Samantha:
PPC440 667Mhz
512mB Ram onboard
ATI Mobility M9 chip with 64 Mb onchip
Serial ATA controller with 4 ports
Cirrus Logic audio chip
LatticeXP FPGA chip with a 96 pin expansion connector
1x PCI
1x mini PCI
Nec USB 2.0
2x 100mbit LAN
2x itc ports
4 com ports
dvi and SPI interface
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Extra Info

Efika:
Freescale MPC5200B PowerPC SoC up to 400MHz
128MB DDR RAM (configurable from 32MB to 512MB)
44-pin IDE connector
10/100Mbit/s Ethernet
2x USB ports
1x RS232 Serial port
Stereo Audio out, Microphone and Line-input
PCI/AGP riser slot
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Extra Info

What do you think it-s the best fit for the job*
I for once think that the USB2.0 gives Samantha the edge, even if it was only because of that

Quote:

What about price and avaibility ?

Both hardware specifications are nice... but for PDA, not for desktop!

They both have nice specs but IMHO Samantha has more to offer like SATA, USB 2, onboard Video and a faster processor. If the price is right (thinking about 250E~350E incl OS4) and they get themselves an OS4 license I might even get one.

~toto

[ Edited by Toto on 2006/9/23 20:09 ]

Quote:
Price for the first batch will be around 370-399 Euro + VAT. First batch mainly aimed at industrial/embedded customers (they have some already), so price doesn't seem to include AOS4 and licence.

@cdfr:
"Official" presentation (i.e. not to the Amiga community, but to specialized press, customers and the likes) is scheduled around december, so that might give a hint.

Kind regards,
Andrea

over 500 euros to run os4 on a pocketcalculator? Come on...

Samantha vs Efika? wow!!! i like the idea!

On which pr0n channel? at what hour? (GMT+1)

hooligan: well.. apparently some people pay more of cell phones, which run windows, so it's where you compare it :) But I think that both of boards should be really cheap to get any interest on desktop... I'd rather see boards with better specs for MOS/OS4 to really get interested.

Samantha looks like a nice little computer, with a rich feature set. Pity is, I guess MorphOS-Team isn't interested either. As this computer does not come from Genesi, could that be a reason for them to have MorphOs running on it?
My question raises again: MOS-team, what happens when the only platform on which MorphOS runs gets out of production?
Allright, MOS is your pet project, I can hear "mind your own business"...

While i think the specs of the Samantha are not too bad, I doubt it
will make a satisfying (= i.e. will meet the expectations) small
desktops system. The performance of the 440 is not bad for *embedded*
usage,but it has *no* L2 cache. Th 266 MHz DDR ram (SODIMM)
will not be fast enough to compensate that lack. While running at 550 or even 667 MHz it will cause many waitsates.
The Efika has no L2 cache either, but since running only at 400 MHz it
will suffer less under wait states, resulting in a overall
performance which will be roughly be en par with Samatha. But Efika
will have a lower price,smaller dimensions and consume less energy.
Also it will feature the Smart Firmware and has a higher chance to see
MOS one day..

I can't see why anyone would be interested in paying more money for a system that has (far) lower specs than the already available and trusted Peg 2.

It's not like the Peg board is too big to be a real problem, or that these boards are small enough to offer any really exciting possibilities anyway.

Fortunately I'm confident the MOS team won't waste their time on such nonsense. Come back when it's a) available and b) comes at a price that matches the very, very low specs.

i thought Samantha was targeted for OS4 anyway ?

Quote:
yes and no, the primary target is the embedded/industrial market.
An OS4 porting/licensing is on the todo list, but it isn't targeted only to the amiga market

but anyway who cares ?

[ Edited by raistlin77it on 2006/9/25 21:52 ]

And what do you think about EFIKA?

A "pocketcalculator" would be enough for many.. it is a computer hobby. And my calculator isn't that powerfull....

Efika for MOS and Samantha for OS4. It depends on which OS you want to run.

If i want MOS i don't care if Samantha cost less and it is more powerfull and viceversa imho.

Samantha specs are impressive imho, the pcb is completely full of goodies

Honestly Efika and Samantha are not fast enough to run all software at decent speed.

@Ikir

What I meant was that a DESKTOP OS's like OS4 doesnt suit very well to run on Efika or Samantha, or how to put it, some of the apps. Plus, the rest of the world is going up with mhz and in the amigaworld the mhz is going down... whats the deal here?

And when you mention hobby os. Hobbies are also playing modern games. Amiga has always been known as a good gamesmachine. What kind of modern game you can play with Efika or Samantha?

And its not only games, you cant do lots of cool and useful things on Efika or Samantha as they just aren't up to it. And for some it might be even ok, but if the price is 500 euros + OS4 pricetag.. it doesnt sound very inviting.



[ Edited by hooligan on 2006/9/26 21:32 ]

Discovered a funny thing.. my calculator has MC68000 cpu on it

http://www.ticalc.org/basics/calculators/ti-89-ti.html

Have your realized that bplan has released information about Efika, and even a video, shot during its presentation in "EBV Tech Trends Symposium 2006"?
Have you realized that Genesi in not mentioned in the slightest way, nor Genesi told anything about this event?
The video is fairly good, and shows at least one fully functioning Efika unit, running some (to me) unknown operating system, that almost for sure is Linux. Performance wise, it can be seen running a 3D game, about a familiar looking penguin rolling down a snowed hill. It looked fairly well, albeit simple. The last frames on the video show what looks like a Windows XP desktop (?!). Is there any Linux distribution that close in appeareance? Why chosing such a complex user interface, is it to show that Efika has enough power to cope with it?
Also, an updated SmartFirmware shows up. Neko has informed, in a thread at PPCZone.org, that this new version is able to boot from USB mass storage devices.

Kewl!

[ Edited by jcmarcos on 2006/9/27 10:13 ]

Quote:

Probably Tux Racer.

Also ported to MorphOS I believe.

Quote:
Agreed on "full of goodies" - the PCB looks very small, can't fit much on it

I understand that it's good for some uses (DIY laptop/PDA/custom case, all sorts of embedded stuff etc.) but I'd guess that most people would prefer "normal" desktop system. Thanks to small size, you lose a lot of expandability and CPU power when compared to "normal" sized boards (even Pegasos & A1).

Quote:
Time to have some fun (sometimes people say MorphZone is way too boring...).
The game in question, as correctly pointed out by hooligan, is TuxRacer. We can take a look at some screenshots (the link he gave doesn't work for me, so I'll add a couple):
http://www.bretschneidernet.de/images/tuxracer.jpg
http://www.pro-linux.de/spiele/jpgs/tuxracer/select.jpg
As you can see, during the game you can read the speed inside the indicator at the lower right end of the screen, and fonts do work correctly in the menus.
Now, grab the MorphOS version:
http://dasixk.free.fr/tuxracer-0.61-mos.lha
Install and play around a bit. I don't know if it has been fixed in the meantime (I'm not in front of my Pegasos right now), but I seem to remember some time ago I had a version installed that didn't show the speed, and the menus were "empty" (I am pretty sure I saw it also at Pianeta Amiga 2004 on Miky060's Peg2): this might have been due to an error in old tinygl now corrected, but I don't remember if TuxRacer now runs perfectly...
Third step: take a look at the Efika video. Now, if you ever saw the "bugged" TuxRacer, come back and share your conspiration theories and afterthoughts here...

Kind regards,
Andrea

Quote:

Ciao Andrea,

You mean that it could be MorphOS running, because that "Tux racer" might show MOS version's bug?
I like this kind of conspiracy.

Now, back on topic, it really looks as Samantha being a more complete computer than Efika. What's even better is that Samantha is a fully italian achievement - kind of Ducati vs. BMW motorcicles!

Just saw another post from guruman, in the thread about Sputnik, where he shows some very good photos, shot in Pianeta Amiga 2006.
The most interesting is Samantha's motherboard. As expected, it looks quite more crowded that Efika's.
Yoo can also see Amy'05 and another board from Troika.