A possible future for MorphOS
  • Just looking around
    Posts: 15 from 2016/1/22
    > the next Nintendo will use X64
    We don't know, it may just as well be ARM based.

    > Manufacturers of lightweight devices and manufacturers of servers hardly overlap.
    > Lightweight devices and servers are distinct markets. Even if the same ISA was prevalent
    > in both, it would be completely different SoCs/chips and even microarchitectures.
    I think you're both right and wrong. While it if obvious the same IC is not going to be used for both servers and lightweight devices, VHDL code is being reused. When they design a new IC, they reuse part of the existing code, modify it and combine it with new code, so it is part reuse and part new. And they are trying to make servers containing Intel Atom processors, which is officially a mobility-oriented processor, which means they are trying to put low-power processors in servers. Companies will reuse when it doesn't compromise another aspect.

    > A single-core SoC would run worse with the popular operating systems,
    Not necessarly, a single core p6600 running at 2ghz would have similar performance to a triple-core i6400 running at 1,33ghz and probably wouldn't cost more. There would be no reason for a board designer intending to run linux on a board to prefer the triple core i6400 or the p6600 before carefully looking at his specific application, at which time, he may find that one of the other is more suitable for him. Also, the p6600 supports hyperthreading so it can be run as multiple slower "virtual cores" if one needs to do so. It is worth noting that enabling SMP makes it more difficult to optimize an operating system's setting for low latency operation.

    > What is the legal structure of this alleged registered "MorphOS Development" company?
    Well, I'm not sure.

    > and more and more tablets use it. Sure Intel and X64 in not dead for long time.
    I made an error and should have said that Windows based computers will remain x86 based. The only reason the number of x86 based tablets is growing is poeple are stupid enough to want to run that windows garbadge operating system. Apple based tablets are ARM based and so are most Android based tablets. Finally, never said x86 will be dead, the office oriented, windows running computer will remain x86 based, there is no reason for this to change.

    > Except in phones Intel chips are efficient for the calculating power they deliver.
    They are not efficient, they are inexpensive, they offered the best performance per dollar, this is the reason why they are popular. They are inexpensive because they are made in huge numbers and they are made in huge numbers because only x86 runs Windows and people are dumb enough to want to run that garbage operating system by the hundreds of millions. ARM is also made in huge numbers and as such has become a contender. However, performance per watt is more important than performance per dollar in mobile applications, it will soon be true also for servers. This means non-x86. Once some non-x86 architecture(s) becomes popular for both servers and mobile devices, other non-windows machines will switch over. It fact it is already happening with the ARM architecture.
  • »19.04.16 - 22:45
    Profile
  • Jim
  • Yokemate of Keyboards
    Yokemate of Keyboards
    Jim
    Posts: 4977 from 2009/1/28
    From: Delaware, USA
    @ Amiga believer

    Personally, I am rather ambivalent about what ISA is running the software I use as long as that software runs well.
    As such MIPS, ARM, whatever.
    We ARE going X64 and we currently support PPCs.

    I see no massive advantage in changing that.
    "Never attribute to malice what can more readily explained by incompetence"
  • »19.04.16 - 23:20
    Profile
  • Yokemate of Keyboards
    Yokemate of Keyboards
    Andreas_Wolf
    Posts: 12058 from 2003/5/22
    From: Germany
    >> A single-core SoC would run worse with the popular operating systems

    > Not necessarly, a single core p6600 running at 2ghz would have similar performance
    > to a triple-core i6400 running at 1,33ghz

    I was comparing single-core SoC vs. multicore SoC using the very same core(s), of course.

    > There would be no reason for a board designer intending to run linux on a board
    > to prefer the triple core i6400 or the p6600

    In most cases, it would be reasonable for a board designer intending to run Linux on his board to prefer a multicore SoC to a single-core SoC, with both using the very same core(s). Usually, the decision for one or the other wouldn't even have an impact on the actual board design as the SoC variants with different core counts are interchangeably usable as pin-compatible drop-in replacements.

    > the p6600 supports hyperthreading

    How "to make sure no one develops software depending on unofficial capabilities which would be removed in successor machines" in this case? :-)
  • »11.12.16 - 13:06
    Profile
  • Jim
  • Yokemate of Keyboards
    Yokemate of Keyboards
    Jim
    Posts: 4977 from 2009/1/28
    From: Delaware, USA
    >> Imagination has stated that the MIPS market is growing.

    yeah...growing legs apparently ;-)
    "Never attribute to malice what can more readily explained by incompetence"
  • »07.05.17 - 00:52
    Profile
  • vox
  • Priest of the Order of the Butterfly
    Priest of the Order of the Butterfly
    vox
    Posts: 524 from 2003/11/24
    From: Belgrade
    MorphOS 4.x for selected x64 boards and PPC64 (G5, x5000, Tabor maybe?) with real SMP, 64-bit memory map and modern Radeon drivers and FAT32/NTFS/EXT4 support would be awesome. Yes, OS3 and WOS/PUP/MOS 1-3.x apps could be boxed and Crysalid pack ported to be native. Some AROS x64 backporting only if needed fore some more Amiga x64 apps and one can have stylish and modern OS. Some "dual" application format could be used for installs, like Macs did once or mixed m68k/PPC apps were.

    E-mail client indicate what kind of applications could be developed and userbase could make some OS4 developers "do the blue too" (as some did, Vampire could be m68k flavour where applicable) and some x64 developers might come with proper development tools Vamp and OS4 currently lack of.

    Thats a nice wish, and alternatives are nice too exist, but I dont see where e.g.
    MorphOS 4 for ARM64 would lead without tablet scaling and extensive touch screen support. And would I or you use it then? MIPS would even fare way worse.

    [ Edited by vox 18.12.2018 - 20:41 ]
    ------------------------------------------
    iMac G5 1GB with MorphOS and MacOS X
    Lame PC with AmiKit XE
    YT channel https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCdHl_msNWHEVPf229h_gijQ
    Telegram Amiga group: https://t.me/amigaranchorelaxo
  • »18.12.18 - 19:39
    Profile
  • Yokemate of Keyboards
    Yokemate of Keyboards
    Andreas_Wolf
    Posts: 12058 from 2003/5/22
    From: Germany
    > PPC64 (G5, x5000, Tabor maybe?)

    The e500v2 cores inside Tabor's QorIQ P1022 CPU are 32-bit.

    > Crysalid pack [could be] ported to be native.

    ...as long as sources are available.

    > I dont see where e.g. MorphOS 4 for ARM64 would lead without tablet scaling
    > and extensive touch screen support.

    http://linuxgizmos.com/catalog-of-116-open-spec-hacker-boards/

    40 of those are 64-bit ARMv8 (AArch64, "ARM64").


    Edit: new list (43 of those are 64-bit ARMv8)

    [ Edited by Andreas_Wolf 04.01.2019 - 12:26 ]
  • »18.12.18 - 22:27
    Profile
  • vox
  • Priest of the Order of the Butterfly
    Priest of the Order of the Butterfly
    vox
    Posts: 524 from 2003/11/24
    From: Belgrade
    Quote:

    Andreas_Wolf wrote:
    > PPC64 (G5, x5000, Tabor maybe?)

    The e500v2 cores inside Tabor's QorIQ P1022 CPU are 32-bit.


    Really? AmigaOS 4 anyway has nothing to do with 64 bit beside patching file sys.

    Quote:


    > Crysalid pack [could be] ported to be native.

    ...as long as sources are available.



    True. Sources and people willing to recompile, bugfix and continue development will be critical.

    Quote:


    > I dont see where e.g. MorphOS 4 for ARM64 would lead without tablet scaling
    > and extensive touch screen support.

    http://linuxgizmos.com/catalog-of-116-open-spec-hacker-boards/

    40 of those are 64-bit ARMv8 (AArch64, "ARM64").



    I do understand ARM64 exists, as well as Linux and Android for it. I just dont see MOS with no touchscreen support there yet. Or even with it. Kind of backward retro enthusiasm - would love to see MOS advance to convenient desktop/laptop system, but not that far.
    Its up to MOS team to decide.

    [ Edited by vox 19.12.2018 - 07:38 ]
    ------------------------------------------
    iMac G5 1GB with MorphOS and MacOS X
    Lame PC with AmiKit XE
    YT channel https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCdHl_msNWHEVPf229h_gijQ
    Telegram Amiga group: https://t.me/amigaranchorelaxo
  • »19.12.18 - 06:37
    Profile
  • Yokemate of Keyboards
    Yokemate of Keyboards
    Andreas_Wolf
    Posts: 12058 from 2003/5/22
    From: Germany
    >>> MorphOS 4.x for [...] PPC64 (G5, x5000, Tabor maybe?)

    >> The e500v2 cores inside Tabor's QorIQ P1022 CPU are 32-bit.

    > Really?

    Yes, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PowerPC_e500.

    > AmigaOS 4 anyway has nothing to do with 64 bit

    You were talking about "MorphOS 4.x" at that point, not about OS4.

    >>> Crysalid pack [could be] ported to be native.

    >> ...as long as sources are available.

    > [...] and people willing to recompile

    It's not even clear if a simple recompile will suffice when porting current MorphOS programs to a future MorphOS with modernized API.

    >>> I dont see where e.g. MorphOS 4 for ARM64 would lead without
    >>> tablet scaling and extensive touch screen support.

    >> http://linuxgizmos.com/catalog-of-116-open-spec-hacker-boards/
    >> 40 of those are 64-bit ARMv8 (AArch64, "ARM64").

    > I do understand ARM64 exists, as well as Linux and Android for it.
    > I just dont see MOS with no touchscreen support there yet.

    What you don't seem to understand is that those 40 "ARM64" boards do not need any touchscreen support, and that anybody is free to port whatever OS to them.

    > Or even with it.

    Why even bring the matter of touchscreen support up then?

    > Kind of backward retro enthusiasm

    I see nothing retro about multiple 2+ GHz Cortex-A72 or newer cores.
  • »19.12.18 - 09:58
    Profile
  • Yokemate of Keyboards
    Yokemate of Keyboards
    Zylesea
    Posts: 2053 from 2003/6/4
    I am still all for the x64 switch as long taerm goal. But as a stop gap I would welcome power9 support (i.e. Raptor blackbird) in the meantime. Would bring us one up to date hardware at a still rather reasonable price tag.
    But x64 is the key for future hardware supply (well designed laptops, powerful desktops).
    And a Power9 machine would make a nice development system for a 64 bit little endian MorphOS. To me the backbird seem like a good step between the generations (from current 32 bit big endian PPC to future 64 bit little endian/endianess indipendant x64/multi ISA system).
    --
    http://via.bckrs.de

    Whenever you're sad just remember the world is 4.543 billion years old and you somehow managed to exist at the same time as David Bowie.
    ...and Matthias , my friend - RIP
  • »19.12.18 - 13:37
    Profile Visit Website
  • Acolyte of the Butterfly
    Acolyte of the Butterfly
    kamelito
    Posts: 103 from 2011/9/21
    Well, Intel expect Apple to move MAC to ARM as soon as 2020.

    https://www.axios.com/apple-macbook-arm-chips-ea93c38a-d40a-4873-8de9-7727999c588c.html
  • »22.02.19 - 11:47
    Profile
  • ASiegel
    Posts: 1369 from 2003/2/15
    From: Central Europe
    Quote:

    kamelito wrote:
    Well, Intel expect Apple to move MAC to ARM as soon as 2020.

    https://www.axios.com/apple-macbook-arm-chips-ea93c38a-d40a-4873-8de9-7727999c588c.html

    As Apple use their own custom chips, it seems important to acknowledge that this step would not necessarily have wider implications for the larger ARM ecosystem.

    I found Torvald's recent comments on the relationship between developer hardware and cloud / server hardware to be interesting:
    Quote:

    Some people think that "the cloud" means that the instruction set doesn't matter. Develop at home, deploy in the cloud.

    That's bullshit. If you develop on x86, then you're going to want to deploy on x86, because you'll be able to run what you test "at home" (and by "at home" I don't mean literally in your home, but in your work environment).

    Which means that you'll happily pay a bit more for x86 cloud hosting, simply because it matches what you can test on your own local setup, and the errors you get will translate better.

    This is true even if what you mostly do is something ostensibly cross-platform like just run perl scripts or whatever. Simply because you'll want to have as similar an environment as possible,

    Which in turn means that cloud providers will end up making more money from their x86 side, which means that they'll prioritize it, and any ARM offerings will be secondary and probably relegated to the mindless dregs (maybe front-end, maybe just static html, that kind of stuff).

    Guys, do you really not understand why x86 took over the server market?

    It wasn't just all price. It was literally this "develop at home" issue.
    Thousands of small companies ended up having random small internal workloads where it was easy to just get a random whitebox PC and run some silly small thing on it yourself. Then as the workload expanded, it became a "real server". And then once that thing expanded, suddenly it made a whole lot of sense to let somebody else manage the hardware and hosting, and the cloud took over.

    Do you really not understand? This isn't rocket science. This isn't some made up story. This is literally what happened, and what killed all the RISC vendors, and made x86 be the undisputed king of the hill of servers, to the point where everybody else is just a rounding error. Something that sounded entirely fictional a couple of decades ago.

    Without a development platform, ARM in the server space is never going to make it. Trying to sell a 64-bit "hyperscaling" model is idiotic, when you don't have customers and you don't have workloads because you never sold the small cheap box that got the whole market started in the first place.

    The price advantage of ARM will never be there for ARM servers unless you get enough volume to make up for the absolutely huge advantage in server volume that Intel has right now. Being a smaller die with cheaper NRE doesn't matter one whit, when you can't make up for the development costs in volume. Look at every ARM server offering so far: they were not only slower, they were more expensive!

    And the power advantage is still largely theoretical and doesn't show very much on a system level anyway, and is also entirely irrelevant if people end up willing to pay more for an x86 box simply because it's what they developed their load on.

    Which leaves absolutely no real advantage to ARM.


    Source: Real World Tech
  • »23.02.19 - 07:05
    Profile
  • Priest of the Order of the Butterfly
    Priest of the Order of the Butterfly
    polluks
    Posts: 778 from 2007/10/23
    From: Gelsenkirchen,...
    Will MorphOS 4 recycle old Mac x86 hardware?
    Pegasos II G4: MorphOS 3.9, Zalman M220W · iMac G5 12,1 17", MorphOS 3.18
    Power Mac G3: OSX 10.3 · PowerBook 5,8: OSX 10.5, MorphOS 3.18
  • »23.02.19 - 12:36
    Profile
  • Moderator
    Kronos
    Posts: 2231 from 2003/2/24
    Quote:

    polluks wrote:
    Will MorphOS 4 recycle old Mac x86 hardware?


    Well Macs will be ARM by than so it would make perfect sense ;)
  • »23.02.19 - 14:25
    Profile
  • Priest of the Order of the Butterfly
    Priest of the Order of the Butterfly
    KennyR
    Posts: 868 from 2003/3/4
    From: #AmigaZeux, Gu...
    Quote:

    ASiegel wrote:
    As Apple use their own custom chips, it seems important to acknowledge that this step would not necessarily have wider implications for the larger ARM ecosystem.


    But surely ARM are far more heavily slanted toward SoC than PPC ever was, so Apple may not even need custom chips?

    We know people trying to adopt PPC found it difficult to get support chips. When it came to NB and SBs, generally it was a case of a. capable b. available c. bug-free: pick any two.

    The situation was similar but different for low power x86 like VIA and Atom, where the problem was getting support chips that were as super-low power as the CPU was. Put a standard chipset in there and you might as well just put a Celeron in too.

    ARM desktop might be a different beast, but to my understanding ARM desktop never really took off anyway. ARM netbooks disappeared quickly and Chromebooks haven't made much impression. I don't think this was a factor of any unsuitability of ARM CPUs or their support chips, but I could be wrong.

    Edited: wow, something broke the formatting! :O

    [ Edited by KennyR 23.02.2019 - 17:34 ]
  • »23.02.19 - 17:32
    Profile
  • Yokemate of Keyboards
    Yokemate of Keyboards
    amigadave
    Posts: 2793 from 2006/3/21
    From: Northern Calif...
    Quote:

    polluks wrote:
    Will MorphOS 4 recycle old Mac x86 hardware?


    No (and I wouldn't want them to), I believe the team stated that they would target 1 or 2 chipsets that would have several years of continued mainstream lifespan, so that by the time they complete the port of MorphOS to specific hardware, it will still be available to purchase new at retail locations and online (hopefully), or at worst case, would still be available new from overstock warehouses.

    I'm hoping that they choose to support popular combinations of support chips and components, so we will have several desktop and laptop computers to choose from, that are made by different manufactures, but that might not be possible in the beginning, and only one laptop, and one desktop will be the first officially supported MorphOS4 systems.

    Edit: I understand why the MorphOS Dev. Team has chosen x64 as the target to port to a new architecture, but given the ever increasing power and popularity of ARM boards like the Raspberry Pi 3B and beyond, and the lack of a clearly dominant OS for such ARM boards at this time, I think a lightweight OS like MorphOS might have a great chance for expanding its user base, if it were ported to the Raspberry Pi. Certainly many (maybe most) of the remaining AmigaOS3.x, AROS and MorphOS community, would applaud and buy such a version of MorphOS. ARM SOC boards are only going to continue to get more powerful and support more features and peripherals, so perhaps in 3 to 5 years, ARM systems will be able to provide all the power and speed that the average desktop computer user needs and wants.

    [ Edited by amigadave 23.02.2019 - 10:16 ]
    MorphOS - The best Next Gen Amiga choice.
  • »23.02.19 - 18:08
    Profile
  • ASiegel
    Posts: 1369 from 2003/2/15
    From: Central Europe
    Quote:

    KennyR wrote:
    Quote:

    ASiegel wrote:
    As Apple use their own custom chips, it seems important to acknowledge that this step would not necessarily have wider implications for the larger ARM ecosystem.

    But surely ARM are far more heavily slanted toward SoC than PPC ever was, so Apple may not even need custom chips?

    By "custom chips", I was referring to ARM-derived System-on-Chips that Apple has developed in-house and absolutely nobody else is using.

    Quote:

    ARM desktop might be a different beast, but to my understanding ARM desktop never really took off anyway. ARM netbooks disappeared quickly and Chromebooks haven't made much impression. I don't think this was a factor of any unsuitability of ARM CPUs or their support chips, but I could be wrong.

    Again, I was not making any statement about support chips.

    ARM Chromebooks have been largely replaced with Intel-based versions on store shelves because the performance simply was not competitive. Every single review of ARM Chromebooks I have ever seen over the course of many years made a point to mention that the speed was sorely lacking and people should consider buying a version with an Intel chip for this reason.

    For people who are interested to run Android apps on ChromeOS, ARM models might provide a smoother experience. But if you plan on running Linux apps on ChromeOS, you will notice various precompiled packages are only available for Intel-compatible architectures.
  • »23.02.19 - 18:36
    Profile
  • Yokemate of Keyboards
    Yokemate of Keyboards
    Andreas_Wolf
    Posts: 12058 from 2003/5/22
    From: Germany
    > people trying to adopt PPC found it difficult to get support chips.

    ...except when adopting a PPC SoC :-)

    > When it came to NB and SBs, generally it was a case of
    > a. capable b. available c. bug-free: pick any two.

    This was never true for southbridge chips.

    > to my understanding ARM desktop never really took off anyway.

    Funnily, it was the desktop where ARM started ;-)
  • »23.02.19 - 20:09
    Profile
  • Priest of the Order of the Butterfly
    Priest of the Order of the Butterfly
    KennyR
    Posts: 868 from 2003/3/4
    From: #AmigaZeux, Gu...
    Quote:

    Andreas_Wolf wrote:
    > people trying to adopt PPC found it difficult to get support chips.

    ...except when adopting a PPC SoC :-)


    PPCs SoCs sucked. They were full of bugs (being mostly untested), hard to get a hold of in any quantity, horribly underpowered, incompatible with desktop PPC instructions, or all of the above. There's a reason everyone in embedded moved on from PPC to MIPs (then ARM) in the early 00s.

    Quote:

    > When it came to NB and SBs, generally it was a case of
    > a. capable b. available c. bug-free: pick any two.

    This was never true for southbridge chips.


    Sure it was. Even the VIA chip the Pegasos used was a buggy piece of shit. No bugs quite as fatal as Articia, but a lot erratas to be worked around. And certainly it was never high end.

    Quote:

    > to my understanding ARM desktop never really took off anyway.

    Funnily, it was the desktop where ARM started ;-)


    StrongARM maybe, but not ARM as we know it. And StrongARM CPUs, while interesting, provided no real advantage over Intel, AMD, and Motorola CPUs of the era. An Acorn Archimedes was really no faster than an Amiga 500.
  • »24.02.19 - 01:06
    Profile
  • Yokemate of Keyboards
    Yokemate of Keyboards
    Andreas_Wolf
    Posts: 12058 from 2003/5/22
    From: Germany
    >>> people trying to adopt PPC found it difficult to get support chips.

    >> ...except when adopting a PPC SoC :-)

    > PPCs SoCs sucked.

    More or less than the support chips needed for discrete PPC chips? :-)

    > They were full of bugs (being mostly untested)

    Certainly not true.

    > hard to get a hold of in any quantity

    Only true for PA6T and maybe PPC47x-based SoCs.

    > horribly underpowered

    Indeed, as they were not intended for desktop use so never had to compete with x86 chips in that regard.

    > incompatible with desktop PPC instructions

    This has only been really relevant for PPC SoCs with e500v1/e500v2 core(s). All other PPC SoCs have either been compatible with "desktop PPC" in both user mode and supervisor mode (e300, e600, PA6T) or have some differences solely in supervisor mode (PPC440/460/470, e500mc, e5500, e6500), which is no real problem as shown by existing OS4 and MorphOS support for some of those SoCs/cores.

    > There's a reason everyone in embedded moved on from PPC to MIPs
    > (then ARM) in the early 00s.

    There was no general move from PPC to MIPS in embedded in the early 2000s, but embedded MIPS was there since the mid-1990s and a more or less constant contender to embedded PPC since. (Nice, with discussion of MIPS this thread comes full circle ;-)
    There are indeed reasons for the move in embedded from PPC/MIPS to ARM starting in the 2000s, but none of them had, at least with regard to PPC, anything to do with bugs, availability, performance or incompatibility with "desktop PPC instructions".

    >>> When it came to NB and SBs, generally it was a case of
    >>> a. capable b. available c. bug-free: pick any two.

    >> This was never true for southbridge chips.

    > Sure it was. Even the VIA chip the Pegasos used was a buggy piece of shit.
    > [...] a lot erratas to be worked around.

    I don't think the VT8231 was significantly more buggy than southbridge chips from other vendors of that time. But even if pretended for a moment that it was, many x86 boards of that time used that same southbridge chip so this alleged problem couldn't have been PPC-specific.

    > certainly it was never high end.

    At that time, the VT8231 was a decent and capable southbridge chip that offered features some of which had to go unused on a PPC platform.

    >>> to my understanding ARM desktop never really took off anyway.

    >> Funnily, it was the desktop where ARM started ;-)

    > StrongARM maybe

    No, StrongARM, although used in some later (1996+) RiscPC models, was not primarily intended for the desktop but for PDAs and set-top boxes.

    > Acorn Archimedes was really no faster than an Amiga 500.

    Yet, this is where ARM really started in 1987.
  • »24.02.19 - 12:44
    Profile
  • Jim
  • Yokemate of Keyboards
    Yokemate of Keyboards
    Jim
    Posts: 4977 from 2009/1/28
    From: Delaware, USA
    Quote:

    KennyR wrote:
    Quote:

    Andreas_Wolf wrote:
    > people trying to adopt PPC found it difficult to get support chips.

    ...except when adopting a PPC SoC :-)


    PPCs SoCs sucked. They were full of bugs (being mostly untested), hard to get a hold of in any quantity, horribly underpowered, incompatible with desktop PPC instructions, or all of the above. There's a reason everyone in embedded moved on from PPC to MIPs (then ARM) in the early 00s.

    Quote:

    > When it came to NB and SBs, generally it was a case of
    > a. capable b. available c. bug-free: pick any two.

    This was never true for southbridge chips.


    Sure it was. Even the VIA chip the Pegasos used was a buggy piece of shit. No bugs quite as fatal as Articia, but a lot erratas to be worked around. And certainly it was never high end.

    Quote:

    > to my understanding ARM desktop never really took off anyway.

    Funnily, it was the desktop where ARM started ;-)


    StrongARM maybe, but not ARM as we know it. And StrongARM CPUs, while interesting, provided no real advantage over Intel, AMD, and Motorola CPUs of the era. An Acorn Archimedes was really no faster than an Amiga 500.


    Actually, the only decent Southbridge components that worked well with PPC cups and Socs were from ULi and ATI. When then X1000 was announced it was no big surprise that it utilized an SB600. That component was well documented, fairly compatible with the ULi Southbridges used on Freescale's evaluation boards, and relatively big free.
    I've always favored ATI/AMD components and hope at least one of the systems supported by MorphOS NG is AMD based.

    I'd still like Power9 support, though. ;-)
    "Never attribute to malice what can more readily explained by incompetence"
  • »02.04.19 - 11:52
    Profile
  • Yokemate of Keyboards
    Yokemate of Keyboards
    Andreas_Wolf
    Posts: 12058 from 2003/5/22
    From: Germany
    >>>> When it came to NB and SBs, generally it was a case
    >>>> of a. capable b. available c. bug-free: pick any two.

    >>> This was never true for southbridge chips.

    >> Sure it was. Even the VIA chip the Pegasos used was a buggy piece of shit.
    >> [...] a lot erratas to be worked around. And certainly it was never high end.

    > Actually, the only decent Southbridge components that
    > worked well with PPC cups and Socs were from ULi and ATI.

    You are referring to a later time frame starting around 2005, when you'd connect a PCIe southbridge to a PCIe-based PPC SoC or to a PCIe northbridge. KennyR's and my debate was about the time around half a decade earlier when you'd connect a PCI southbridge (or a southbridge supporting a fast but proprietary connection plus PCI as legacy fallback) to a PCI(-X) northbridge. And as far as I can tell, the VIA southbridge has worked rather well on the Pegasos in PCI fallback mode.
  • »02.04.19 - 13:57
    Profile
  • Cocoon
    Cocoon
    MorphOSUser
    Posts: 44 from 2012/5/2
    I got such a throbbing headache reading pages of everyone trying to proof a point of the other and throwing terminology and technicalities and so forth...

    personally...that is just my opinion....

    I love MorphOS in it's current hardware choices. Apple PPC laptops and desktops and I wouldn't want it any other way. I prefer the resources taking to making it appealing for developers and easier for developers to develop applications and games for the MorphOS PPC current hardware than to invest in porting it into other hardwares and tugging back and forth which hardware is the best to go. I love my iBook G4 laptop...I love my MorphOS 3.11 and I want to write fresh apps for it.

    By the way...I am unsure what is the final conclusion? Where have we reached or is it an endless on-going discussion that no one will agree on?

    [ Edited by MorphOSUser 03.04.2019 - 07:48 ]
  • »03.04.19 - 06:48
    Profile