As the subject states, I am new to Morph and have recently ordered Efika in order get started. First let me say that I am coming over from legacy Amiga world and 8bit Commodore world before that. My choice for MorphOS a simple one, it is becoming a truly great OS. It is time to become an active part in it. So with core parts to build an Efika on the way, I thought I would request assistance from more experienced users of this board before I purchase other components. Here is what I have bought so far:

1-Efika motherboard / AGP riser card
2-250GB (44pin) 2.5" drive.
3-USB keyboard
4-USB mouse
5-Powered 7 port USB hub

I already have a 128MB Radeon 9200 video card sitting in an old powermac, not sure if it is 3.3v or not. I elected not to get the Efika case and will instead be mounting in an old Compaq dual 5.25" external drive case. I have one I use with my A3000 and an extra one I think will fit Efika OK. My first question is CD/DVD drive. I have read through posts and see that there has been mixed success with the USB variety. Being attached to USB1.1 will be admitedly slow but this doesn't concern me as much as 'what tried and true components can other users recommend?' Should I put CD/DVD drive all alone on one of the USB ports and then run the 7port host on the other? Seems like CD/DVD by itself might work better than mixed with other stuff on a host. Please advise. My other question is in regards to partitioning larger drive. I am assuming that 128MB is max size per partition and that I should be able to make two 125MB partitions with this drive. Please advise. I figure while I am at it, I will use other partition to see what Crux Linux is all about.

Congratulations to Morph, Genesi, and all of the developers who got MorphOS so far. I look forward to working with it and the people involved with it.

Welcome!

I assume that you have a reliable PSU. Efika is quite delicate when it comes to power USB devices. Self-powered USB hub should help though. I see that you have one even :).
Gfx card with a Mac BIOS might be a problem. Smartfirmware supports common gfx cards but i'm unsure about Mac ones. Remember that with AGP riser card shipped with Efika you need to use a lowprofile card. 128GB is a max size per partition in SFS. Well i suggest to make more than one partition. Linux is hell slow compared to MorphOS, so better don't start with it :D.


[ Edited by Korni on 2009/1/20 20:39 ]

Thank you for your response Korni,

I am still debating how to handle power. I have a brand new standard PC power supply of good quality that I will use to get things running. But this is overkill in wattage and won't fit into my planned case so I am looking around for smaller units.

I will have to research video card thing a bit more. In looking at information, it appears that 9200 (rv280) running at 3.3 volts is what I need. Still a little uncertain. THere are so many 9200 cards out there, I do not want to get wrong one.

I appreciate your Linux comment. My main focus for Efika is and will always be MorphOS. Linux has always been a sideline thing for me and I can always run it on other systems.

Thanks again!

Don't worry, all Radeon cards from 7000 to 9250 are 3.3v compatible and work on Efika/Pegasos :)

[ Edited by Korni on 2009/1/20 21:40 ]

Then it would appear that I am all set as far as video. This is good.

I have been searching around for storage solutions that work around Efika's single IDE 44 pin option. I have already purchased a correct drive but was wondering about the following scenerio:

Orig Efika 44P (F) --> gender change (M) --> convert to 40P (M)
and then attach 40P IDE to dual SATA converter.

http://cablesonline.stores.yahoo.net/44pinmalidc2.html
http://cablesonline.stores.yahoo.net/40idemato44n.html
http://www.startech.com/item/PATA2SATA2-IDE-to-SATA-Adapter.aspx

Perhaps with power running to the pin count converter and sata converter, there wouldn't be typical signal loss by added distance. This would then enable two drives that you could mount anywhere. I'm pretty sure it would work w/ 5200B IDE aspects. CD/DVD could also run a lot faster than through USB1.1

Just a thought. We need a hardware guru to comment on this sort of craziness.

THanks again for your comments!

[ Edited by Rodomoc on 2009/1/20 14:54 ]

[ Edited by Rodomoc on 2009/1/20 15:27 ]

cd/dvd drives will work but I have not been able to play audio cd's maybe someone here will shed some light on the that isue ( had to do with a cd controller) and not enough power to play dvd movies. Files are accessed fine though except in my case of cdda on music cd's which hang the system.

Thanks for your comment xyphoid!

Although I will be attaching IDE drive in normal fashion to begin with, I may buy these conversion parts and experiment with dual sata at some point in the future.

And now for my next question, has anyone played around with pci riser cards on Efika? I see places that have an active dual slot extender (not sure what difference between active and passive units are). Extra slot could be used for Soundblaster Live or something...

I think you might want to search for answers on http://www.powerdeveloper.org/ ... there is a lot of info about this

@xyphoid

Did you try disabling the Simple SCSI option in Poseidon for your cd/dvd drive?

I am answering my own pci riser question here....

Probably a bad idea for Efika. It would seem a multiple slot card would need a host chip on it in order to direct traffic. Not sure but assuming that scheme worked, Efika would probably not register two cards, and instead only see 1. This gets a bit beyond my hardware ability...Time to give up :)

Quote:

Disabling the option causes the system to just lock up, when the .wav file is accessed

[ Edited by xyphoid on 2009/1/20 22:35 ]

errrr it worked? :P

[ Edited by xyphoid on 2009/1/20 23:55 ]

@Rodomoc

Power supply

There are two options. A small MicroATX PSU, or using PicoPSU + external power "brick".
There are two kinds of PicoPSU, one that needs fixed 12 V (then you need external, stabilized
power source at 12 V/5 (or more) A). The second, a bit more costly PicoPSU is able to work
with unstabilized DC power source from 6 to 24 V, so any laptop PSU will work, assuming it delivers
no less than 60 W.

IDE

Please do not attach more than one device to the IDE channel. IDE controller in MPC5200B is not
designed to handle flat cables and more than one device. Handling them would require
stronger signal drivers. MPC5200B has weak drivers to reduce power consumption. It is designed
for one ATA device connected directly to the socket on the board. Playing
with flat cables and multiple devices is asking for trouble and may damage your Efika.
If you really need more mass storage options, you are sentenced to USB, or some kind of
Network Storage Device.

PCI and risers

The only riser which may be used is angle one (similar to included PCI->AGP riser), which
allow to put PCI card horizontally. Passive multi-slot risers won't work, as PCI controller
in MPC5200B is designed for a single PCI slot. Active risers (with PCI-to-PCI bridge) will
probably not work too, because Open Firmware does not expect additional PCI bridge.

|||

[ Edited by Velcro_SP 29.06.2011 - 12:05 ]

@ Velcro

This is from the product brief:
PCI host controller
— PCI specification revision 2.3 compliant
— 32-bit PCI interface support on primary PCI port
— On-chip arbitration supports three external PCI bus masters
• Serial ATA controller with integrated PHY
— Compliant with serial ATA 1.0a spec
— Supports 1.5 Gbps
• Parallel ATA controller
— Compliant with ATA-6 specification
— Supports PIO mode 0 to 4
— Supports MDMA mode 0 to 2
— Supports UDMA mode 0 to 4


The 5121 sports SATA additional to the PATA interface (don't know if that one is improved). Plus there is an additional CF/SD-Interface.
PCI supports three bus masters
Connectivity of the 5121 is quite comprehensive.

Hi,

Power : best solution is a 12V picopsu.

IDE : single device only. A good option is CF to IDE. Silent, low power, rock solid. I do have this setup and my Efika is 100% silent.

CD/DVD : smbfs share via network (other computer needed sadly) or USB drive.

Housing : I have built some machined enclosure, full passive, full metal, picopsu compliant. More details at http://www.efikaz.eu

Gfx : radeon 9200 is enough for the low cpu horsepower. Some bench I did showed that the rendering is mostly limited by cpu (test done with Q, QII & QIII). The best is to use the AGP riser.

Multiple PCI slot riser : not working AFAIK.

Cheers,

Czk

Thank you everybody for the good Efika advice!
(Krashon, Velcro_SP, Zylesea, & Tcheko)

My component parts for the system are starting to arrive. Just waiting for everything to get here so I can start building. I look forward to running MorphOS very much.

I see there was comment on the MPC5121. Definitely better options but is this a supported future direction for Genesi/Morph? I think I read somewhere that there were complications in 5121 development to the point of abandoning it. I have yet to pick up on what any future hardware platforms for Morph clearly will be. In regards to Efika, although not a long term solution, it is cheap and hopefully becasue of this the MorphOS userbase is expanding and thus increasing overall Morph momentum. I think it is sound strategy at this point. Other crowd has the SAM board and it is a very nice board but also expensive and potentially limiting to userbase expansion.

The 'Mini' port looks interesting just because it is a more powerful package (7447a w/ Altivec + generally good board features). Is this port a method of extending Morph userbase without having to reinvent hardware? (seems reasonable) Or is the port being used as a temporary development platform for a long term future hardware strategy that utilizes 'Mini' design aspects? (also seems like reasonable strategy)

Morph is an elegant system in my opinion. As an engineer (non-computing field), I can appreciate the logic behind how Morph is being put together. Clean-Efficient-Capable-Portable, etc... In the ideal situation I do not see why it couldn't be mainstreamed. My hope is that it does evolve into this. It's too sensible of a system to be a hobby market only entity.

Thanks again for all of the help!

Now that I have received all of this excellent advice, I can now buy the last component I need (CD/DVD). Should I get a standard drive and use a USB-IDE converter cable OR should I just get one of those external drives and be done with it?

The advantage for me using a standard 5.25" unit is I already have a newer Liteon left over from my A3000 configuration.

Korni,

I did more research on this video card I have. It is an oddball from what I can tell. ATI-9200LE (mac version)

From what I can tell it is indeed AGP, 128MB RAM, 3.3V, and RV280. It was originally purchased from OWC for an older power mac I upgraded a while back. I believe it has slower GPU and slower RAM compared to other 9200 varieties. I'm not sure about potential mac ROM issue.

At this point, I do not think it will blow Efika up if I plug it in so I will give it a go.