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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.

Addendum:

> the incompatibility of the e500v2 core is the reason the UltimatePPC has been
> put on hold (or cancelled?).

Interestingly, two years ago and more than one year after the UltimatePPC team announced they would eventually reconsider their choice of CPU, Trevor Dickinson reached out to them:

http://eab.abime.net/showpost.php?p=919823
http://eab.abime.net/showpost.php?p=919837

Any guesses what they talked about? :-)

@Andreas_Wolf

You forgot to quote and approve the new official name that I 've given to MOS NG :P

Regarding the game, do you have any additional details such as recommended specs (cause Steam reports cpu >2Ghz), cost & pre-order option? Graphically speaking, will it be just like the windows version? How the hell it was ported since it is based on Unity? And last but not least, is there a list of MorphOS compatible flight joysticks? Cause I 'll sure will be needing one :P

> do you have any additional details such as recommended specs (cause Steam reports
> cpu >2Ghz), cost & pre-order option? Graphically speaking, will it be just like the
> windows version? How the hell it was ported since it is based on Unity?

Unfortunately no. All I know is from there:

http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=de&tl=en&u=http://www.amiga-news.de/de/news/AN-2015-10-00032-DE.html

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I just don't get it. So much of OS4 land is an alternate universe where getting slower and more expensive is an achievement. If you try to make sense of it, you are "trolling".

We're probably to the point this question warrants a new thread, but I'll try here first.

It sounds to me that the X5000 is in the hands of not just MorphOS developers, but at least a handful of beta testers too? This weekend MorphOS was just demoed on the X5000.

So... Could someone kindly start posting benchmarks? I have a genuine curiosity here. It has been a full decade since the last PowerMac G5, can this X5000 beat one in any category besides power consumption and noise? I'd hope there are no NDAs blocking the posting of such benchmarks.

[ Edited by redrumloa 12.10.2015 - 08:48 ]

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Daytona has already stated that he will be using his own rendering routines for Tower57 ports to AmigaNG platforms. I would assume that it will be the same for the Wings Remastered port, not a port of the Unity game engine to any AmigaNG platform.

> I would assume that it will be [...] not a port of the Unity game engine to any AmigaNG platform.

Correct.

http://amigaworld.net/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?topic_id=40603&forum=16&start=20#770033
http://amigaworld.net/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?topic_id=40621&forum=32#770288
http://www.amiga.org/forums/showpost.php?p=797272

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Its a little premature, the port is not (to the best of my knowledge) 100% ready for distribution.

> this ever-shrinking "market" that is probably already all-saturated by the X1000

Considering that, according to Trevor Dickinson at AmiWest 2015, the X1000/Nemo has sold out in September 2015, the market does not seem completely saturated at least :-) They will start with a batch of 500 boards with P5020.

The awesome thing about MorphOS on the X5000 is it will be ready to go before an offical release of 4.1FE is! From what I saw of 4.1FE being installed on a beta testers machine this weekend it has a lot of work left to make it a fluid process. It never got installed on the machine the user was setting up.

This doesnt mean its bad, but it could be the machine had a problem with the board. It would be impressive if MOS came out before and worked as well as it does on the hardware we currently have it on!

Qestion is though if A-Eon would release the board with only MorphOS working on it. They might as you don't have to pay for MorphOS to try it out while waiting for their copy of AmigaOS (just like X1000 users got a 4.2 license while using 4.1).

On the other hand, Trevor is mainly an AmigaOS 4 guy (he doesn't hide or appologise for that) so maybe he will wait anyway. I hope for the first while suspecting the latter.

I geuss they will release the board not without OS4 meaning not before it ships with it. Maybe there will be some updates later on but I can not imagine that they release the "OS4 board" without OS4 running on it. Otherwise they would loose many customers to MOS and as A-Eon is a company closer to OS4 than MOS they will probably wait for it. And as I read MOS does not fully install on it yet too. There are still works to do on the installation process and details. So there is more work for the MOS team as well. Means we do not know which one is earlier ready on it: OS4 or MOS. I think the board will come out when OS4 is ready, maybe when both are at the same time.

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Based on the remarks he made at AmiWest, A-Eon will wait for OS4 to be completed for the X5000 before they ship any mainboards to end consumers, which seems reasonable given that the hardware was designed to run this specific operating systems.

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I fear that this impression (or reality) will always trouble the creation of custom hardware for any NG Amiga inspired platform, because the time it takes to design and produce such custom hardware is always going to be measured in many months, if not years, so by the time any custom hardware is announced, there will always be something newer and better announced, or available.

As Trevor and others have tried to explain, the choice of the P1022 was made due to availability at the time A-Eon's choices had to be made. Hindsight is always going to look better and sometimes, the choice made may not turn out to be the best available when looking backward. It is always a gamble, specially when committing to purchase in quantities such as 500 units for the Cyrus+ boards and CPU's, and 1,000 units for the Tabor boards and P1022 CPU's.

A-Eon now has to make the best of those choices and hope they can deliver a product that Amiga users will want to purchase. Time will tell if their gamble will be profitable, break even, or lose money due to poor sales. As a friend of Trevor's, I hope that he is successful, but I also hope that he succeeds so that he can continue to go forward and produce future systems for our community. The Amiga community would be a duller place if A-Eon were to fail and close their operations some time in the next few years.

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It might very well be impressive but MorphOS 3.10 will feature other improvements than X5000 support. Unless these are ready to be published for all target platforms, 3.10 is not likely to be released.

I wouldnt expect the board to ship without OS4 being ready for it, I just meant it would be awesome to know MorphOS would be ready the day it does ship if things continue as fast as they are.

Also, here is a real nice show of the X5000 in a custom case I took.

https://goo.gl/photos/o6kPoFG3ky587Yxk9

[ Edited by Acill 20.10.2015 - 14:48 ]