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The CPU is said to be something that we probably haven't seen "out in the wild".

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Compared to what MorphOS currently runs on (and will be running on soonish), that motherboard is not only "a little" underpowered, it's also ridiculously expensive, and a very low volume thing. How many could Acube hope to sell to the Amiga community? 30? 60? 90? All in all, how would it be worthwhile the time and effort to support something that inferior? It's no point, and would be a major step backwards...

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Current MorphOS HW has far better availability than any Acube motherboard, in fact, MorphOS has probably never had a better HW availability situation than today. There are G4 Macs everywhere, they are mainstream, and you can easily go down town today and get one locally (at least if you don't live in some outskirt village), which is far better than ordering some obscure motherboard from the other side of the planet by some hobbyist Amiga reseller that runs his company from his basement. When Powermac support gets introduced, you will be able to buy a *complete system* for the kind of money you would spend on *shipment alone* from "Amikit"...

@ Jim

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In terms of availability (of PowerPC hardware platforms), nothing comes even close to Macs right now so this is what is being focused on.

If somebody is not interested to buy second-hand hardware for whatever reason and does not mind a low-performance processor, that person can still buy brand new EFIKA 5200 mainboards and / or EFIKA-based kits from resellers such as Directron (USA) or Vesalia (Germany). This entry-level platform has been consistently available to MorphOS enthusiasts for years now.

> PowerPC 970FX! 64bit, dual core, could easily do 1.8GHz.

1. Dual-core would mean 970MP, not 970FX.
2. See takemehomegrandma's reference to A-Eon's hint regarding the CPU's commonness. 970MP is freely available as a new part and was used in Macs (vs. "the X1000 processor currently has very limited availability, and you've probably never seen one in the wild").
3. As the board picture shows, the CPU must be a SoC. The 970MP is not a SoC but would need the CPC945 northbridge.

> what is it Andreas?

I think you know by now what I think it is. We discussed it in this very thread :-)
In case you forgot already: http://www.eetimes.com/news/latest/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=208808517

> after all this discussion on the new Acube MB, why not port MorphOS to Acube boards?
> The Applied Micro processors they're using are a little underpowered, but the boards
> are avaiable.

The Sam460ex is not available by now. Or do you mean the 'Canyonlands' reference board? Porting to available Sam440ep(-flex) wouldn't be worth the hassle in my opinion, at least unless ACube pay the MorphOS team to do it (like Genesi payed them for porting to the Efika 5200B). But ACube already declined to pay them for porting.

> There are G4 Macs everywhere, they are mainstream, and you can easily go
> down town today and get one locally (at least if you don't live in some outskirt village)

I wouldn't call my home city with a population of 240,000 a village, but still I wouldn't know where to easily get a G4 Mac locally today.

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Freely available? I want a few dozen! Or more! :D
(yes, I know you didn't mean it like that, but the thought of IBM giving away truckloads of 970MP cpus was terribly amusing -at least to me :)

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You PowerPC junkie...

> Freely available? I want a few dozen! Or more! :D

Hehe, just meant that you don't have to sign NDAs as with the PA6T apparently. Money will do fine :-)

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Yes that bothers me too. I put together the Powermac I'm typing this message on at a really low cost, but I had to go to Ebay for most of the parts. The closest G4 Mac I could find (for sale) was in nearby State.

I will allow that Acube boards are over priced, but they're available and the Efika has been discontinued (and has severe memory limitations).

If the X1000 is PA Semi based then Aeon has chosen a processor that is difficult to obtain and one that has no future (as Apple has NOT committed to further development of this chip, only to supporting the current processor).

It would be nice to be able to run MorphOS on NEW equipment.

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Well, sure. But I don't get this "obsession" with "new". As long as it works well, everything's fine IMHO. My Mac mini is 2nd hand. But it works flawlessly, is fast enough and was pretty cheap - so what?
On the long run there may be need for more powerful hardware. But if this more powerful hardware will be new or 2nd hand is IMHO only a problem of 2nd order.
Supply must be relative easy and affordable. Currently the Mac G4 hardware fits well.

OTOH I would applause to some new and remotely competetive hardware - but I fail to fullfill Acube or A-eon doing this. Both products (Sam and this x1000) are/wil be way to expensive. Genesi/bplan were close, but eventually they also dropped the ppc towel.
The MPC 8610 was (still is!) interesting, but unfortunately it doesn't get fresher. I think the next interesting candidate in ppc land may be the ibm 476 (or some QorIQ). For real low end stuff there is plenty to chose (e.g. the 5123), too. But low end is only attractive if you go for real high volume productions and I fail to see this done by someone.
Still a sad thing, that the Efika 8610 hasn't made it?- but crying for lost chances are rather vain tears.

> Yes that bothers me too.

It doesn't bother me, I'm fine with using eBay and such. It's just that I found takemehomegrandma's statement way off. But then, I don't know how the situation is in Sweden's cities. Maybe G4 Macs can be picked off the pavements there ;-)

Picked off the pavement like IBM processors?

What about Titan, Andreas? I can't get technical information out of Applied Micro. They're more tight lipped than IBM.

It's frustrating, after working with the 8640 (and finding the design requirements to be far too complex) and after being underwhelmed by the 8610, it would be nice to have something new to work with. There are some new PPC processors that are promising (sorry guys, PPCs not dead yet), but right now what currently in production is too slow and overpriced.

And I DO think Mac G4 support is brilliant. With what I've saved putting together a relatively fast Powermac, spending 150 Euros on an OS isn't nearly as painful (as it was when my only option was overpriced used Genesi/bplan hardware).

What about the Fixstars hardware you've mentioned? I don't consider $1200 to be too far out of line. The last 68K systems the company I worked for in the 80s and 90s was about that expensive. However, I don't see it listed on Fixstars' website anymore.

FixStars won't sell this anymore. In fact, they're moving out of the PPC/Cell/PS3 cluster business -no wonder, given Sony's lack of commitment to its customers. They are moving to OpenCL on GPU stuff. I guess they will continue to support existing customers, but I doubt they will waste any more energy on Cell.

Also, former TerraSoft Solutions & YDL CEO, Kai Stats, left FixStars about a ago and started a new company (http://www.overthesun.com, I know, he told me so in an email), so it's unlikely that current FixStars will continue his preference of PowerPC systems. Better forget that PowerStation guys.

> Picked off the pavement like IBM processors?

Yes, exactly. For both buying G4 Macs and IBM CPUs no NDA required ;-)

> What about Titan, Andreas?

You mean regarding the X1000? Or in general?

If the first: See some posts above.
If the latter: https://morph.zone/modules/newbb_plus/viewtopic.php?topic_id=6268&forum=11&start=60#72235

> What about the Fixstars hardware you've mentioned? [...]
> I don't see it listed on Fixstars' website anymore.

The PowerStation vanished beginning of January. Then end of January the bitter truth:
http://www.yellowdog-board.com/viewtopic.php?p=35851#p35851

> Kai Stats, left FixStars about a ago

;-)

> and started a new company (http://www.overthesun.com, I know, he told me
> so in an email)

For interested parties who didn't come across these up to now, let me reference two very interesting articles from his personal blog:

http://blog.overthesun.com/2008/11/at-the-door-of-a-decade/
http://blog.overthesun.com/2009/09/at-the-door-of-a-decade-part-2/

Andreas, Titan in general. Thanks to your input, I'm beginning to get a better idea of what the X1000 is made up of.
We don't need 64bit processors (or dual core for that matter).

BTW - Thank you ALL for those references. This forum seems to attract well informed individuals.

One further question. Does anyone have an archive of the specs for the Fixstars system?

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Agreed. In fact, using second hand equipment has some drawbacks, but many important advantages. You benefit from the reliability and availability that others have built up, at a lower cost. The funniest thing is that the only difficult part is choosing target, and, in PowerPC space, it's dead easy, as there's only one. And the MorphOS Team chose it.
Can anyone imagine where would we be now, if MorphOS still only worked on Pegasos and Efikas?

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Yes, but I can't see the NEED yet for that. Add up the fact that the PowerPC space is shrinking instead of expanding, and go figure. It's very, very unwise to target for a completely new (supposed) PowerPC computer.

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Exactly the picture. Genesi has tried it many times, but it has never catched and tied a mass market opportunity. I guess mass market and weird computers just don't match. Which is a shame, of course...

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Indeed. But changing platform is just too much for us tech junkies.

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Yes, that's what I heard from Genesi's Matt "Neko" Sealey. Things only looked nice when you just saw the CPU. As soon as you started to think about how to build the whole computer around it, it gets wickedly complicated.

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What was so bad about it? Something in common with the MPC512x's integrated devices, sucking so much bandwidth from the CPU that it almost ruined performance?

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Amen! Compare the A-Eon sittuation with happily picking up an EXISTING, WORKING, PROVED MacMini computer for a couple hundred, and immediately start enjoying MorphOS...

Pity that those cheap computers make the operating system look more expensive (me ducks ).

God choice, Team!

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Way off you say? In a city of 280.000 citizens, I find it very difficult to believe that you would have a hard time finding yourself a second hand Mac. Throw in a classified add in the local newspaper, or use whatever channel there is for general second hand goods in your city, and I'm sure you'd get several interesting offers from people that's more than happy for an opportunity to offload their G4 equipment.

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Of course not, but neither are Sam's...

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Do you see a need for this?

http://charlie.amigaspirit.hu/screenshots/macmini/mini-MorphOS-OWB-1.8-teaser.mov

Media stuff is nice, isn't it? And isn't the above link what we all and people in general really expect a desktop system to do *as a minimum*? Stuff like this should just work, shouldn't it?

I see some Flash 10 apps and games really struggle on my G4 Mac with MacOS X and the official Adobe Flash Player. It can be a slide show sometimes. AFAIK, the Sam can't play DVD video without frame skipping. MorphOS on Mac Mini plays H264 720p movies. But 1080p?

I don't buy this "but AmigaOS runs fine on low power hardware" if what you want to do is to use it as a desktop system. Desktops (that's being used beyond IRC, SSH terminal stuff and checking e-mails, etc) needs power, period. Perhaps a system that simply doesn't have what it takes to play the most basic and most commonly used media formats, shouldn't call itself a *desktop* system?

> Way off you say? In a city of 280.000 citizens, I find it very difficult to believe that you
> would have a hard time finding yourself a second hand Mac.

That's not what I said. See below.

> Throw in a classified add in the local newspaper, or use whatever channel there is for
> general second hand goods in your city, and I'm sure you'd get several interesting
> offers from people that's more than happy for an opportunity to offload their G4 equipment.

That's not what "you can easily go down town today and get one locally" implies. "Today" implies that I get up in the morning (let's assume having a day off on a normal workday), have the spontaneous idea to get a G4 Mac, take my shoes and can easily return home no later than evening the same day with a G4 Mac under my arms. That's what I questioned. Throwing a classified to the newspaper would take several days to get published and answered. And while we have a number of 2nd hand stores here, it's not a save bet that any of them has a G4 Mac in stock.

> Of course not, but neither are Sam's...

Yes, of course. In my opinion the general availability of G4 Macs is better than that of Sam440s.

> Does anyone have an archive of the specs for the Fixstars system?

http://lists.fixstars.com/pipermail/yellowdog-announce/2008-June/000180.html
http://lists.fixstars.com/pipermail/yellowdog-announce/2008-July/000185.html
http://lists.fixstars.com/pipermail/yellowdog-announce/2009-January/000199.html
http://lists.fixstars.com/pipermail/yellowdog-announce/2009-July/000217.html
http://web.archive.org/web/20080801054135/http://www.terrasoftsolutions.com/products/powerstation/breakdown.shtml

Thanks Andreas.

Once again, after hashing all these ideas out, we come (again) to a consensus. G4 Macs make sense, Acube SAMs are overpriced and underpowered, and there's no other commonly available PPC computers that make sense porting to (yet).

Does anyone know where Fixstars' motherboards came from?

[ Edited by Jim on 2010/4/23 1:48 ]

> there's no other commonly available PPC computers that make sense porting to (yet).

G5 Macs anyone? :-)

> Does anyone know where Fixstars' motherboards came from?

The PowerStation came with IBM's "Bimini" board. For "Bimini" refer to:

http://blemings.org/hugh/blog/blosxom.cgi/2007/08/05
http://blemings.org/hugh/blog/blosxom.cgi/2007/09/29
http://blemings.org/hugh/blog/blosxom.cgi/2008/06/10
http://www.penguinppc.org/news/2007/08/10/970MP_workstation
http://www.power.org/news/pr/view?item_key=e6edc76b12015b289dbc18089d2d7cd556a4f83d
http://web.archive.org/web/20071017044111/people.freedesktop.org/~idr/blog/index.php
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NjA3MQ
http://lisas.de/~adrian/?p=46
http://lisas.de/~adrian/?p=45
http://lisas.de/~adrian/?p=44
http://lisas.de/~adrian/?p=6
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/power/pa-slof/
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/power/pa-slof-js20/

Later, Genesi's Matt "Neko" Sealey revealed that the "Bimini" is IBM's further development of Genesi's/bplan's TetraPower board, which was supposed to come with their Open Server Workstation (OSW):

http://www.powerdeveloper.org/forums/viewtopic.php?p=12748#12748

For TetraPower and OSW refer to:

http://www.powerdeveloper.org/platforms/tetrapower/specifications
http://www.powerdeveloper.org/program/tetrapower
http://www.powerdeveloper.org/downloads/OSW_Block.pdf
http://www.flickr.com/photos/54643129@N00/112833476/
http://web.archive.org/web/20071014173313/http://www.genesippc.com/files/power.org/DP-WG.pdf

Historical "review" of TetraPower/OSW:

https://morph.zone/modules/news/article.php?storyid=925
https://morph.zone/modules/newbb_plus/viewtopic.php?topic_id=4095&forum=11&start=20#38077
http://www.morphos-news.de/index.php?lg=en&nid=1201&si=1
http://www.amiga-news.de/en/news/AN-2006-02-00086-EN.html
https://morph.zone/modules/newbb_plus/viewtopic.php?topic_id=4498&forum=11&start=40#42280
https://morph.zone/modules/newbb_plus/viewtopic.php?topic_id=4508&forum=11
http://www.powerdeveloper.org/forums/viewtopic.php?p=2893#2893
http://www.amiga-news.de/en/news/AN-2006-07-00046-EN.html (TetraPower as reference design for PAPR)
http://www.powerdeveloper.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=754
http://www.powerdeveloper.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=819
http://bbrv.blogspot.com/2006/11/watts-happening.html (bottom)
http://www.genesi-usa.com/press/2006/11/6/

Wow!

BTW - Considering the architectural differences between the G5 and the G4, wouldn't porting to that processor be considerably more difficult than the Mac G4 port?

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Porting to x86 would be even more difficult, but it would make a lot more sense...