Quote:

I don't understand why there aren't more AmigaOS4 users clamoring for support of this laptop? It's likely to be the last new PPC laptop that will ever be produced (if this project ever gets to that point, and someone will risk manufacturing a few dozen of them). Trevor probably doesn't want to support it too much, as some users might hold off from buying a Tabor system (if it is ever released for sale to the general public, with a completed port of AmigaOS4), and save their money to spend on this PPC laptop instead. Although, the price difference between this PPC laptop, if it is ever produced for sale to the general public, will likely be 4 times or more, the cost of a complete Tabor system. Still, if I were someone who wanted to use AmigaOS4 daily, I would want to be able to do it on a laptop. Thanks to the MorphOS Dev. Team for giving us a great port of MorphOS to the G4 PowerBook, and some G4 iBook laptops. No matter how much money gets thrown at supporting AmigaOS4 development, MorphOS users are still lucky that the MorphOS Dev. Team keeps coding away and giving us significant improvements to the OS, that allow some improved applications to work, like the new email program, and soon, a new web browser. All MorphOS users should find a way to donate something to the MorphOS Dev. Team occasionally, to thank them for all the free updates we have received.

> [...] port of MorphOS to the G4 PowerBook, and some G4 iBook laptops

MorphOS supports all G4 iBooks, but only some G4 PowerBooks.

Update:

> "As we were unable to reach the goal by August, we are
> forced to postpone the deadline of the current Donation
> Campaign (Phase 1A) to the 15th of September 2020."
https://www.powerpc-notebook.org/2020/08/15-days-more-to-donate-2000-euro-left-for-the-pcb/

"On the 8th of September 2020 we have reached the previous goal targeting to collect the needed donations to complete the design our Open Hardware PCB [...]!"
https://www.powerpc-notebook.org/2020/09/signal-integrity-analysis-of-the-pcb-design/

Also:

"In future we plan to upgrade our PCB design to the more recent packaging technology for the processor."
https://openpowerna2020.sched.com/event/eDr7/open-hardware-gnulinux-ppc64-laptop-potential-roberto-innocenti-power-progress-community-not-profit-association

I wonder what that sentence is supposed to mean.

The development pace is breath taking! The project is going on now for abot 6 years now.
Indeed it is kind of a somewhat charming idea generally, but eventually leading to nowhere. Except burning some funds, which could spend elsewhere yield a probably better outcome.

Quote:

They will likely have problems with the design, simply because by the time they are finished and ready for production, many of the parts may not be available, including the laptop case they have chosen. If the CPU is going to go through a die size reduction and the CPU package they have designed for is no longer available, that could be a rather large redesign (I would think).

>> "In future we plan to upgrade our PCB design to the
>> more recent packaging technology for the processor."
>> https://openpowerna2020.sched.com/event/eDr7/open-hardware-gnulinux-ppc64-laptop-potential-roberto-innocenti-power-progress-community-not-profit-association

> If the CPU is going to go through a die size reduction and the
> CPU package they have designed for is no longer available,
> that could be a rather large redesign (I would think).

I wonder if that's what Innocenti means, and if yes, what his source is. I'm not aware of a die-shrinked T2080, or any die-shrinked QorIQ T CPU. And besides, NXP would be stupid to change the packaging of a die-shrinked CPU to a pin-incompatible one. Usually, shrinked dies are being put into the same package with the same pinout as before to make sure that existing customers can use the chip as a drop-in replacement without having to do any expensive redesigns.

Update:

> "In future we plan to upgrade our PCB design to the
> more recent packaging technology for the processor."
> https://openpowerna2020.sched.com/event/eDr7/open-hardware-gnulinux-ppc64-laptop-potential-roberto-innocenti-power-progress-community-not-profit-association
>
> I wonder what that sentence is supposed to mean.

Slides are online: https://static.sched.com/hosted_files/openpowerna2020/66/Open%20Hardware%20GNU%20Llinux%20PPC64%20laptop%20FINAL.pdf (video)

Unfortunately, they don't help with regard to the quoted sentence from the abstract.


Edit: alternative link to the slides

[ Edited by Andreas_Wolf 18.10.2020 - 16:41 ]

Update:

> https://www.powerpc-notebook.org/2020/09/signal-integrity-analysis-of-the-pcb-design/

New schematics:
https://gitlab.com/power-progress-community/oshw-powerpc-notebook/powerpc-laptop-mobo/-/blob/master/PPC_notebook_electrical_schematics_v0.6.pdf
https://www.slideshare.net/RobertoInnocenti1/open-hardware-powerpc-notebook-motherboard-v06-august-2020

Initial PCB design:
http://www.powerpc-notebook.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/PPC_NOTEBOOK_PCB_board_layout_notes_TOP.jpg
http://www.powerpc-notebook.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/PPC_NOTEBOOK_PCB_board_layout_notes_BOTTOM.jpg
https://gitlab.com/power-progress-community/oshw-powerpc-notebook/powerpc-laptop-mobo/-/blob/master/pcb/PPC_NOTEBOOK_PCB_board_layout_notes.pdf

Quote:

Six years? Doesn't feel that long. And its a passion project, doesn't have to make sense.

Further, I really like the T2080, with eight threads it would make a good match for the new kernel Mark wrote. And its bi-endian (on all cores concurrently, although the code needs to be in separate memory pages), and Altivec is limited to big endian mode.

The biggest drawback I see is price. This thing is likely to be expensive. A Ryzen based laptop would probably cost less (and run circles around a mid-rangr PPC).

Finally, the pace of development seems to have picked up.

They hope to from finish the signal integrity testing done soon, then I assume a few tweaks, and they are ready for a prototype run.
I expect to see this in 2021 (no telling what quarter though).

Quote:

Had to go back to the start of the thread, and yes indeed 2014, if you had asked me I would have said >10 years......

Quote:

The T2080 was meeeeh in 2014 but today it's more like someone trying to (re)build an 68k-system with a ColdFire SoC in 2010.

Quote:

Now add time to actually turn this into consumer grade HW and proper SW-support and it will be >10 years.


Edith got my Trek mixed up:

As Leonard McCoy will have said in about 150 years:
"It's dead Jim"



[ Edited by Kronos 11.11.2020 - 14:32 ]

Quote:

I really like to see this hardware succeed, but is it a passion project ?
Imho a project with passion is something you sleap and dream about and want to succeed asap, no matter what is in your way :)


If you look at the classic scene, e.g. the Warp accelerators, there are 2 people working on it and producing several designs/cards. In their spare time and the Warp boards are not the easiest board to do with interfacing to the old Amiga's.
According to the 15 sept PDF file there are 50 volunteers, but it is just a comparison...

Ten years ago, we still had people looking at the 8610, 8640, and 8641 (those were really dead).
And Tabor hasn't been released yet and it's based on a less powerful core (personally, to be repetitive, I prefer the e5500 cored T104x series).

To address Kronos' Star Trek quote, unless they're wearing a red shirt, no one stays dead in Star Trek. Long live Power, be it dead or alive.

I'm in favor of another PPC/Power based system. There is still some potential there.
Not as much as Ryzen (heck, nobody is touching that these days), but it would provide a viable way to extend legacy MorphOS.

On production of the first prototypes, anyone care to wager chocolate or beer?

To close, I really like the proposed expansion capabilities of his laptop. Replaceable graphics, M2 and PCIe/PCI slots. Memory seems limited though.

> then I assume a few tweaks, and they are ready for a prototype run.

Only after collection of another 10500 EUR :-)

Quote:

Rather economical, by industry standards. And they will have met the goals originally planned.
Then you can only hope Acube or Aeon will do a production run.

Again, done in 2021, any wagers?

BTW - This project has really caught the attention of the posters on Amigaworld.
Why not? OS4 has planned multi-core support and doesn't support a laptop yet.

> Memory seems limited though.

64 GiB if you can find 32 GiB SO-DIMMs, else 32 GiB, according to the quote in comment #165. That's plenty enough for a portable computer I'd say.

>BTW - This project has really caught the attention of the posters on Amigaworld.
>Why not? OS4 has planned multi-core support and doesn't support a laptop yet.

O.k. lets assume these are available next year (just for fun), it would still need a decade for OS4 support to be actually released....

As for MorphOS support, given that these things always tend to be done by the same 5 guys, I rather have them working on the AMD support both in CPU and GPU and/or doing a "QBox" (SMP,MP all that stuff)


>To address Kronos' Star Trek quote, unless they're wearing a red shirt,
>no one stays dead in Star Trek. Long live Power, be it dead or alive.

Lots of things (and non red shirt people) died and stayed dead in TOS.

>I'm in favor of another PPC/Power based system.

I code in C(++) and LUA, couldn't care less if it was running on PPC or some super-hyped up Z80...

>There is still some potential there.

It's dead Jim !!!

>Not as much as Ryzen (heck, nobody is touching that these days),

Apple seems to be knocking on the basement door, would be surprised to see them at the Penthouse in a few years.

>but it would provide a viable way to extend legacy MorphOS.

"legacy MorphOS" is fine as it is and wouldn't benefit much from the T2080 compared to the G4 i/PowerBooks it already supports.

"MorphOS NG" (if it ever comes to fruition) has no business supporting dead on arrival HW.

> they will have met the goals originally planned. Then you
> can only hope Acube or Aeon will do a production run.

Only after collection of another 26500 EUR for testing and certification :-)

Quote:

Again, by commercial standards, a bargain.

And Kronos, "its dead" is an opinion.

And MorphOS NG is being created (at least the kernel) using PPC code.

Personally, I care what I'm running on, and I have never really cared for X86 (it just had a performance advantage).

> Again, by commercial standards, a bargain.

Why apply commercial standards for a passion project, as you put it? The donation campaign started in mid-2017 and is currently at 47%. At that overall pace, it will be finished in 2024.

> MorphOS NG is being created (at least the kernel) using PPC code.

The kernel was originally developed on/for the X5000 before being ported to AMD64, yes, but is this still the case? That's not what I got from bigfoot's posting.

Quote:

Now imagine what else you could fund with 26500 EUR. Put that money into Wayfarer development or into porting over to x64....

You can spent money only once, hence I'd put it rather where it moves most in regard you your interests* . And _I_ doubt this is in some ppc hardware.

*) as this is morph.zone, I just assume that interest #1 is MorphOS.

Valid argument, but people invest in the bounties they want to sponsor.
Is there a X64 bounty? I'd have to assume you can donate for Wayfarer.

Regardless, this is moving forward. The drivers for OS4 probably will take forever, if the ludicrous development pace of Tabor's drivers is any indication.
But the argument that MorphOS NG had to be developed on X64 hardware is invalid.
You yourself pointed out that high level coding makes the ISA relatively irrelevant.

Everything done in MorphOS development has been revolutionary.

Whatever NG becomes it won't be MorphOS without some level of compatibility (even if code requires tweaks and recompilation).

I obviously don't support Tabor, but I'm running on an unsupported quad core anyway.
And I can't help but wonder what it would be like to take full advantage of the multi corr systems we do (or could) support.

I like alternate ISAs, and for a "dead" ISA, Power still seems to have some life in it. ARM would have been cool, too.
One of those FPGAs with a PPC or ARM core would have made a interesting basis for a MorphOS platform.

We don't really need the power of a Ryzen based system.
I'll be glad to see it happen, but at the same time it will be a reminder of how I had to move from 68K to X86.

> Is there a X64 bounty?

You mean a bounty for developing MorphOS for x64? Not that I know of.

> I'd have to assume you can donate for Wayfarer.

Indeed.

> the argument that MorphOS NG had to be developed on X64
> hardware is invalid.

Which comment contains this argument?

> You yourself pointed out that high level coding makes the ISA
> relatively irrelevant.

Wasn't that Kronos?

> Everything done in MorphOS development has been revolutionary.

Everything? Revolutionary? Seriously?

Sorry, badly composed, I meant evolutionary not revolutionary. And in a way, my own argument works against me since NG is an evolutionary step. Its just a large step (a leap actually).

I'm waffling too much here, as I can see both sides of this debate.
I guess I'm basing this on my own preferences and I'm not involved in the decision.

Update:

>> then I assume a few tweaks, and they are ready for a prototype run.

> Only after collection of another 10500 EUR :-)

The 10500 EUR for 5 prototypes increased to 12500 EUR for 3 prototypes:

"While interacting with ACube on the simulation process, we were faced with the fact that the verbal agreement we made on the prototyping costs dated back to mid-2017 and the world went through great changes. Back then, they estimated a total cost of €10.500, consisting of a first € 3000 for the initial equipment, and € 1500 for each prototype motherboard, multiplied by 5 motherboards. However, after detailing and updating all involved costs using today’s market quotations, it appears clear that most of the components costs have increased since then [...]. Take for example the NXP T2080 CPU, since 2017 its price has simply dubled, and most of the other components have increased their price too. We discussed extensively with ACube Systems, the initial equipment is still € 3000, but the final cost of each prototype motherboard has increased to € 3000, doubling the initially estimated price of 4 years ago. Because of this dramatic increase in the production cost we decided to make 3 working prototypes only, that makes € 9000. On top of these we add another € 500 to make a dummy board (not working board), printed with a two layers PCB and all mechanical components correctly mounted. The scope of such a dummy board is to ensure that the working prototypes that will be produced later will mechanically fit in the Slimbook Eclipse. As a result, the ongoing campaign goal will be increased to € 12.500."
https://www.powerpc-notebook.org/2021/02/pcb-gerber-files-published-updates-on-the-prototypes/

I called vapor on this pipe dream years ago, and as the years has gone by since then the thing seems less and less likely to come through and at the same time it gets less and less relevant. PPC is dead, chances are the CPU isn’t even manufactured anymore and that the price raise is due to that. This is a stillborn.