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?

Quote:

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.

Quote:

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!

Quote:

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?

Quote:

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

Quote:

I question that assertion.

While an X86 port would offer a wealth of new, low cost equipment, it also brings along something I personally would prefer to avoid - the X86 processor.

Has anyone looked at the current X86 instruction set recently? It is impossibly large, with additions specific to particular processors (not implemented across the entire X86 family).

While assembly language is still a possibility on a PPC, I would not want to attempt it on an X86.

And, if we are going to have to use higher level languages and tools to create code, who is going to create these tools for MorphOS (or are we going to have to develop programs under other OS')?

Beyond all that, AROS already exists for the X86 processor and OSX and Windows also run on the X86.

Does MorphOS stand a chance against competition that already has a gigantic base of available software?

I don't think so, and I lost this bet taking a different stance in the 90's. No matter how much better your OS is, the installed base of Windows users and the mass of available programs is always going to weight in Windows favor.

New picture of Nemo:

http://amigaworld.net/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?topic_id=31070&forum=33&start=80#554554

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Frankly, who on earth cares about instruction sets? Face it, if you want scalability from low power mobile up to true desktop performance, if you want broadly available hardware at best possible price, and if you want a safe and secure path into a sustainable future, then there is only one option to choose from (and no, it's definitely not PPC).

Quote:

Me scratching head... Why exactly should we care about the instruction set of the CPU? I'm sure you know that word... "compiler":

Quote:

"IF"? You are scaring me, Jim!

Quote:

You mean we can't use an existing x86 compiler? I fear I'm missing something very big, because I'm puzzled.

Quote:

Sure not. But that's not the idea. The idea is having cheap and good hardware, that's all. I'm not saying it's easy to do, though.
MorphOS Team are a bunch of geniuses, and even porting from one apple to another apple takes a lot of effort.

Back to the x86 topic, that CPU's instruction set might look like shit, but last time I checked, regular pecees were very good computers.

Anyway, no problem: MorphOS for x86 won't happen. God bless the Mac Mini port! Roll on PowerMac version, to increase the fun even more!

Obviously, the last posts miss my major points.

Were MorphOS to be rewritten in X86 machine code, program code compiled for MorphOS would have to be specific to MorphOS. Who's going to write to tools we're going to need to create this code. You're not going to be able to create X86 code that addresses MorphOs system calls by developing on another system.
We're going to need all the development tools other X86 OS' have and that means porting such tools to X86 Morph.
Now as to assembly language and the size of the instruction set. Currently the relatively small instruction set of the PPC processor makes the direct creation of machine code relatively easy.
The X86 processor family has a much larger instruction set (partially due to its CISC nature), but further complicated by decades of additions to the instruction set.
While it is still possible to directly create efficient machine code on a PPC, the almost 1000 instructions in the X86 instruction set make it virtually impossible to create the tight code generated by an assembler. Virtually all X86 software has to be created by higher level tools. Code produced is larger and inefficient.
Currently there are decent PPC processors that would allow us to continue to develop the compact, tight, efficient and fast code that MorphOS and AmigaOs are known for.
Moving to an X86 architecture will produce a larger and less efficient system.

And, to close, I can't see MorphOS (after it loses its advantage of compact quick execution) being able to compete against the already well established X86 OS' already on the market.

In a word, you're wrong, adopting an X86 platform would be a mistake

Quote:

First, assembler code is rarely used for the PowerPC-compatible versions of MorphOS. Why would this change if it ever supported another processor architecture?

Second, why exactly would the need for OS-specific code become bigger on another processor architecture?

I fail to understand the reasoning behind your initial assumption as well as your conclusion.

Quote:

Why?

@Jim

Just a quick question, have you actually ever programmed anything in the last decade or so?

I share both Andre and Britelite amazement at Jim's comments, but I think I grasp something, but I'm not sure what exactly are his worries. Nevertheless, it's an interesting debate.

Of course, to move to another processor, we would need a new developer toolchain. But that toolchain already exists, if we choose a much more widestpread processor. Moreso, it's more than probable that compilers for that processor are way better than por PowerPC.

But I need more light in the subject of making function calls in a different processor scenario, if endianess really only affects input/output, etc. Yes, let this be the starting point for the MorphOS to x86 project (yeah, right).

As for x86 machine code being inneficient by definition, I guess any talented programmer can write efficient code in any language. What's more interesting is that, from what I learnt some time ago, current compiler and code generators for x86 are able to do amazing wicked tricks to optimize code, even some that a seasoned assembly language programmer wouldn't think of.

Compilers are very, very interesting animals. Not only they are the "invisible" medium that enables
human communication with copmuters, they also challenge to be MORE clever than the very programmer.

Just like the fascination and fear about what unexpected things can do a creature you've built yourself.

@jcmarcos

Every compiler can only optimize in way that the compiler-developer can.

Everyone with some understanding of the target CPU and full documentation can optimize to that level, it would only take years instead of seconds ;)

Addendum:

> the southbridge, which is rumoured to be the AMD SB600.

Seems the rumour was spot on. Compare:

http://amigaworld.net/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?topic_id=31514&forum=33&start=80#557201 (1st link therein)

vs.

http://img.tomshardware.com/us/2008/03/04/amd_780g_chipset/amd_780g___sb600.jpg

Think about it, BeOS was on PPC, was doing great, but it decided to try X86. It perished woefully against a company like MS. Don't think for a second we aren't any different:

Small user base to start with
Lack of all modern features
Very expensive OS
A small group of developers with extremely limited resources, fixes specific to OS cannot be currently "Hotfixed".

And, it would make us fall into the other minority OSes, and against them we don't stand a chance.