,Ultra Varisys,Acube and Hyperion and others I would bet that it will be a nice board for OS4 .

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> WIth the joint resources of A-Eon,Ultra Varisys,Acube and Hyperion and others

So has this board been developed by Varisys?

> I would bet that it will be a nice board for OS4 .

I have severe doubts about that. After all, the incompatibility of the e500v2 core is the reason the UltimatePPC has been put on hold (or cancelled?). And it was also discussed years before in feanor's market research for new PowerPC system.

I can't preempt the official announcement.
But the Hardware is what drives changes in software.

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If this is based an e500v2 cored cpu, you can bet one thing, it will "drive" away support from MorphOS.

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That sounds perhaps more interesting than the "Tabor", do you have any more info about that one? Like what is its CPU for example and planned availability etc?

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ONLY hardware that is an IMPROVEMENT.

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Tha Sam follow up _is_ the Tabor: Dual core 1.2 GHz priced between 700 EUR and 1000 EUR - unfortunately with an incompatible and slow fpu. Rumours have it a compatible FPU can be emulated though. We'll see. luckily this board is not too important fom a MorphOS centric POV since we have plenty hardware already.
If support is a cheap shot, then welcome. If support will be hard, don't waste development time on it and put the effort better into MorphOS NG.

I quote, especially the last sentence.

>>> WIth the joint resources of A-Eon,Ultra Varisys,Acube and Hyperion and others

>> So has this board been developed by Varisys?

> I can't preempt the official announcement.

Well, you mentioned Varisys in the context of Tabor, so this limits the possibilities :-)

>>> I would bet that it will be a nice board for OS4 .

>> I have severe doubts about that. After all, the incompatibility of the e500v2 core
>> is the reason the UltimatePPC has been put on hold (or cancelled?).

> But the Hardware is what drives changes in software.

Changes can be for the better or for the worse ;-) Except for automotive chips (e200 core), GPR-based FPU and SPE SIMD have been deprecated by Freescale with the advent of the e500mc core.

>don't waste development time on it and put the effort better into MorphOS NG.

Yes, as much as I am loath to admit it, I can't see supporting a board that requires different floating point routines.

And, I would have qualified this with a statement about the continued potential introduction of further e5500 or e6500 core based systems, but I'm not sure that the topic carries as much interest with me as it once did.

NG NG, might as well continue to lead, instead of following.

A-Eon's e500mc core option, the P3041 Cyrus +, was cancelled .


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[ Edited by Spectre660 11.10.2015 - 19:11 ]

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Ah, for some reason I got the impression that the follow-up to the Sam would be a second piece of HW.

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The Sam460cr is €539 (was it ever really available BTW?). So it's not at all "at the same price", far from it.

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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...

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gotta agree with you there. personally i want a machine that can dual-boot AOS4 and MOS, but i'd rather MOS NG come out sooner if i had to give up one or the other. i really think MOS NG is the future and am terribly excited about it. so, from my point of view, anything that takes development time away from it -- especially for custom boards given their costs -- is something i'd hope the dev team would punt on.

-- eliyahu

>> Except for automotive chips (e200 core), GPR-based FPU and SPE SIMD have
>> been deprecated by Freescale with the advent of the e500mc core.

> A-Eon's e500mc core option, the P3041 Cyrus +, was cancelled .

I know that A-Eon cancelled it, but what has this got to do with the price of fish? It was their own decision to cancel it. And even if cancellation was justified, why should that imply they had to go backwards to the e500v2?

if several boards were in the design stage at the same time and one was cancelled how does that imply going backwards ?

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Uh, because the e500v2 IS a step backwards.
What part of that didn't you get?
Of all the alternatives possible, A-eon picks one of the poorest ones.

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> isn't the "e500" kind of a slightly evolved/souped-up "G3" and running at higher clock?

https://morph.zone/modules/newbb_plus/viewtopic.php?topic_id=6313&forum=11&start=3

> the x16 slot only has [...] connected [...] 4 lanes. But the data sheet [...] 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?

Yes, it sounds reasonable to me that one of the three PCIe controllers uses four of the six SerDes lanes.

> 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?

Yes.

> if several boards were in the design stage at the same time and one was cancelled
> how does that imply going backwards ?

The core lineage goes as follows:

e500v1 -> e500v2 -> e500mc -> e5500 -> e6500

Going to the right means forward, going to the left means backward. Seen?

So, to recap, we have confirmation of ongoing work about MorphOS NG (I hereby baptize it "MetaMorphOS" and we should all call it this way :P) but without any eta. Given that the first discussions started on Alchimie 111111 (already 4 yrs ago :( ) I pretty much doubt we are going to see it materialize in the next 2-3 years, unless MorphOS Team, decides to focus on it and not split resources on advancing further the dead end PPC line. Well, at least, I personally hope that they will consider taking this path.

Tabor mobo, might be incompatible with current fpu instructions on software, thus resulting to a degree of slowdown when using it on real world applications. However, I prefer to wait for final announcement. Perhaps the cpu might change.

The game that will be coming to MorphOS is Wings Remastered? I think I heard that WR will be out for OS4, MorphOS and AROS on the YT stream, but perhaps I am wrong. Who did the port (Daytona again?), when will it be launched? What about the cost? Will we have a digital or physical option for us to buy?

When will MorphOS 3.10 be coming to public?

> Perhaps the cpu might change.

Unlikely, as this would mean doing all board design work all over.

> The game that will be coming to MorphOS is Wings Remastered?

Yes.

> I think I heard that WR will be out for OS4, MorphOS and AROS on the YT stream

Yes, that's what's been announced.

> Who did the port (Daytona again?)

Yes.

> when will it be launched?

Planned for February 2016.