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I think it is worthwhile to go back and review feanor´s research and conclusion. Pricing depends largely on how many units you believe could be sold, which is not going to be many...

> Dunno how Ativec competes against VMX.

If e6500's AltiVec implementation and integration are based on e600's (which I'm pretty sure they are), it should be faster per clock than PPC970's VMX.

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All very good info. This is you at your best Andreas_Wolf, thanks!

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I wonder what it would cost to get a T2080 motherboard designed and produced roughly, using as much community knowledge and manpower as possible to keep the cost down where ever possible?

The T2080 seems to be the logical best choice for a low (but not lower than the SAM460cr) cost system which AmigaOS4.x and MorphOS could be ported to.

I doubt we could create such a system, but I am curious what some of you think it would cost to actually complete.

@amigadave

A whole lot. And it won't make much sense now the SAM, X5000 and Tabor exist. The market is already full.

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Well, from the DMIPS figures Andreas has provided a 1.8GHz T2080 would be almost twice as powerful as a 2.2GHz P5040 (which, in itself, is twice as powerful as the T5020).

And that is with about 90% of the single threaded performance of the X5000.
So, if a community funded board was approached, that is the CPU I'd like to see used.

Its cheaper than the P50XX, and the performance (overall) would render it a superior choice to the systems you have mentioned.

> from the DMIPS figures Andreas has provided a 1.8GHz T2080 would be almost
> twice as powerful as a 2.2GHz P5040

It's (1.8*8*3.0)/(2.2*4*3.0)-1=64% faster. But that's requiring SMP support anyway, which we don't have.

> which, in itself, is twice as powerful as the T5020

Assuming you mean the P5020, it's even (2.2*4)/(2.0*2)=2.2 times as fast.

> that is with about 90% of the single threaded performance of the X5000.

Yes, with X5000/40. Compared to X5000/20 it's (1.8*3.3)/(2.0*3.0)=99%.

Yeah, but then we will have four boards competing for a couple of hundreds of buyers. That is not good prospects to get your development money back.

Well, I did want to be conservative Andreas. ;)

If the T2080 provides 99% of the performance of the P5020 and 90% of the performance of the P5040, at a substantially lower price, PLUS has the e6500 core with Altivec, I hope that Trevor is reading this thread and drops the X5000 w/P5040 design, and instead switches to a lower priced, high end AmigaOne system using the T2080 CPU in the future.

Of course, for that to happen, he probably needs to sell more than 500 Tabor motherboards or complete systems, to allow him to continue forward in producing PPC motherboards for the AmigaOS4.x and MorphOS users.

With all the negative discussion regarding the Tabor's CPU choice, I am nervous about how well the Tabor will sell, and how much poor sales could hurt A-Eon's future. I just hope that once the Tabor is released and tested running AmigaOS4.1FE, it's performance will disprove most of the negative comments made about it, and the sale price will be low enough to spur many hundred sales, so that A-Eon can hopefully continue and make better choices in the future.

Trevor, if you are reading this, please add one or two of the MorphOS Dev. Team members to your decision making team, before you commit large sums of money on your next motherboard design. Although I might criticize some of your decisions (using hind sight long after the fact), I really do want to see you succeed and continue to provide hardware and software for the whole Amiga community, long into the future.

[ Edited by amigadave 15.11.2015 - 16:24 ]

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...the day before the Aachen "show" in 2002 (& Genesi Aachen gallery) Raquel and I ran the CPU cards through the wave solder machine after placing the capacitors on the boards. Gerald and Thomas ran the SMT line with Thomas Dellert. Thomas was paid for storing components at DCE, as well as for other services.

As I recall, the Aachen event marked the transition from the Betatester to the Pegasos. There were a number of "shows" prior to this (scroll down to links in Products Overview & History -- Genesi Products). There are actually pictures here from that time period too at DCE, in Frankfurt and Paris, and in Normandy.

We reconnected post-VisCorp with Gerald at the Amiga show in Cologne in 2000 (Amiga-News.de Interveiw with Petro). The Pegasos was called the "Betatester" before it shipped. There were a number of development challenges. The Mai Logic Articia being the most troublesome. It is fair to say we contributed significantly to the cost of the development and were involved before the Pegasos was a product.

R&B

> I hope that Trevor [...] drops the X5000 w/P5040 design, and instead switches
> to a lower priced, high end AmigaOne system using the T2080 CPU in the future.

The X5000/40 is planned to be released next year, so hardware development has most likely been completed by now. Judging by development cycle of prior A-Eon products, developing a new board based on T2080 would require another 2 years or more, so I'm not sure dropping the X5000/40 now would be beneficial to a future T2080-based A-Eon product.

>> DCE wasn't paid for the manufacturing but only for the lease of the
>> mounting machines. It was bplan staff who operated them.

> Raquel and I ran the CPU cards through the wave solder machine after placing
> the capacitors on the boards. Gerald and Thomas ran the SMT line with Thomas Dellert.
> Thomas was paid for storing components at DCE, as well as for other services.

Thanks for the additional info and for the confirmation that DCE wasn't commissioned to manufacture the boards.

>> the involvement of the Genesi forerunner Thendic France started only
>> when the Pegasos I design was completed.

> the Aachen event marked the transition from the Betatester to the Pegasos. [...] The Pegasos
> was called the "Betatester" before it shipped. There were a number of development challenges.
> The Mai Logic Articia being the most troublesome. [...] we contributed significantly
> to the cost of the development and were involved before the Pegasos was a product.

Yes, I was obviously referring to the original post-prototype Pegasos board, i.e. pre-April. I know you were key in financing the development and production of the intermediate "April" PCB that was added to the Pegasos PCB before it became available for non-betatesters. However, I remember that also the pre-April board was called Pegasos, and "Betatester" was used more like a byname.

http://www.amigahistory.plus.com/press/04102002.html

By the way, if my command of the English language isn't completely awry, "Betatestee" would have made way more sense as byname of the board ;-)

We need fast and cost affordable PowerPC Genesi Hardware able to run MorphOS and if possible AmigaOS.

Perhaps crowd funding a new motherboard would be a good idea?

I know I'd contribute to such a product depending on the specs and the official blessing of the MorphOS team obviously.

Me too.

That would be a problem as MorphOS Team doesn't support non existing boards. You need to make it first before they will start working on a port. Or so they keep saying at least.

> That would be a problem as MorphOS Team doesn't support non existing boards. You need
> to make it first before they will start working on a port. Or so they keep saying at least.

Would it even be feasible any other way?

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Did Bill say that the meeting scheduled with Freescale in December was as a representative of Genesi or power2people?

Whether crowd or bounty funded, I would back an alternative board.

Something that was powerful and priced reasonably.

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Actually, it referred to combinations of pre-release versions of the Pegasos as well as pre-release versions of MorphOS. Here is the original announcement text (added emphasis for clarity):

"Announcing BETATESTER and Team Betatester!

The time has come for Thendic-France/bplan to start selling machines. We are not going to call it the Pegasos for now. We are going to call the pre-release version of the Pegasos with the pre-release version of MorphOS for PPC: BETATESTER.

MorphOS may not be ready for regular computer users, but it is ready for developers. You can purchase a BETATESTER for 1000 Euros (tax not included)."

It is also worth nothing that the original BETATESTER priced at 1000 EUR was a 'complete system', not merely a mainboard with software.

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See above. Initially, it was not used as a byname. Later on, it took on a different meaning and inspired the name of the MorphOS mailing lists, which were called "beta2" and "beta2-info" until 2004.

> ["Betatester"] referred to combinations of pre-release versions of the Pegasos as well as
> pre-release versions of MorphOS.

Thanks for clarification.

>> "Betatestee" would have made way more sense as byname of the board ;-)

> Initially, it was not used as a byname.

Yes, but byname or not, something that is to be tested is usually referred to as "testee", not "tester" :-)

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Since they have announced and actually begun work to move to x64 architecture, it makes no sense for them to become involved in more new PPC systems, but it is not beyond imagining that IF the MorphOS Dev. Team knew that it was going to take years to complete an architecture switch, and IF they also wanted to, they could help choose which components were to be used on a community funded, new motherboard design, and agree to support such a board when it was finished.

That commitment could be stated prior to the board existing, but I doubt very much that such a plan will be put in place, and hopefully the switch to x64 will not take years to complete, counting from today, as work on it has already been begun some time in the past.

Personally, I will be satisfied with a few releases which improve the performance and features of MorphOS on the hardware that is already supported, as we wait (hopefully only 6 to 18 months longer) for an x64 compatible version of MorphOS to be completed. If it is going to be significantly longer than that time frame, perhaps a newer, faster, and more modern, community funded PPC motherboard design would be worth while.

Edit: I am also not supporting the idea of a community funded PPC motherboard at this point in time. I am hoping that the Tabor will be priced low enough, and perform well enough, so the MorphOS Dev. Team members will reconsider and reverse their decision NOT to support it. I doubt very much that there are enough AmigaOS4.x users to purchase 1000 Tabor systems and/or motherboards, but if MorphOS were ported to the Tabor, it would no doubt sell additional numbers of systems or motherboards. Once the Tabor is released for sale and we find out how well (or how poorly) it runs AmigaOS4.1FE, plus we know for sure how much it will cost, then I might have to re-evaluate my point of view regarding a community funded PPC motherboard.

[ Edited by amigadave 18.11.2015 - 20:35 ]

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It depends on what exactly the main object of your testing is. The idea behind the BETATESTER was to get systems into the hands of eager early adopters so they could help to improve the included operating system by reporting issues. Put differently, the pre-release version of the Pegasos mainboard was primarily a tool for testing MorphOS. Much like a person uses a "cooker" as a tool to cook food, the "BETATESTER" hardware was used to (beta)test MorphOS.

While the hardware was also given the "pre-release" label, I think it is reasonable to say that there was no general expectation that testers would have the required capabilities to correctly identify and report hardware bugs, which would have been extremely difficult since the hardware was running software that was known to be unfinished and be the most likely source of problems.

Maybe this is a naive question... but instead of "crowdfunding a new motherboard" (for MorphOS in this case), isn't it easier to crowdfund MorphOS port for a particular x86 chosen by MorphOS Team?

@Everblue

I agree. We already have the SAM 460 and the upcoming X5000. We _really_ don't need any more PPC boards. They will probably never be cheap enough for me to get one of those instead of a used PPC Mac anyway.

I much rather support the ISA shift. It will take it's time no matter what we do but anything to speed it up would be good.

Another idea is to create a Patreon (donating a fixed sum every month) to a particular developer or to the entire team. I used to do this every month for AROS for almost 2 years. I think if we use Power2people it won't cost much, if any, fees.

Yet another idea is to create a "beer-and-pizza" fund which the Team is free to use for that purpose (or coke and cookies if they prefer) when they code, individually or when they meet.

It really depends on what they prefer, but the Team should not be intimidated by our "shut up and take our money" attitude. I know perfectly well I might not get my moneys worth back. And I don't care