Daystar announced that they are now shipping the Freescale 7448 Upgrade for Macs up to 2 GHz.

Daystar News Release

And what about the Pegasos Upgrade?

...We would expect Apple Vendors to get upgrades of the 7448 before us... Wouldn't we?

I can't see that Genesi would benefit by selling 7448 upgrades to excisting users, prior to moving the Peg II's over to the 7448 first... only after new machines are being made with the 7448 or 7448B will we see the upgrade path become available to the rest of us. Its just a matter of smart business... first they must sell off the rest of the 7447's and then make a new investment into the 7448's. Of course right now they are working on/ investing in the blade systems. I would not expect to see any new news about Peg II hardware upgrades until at least the 3rd quarter of this Year... Of course this is just my speculation

take it or leave it

katos1

@ katos1

Well, you cant buy a Pegasos Board anymore at the Genesi Shop so I think they were out of stock (ok, seems this Muiltimedia Center thingy is still available). Also the Pegasos needs an Upgrade/Redesign because of the RoHS story starting in July this year or they can't sell it anymore. I am a bit confused about the future.

I asked GigaDesigns 1 or 2 years ago about CPU Upgrades. They said they want to look at it but it seems it was out of interest then. Maybe I should repeat that with Daystar.

Ya,

You've got a point... then it doesn't make sense for a board redesign... Genesi is much better off getting the Blade server motherboard ready for production, and maybe after that is up and running contracting a redesign of the cpu card only... then again they might have already done that... and are just waiting to release the new cards after the new system is out... or maybe not. It would be nice to get some CPU card upgrades... but I wonder if it is a reality at this time... and if it would make financial sense right now?

@ katos1

Maybe Daystar is able to do something because they buy the CPUs in higher quantities and could use some for a Pegasos Upgrade. Well will see what they have to say about this topic. I wrote an email to them some minutes ago.

[ Edited by DJBase on 2006/3/8 20:30 ]

i thought there were some CPU cards coming soon from Genesi... there were some half-official news about some 1,7Ghz cards in january...

@SoundSquare

I do remember that, but even if they are coming, I don't see the date being soon, so that would mean that the cpu card would still have to be redesigned or at least certified... I doubt there is much that needs redesigning, just the work done on changing the Manufacturing process...

Also we have no actual dates... if we could get a 1.7ghz 7448 I would run it... DNETC could use more muscle, while we await Mos 1.5

@katos1

well i heard the cards were done already and the manufacturer (not genesi, i forgot their names, but i even sent an email to them last month, i'll look for it) was offering to sell some of them to the users directly. I guess Genesi asked them not to do so, cause they took the offer back after a few days.

another great mystery.

@Soundsquare:
Weren't these cards suppossed to come out in March? Did you get any answer from them?

For those who may care, the company that suppossedly was producing these cards was Thomasoft (a Swiss company).

Since their contact information can be easily found in a kind of Swiss Yellow Pages (http://freeweb.econophone.ch/thomasoft/thomasoft.htm), I will try and give them a call if (I find the time).

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There is something wrong. Thomasoft is not a hardware manufacturer, its just a dealer. They wanted to sell the cards in some special preorder-way before they will be available to all. The cards will stillbe produced by bplan.

well no i never got any reply from them. I would have been surprised to get anything anyway.

so what happened with these cards ?

I think we should make use of current G4 version at first (Altivec)...

I know, there is also Linux, but we are at MorphZone, not at LinuxZone now... ;)

If people want a faster CPU why not let them buy it? Nobody knows if or when we will get official AltiVec support. I also think this Forum even if it is named MorphZone is a good starting point for all kind of questions regarding Pegasos, if i have random questions i also post them here in the "Off topic" section and mostly get good answers.

[ Edited by Donar on 2006/3/11 12:06 ]

@Kamul

Altivec yes but what for? MorphOS with or without Altivec wouldn't make much of a difference.

dnetc, mencoder, mplayer for a start.
And there is the freevec lib to speed up programs in general.

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If my memory is correct (let me check... yes, I've taken my memory pills this morning ) this 1,7GHz card was announced as a "private initiative by Thomas ..." (I can't remember his surname). So I couldn't tell whether the cards were suppossed to be manufactured by bplan or not.

@Soundsquare:
Altivec is part of the most sacred holy graal. To speak of it like that amounts to blasphemy .

My point of view is that a faster CPU would be very useful to speed up multimedia (while waiting for Altivec support) and to permanently speed up emulators and alternative OSes (Linux, MOL).

BTW, I have just one ignorant question for the knowledgeable out there: What is the most difficult part of adapting the current design to host a 7748? Maybe pin order is not exactly the same (easy to overcome), but voltages and signals seem to be the same (if we drop the 7448's ability to clock itself down and reduce it's power consumption). So where lies the biggest obstacle to designing this card?

The biggest obstacle might be the investment needed to make a batch
that is not only fitting to the market size, but at a cost that most
will buy! ...and be profitable...

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Just to know, i looked to my CPU card today, and I dont know if somebody have noted but the CPU cards in PEgII have a ( PEGASOS SINGLE CPU for 744X rev. 1.2) "printed label" in the back, so this revision may already work with 7448 G4s with little changes if any.

The 7448 is pin compatible to 7447/7447A so you could just replace the cpu on the existing card and set clock/power.

@DJBase:
I've read that the 7448 is pin compatible with the 7447A, but didn't know that the 7447A is pin compatible with the 7447.

In other words, we only need to change the power controller (probably not, just add a heat sink) and the clock.

Has anyone checked whether the clock on the CPU card is soldered (on some computers it is on a slot - never checked in my peggy, though)?

Finally, I have a heretical thought... Should we look into this matter more "seriously" and maybe even run a cost estimate for new CPU cards? If we can design them, we could make a "grouped purchase order" to some manufacturer. If we can get interesting prices, we could then use the bounty system in Morphzone (people "donating" the cost of a single card) to get the money together to purchase a batch of faster cards. That way we can get them for the real manufacturing cost and in the near future.

[ Edited by winterhunter on 2006/3/14 11:23 ]

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Then we have the RoHS thing, and maybe some adjustments needs to be done, or at least checking all the components? Shouldn't really be much of an obstacle for a small PCB like the Pegasos CPU card, probably a "no issue" really in practice, but from what I understand, Genesi is quite busy ATM with several important projects going on in parallell, and I guess all of them has a higher priority than a faster CPU card for the Pegasos 2? I mean, Carda&Knäbel are probably quite busy meeting deadlines that can *really* make a difference for the future of the company, as opposite to an optional CPU upgrade for a small platform that's already up and functional (putting efforts on fundamental things vs. "luxery" things). A thing very much related to this is the firmware - the latest version of the firmware needs to be released for public download AFAIK, and they are obviously not quite ready to do that just yet. And besides, wasn't the faster versions of the 7448 introduced just recently anyway, so a simple thing like *availability* could have played a part also? To sum up, I don't think there are any serious obstacles for Genesi in releasing a 7448 upgrade, and I think it will come soon enough.

I think we have a very interesting spring/summer ahead of us on the HW side! We will see the Efika developer program be launched. We will also know more about the follow-up project with on-board graphics and other things, codename "4U2", and possibly also *even more* designs based around the MPC5200B SoC. Speaking of graphics, did you read BBRV's latest blogs (here and here)? That sounds very interesting! Wonder what GFX chip manufacturer they are speaking of? They have been in communication with both nvidia and ati a numerous times during the last years, and maybe it has finally paid off? Or is it perhaps XGI? Whoever it may be, access to insider docs/source code should do magic. We will also see (hopefully) the OSW/Dual 970MP board released during this time frame, which should be quite exciting hardware, and a developer program connected to that as well. But before that I actually expect both an updated firmware and a CPU upgrade for the Pegasos 2. Speaking of the Pegasos 2, it will be interesting to see what happens to that one. The clock is ticking and the RoHS deadline comes closer. Someone needs to go through the design and component list and check RoHS compatibility (obviously, that has not yet been done), but the "spare time" for the two engineers over there is probably limited ATM. Genesi isn't selling the board directly to end users through their webshop anymore (it's still available through dealers of course, at least up to the RoHS deadline, if nothing happens in the meantime). It will be interesting to see what happens to the Pegasos 2. Will it be fully RoHS assured and continued like before? Will it be terminated? Or will there perhaps be an *upgraded* general purpuse 32-bit design to replace it, based on the Marvell Discovery V perhaps, with PCI-Express etc? Every developer needs a desktop (read that blog), and any 32-bit 5200 design needs to be backed up by a good developer desktop platform, cause the 5200 isn't the answer for that. Or are they perhaps considering the 64-bit 970MP for this? Does that make sense? It seems they are dreaming of making that one a developer platform for all three NG game consoles at least . Anyway, I look forward to lots of interesting news/products during the coming half year or so, *including* a CPU upgrade for existing Pegasos 2 motherboards!

(Edit: Wow, seems I typed more text than I first intended! )

[ Edited by takemehomegrandma on 2006/3/14 13:30 ]

edit: Wrote nonsense, should take a lesson how to read.

[ Edited by Zylesea on 2006/3/14 14:19 ]

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The clock is set by resistors which are soldered on the cpu card.

Quote:

In the beginning of last year, someone released a small article covering how to "custom clock" the Pegasos CPU cards, with schematics, tables and all. A simple thing to do really, and it's all on the CPU card.

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No offence buddy, but you almost sound like some of the people over at AW.net, where every two user or so is designing (or at least *talks* a lot about it ) their own hardware "to save the Amiga".

Seriously, I seriously doubt that you (or anyone else here) could do a better job and reach a better end-user price for 7448 cards than Genesi themselves. Needless to say, they are the true experts on the design, with years of experience () on the motherboard as well as the 7447/7447A/7448 CPU's, the firmware, etc. They also have a close relation with Freescale, which I think is almost essential in this context.

But perhaps you were talking more in line of dusting off your old soldering iron to try replacing a standard 7447 with a 7448 on an existing card, just for fun/hobby, to see if it will work? Then sure, go ahead and try! But make sure that you have a spare one to fall back to, after you have destroyed your first!

Quote:

http://www.pegasosforum.de/kb.php?mode=article&k=13