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Try http://www.bplan-gmbh.de/ :)

The Teron CX is one of the two boards that will be sold under the licensed "AmigaOne" trademark. The other is the Teron PX. Read this comment. There will be no more "new Amigas".

Graphics? It's whatever AGP card there's drivers for.

The Pegasos, designed by the old Amiga gurus at bplan, is a similar board, but in a smaller Micro-ATX form factor, minus one PCI slot, plus a slot for CPU modules (the G3/600 is soldered down on the Teron CX), plus Firewire, plus on-board sound I/O including SPDIF (the Terons have an AMR slot), plus IrDA, plus a game port.

The Pegasos is cheaper than the Teron CX when that is sold as an "AmigaOne", and slightly more expensive than the Teron CX sold "normally" by e.g. Terrasoft.

Well, it was originally intended as a developer's evaluation board for Mai Logic's Articia S chip set. As a bonus for us users it turned out to be quite a usable end-customer board, although its developer/evaluation roots are still clearly visible in the PCB design, choice of components and specs.

Look at this photo of a "Pegasos" PPC mobo. It's a mobo similar to the Teron CX (it's the same Articia S northbridge for example), but on a much smaller Micro-ATX board, including a slot for CPU modules (including not-yet-available dual G4). Just looking at a thing as the PCB trace routing, or the choice of common components like resistors, caps et c. says this is a more well thought out design, originally aimed at the consumer market. It's cheaper too, and runs Yellow Dog Linux... ;)

• 133 MHz Processor Slot
• Optional with 350 MHz G3 PowerPC® / 512k Cache
  up to Dual MPC 7450 G4 PowerPC® / 2 MB Cache at state of the art speedgrades
  
• PC133 SDRAM Memory for a total of 2 modules
  maximum 2GB extension by availibility of modules
• AGP Slot x 2, user selectable graphics card
• PCI Subsystem with a total of 3 slots to be used for custom expansion, included one slot for Riser Card Option
• IEEE1394 VIA VT6306 at 100/200/400 MBit Transfer rates with three ports
• 10/100 MBit Network Realtek 8201 Phyceiver
• USB I/O System VIA 8231 with a total of 4 ports
• AC97 Sound Subsystem Sigmatel STAC 9766 Codec with Mic. In, Line In/Out and Headset support
• optical S/PDIF output
• IRDA for comunication with PDAs and other IRDA devices
• ATA100 VIA 8231 with up to 4 devices
• KBD for PS2 compatible keyboards
• Mouse for PS2 compatible pointing devices
• Seriell one channel RS232
• Parallel standard Centronics
• Floppy
• Gameport to be used with PC style joysticks/gamepads
• 56K Modem
  integrated

Pegasos
Should be available now AFAIK.

There is also the Amiga One which right now is mostly vapor (E.g. not purchasable at the moment)

See, I mentioned both.

While Linux has run on PPC chips for a long time, it is difficult to come upon a G4 chip without paying the "Apple Tax" for the hardware

Perhaps I could point you in the direction of the Pegasos , a PPC board aimed at Linux and alternative computer users.

highly unlikely.

For starters, they're fundamentally different architectures.

What the article fails to mention is that MorphOS will be shipped on (together with Yellow Dog Linux) an in-house designed POP-based OpenFirmware-equipped motherboard called Pegasos. While different from a New World PowerMac, it's not "fundamentally different architectures". This board already runs OSX with Mac-On-Linux. MorphOS on (reasonably modern) Mac hardware is quite likely, though not in its initial release.

MorphOS is intended for the POP-compliant Pegasos PowerPC board from bPlan. Note that while a Realtek PHYceiver is listed, that's just the PHY; the ethernet controller itself is a Via Rhine derivative embedded in the southbridge. Pictures here. It can also run on classic Amigas with appropriate PowerPC accellerators; NetBSD is also being readied for the bPlan hardware.

AmigaOS 4 is the 'name-brand' product, being produced under contract by Germany's Hyperion Software. It's intended for Eyetech's AmigaOne G3SE and XE products, and Elbox's SharkPPC accellerator in classic hardware with suitable PCI busboards. Hardware dongling of the AmigaOne (with respect to AmigaOS; Linux and *BSD will run unhindered), and continuing intellectual-property disputes may or may not effect the chances of OS4 support for the Pegasos.

All three new PowerPC boards use MAI's PowerPC chipsets, also seen on the Linux-friendly Barbie.

Nor should we forget 'AmigaDE' or 'Amiga-Anywhere,' a crossplatform system based on Tao's Intent runtime + media libs, which is really quite cool even if they've just redesigned their site opaquely. the CEO of Gentoo provides a good writeup here.

MorphOS is intended for the POP-compliant Pegasos PowerPC board from bPlan. Note that while a Realtek PHYceiver is listed, that's just the PHY; the ethernet controller itself is a Via Rhine derivative embedded in the southbridge. Pictures here. It can also run on classic Amigas with appropriate PowerPC accellerators; NetBSD is also being readied for the bPlan hardware.

AmigaOS 4 is the 'name-brand' product, being produced under contract by Germany's Hyperion Software. It's intended for Eyetech's AmigaOne G3SE and XE products, and Elbox's SharkPPC accellerator in classic hardware with suitable PCI busboards. Hardware dongling of the AmigaOne (with respect to AmigaOS; Linux and *BSD will run unhindered), and continuing intellectual-property disputes may or may not effect the chances of OS4 support for the Pegasos.

All three new PowerPC boards use MAI's PowerPC chipsets, also seen on the Linux-friendly Barbie.

Nor should we forget 'AmigaDE' or 'Amiga-Anywhere,' a crossplatform system based on Tao's Intent runtime + media libs, which is really quite cool even if they've just redesigned their site opaquely. the CEO of Gentoo provides a good writeup here.

Fuck off Mike Bouma. Just buy that "Amiga One" (HAH!) directly from Mai Logic instead, and skip that fucking "Amiga tax". It feels good to screw those Amiga, Inc. and Eyetech clowns, they were trying to screw us first after all. Or get a Pegasos instead.

Oh Pleeease. Wake up from your dreamworld.

In fact, it was only recently, with AGP systems, that modern PCs could even match the first Amiga (the A1000) in terms of graphics sync/performance.

Recently? Already at the time Commodore went belly up Amiga was starting to show its age. Doom was the game to show that Amigas "superior" chipsets wasn't so superior.

Just when PCs and Macs are starting to catch up with the original Amiga, the new Amiga is getting ready to be unleashed.

Christ, I dumped Amiga 4 years ago and since then I've been catching up to the rest of the world. The PC's and certainly Mac's surparsed Amiga years ago.

Very timely, actually. Things could get interesting in the next few years.

How so? There is absolutely nothing interesting about the new Amiga. The most advanced feature of the new OS is... *gasp* .... some sort of memory protection. How do you create a modern OS in less than a year? You don't, OS4 will mostly be a PPC-port of OS3.1 (H sits on 3.5/3.9).

And what about software? There have hardly been released anything for the Amiga the last 8-10 years. And even less for all those PPC-addons.

And then there is the HW... It'l be closed and crippled and "donglelised" as always (just as a Mac)... I'm sure the slashdot-crowd will be more interested in bplan's more open PPC-board.

No, there is absolutely nothing interesting about the new Amiga.

I don't want to drag flamewars over from the Amiga messageboards, but the fact is that bPlan is, at present, promoting a friendlier sales model for Linux/BSD users, and perhaps more importantly, claim a better array of OSes lined up off the bat (Yellow Dog and NetBSD, vs. TurboLinux for Eyetech's board). The AmigaOne and Pegasos are pretty comparable from a hardware standpoint.

I admire both boards; however, Eyetech and Amiga's business models are heading to 'OS tax' territory, and they don't consider the "developers' edition" AmigaOne as a consumer product (the debates over an eventual LinuxOne continue on...). If you want to run AmigaOS 4, by all means, get an AmigaOne, but if you have no intentions of moving off Linux/NetBSD for the moment (or you're thinking of building a few hundred Linux/BSD workstations), bPlan will provide better support.

I don't want to drag flamewars over from the Amiga messageboards, but the fact is that bPlan is, at present, promoting a friendlier sales model for Linux/BSD users, and perhaps more importantly, claim a better array of OSes lined up off the bat (Yellow Dog and NetBSD, vs. TurboLinux for Eyetech's board). The AmigaOne and Pegasos are pretty comparable from a hardware standpoint.

I admire both boards; however, Eyetech and Amiga's business models are heading to 'OS tax' territory, and they don't consider the "developers' edition" AmigaOne as a consumer product (the debates over an eventual LinuxOne continue on...). If you want to run AmigaOS 4, by all means, get an AmigaOne, but if you have no intentions of moving off Linux/NetBSD for the moment (or you're thinking of building a few hundred Linux/BSD workstations), bPlan will provide better support.

The G3/G4, Power4 etc. belong to the PowerPC (PPC) family of CPUs. Of course, we all know this.

However, few participating in the discussion seem to acknowledge, that there is more systems running PPC than Apple's Macs.

PPC is important in the embedded market. It has a high performance, stays relatively cool There are 'computers on a card' (a PCI card with a G3/G4 on it plus memory). They communicate over TCP/IP (or proprietary protocols) over the PCI bus with the host system. Nice if you want to have a mini cluster, a physical firewall, or whatever...

• CPCI-680 Sentinel PCI G4 card
• The CPCI 6750
• CompactPCI SBC: CPCI 3750
• Then there is the Micro Server-S from Mai Logic Mai Logic also offers evaluation boards for PowerPC but at prices, that make them interesting only for developers/companies.
• This one has been announced (German text)a year ago or so but not yet been sold. It is based on the Pegasos below.
• A search on Google for embedded PPCresults in approx. 27.000 hits one being this

Then we have several (Micro)ATX mobos, some even for dual G4 (SMP). They get used mostly in the industry, however, this year will see two new home/office-desktop G3/G4 systems that have nothing in common with Apple. See here:

• AmigaONE
• and
• Pegasos G3/G4 MicroATX mobo (SMP option)
• Another project, that at least is in planning is here (RioRed, SMP option)
• Then there is (was?) the OpenPPC project.

So it is obvious that RedHat, being focussed more on industry/server markets than on hte Desktop (that is their current goal as far as I am informed) has some interest in supporting PPC development. Altivec is a very good instruction set and having optimizations for it will be a great benefit. Altivec is not only for MultiMedia, btw. !

Theoretically, all these systems could run LinuxPPC !

Personally I am happy to see some major resource supporting the PowerPC since I would prefer a PPC machine far more than the archaical, outlived, patched & hacked i86 platform (can you use all your PCI slots without clashes...? I can't and my MoBo is from April last year...) Also the PPCs keep quite cool, meaning one could live without an active fan, unlike the Athlon hair-driers...;-)

For the enhusiasts: There are at least two other desktop (!) OS in the works, which are PPC native and come with SMP support: MorphOS (in the works since three years or more) and AmigaOS4.x

AmigaOS 4 (meant to be released to developers this month) is being designed for PPC computers by Hyperion and a few extra Amiga developers they have hired.

It is aimed to work on new PPC hardware designed by eyetech and bplan, as well as current amigas that have older 603 and 604 PPC processors like the blizzard and cyberstorm accelerator cards, allowing people to use existing equipment, or newer equipment that allows use of off the shelf PC items such as PCI cards etc.

There are other PPC expansions coming out and they may be supported as well.

x86 is not a goal for AOS4, as to change it for that, instead of going the naturla route of 680x0 to PPC, would take a lot longer, and people want product asap (as always).

all this is just a small piece of the market Amiga is aiming for anyway, and has aimed for since they were created. See this recent interview with CEO Bill McEwan for what is currently on the minds of Amiga.

It's right here

And it's AGP 2x, not 4x.

Hello,

There's another PPC Motherboard with PCI, UDMA100, and Firewire coming in a couple of weeks from a German company named bPlan. It's called Pegasos, and info is here.

$650 with a G3/400 is a lot more palatable than $3000. I just hope it has OpenFirmware on it!

irc log ANN

tarbos : Are the Pegasos developer boards already shipping and is the enduser board still on track for a late march release? PEGASOS : Bplans Mainboards PEGASOS start shipping in two weeks.

AmyTek : I need to know how much will cost a pegasos mainboard with MorphOS and when it will be sold. PEGASOS : The consumer version will be sold in march for about 650Euros for bare boards.

Logain : What kind of CPU-module will be included in the 650 EUR-package? PEGASOS : Motorola/IBM PPC G3 CPU's with 400MHz are planed for initial release.

Psyria : Can you tell me something about the onboard SoundChips of Pegasos? PEGASOS : AC97 Sound with sigmatel ST9766 including SPDIF out.

Univers : Which software is delivered with the Pegasos? PEGASOS : Pegasos is always delivered with MorphOS.

Hans : When will the developer machines ship? PEGASOS : Shipment starts within next 14 days.

Hans : When will the final version ship? PEGASOS : End user systems are available at end of 1Q2002.

Hans : How much for the dev machine? PEGASOS : 650 EUR.

Hans : How much for the final machine? PEGASOS : 650 EUR.

McGreg : Will the Pegasos support also G5 and if, will it then support also DDR RAM? PEGASOS : We still have no G5 sample here: theoretically yes.

DunkleSeele: Which operating system can I use on the Pegasos? PEGASOS : MorphOS/LINUX/NetBSD.

AmiGR : Does the manufacturer of the chipset you're using plan to make DDR versions of the chipset? This would give your boards a HUGE boost. PEGASOS : DDR version of our chipset are not planned for release this year.

McGreg : Will the Pegasos support also G5 and if, will it then support also DDR RAM? PEGASOS : We still have no G5 sample here: theoretically yes.

miksuh : If Pegasos motherboard will cost about 650EUR, is there any idea of how much will cost a lowend prebuilt system with CPU, gfx card? PEGASOS : Complete Systems are around 1000EUR incl. HD/DVD.

AS.

>Yeah, so where do I buy a PPC motherboard and CPU?

Here:

• Dual G3/G4 MicroATX Motherboard
• G3/G4 PPC Card for PCI
• another one

Some stuff in the works is here:

• geekish G3/G4 MoBo
• An IBM initiative (?)
• .

And some (German) announcement of a PPC System on a PCI card,aka MicroServer, would make a nice hardwared personal Firewall ;-))

• DCE MicroServer

Take a look at the 'news section' at the website of the german company bplan:
http://bplan-gmbh.de/news.html.
They have a new PPC Board coming soon, LinuxPPC is already running. They specs are good, a complete system should be available for 1000 Euro.

Well, despite the fact that the article was a flaming pile of twice-digested horse feces...

An Amiga (of 'classic' vintage) can play 3ivx files. I seem to recall a 68060 was reccommended (only available on accellerator cards), but I have a feeling playback could be tolerable (&GT 1FPS) on an '040, and it just might survive enough to show a Realplayer-on-a-Pentium-75-esque rendition on an '020, for severely small framesizes... We're talking MPEG-4, here, too.

So yes, it's indeed feasible, although perhaps not altogether practical.

You're welcome to have a look at Amiga.org or ANN to see some of the latest developments in the Amiga scene- ANN may be worse than JonKatz's postings, but the ATX PPC board is for real, and the lesser-specced, Amiga Inc.-sponsored board just might appear by next July..

I just wish I could pick up a cheap powerpc atx motherboard, and through a couple power4's in it.

This is getting closer and closer. By some rumors, the vapor is close to condensing. (Of course, it all might just be bullshit.) Keep your eye on bPlan.

Can I use this with one of these: (nota bene: These are no iMacs)

• microATX Mainboard
• 133 MHz CPU slot
• two PC133 RAM
• AGP slot
• 3x PCI slot
• FireWire
• 10/100 MBit Netzwerk
• 4x USB
• AC97 sound
• IRDA
• ATA100
• KBD (PS/2)
• Mouse (PS/2)
• 2x RS232
• Centronics
• Floppy
• Gameport
• FlashBIOS

Nota bene: This is a motherboard, so all in the list is onboard !
That would give heaven of a multimedia machine: DualG4, Firewire, IRDA and Ether onboard, put one of the DCE Microservers (see next one) in one free PCI.....WROOMMMM !

• G3/G4 CPU 450-733 MHz 1-4 MB Cache
• bis 1 GB 133 MHz SDRAM
• 100 Mbit Ethernet
• optional Firewire
• PCI 2.1 Master/Agent

• RIORED mainboard supports one or two CPU daughtercards. Each daughtercard contains one PowerPC G3cx microprocessor operating at a speed of 550 MHz.
• 64MB to 1GB memory by four interleaved sockets (used 2 by 2) consisting of 64 or 72-Bits (ECC) unbuffered SDRAM 168pins DIMMs.
• Memory speed support of 100MHz (PC-100) for up to 800 MBytes/s.
• 512KB of FLASH memory for the BIOS and SETUP.
• Four 33MHz PCI-32 (32-Bits) slots with BURST transfers at 133 MBytes/s.
• Two 66MHz/3.3V PCI-64 (64-Bits) slots with BURST transfers at 528 MBytes/s.
• AGP (3.3V) bus support with onboard DMA capabilities.
• PCI IDE for four devices (Ultra-DMA 66).
• PCI USB for four onboard ports (1.5 & 12Mbits/s).
• I2C port to pilot a front panel LCD to show the system information.
• I2C port for geeks.
• Time-of-year clock & NVRAM (256Bytes) with 3V lithium battery.
• Interrupt management with clear distribution (not shared int lines).
• Power management with wake up capability from USB events (keyboard / modem) and PCI cards (Ethernet).
• Ambiant thermical sensor.

bPlan has a MicroATX MoBo in the works, that is dual G3/G4, has all important IO onboard (like Ethernet,PS/2,USB,ser/par,Firewire (!!)) and is at the moment the only other product that was designed with the AmigaONE specs in mind and already does boot Linux.

bPlan has a MicroATX MoBo in the works, that is dual G3/G4, has all important IO onboard (like Ethernet,PS/2,USB,ser/par,Firewire (!!)) and is at the moment the only other product that was designed with the AmigaONE specs in mind and already does boot Linux.

... QNX RtP, MorhpOS and AmigaOS 4.x (ETA the end of this summer). All runs PPC as well.

These links might be interesting:

Pegasos PPC-board

Eyetechs AmigaOne PPC-boards

What really would make my day would be to see FreeBSD running on PPC.

Bjarne

...might actually materialize from the years of vapor.

bplan just a couple of weeks ago released images of their prototype PPC ATX motherboards. Part of the reason for this board is to appeal to us Amiga nuts so we can run AmigaOS clones like MorphOS on it, but Ralph has said that the board will be fairly generic and that Linux will also run on it. (Which is a good idea if bplan actually wants some serious sales volume.)

So maybe some day, a sensibly-priced PPC box will be available (well, actually iMacs aren't such a bad deal).

...might actually materialize from the years of vapor.

bplan just a couple of weeks ago released images of their prototype PPC ATX motherboards. Part of the reason for this board is to appeal to us Amiga nuts so we can run AmigaOS clones like MorphOS on it, but Ralph has said that the board will be fairly generic and that Linux will also run on it. (Which is a good idea if bplan actually wants some serious sales volume.)

So maybe some day, a sensibly-priced PPC box will be available (well, actually iMacs aren't such a bad deal).

"It needs to happen." Does anyone know the details for why the POP boards never materialized? What ever happened to Silicon Fruit, Eternal Computing, Total Impact, etc? Is the lack of production a result of perceived lack of market, or a missing part from Motorola, or what?

FWIW, some of the ex Phase 5 (a former Amiga addon manufacturer) guys, in the hope of having a good platform to run their MorphOS Amiga-like OS on, have started a company to produce some PPC motherboards. Ralph Schmidt has stated that the hardware will be "mostly generic" and running LinuxPPC on it should be possible. Whether that means it will be compliant with the PREP/CHRP/POP/whatever standards is still not clear to me. And of course any time products even tangentially related to the Amiga are mentioned, peoples' Vapor Warning lights go off. Nevertheless, it's at least a ray of hope for people who are interested in such things, so I thought I would mention it here.