The EFIKA boards for the MorphOS-Team will ship out as soon as we have all the addresses. We would like to extend that opportunity to the broader MorphOS Developer Community. Please let us know if you have not registered at PowerDeveloper and you would like an EFIKA.

We will be starting an XGI Developer Program soon. We have the 2D and 3D sources from XGI and are working with them on supporting a complete release. This has taken nearly a year. Please indicate your interest in this Program when writing as well.

Finally, if you are interested in including *or* licensing an application in the EFIKA SuperBundle please inform us as soon as possible.

R&B

I wouldnt mind but I code all day at work so I'm burned out by the time I get home.

Which version of MOS comes with this? Can we still order from PegasosPPC.com or are the current batches sold out? I take it the 128megs RAM is soldered on the mobo?

[ Edited by TheMagicM on 2006/11/26 18:05 ]

It's a good idea,even better if the xgi program will end with a mos driver with T&L.

For me i'm waiting the EFIKA+MOS combo, to be purchasable

Ask Ralph about which version you will get.

You can *ALWAYS* order from the PegasosPPC.com store. Efika is a brand new, fresh product and we have plenty in stock - and will be doing new productions very quickly to replenish it.

The 128MB is soldered to the motherboard, but this is what keeps the board at $199. If we put a SO-DIMM slot on the board, it would probably end up costing you $175 but then you'd need to buy a $80 DIMM to go with it. I think you can appreciate that expandability costs YOU money, sometimes.

The latest update of the XGI source code is here:

https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9129

The related documents will be uploaded shortly. FYI, this driver is what was developed for the 7448 UDTech board, known by some as the "Panda."

R&B

>The 128MB is soldered to the motherboard, but this is what keeps the board at $199.

Do you think people would pay $15 more to have another 128 MB soldered to the board's backside?

>If we put a SO-DIMM slot on the board, it would probably end up costing you $175

Does it work with a) 64 Bit DIMMs b) and their longer traces at all?

tarbos, it's complicated but yes, and no, but not because of stuff like trace lengths, but because of simple availability of components, chip features and the cost involved.

You either get 128MB very cheap, or a slot which means the 'system cost' is higher than the basic board cost. If you want to order 500 of them with more memory, then please get your checkbook out :)

You really, really don't need more than 128MB of RAM on a system like an Efika. Get one, start doing your tests in a responsible manner (don't expect it to act like an Intel Core 2 Duo desktop) and for the applications it is targetted at, 128MB is more than enough. I don't think it would be worth our while having 10 different Efika configurations with minor tweaks.

[ Edited by Neko on 2006/11/27 14:09 ]

You would gain a lot by having different choices. How about making 3 different EFIKA`s?

1. with 128mb RAM
2. with 256mb RAM
3. with 512mb RAM

That would be great idea.

I don't understand this.
Do you need more than two additional 64 MB chips of the same kind to populate the underside of EFIKA so you have a total of 256 MB?

>You really, really don't need more than 128MB of RAM on a system like an Efika.

Maybe...but then the additional price is so negligible there hardly is a reason not to do it imho.
Well, it's too late now.

How do you know, MorphDelf?

There is a lot more to it than "we didn't solder as many chips to the board as 512MB needs".

Send us a business case for it. I don't think we can support a market that way. I think it is much more prudent for you to look at what you will do with your Efika that really requires 512MB RAM. I bet whatever it is, it is either too high end an application to run on this class of processor, doesn't actually need that much RAM anyway.

Please pull heads out of sand, look at the world, there is more to life than a half a gigabyte of volatile storage. MorphOS certainly does not need it and Linux has a swap daemon for a very good reason. We haven't seen any performance crisis from lack of RAM on an 128MB board (in fact a Pegasos will do fine with 128MB, too)

Well. For some apps, its nice to have atleast 256mb RAM. I bet that programs like TvPaint etc wont have problems, but trying to run Quake 3 etc on MorphOS which dosent have virtual mem atm would be lots of pain.

I will buy the card anyway when its out offcourse.

Quake 3's system requirements are a 266MHz processor with 64MB RAM - and that's on a PC.

Please tell me why you need 256MB or 512MB to run this game, because I remember when it first came out I had a 400MHz processor with 128MB RAM on my desk, and it ran really quite well under Windows 98 (and 2000).

The Quake 3 ReadMe for MOS says it needs 256 MB!

@tarbos;

Like I said there is more to it. You don't need to understand anything more than that.

Matt,

slap yourself upside the head.. 256megs of ram would be better..some of us *multitask* and have more then one application going...especially if we're coding.

Dunno, 128MB would be more than enough for anything I would want to do with such a lowend CPU (I don't play Quatch3, and if I would I would use another piece of HW).

On the other side, if there was an 64MB version with price-advantage of 30Euro, I might be tempted to get a 2nd one (actually I will probraly by that 2nd sometime next year no matter what RAM-setup) for another "toy"-project.

Quake 3 for morphos needs 256mb of ram. And btw,.. if you run.. kets say..

1. ibrowse
2. sputnik
3. fxpaint
4. tvpaint
5. amitradecenter
6. aminetradio 4
etc+++

All of these programs uses mem. Minimum for EFIKA should been 256mb of RAM or atleast an RAM slot so that people can choose.

I hope that Genesi changes something here. Marked wise, you should go for 256mb of RAM as minimum if you want EFIKA to sell. 128mb RAM is just to tiny, and as usefull wise an Amiga 1200, Amiga 3000 or Amiga 4000 is better suited with 128mb of RAM as you can play and use AGA/ECS programs aswell.

I just want to ask? Who will buy EFIKA from you do you think? What is your targets? If you want it to be a great mini multimedia motherboard, .. I suggest that you should atleast give it a RAM slot instead of soldering mem on the board. Then it would be a bigger choice for all kinds of buyers I think.

Quote:

No, it really shouldn't have.

The Efika is NOT a full featured super-desktop box. It is not an Intel Core Duo, it is not a high end cryptography smasher, it will not play Crysis and it most certainly isn't capable of making you a sandwich.

Unfortunately you will just have to live with that.

Can't remember ever running out of RAM on my Peg1 (128MB).

People seem to forget 2 things:

- this is NOT the Quad-core G5, and useing it for task that are better run on much bigger irons ain't the smartest move in town. And to be more precise, EFIKA in NO desktop-computer, you might use it as one, but you'll have to live with the consequences.

- adding another 128 (or maybe a 2nd IDE, or USB2 or....) might sound good, and "we" probraly won't mind paying the 30Euro or so it add in costs, but would those costumers buying EFIKAs for their actual puporses ? You know, costumers who want a cheap, no-moving-parts, lowheat/lowend piece of HW ...

And doing a special run for "us" would probraly turn those 30Euro into 100Euro, and soone we'll have a "no fish, but no meat either"-product just like another "company" is "trying" to push into this "market" (anybody need some """ ?? Going cheap atm ).

I personally think 128Mb is enough... Q3 won't run, ok, but I don't think Q3 to be the goal of efika... I used my peg1 with 128mb for some time, and I never ran out of mem...

Quote:
Somehow I think that A1200, A3000 and A4000 owners aren't THAT high on "target audience" list - You talk like if it was targeted to MOS/Amiga users only...

Of course there are a few games and programs that really need more mem - MAME for example, but as it struggles with some games even on G4, I don't think I want to run those "requires >128MB" games on such a lowend board

Oh, better add "swap support" to MorphOS 1.5 wanted features list, that would make lots of those programs/games working. I could also add that Linux (which probably is the number one target OS) supports swap, so it isn't too much of an issue there.

Quote:

For industrial customers and running a couple apps at a time, 128MB is perfect.

If you want to do 100 things at once you could have had a Pegasos and 2GB!? The Efika is not a compiler box, it is not a high end 3D workstation. The sales of Efika are NOT affected by people complaining that 128MB of RAM is not enough. And if you want to run all of those apps, well, why not close one down when you are not looking at it? Why do you have TWO browsers and TWO paint packages open, and you have an FTP client too (my web browser works great as an FTP client...)

Here are a few links for you;

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20061112-8201.html

AMD's PIC box, which they pulled the plug on a few weeks ago. ~400MHz processor and 128MB of RAM. They did not kill it because it didn't have enough RAM!

http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/us/en/sm/WF04a/12454-321959-89307-338927-89307.html

The lower 3 thin clients (the ones which are REALLY thin clients) are 128MB RAM and about the same performance. They sell pretty well.

http://www.embeddedarm.com/epc/ts7200-spec-h.html

GASP ONLY 32MB RAM.

Please don't tell me "we should" and "this will sell better". You have no idea what the market is like. Most industrial and commercial uses do not require more than 128MB of RAM. In fact it would be incredibly wasteful if they did.

The Efika is mean to position EXACTLY where you said it was best suited; Amiga A1200, 3000/4000 type performance and productivity levels. This is not a Vaio laptop or a Dell gaming box!

You are complaining that the system doesn't do what you need, but you don't even have one yet. You don't even have the ability to close a window you don't need, and think we should add $50 to system cost just to give you a choice. Well, no, that isn't going to happen. We made the choice for you, because at the end of the day, Gerald knows better than you do about how much RAM is cost effective for you and how deceptive putting a slot on the board is (the board looks cheaper but in fact the total system cost will go through the roof through a 'hidden' item)

[ Edited by Neko on 2006/11/27 16:05 ]

I'm glad you're "developer relations" and not customer relations.


@Kronos:
So what you're saying is that this would be a waste of money to buy just to run MOS 1.x ?

@TheMagicM,

I hope you don't have a project in the system because I'm in the mood to deny it.

No I'm saying it would be waste of money to buy it just for Quatsch3&Co

Vesalia still seems to have some Peg2s left (and probraly other dealers too), that seem more like what you want.

You sound like someone who bought a 3L-Lupo and now complains that he can't win the 24h at the N?rburgring, nor can't transport his whole extended familiy in it .....

[ Edited by Kronos on 2006/11/27 17:17 ]