Well, it's all over aw.net and it's reached several other amiga related forums too.

The a-eon is a confirmed new ppc board, but specs are not yet released.

Perhaps it's premature to ask, but would MorphOS consider porting to it? Is there anything blocking such a port in principle?

I suppose it is too early to know.

There is always the case for the MorphOS Team to be aware of the whole project behind the scenes and already to have made some kind of plan.

But nothing out to the real world yet.

@arnljot

I guess they would need to approach the MorphOS team and work out a deal to make that happen, like Genesi did with the Efika.

We're concentrating on Mac hardware for now. This hardware is available and has a great performance/price ratio.

@Piru

I appreciate that. And I think it's very wise to finish any tasks one has started on.

I love MorphOS, and I really like OS4 too. I have my efika and play with it, and I play with my 3.x systems. But I'm looking for, and have for a long time looked into the SAM, but it hasn't caught my fancy.

What I want (along with a lot of others I suppose) is a dual booting Morph/OS4 machine. Atm it's only for the Peg2 users.

I thought once that SAM would be next for MorphOS, but atm it doesn't seem so.

This post can perhaps more be viewed as me planting a seed with you guys

Btw, I'm looking for a G4 mac... But it has to be cheeeeeeeap. And 1Ghz at least.

This post can perhaps more be viewed as me planting a seed with you guys

I really think you should wait until detailed specification and the price of this new hardware is officially announced.

I think this A-Eon thing will be not very cheap, but probably fairly powerful. Details known or implicity said are: 2 core ppc chip, not a 32 bit ppc and a SoC. This rules virtually all other PPCs out exept the PA Semi PA1682. Generally it is assumed that since Apple took over PA Semi no new customers are able to obtain chips, but who actually has approached PA Semi?
Anyway,I think Hyperion did a good marketing stance here, it really stirs something up. And I also still guess that while AOS4 and MorphOS are rivals on the one hand, thy are also so close together, that everything which caters one side may have positive aspects for the other side, too. I. e. if there wil be a PWRficient board available this will be covered an many sites and will get some interest. Some ppl will read about all the drama in Amigaland and get to know not only AOS4, but also MorphOS.
But first, lets see what this current show will offer in its finale next days. And a good hardware (well, given it will be good) alone doesn't help - to be competetive OS4 would need huge improvements and there I have my serious doubts... But I am willing to get positively surprised.

I think G5 apple machines are way more interesting and easy to find than custom ultra-expensive motherboards.

If it's a PA-Semi product with Altivec it may be interesting but I seriously doubt it. They'll probably prepare 603-like cores with 128KB of L2 cache and no Altivec. And the price will probably be too high for 95% of amiga users.

I'm happy with my Apple hardware and it's easier to replace if it gets broken.

Exactly, we should wait until all specs of the A-EON-HW are available and we could do a "real-life"-comparison to that kind of HW we have. Until we see the A-EON, i personally would guess that we then could use PowerMacs and Powerbooks as MorphOS-HW, and I like to see MorphOS running on a powerful laptop like the Powerbooks and the iBooks.

Assuming the company designing that reference board is technically competent enough to give a proper product (which is a big "if"), I wish them luck to find a sustainable market. bPlan (who were quite competent and had a quite solid product) tried but finally had to focus on something more profitable.


[ Edited by Fab on 2010/1/3 18:20 ]

> Details known or implicity said are: 2 core ppc chip, not a 32 bit ppc and a SoC.
> This rules virtually all other PPCs out exept the PA Semi PA1682.

Yes, if these details are right, it must be PWRficient PA6T-1682, IMHO.

The "Electra" eval board, just for reference:

http://web.archive.org/web/20070821022627/pasemi.com/downloads/pa_semi_board_LOW_REZ.png

And some other specs, just for reference:

http://web.archive.org/web/20080804151811/http://www.amiga.com/news/index.php?art=28

;-)


Edit: Made URL of Amiga Inc. press release point to Wayback Machine due to unavailability of amiga.com website.

[ Edited by Andreas_Wolf on 2010/6/22 2:43 ]

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Whilst I agree with you on this, it must be observed that when Genesi were selling the Pegasos 2, AmigaOS was not available and MorphOS was in 1.4.x stage.
Now that these OSes are available in a more complete form, at least the Amiga-centric market can get on board now. Whether that will be enough fertilizer to make this seed grow remains to be seen.

New PPC hardware must be welcomed though, especially if it is delivering a high-end processor, PCIe and SATA.

I'm gratified to see the positive reaction this has had throughout the Amiga-centric community so far. It could potentially be very good news for all of our OSes.

EDIT: corrected error

[ Edited by boot_wb on 2010/1/3 21:30 ]

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I find it highly unlikely.

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yes indeed... or at least for one of them...

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at least until they come back on this blocking (and sad) statement.

> PCI-X

Don't confuse PCI Express aka PCI-E/PCIe with PCI-X.

@SoundSquare
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Excuse me?

It's fair to assume that they are serious and that they don't want to make the same mistake that Amiga Inc. has made in the past (announcing a product before it has even been designed).
PA Semi doesn't seem that likely (as a source for processors). There are plenty of other products that a new design could use.
We're in the same boat as everyone else, we're just going to have to wait for them to release more information (brilliant marketing the way they've gotten everyone talking).
Right now. it's easy to understand the Morph team's focus on Apple G4 hardware. It's cheap and easily obtained (and the hardware is not that different - compared to the hardware MorphOS has been ported to before).
No matter what A-EON comes out with, its likely that assembling a MorphOS/Mac system will cost less to put together.
And for now, MorphOS performs better than AmigaOS. So, as long as AmigaOS isn't capable of handling 64bit processors or addressing more than one processor core, MorphOS has the advantage.

I just have to make this perfectly clear in case it's not already:

1) I do think that MorphOS for G4 macs should be finalized before a new project is started.

2) I think that Hyperion has credability, if A-EON is their puppy it'll hit the market. And I do think it'll be high specs. Now the cost is an open question....

3) Yes it's way too soon to hear from the MorphOS team: Yes this is hardware we can run on.

Now, what I'd just want to say for my own part, if I buy (another, I have Efika w/MorphOS) a Amiga NG system. I would really like it to dual boot between OS4 and MorphOS.

Quote:

no offense, i only mean that the morphos team should keep a close eye on this, if there's an opportunity to find a better hardware than the old dusty macs then it should be considered.
It's all about hardware avaibility, it's nice to have some cheap hardware semi-available (second, third hand market), but if there's something new coming, it may be interesting to support it and not leave the dancing bananas on the red camp.

but yes, it's way too soon to talk about it.



[ Edited by SoundSquare on 2010/1/3 18:45 ]

@SoundSquare
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If the price is 3-5 times of the similar level "dusty macs", I think it really isn't worth the effort.
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If the price will be in the ranges I believe it will be, I'll gladly let them have all the bananas they want. Just a CPU alone will be more than most Macs.

[ Edited by Piru on 2010/1/3 20:23 ]

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Noted and corrected.

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So do I.
It'll be interesting to see though, and I wish them luck.

@Piru

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i think it is, if this new machine really gets released, even for a high price, i guess it will be bundled with OS4 and we'll probably see that the price/perf ratio won't be so good for the used mac + morphos licence. But i am only speculating, again it's too soon to get into that debate, we'll see when it's out and available.

Seriously... MorphOS on Mac is still very young. And there are complaints already that we want a new hardware when AmigaOS users has at the moment few pieces of puzzle?

Come on guys. We have MorphOS 2.4 on Mac mini, there is development for PowerMacs and PowerBooks. When MorphOS was so strong as it is now?

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Yes, too early to start a debate about price/performance ratio difference between MorphOS2.4 on 1.5GHz G4 MacMini and A-Eon AmigaOne Power-X, but I can't see them producing that mobo for less than the SAM440 cost, so it will likely still be at least 2 times the expense of a used G4 MacMini with a MorphOS2.4 license included, maybe 3x.

I seriously doubt that the new AmigaOne Power-X will have 2x to 3x the performance of my 1.5GHz G4 MacMini running MorphOS2.4.

But a new Amiga motherboard design is interesting and is definitely causing a lot of speculation and discussion.