The “normal” Tower57 FPU build works too on the Tabor btw. In that case, as with all other FPU-using programs, the OS’ current compatibility backend kicks in and “translates” each and every FPU-opcode into something the Tabor likes. Interesting enough: even then the Tabor is so powerful that it’s still playable (about 20fps where the sam460 reaches about 30fps).
http://blog.hyperion-entertainment.biz/?p=1282

The FPU emulation overhead is 50%, right?

'68020 fpu emulated'?

68020??? 50%?????


No idea what you are referring too......

But....

Much faster than SAM -> 66% performance of a SAM just by not using the the special olympics version of the game shows pretty clearly how crippled the FPU EMU is (as not all code in Tower57 will be FPU bound).

> '68020 fpu emulated'?

That‘s the OS4 standard:

http://www.google.com/search?q=%22emulated+mc68020%2Ffpu%22

It's so freak that they launch a computer with an incompatible "FPU". Really hard to understand for me (And many others for what I see).

Are there plans to bring Morphos to Tabor?

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No.
MorphOS-Team has no intentions to support this board with an incompatible fpu. There's plenty other hardware (cheaper and more powerful) for MorphOS.

It's just huge amount of work for one or two users, and when the support is ready, these new boards are already out of stock... like with Sam. "We have new machines" with marginal small batch machines is kind of joke IMHO... but at least we can say that now with couple of boards, but is it worth to do again, especially with a board that has severe flaws?

tabor is much slower than a pi3 ... suggestion from me. buy a pegasos2
Morphos, Os4, linux ppc, mol and good jit for classic speed all in one machine

[ Edited by tlosmx 19.11.2017 - 14:59 ]

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I don't remember the exact number of Tabor A1222 boards was supposed to have already been produced, or if the quantity quote by Trevor was only for the number of Tabor CPU's that were purchased, but IIRC, the number was 500, to 1,000. It might have been that Trevor and A-Eon got a big discount on buying the CPU, if he ordered 1,000 chips initially, but I am only guessing, as I can't remember the exact number (other than remembering that I thought the number was excessively high, for a system that was taking so long to release, and a price to performance ratio that might cause sales to be very limited, or at least slow).

I'm sure someone here with a better memory than me, saw the same quote, and will post a link to it, or copy and paste the exact quote and number of CPU's purchased, or Tabor motherboards produced.

I agree with the MorphOS Dev. Team's decision to NOT support the Tabor, for the reasons jPV stated in the above quote, plus probably many other valid reasons to NOT waste developer time, trying to support a limited supply (even if 1,000 is a rather large number), of non-standard, machines. I'm sure that A-Eon will convince many OS4 users to purchase a Tabor, but I'm not sure that they will be able to sell out a stock of 1,000 boards, at something close to $350 to $550 US dollars, like they did, with the more expensive, but lower number of X1000 motherboards/systems, produced, which seemed to sell out rather quickly.

I hope for A-Eon to have more success than my pessimistic prediction of the future sales, as I like having A-Eon around supporting many software projects, even if most of the software that is being monetarily supported by A-Eon, is for OS4 only. They have been a positive influence in our community since the creation of A-Eon, and Trevor has been a great supporter of the entire Amiga community, for a very long time.

[ Edited by amigadave 19.11.2017 - 13:29 ]

> I don't remember the exact number of Tabor A1222 boards was supposed to
> have already been produced, [...] but IIRC, the number was 500, to 1,000.

It was 1000 for the Tabor (and 500 for the CyrusPlus).

> It might have been that Trevor and A-Eon got a big discount on buying the CPU,
> if he ordered 1,000 chips initially

Incidentally, 1000 was Freescale's minimum order quantity for the P1022. I don't know whether A-Eon purchased directly from Freescale or from a chip broker (who also offer lower quantities), though.

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I believe the plan is to convince as many non-OS4 users to purchase a Tabor as possible.

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Here, in Poland most people consider X1000/X5000 outrageously overpriced. On the other hand, quite-cheap-but-not-so-underpowered machine like Tabor might sell quite well. One user has made a poll and around 30-40 users declared interest if it fits in the promised price range. That would be several times more machines than all X5000's in our country.

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I don't get that.
What would a non-OS4 user use a Tabor system for?
Linux? It would under-perform cheaper solutions.

And Tabor won't be supported by MorphOS.
So considering what $400 would get you in terms of cheap X64 hardware this doesn't make sense to me.

>> I believe the plan is to convince as many non-OS4 users to purchase
>> a Tabor as possible.

> I don't get that.

Tabor's relative low price is supposed to create new OS4 users. So at the time of convincing, they are obviously not yet OS4 users. Convincing OS4 users to purchase a Tabor would mean making them switch from PowerUP hardware, Eyetech AmigaOne, Pegasos II, Sam440 etc. to Tabor.

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Ah, thanks for the clarification.
Pity its not a better system, as the cpu implemented forces me to conclude our current planned X64 transition makes more sense.

We could match this price point with more powerful X64 hardware.

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Yes, we could. But I'm afraid the users that really wanted to try out MorphOS did that already. The entry cost is so low that literally nothing stands in your way if you only wish to.

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I agree that even if the Dev. Team changed their minds, and supported the Tabor in a future version of MorphOS, not many users would buy the Tabor with the primary reason being to run MorphOS on it.

@Andreas Wolf,

I used the wrong words to describe the most likely target market for the Tabor boards/systems. The largest remaining group of users are the users who currently, or formerly, run/ran, original 68k, and/or 68k + Phase5 PPC accelerated Amiga computers, who have an interest in running OS4, but have not yet purchased an OS4 compatible system, or accelerator, due to the high cost, or limited availability, of such systems. Some current and former OS4 users, who could not afford an X1000, or X5000 system, might upgrade, or replace faulty, or broken Eyetech AmigaOnes, or slow SAM440 systems.

I believe that A-Eon is trying to fulfill a gap (seeming or otherwise), in the Amiga marketplace, by trying to produce a more affordable entry level, OS4 compatible system. If they can demonstrate the Tabor successfully running both, old 68k Amiga software/games, via emulation, and current PPC native OS4 software/games, at acceptable speeds, they might be successful in getting all of their Tabor boards/systems sold in a relatively short period of time. Only time will tell if their gamble has paid off.

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Hey, that's a very pessimistic view. MorphOS x64 will not only come with a new ISA, but also with some modernizations: SMP, more than 31 bit address space. Which are hard limitations with current the MorphOS. So, an x64 MorphOS will come with more power and support for modern hardware (many ppl rate ppc Mac as "garbage", this stigma would be void with x64). The most critical application of today 8Browser9 will benefit massively from x64 (f.ex. JS JIT)
Last not least MorphOS x64 does not require a dedicated box.

Cards will be played out again with x64: there is chance of a bettering, but of course we also see the "big success" of AROS...

> MorphOS x64 does not require a dedicated box.

Depends on the definition of "dedicated box". MorphOS/x64 surely won't support the vast majority of x64 systems people happen to already own.

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Sure, but think of it from the other direction. Get a MorphOS x64 computer and have a rather current computer that runs Windows and the Linux64 of your choice.

The ppc Macs don't offer that possibilty: outdated performance, outdated OS X and ppc Linux that doesn't receive the samelove Linux x64 is getting.

So while you are having a hard time today if your prerequisite would be to use only one computer for all your needs including MorphOS, you will probably have much less trouble with the hypthetical MorphOS x64 available.

Not that I necessarily want to reduce it all to one single machine, but reducing the required ammount of machines is rather not a disadvantage IMHO. But, well, MorphOS x64 is not there yet and next stop is 3.10 which also should breing a bit of new momentum to the MorphOS world.

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1000 boards, sitting on shelves since 2015.


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Regarding the price of the Tabor, while it’s obvious that it was always meant to be a ”more affordable” (relatively speaking) option, I don’t think it was ever meant to be *this* “affordable”. As soon as the discussion about its flaws reached a certain threshold, the discussed price tag quickly went downhill from “700-1000” EUR to “selling at loss”.

Some observations about the Tabor price

And my guess is that the potential market for OS4 HW isn’t today what it was a few years ago.

[ Edited by takemehomegrandma 21.11.2017 - 00:07 ]

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By choosing to go in one direction, you also choose *not* to go in some other direction

Trevor may be an enthusiast with good intentions, but IMHO the X1000 and later was what finally killed off OS4 since it effectively prevented a fundamentally needed development in another direction, while effectively driving away the last community members sitting on the fence hoping for signs of a potential Amiga [OS4] future...

What was the point in making super expensive machines like the X1000 and X5000, with hardware features which most probably will never be even supported by Amiga OS? They should have made more affordable machines from the start (ones that are compatible that is) and saved the extra money for software development. Just my two cents.

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Well, new custom hardware is expensive to create no matter how inexpensive the components are.
That is illustrated by Tabor's price.
For the added value, I'd pick an X1000 or X5000 over the A1222 any day.
And when these boards were all created, you had a choice between the relatively powerful higher end chips and the low end e500V2 basedchips like the P1022, they middle ground T10xx series had not yet been introduced.

Again, this all points to the well founded decision by the MorphOS development team to support Apple PPC hard, which can be had cheaply.
And it reinforces the reasoning to migrate to X64.

If T10xx (or a cheaper Power 9) based board had been introduced I might not feel this way, but...

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Well, little endian support was rather easy, but much effort was made by AROS to have all applications 64-bit clean. Good luck, Team MorphOS!