New SAM460EX
  • Yokemate of Keyboards
    Yokemate of Keyboards
    amigadave
    Posts: 2794 from 2006/3/21
    From: Northern Calif...
    KimmoK,
    Quote:

    "Varisys to develop no less than 3 new products, one of which will be an XCore processor card."

    1) XCore processor card (for PCI)
    2) Xorro card that gives easy access to xmos I/O + prototyping area.
    3) nemo successor with some Freescale P* or T* chip
    4) ?
    (I calculated 4 HW things being done from the news feed, but I do not have any details)

    There's also XMOS SDK being done for AOS4, but that's not "HW". And netbook/notebook does not seem like A-Eon thing.

    I think A-Eon will consentrate on high end systems only.



    Although it is not available for sale to the public yet, I believe that #2 above has already been completed, but might need more work before it is ready to sell. I think they showed it somewhere already.

    I don't agree with your last comment about A-Eon only concentrating on high end systems only. If the e6500 core design chips are available as announced in the near future, with a single core SOC, low cost chip design, I could see A-Eon using it to produce an equivalent to an A500 kind of product for the Amiga market. That is what is needed for OS4.x to spread out to more of the majority of remaining and returning former Amiga users. Of course, if Hyperion comes out with their announced netbook at a price of only $300 to $500 and it can run OS4.x fairly well, that will be a huge hit and big seller for people interested in trying out OS4.x for the first time, plus all the existing OS4.x users who want something that is portable and can run off battery power.

    In the long run, this could actually be beneficial to MorphOS3.0 on the G4 PowerBook as well, because once hundreds (or hopefully thousands) of current and former Amiga users get a taste of running a Next Gen Amiga system on PPC, many of them will want something more, better, faster, and might try MorphOS3.0 on the G4 PowerBook as a step up from their low powered Hyperion netbooks.

    [ Edited by amigadave 09.05.2012 - 10:36 ]
    MorphOS - The best Next Gen Amiga choice.
  • »09.05.12 - 21:32
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  • Yokemate of Keyboards
    Yokemate of Keyboards
    Andreas_Wolf
    Posts: 12085 from 2003/5/22
    From: Germany
    > I calculated 4 HW things being done from the news feed

    I didn't "calculate" anything but just listened to what Trevor said himself at AmiWest 2011:

    "I'm looking at several new hardware developments with Varisys and we just signed the contracts for three new developments. Two of them are quite exciting, one will just [...unintelligible...] a PCI board with XMOS stuff on it [...]. We're looking at two other areas for new hardware which will hopefully help to bring again a new community together in the future."
    https://morph.zone/modules/newbb_plus/viewtopic.php?forum=3&topic_id=7183&start=383 (video links therein)

    > There's also XMOS SDK being done for AOS4

    I wonder if that will ever come, and I still remember Trevor's statements on that from July 2010 in Essen/Germany:

    http://www.amiga-news.de/de/news/comments/251521.html

    (Working links to video:
    http://www.boingsworld.de/video/AmigaEvent2010Essen.ogg
    http://www.boingsworld.de/video/AmigaEvent2010Essen.mp4 )

    Some statements issued by "the son of the guy that runs XMOS" some weeks before:
    http://moobunny.dreamhosters.com/cgi/mbmessage.pl/amiga/173959.shtml
    http://moobunny.dreamhosters.com/cgi/mbmessage.pl/amiga/174092.shtml
    http://moobunny.dreamhosters.com/cgi/mbmessage.pl/amiga/174154.shtml
    http://moobunny.dreamhosters.com/cgi/mbmessage.pl/amiga/174180.shtml

    > netbook/notebook does not seem like A-Eon thing.

    True, it's been announced as a Hyperion thing. But I suspect that sales are supposed to be handled by AmigaKit.
  • »09.05.12 - 22:25
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  • Yokemate of Keyboards
    Yokemate of Keyboards
    Andreas_Wolf
    Posts: 12085 from 2003/5/22
    From: Germany
    > I think they showed it somewhere already.

    Yes, 2 months ago there: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S5LLqe62_J8
  • »09.05.12 - 22:58
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  • Yokemate of Keyboards
    Yokemate of Keyboards
    Andreas_Wolf
    Posts: 12085 from 2003/5/22
    From: Germany
    Update:

    > I wonder what ACube will do for the successor to the 1.15 GHz Sam460ex, if there'll
    > be one that is. Let's see if they'll stay with Applied Micro and opt for the 1.2 GHz Mamba
    > and maybe overclock it like they did with the PPC440EP and PPC460EX chips on the
    > previous Sam boards so they can get it to some 1.4 GHz, or turn to another CPU vendor.

    No overclocking of 1.2 GHz Mamba to 1.4 GHz needed as APM86691 and APM86692 ("Black Mamba") got announced running at up to 1.4 GHz:

    http://investor.apm.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=78121&p=irol-newsArticle&ID=1702760
    http://www.apm.com/products/embedded/multicore460/apm86692/

    So for now the PacketPro family of chips has those members:

    APM86190 (Green Mamba, single-core)
    APM86290 (Green Mamba, dual-core)
    APM8639x (Diamondback, single-core and dual-core)
    APM86491 (Catalina, single-core)
    APM8669x (Black Mamba, single-core and dual-core)
    APM86791 (Keelback, single-core)

    I assume that there's an APM8659x still to come ;-)
  • »05.06.12 - 21:34
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  • Yokemate of Keyboards
    Yokemate of Keyboards
    Andreas_Wolf
    Posts: 12085 from 2003/5/22
    From: Germany
    Correction:

    > the e6500 in T1 through T4 will be dual-threaded

    First T1 chip got announced:

    http://media.freescale.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=196520&p=irol-newsArticle&ID=1705881
    http://media.freescale.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=196520&p=irol-newsArticle&ID=1743554
    http://www.freescale.com/webapp/sps/site/prod_summary.jsp?code=T1042
    http://www.freescale.com/files/32bit/doc/fact_sheet/AMPT1042PFS.pdf
    http://www.freescale.com/files/32bit/doc/fact_sheet/T1FAMILYFS.pdf
    http://www.freescale.com/files/training/doc/dwf/DWF13_QorIQ_Portfolio_SanJose.pdf (SerDes lane and PCIe controller configs at pages 36/37 and 39)
    http://2014ftf.ccidnet.com/pdf/0163.pdf (SerDes lane and PCIe controller configs at pages 21-23)
    http://www.freescale.com/files/graphic/block_diagram/T1040_T1042_BD_IMG.jpg
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V6V3cKlZW0o
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hyU3VUT2Vpc

    ...and quite to my surprise (and opposed to what is being said by Freescale on other occassions*), it doesn't have the new e6500 cores but the older e5500 cores, thus neither threading nor AltiVec.
    I think it's notable that those are e5500 cores shrunk to 28 nm (like e6500), as opposed to the 45 nm e5500 cores of the P5 series.
    Furthermore, the T1042 has a DDR4 memory controller (T2080 and T4240/T4160 have only DDR3).

    * http://www.freescale.com/files/training_pdf/FTF/2012/americas/WBNR_FTF12_IND_F0122.pdf (page 9)
    * http://www.freescale.com/files/training_pdf/WBNR_FTF11_NET_F1176.pdf (page 12)
    * http://www.freescale.com/files/32bit/doc/brochure/PWRARBYNDBITSSKD.pdf (page 3)
    * http://www.freescale.com/files/32bit/doc/brochure/PWRARBYNDBITS.pdf (page 57)
    * http://www.freescale.com/files/microcontrollers/doc/brochure/BRPWRARCHCOR.pdf (page 3)

    T1022 seems to be next (maybe it has a DIU like the P1022):
    http://www.freescale.com/files/training_pdf/FTF/2012/americas/WBNR_FTF12_NET_F0009.pdf (page 59)
    http://2012ftf.ccidnet.com/pdf/0009.pdf (page 52)
    http://www.freescale.com.cn/cstory/ftf/2012/pdf/0009.pdf (page 52)

    Edit1: Added Youtube video link.
    Edit2: Added another PDF link.
    Edit3: Added T1040.
    Edit4: Added another PDF link.
    Edit5: Added another PDF link.

    [ Edited by Andreas_Wolf 29.10.2014 - 14:04 ]
  • »18.06.12 - 12:10
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  • Yokemate of Keyboards
    Yokemate of Keyboards
    Andreas_Wolf
    Posts: 12085 from 2003/5/22
    From: Germany
    Update:

    > Revised QorIQ T roadmap as of August 2011 (page 4):
    > http://www.freescale.com.cn/cstory/ftf/2011/pdf/0772.pdf
    > http://2011ftf.ccidnet.com/pdf/0772.pdf
    > [...]
    > T2: T2080 [...]

    Announced:

    http://media.freescale.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=196520&p=irol-newsArticle&ID=1705881
    http://media.freescale.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=196520&p=irol-newsArticle&ID=1743554
    http://www.freescale.com/webapp/sps/site/prod_summary.jsp?code=T2080
    http://www.freescale.com/files/32bit/doc/fact_sheet/AMPT2080PFS.pdf
    http://www.freescale.com/files/32bit/doc/fact_sheet/T2080FS.pdf
    http://www.freescale.com/files/graphic/block_diagram/T2080_BD_IMG.jpg
    http://www.freescale.com/files/graphic/block_diagram/T2081_BD_IMG.jpg

    T2080: 2x PCIe 3.0, 2x PCIe 2.0, 16 SerDes lanes (8x 10 GHz, 8x 8 GHz), 2x SATA2
    T2081: 1x PCIe 3.0, 3x PCIe 2.0, 8 SerDes lanes (8 GHz), no SATA

    "T2080 is primarily intended to succeed [...] P2041 and P3041. T2080 offers double the performance of these devices while maintaining about the same power and pricing."
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_qOP9muZAQ8

    "T2080 is primarily intended to succeed [...] P2041 and P3041. T2080 [...] offers 2x or better in core capability, cache size, SerDes bandwidth and Ethernet connectivity of these devices while maintaining about the same power and pricing."
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JRhAq1XHcBo

    Pricing of P2041/P3041 at Avnet:
    P2041: 202...337 USD
    P3041: 230...364 USD


    Edit: added T2081

    [ Edited by Andreas_Wolf 10.10.2012 - 22:13 ]
  • »18.06.12 - 12:20
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  • Yokemate of Keyboards
    Yokemate of Keyboards
    Andreas_Wolf
    Posts: 12085 from 2003/5/22
    From: Germany
    Addendum:

    >> some (see Wikipedia) even think the e5500 to actually be what was
    >> announced as e700 in 2004.

    > Answer from Preet Virk, strategic marketing director for Freescale's
    > Networking Processor Division:
    > "The e5500 is [...] unrelated to a previously mentioned e700 family"
    > http://blogs.freescale.com/2010/06/23/what%e2%80%99s-up-with-64-bit-embedded-computing/#comment-292

    Wikipedia has been changed recently to reflect this. The statements

    "Freescale have used the e700 and NG-64 monikers to refer to this core since 2004."
    and
    "The former codename for what probably was to be this product."
    and
    "It was eventually revealed as the e5500 core."

    ...have been changed to

    "Freescale have used the e700 and NG-64 monikers to refer to a very similarly speced core since 2004, but they are not the same product"
    and
    "Freescale eventually released the e5500 core but it was not the same core even though they are very similarly speced."

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PowerPC_e5500
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PowerPC_e700
  • »19.06.12 - 12:18
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  • Yokemate of Keyboards
    Yokemate of Keyboards
    Andreas_Wolf
    Posts: 12085 from 2003/5/22
    From: Germany
    Update:

    >> I have not read up on which PPC platforms AROS has been ported to

    > So far, AROS for PPC runs natively only on Efika 5200B and Sam440.

    Seems it's being worked on for Sam460ex as well:

    http://gitorious.org/aros/aros/commits/sam460
    http://aros-exec.org/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?post_id=72012#forumpost72012
    http://aros-exec.org/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?post_id=72034#forumpost72034


    Edit: Added links to aros-exec.org postings.

    [ Edited by Andreas_Wolf 01.08.2012 - 18:17 ]
  • »04.07.12 - 00:28
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  • Jim
  • Yokemate of Keyboards
    Yokemate of Keyboards
    Jim
    Posts: 4977 from 2009/1/28
    From: Delaware, USA
    What's the fastest T1?
    What core is to used in T2-T4?
    "Never attribute to malice what can more readily explained by incompetence"
  • »04.07.12 - 21:17
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  • Yokemate of Keyboards
    Yokemate of Keyboards
    Andreas_Wolf
    Posts: 12085 from 2003/5/22
    From: Germany
    > What's the fastest T1?

    The only one announced so far:

    https://morph.zone/modules/newbb_plus/viewtopic.php?forum=3&topic_id=7001&start=736

    > What core is to used in T2-T4?

    "e6500 core running up to 2.5 GHz (T2-T5 families)"
    http://www.freescale.com/webapp/sps/site/overview.jsp?code=QORIQ_AMP_SERIES
  • »04.07.12 - 22:15
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  • Yokemate of Keyboards
    Yokemate of Keyboards
    Andreas_Wolf
    Posts: 12085 from 2003/5/22
    From: Germany
    Update:

    > There's also another error in there, as it reads "P3080" where it should read "P3060"

    P3060 cancelled:

    https://lists.ozlabs.org/pipermail/linuxppc-dev/2012-July/099047.html
    http://lists.denx.de/pipermail/u-boot/2012-July/127806.html
  • »20.07.12 - 00:01
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  • Yokemate of Keyboards
    Yokemate of Keyboards
    Andreas_Wolf
    Posts: 12085 from 2003/5/22
    From: Germany
    >> bPlan are very close to finishing Aura development on the EfikaMX, thus providing
    >> an high level abstraction to the devices/drivers of the device in an OS-agnostic way.
    >> Of course, an appropriate Linux kernel is also developed at the same time.

    > Thanks for the clarification Konstantinos. So, what Genesi/bPlan/Pegatron are doing
    > is making a new computer and custom operating system. Well, almost... But in many
    > regards, it is. Once done, it's all a matter of convincing the world to write kernels for Aura.

    According to Genesi's statement from June 2011, they are more successful than IBM in this regard at least:

    "Genesi also possess the proprietary technology, "Aura." Competitors like IBM have worked diligently and spent substantial amounts of time and capital to replicate Aura. However, until this date, they have not been able to succeed in that endeavor."
    http://www.genesi-tech.com/cache/baylor/China.pdf (page 20)

    Does anybody have any information about IBM's alleged unsuccessful endeavour to "replicate Aura"?
  • »15.09.12 - 12:21
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  • Yokemate of Keyboards
    Yokemate of Keyboards
    Andreas_Wolf
    Posts: 12085 from 2003/5/22
    From: Germany
    Update:

    >> when I discussed PPC based systems with the owner of Varisys
    >> (the designers of the X1000 motherboard) I got this response:
    >> "In terms of PPC we are thinking QorIQ here for higher end designs."

    > Apparently, they've started to follow suit:
    > "XMC/PMC [...] VM400 (XMC) QorIQ Pxxxx"
    > "COM Express [...] VPX1 QorIQ P1022"
    > "PC104 [...] MC104PRQ QorIQ P2022"
    > http://www.varisys.co.uk/products.html

    The VM400 has now been revealed as:

    "XMC/PMC VM400 (XMC) QorlQ P3041/5020"
    https://www.box.com/index.php?rm=box_download_shared_file&file_id=f_3209347735&shared_name=si8iwtiq2ag3oyykkqvb (page 9)

    PDF file seems to be 4 months old but was apparently publicly released only now.
  • »17.09.12 - 22:56
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  • Yokemate of Keyboards
    Yokemate of Keyboards
    Andreas_Wolf
    Posts: 12085 from 2003/5/22
    From: Germany
    Update:

    > T1022 seems to be next (maybe it has a DIU like the P1022)

    T1020 and T1022 announced:

    http://media.freescale.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=196520&p=irol-newsArticle&ID=1743554
    http://www.freescale.com/webapp/sps/site/prod_summary.jsp?code=T1020

    And indeed they seem to come with a DIU (just like the also newly announced T1040 and the previously announced T1042 do):

    http://www.freescale.com/files/graphic/block_diagram/T1020_T1022_BD_IMG.jpg
    http://www.freescale.com/files/32bit/doc/fact_sheet/T1FAMILYFS.pdf
    http://www.freescale.co.jp/event/ftfj/2012/technicalsession/pdf/FTF12_NET_F0635_Matt_rev2-180.pdf (pages 10 to 14)
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hyU3VUT2Vpc


    Edit: T1023 mentioned with block diagram and specs in http://www.freescale.com/files/training/doc/dwf/DWF13_APF_NET_T0809.pdf (page 12)

    [ Edited by Andreas_Wolf 26.11.2013 - 22:41 ]
  • »10.10.12 - 21:59
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  • Yokemate of Keyboards
    Yokemate of Keyboards
    Andreas_Wolf
    Posts: 12085 from 2003/5/22
    From: Germany
    Update:

    > "e6500 core running up to 2.5 GHz (T2-T5 families)"
    > http://www.freescale.com/webapp/sps/site/overview.jsp?code=QORIQ_AMP_SERIES

    ...has been changed (somewhen between October 4th and today*) to:

    "e6500 core running up to 1.8 GHz (T2-T4 families)"

    No mention of T5 anymore. What gives?


    * Edit:
    The Wayback Machine link now shows the site on October 7th already having been without mention of the T5. Thus, the removal of the T5 must have happened somewhen between October 4th and October 7th.

    [ Edited by Andreas_Wolf 28.10.2012 - 21:29 ]
  • »15.10.12 - 22:20
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  • Jim
  • Yokemate of Keyboards
    Yokemate of Keyboards
    Jim
    Posts: 4977 from 2009/1/28
    From: Delaware, USA
    Andreas_Wolf,
    Quote:

    "e6500 core running up to 1.8 GHz (T2-T4 families)"

    No mention of T5 anymore. What gives?


    Bitterly disappointing.
    With a clear lead, it appears that PPC manufacturers could eventually see their products outperformed by ARM Socs.

    The T4 is neat, but its got too many cores and too low a clock speed.

    [ Edited by Jim 16.10.2012 - 00:50 ]
    "Never attribute to malice what can more readily explained by incompetence"
  • »16.10.12 - 01:46
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  • Yokemate of Keyboards
    Yokemate of Keyboards
    Andreas_Wolf
    Posts: 12085 from 2003/5/22
    From: Germany
    >> No mention of T5 anymore. What gives?

    > Bitterly disappointing.

    Let's not jump to conclusions here. I didn't mean to imply that the T5 was cancelled. I guess we'll have to see if Freescale will follow through with their announcement or if the QorIQ T5 will suffer the same fate as the MPC75xx and MPC87xx.

    > With a clear lead, it appears that PPC manufacturers could
    > eventually see their products outperformed by ARM Socs.

    ...from their very own production (Freescale's QorIQ LS1, Applied Micro's X-Gene, LSI's ARM-based Axxia), that is.
  • »16.10.12 - 10:26
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  • Yokemate of Keyboards
    Yokemate of Keyboards
    Andreas_Wolf
    Posts: 12085 from 2003/5/22
    From: Germany
    Update:

    > Seems it's being worked on for Sam460ex as well:
    > http://gitorious.org/aros/aros/commits/sam460
    > http://aros-exec.org/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?post_id=72012#forumpost72012
    > http://aros-exec.org/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?post_id=72034#forumpost72034

    AmiWest 2012 news:

    "We will be demonstrating AROS v1 on the Sam460 (native)"
    http://www.amiga.org/forums/showpost.php?p=711924
  • »19.10.12 - 11:02
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  • Jim
  • Yokemate of Keyboards
    Yokemate of Keyboards
    Jim
    Posts: 4977 from 2009/1/28
    From: Delaware, USA
    Andreas_Wolf,
    Quote:

    "We will be demonstrating AROS v1 on the Sam460 (native)"
    http://www.amiga.org/forums/showpost.php?p=711924


    Where this could prove interesting is in 3D support on newer Nvidia video cards.
    I'll have to contact AmigaDave and see if Samuel Crow really does demo this.

    Its not MorphOS and the Sam460 has a pretty weak CPU, but newer, more powerful video cards with OpenGL support?
    Gotta find out more.
    "Never attribute to malice what can more readily explained by incompetence"
  • »19.10.12 - 23:35
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  • Jim
  • Yokemate of Keyboards
    Yokemate of Keyboards
    Jim
    Posts: 4977 from 2009/1/28
    From: Delaware, USA
    From AmigaDave at Amiwest, today:

    "Not sure why there would be so excited about anything running on the SAM460ex, since it is still over priced and under powered, but Jason McMullan has confirmed that he does have AROS running on his SAM460ex and will be showing it tomorrow during the show. He will be leaving after his presentation on Sunday morning to go home."

    So, I guess, more news tomorrow...
    "Never attribute to malice what can more readily explained by incompetence"
  • »20.10.12 - 19:30
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  • Yokemate of Keyboards
    Yokemate of Keyboards
    Andreas_Wolf
    Posts: 12085 from 2003/5/22
    From: Germany
    > I guess, more news tomorrow...

    Indeed:

    http://www.acube-systems.biz/index.php?page=news&id=108
  • »21.10.12 - 15:58
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  • Jim
  • Yokemate of Keyboards
    Yokemate of Keyboards
    Jim
    Posts: 4977 from 2009/1/28
    From: Delaware, USA
    Andreas_Wolf,
    Quote:

    Indeed


    Well, we have an official announcement.
    No word from David as to how to demo went, but I think his initial assessment is probably correct.
    Acube hardware is underpowered.
    Why would you run AROS on an expensive Acube board, only to have it seriously outperformed by cheaper X86 hardware?
    "Never attribute to malice what can more readily explained by incompetence"
  • »21.10.12 - 22:08
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  • Yokemate of Keyboards
    Yokemate of Keyboards
    Andreas_Wolf
    Posts: 12085 from 2003/5/22
    From: Germany
    > Why would you run AROS on an expensive Acube board, only to have it
    > seriously outperformed by cheaper X86 hardware?

    I have no idea :-)
  • »21.10.12 - 22:37
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  • Yokemate of Keyboards
    Yokemate of Keyboards
    amigadave
    Posts: 2794 from 2006/3/21
    From: Northern Calif...
    Jim wrote:,
    Quote:

    From AmigaDave at Amiwest, today:

    "Not sure why there would be so excited about anything running on the SAM460ex, since it is still over priced and under powered, but Jason McMullan has confirmed that he does have AROS running on his SAM460ex and will be showing it tomorrow during the show. He will be leaving after his presentation on Sunday morning to go home."

    So, I guess, more news tomorrow...



    Jason ended up giving his AROS presentation on the SAM460ex on Saturday, instead of Sunday, so he did not even set up his computers on Sunday, and he left to go to the airport around 10:30am on Sunday. I over slept on Sunday, after initially waking up at around 6:30am I fell back to sleep and did not wake up until 5 minutes until 10am, so I almost missed even saying goodbye to Jason McMullan on Sunday morning.

    To be honest, I was so busy with people interested in MorphOS3.1, winning raffle prizes (I think I won 4, or 5 out of the possible 8 to 10 raffle prizes during both days by giving the SACC club a $20.00 donation to support their work in putting on the AmiWest Show each year), and trying to look around at all of the different display tables and buying a couple of things from Matthew & AmigaKit (I hate to see Matthew pack up much gear that he had shipped over to sell during the show), as I never want Matthew to bring Amiga gear over with him and have me not buy something from him before he returns to Wales and has to ship his remaining stock that did not sell during the AmiWest Show.

    I only had a quick look at AROS running native on the SAM460ex, and the only thing I noticed was that Jason McMullan had not yet completed work on the video driver so that the resolution he was running at was not optimal for the monitor he had borrowed from one of the other people attending the 2012 AmiWest Show. I did not realize that Jason was not going to set up his display at all on Sunday, because his original plan was to do his presentation on Sunday and then leave for the airport to catch his flight home. I wish I had taken a closer look at the demonstration of AROS native on the SAM460ex, so I could answer some of your questions regarding it.

    I don't want to offend all of the people who have purchased a SAM460ex with my comment that Jim quoted from my email to Jim, after he had indicated that many posters on the MorphZone.org forum were interested in the Native AROS demonstration that was rumored that Jason was going to do during some part of the 2012 AmiWest Show (Jim, that is twice now that you have copy and pasted part of a private comment between me and yourself into a public forum).

    Although I stand by what I wrote to you, I don't want people taking it out of the context of my perception that not many people who post on the forums of MorphZone.org would own a SAM460ex, as it does not run any version of MorphOS, so only AmigaOS4.x users would use a SAM460ex, and there are not many people who run AmigaOS4.x exclusively posting comments on a MorphOS Centric public forum. I can easily understand why people who already own a SAM460ex (which by the way has adequate power to run AmigaOS4.1.5 at an acceptable speed, or maybe even at a fast speed, but it woud depend on what you are comparing it to, as there are only a limited number of computers that can run AmigaOS4.1.5 and the SAM460ex is perhaps the 2nd fastest new computer you can purchase, or the 3rd fastest available computer over all if you consider all current and past computer designs that can run AmigaOS4.1.5 on today.

    Comparing computers that can run AmigaOS4.1.5 with other computers which are not capable of running AmigaOS4.1.5, makes no sense. It is like comparing a Ferrari with a pick-up truck. Only the truck is capable of carrying over 1,000 pounds of cement bags down a dirt road to a construction site without damaging itself, so it serves it's specific purpose well. Running AROS on the SAM460ex does not make any sense, UNLESS the person already owns a SAM460ex to run AmigaOS4.1.5 and he just wants to explore what running AROS is like, just like many X1000 owners are curious about how well their X1000 can run Linux, so a few smart guys with X1000's have taken the time and expended the effort to write, or modify existing Linux kernels, so they can boot many different versions of Linux on their X1000 computers, but I doubt that any Amiga users have purchased their X1000 computers only for running Linux on them, just as I strongly doubt that any MorphOS3.1 users will purchase a SAM460ex so they can run AROS native, instead of buying an x86 PC to run AROS Natively at many times the speed of a SAM460ex.

    Jason McMullan already owned a SAM460ex and his programming skill set is ideal for writing AROS drivers, from what I can tell, after spending just a short time with him on Friday evening and a little time while we were setting up his AROS demonstration and I was setting up the many computers I use each year to demonstrate MorphOS, with the addition of my X1000 this year, that was sharing my table space with all the MorphOS3.1 computers.

    Sorry for the long explanation, but I did not want my quoted comment about the SAM460ex to be misunderstood, without the context I was using to base my comment on fully explained. When you discuss AROS running native on the SAM460ex, you naturally must consider other platforms that can also run AROS. The same discussion is very different when you are talking about computers that are capable of running AmigaOS4.1.5. Since I own, use, and promote all flavors of the Amiga experience, including all of the Classic Amiga computer models, so I never want any of my comments used out of context, which is why I have written such a long explanation here.

    Perhaps Jim also misunderstood my comment, as I did not write it out clearly within my email to him, which was short and did not include any long explanation, but I thought he would understand, since I believe it was this forum he was referring to, when he made the initial comment about people being very interested in the rumor of Jason McMullan demonstrating AROS Native on the SAM460ex.

    [ Edited by amigadave 24.10.2012 - 04:50 ]
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