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Anyone remember The OpenPPC Project? This was something Ralph Giles and I started a few years ago, to follow up on a PPC-based reference board designed by IBM. Unfortunately a parts problem prevented it from ever being produced commercially, despite creation of a commercial company (Pop Computers) to manage the process.

Anyway... while the Apple Mini/OSX solution isn't the same thing philosophically, I'm fairly content that it solves most of the problems for which that project was created: It's Unix, it's cheap, it's PPC.

What it *isn't* is open-source in any real way. As someone who's now more influenced by practical than ideological concerns these days, I'm content.

Just look at the POP reference design they made a few years back. Nobody I mean Nobody ever produced a single board. The fact that they used a virtual non existant Northbridge didn't help.

Nothing to see here Move On, or call IBM and try and get a quote for 500 pcs PowerPC if you doubt me.

Look here:

IBM's POP Motherboard

IBM has an open PowerPC motherboard design. I suspect you could build this using off-the-shelf parts, and probably get linux running on it.

-Jason

Look here, but it's kind of old. Oh and here also!

PPC is proprietary.

Something along the lines of OpenPPC sounds like the ticket to me. Now all it needs is people supporting it, and some might argue a better design :).

There's always OpenPPC.

To quote the site: "The immediate goal of the project is to enable interested parties to build inexpensive, PPC-based Linux boxes from IBM's reference plans. In the longer term, we hope to expand the open-source ideals expressed in the GPL to hardware projects, primarily motherboards."

I think it deserves mention that OpenPPC.org is an IBM-supported initiative to bring OpenPPC-based machines to us commoners.

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

--Tom, former administrator of openppc.org.

--Tom, former administrator of openppc.org.

>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

Then, IBM had problems with the new Northbridge design they specified for the board. Not wanting to release a flawed design to the world, they decided not to make the layout files ("Gerbers") available. With only schematics, lack of support from IBM, and waning confidence in the community, the project eventually fizzled.

Sic sic transit gloria PPC.

But I can not view these same quicktime files on my LinuxPPC base G4, and have to reboot into MacOS.
[snip]
Is there any hope of Apple giving back to the Linux community

In a word: No. They can't ever open Quicktime, because the Sorensen Codec isn't theirs to give out.

If you don't like the Quicktime situation, you should either fight software patents, or boycott the Codec (i.e. stop booting into MacOS to view Quicktime movies, and instead, do without it).

In other respects, there seems little incentive to Apple to ever "give back to the community" because they view their Mac+MacOS bundle as a single product, especially since Jobs came back. From Apple's point of view, there is no reason to aid OSes other than MacOS, because they don't see Mac sales to users-who-don't-want-MacOS as a significantly market. And judging from the lack of appearance of non-Mac PPC personal computers (e.g. POP) they might be right. Apparently, the market has spoken (although IMHO, POP hasn't really been given a fair chance yet).

If someone other than Apple starts selling non-Mac PPC boxes and makes some decent sales, this would indicate a larger market for PPC-based personal computers, and maybe Apple would change their mind, and then have more incentive to accomodate non-MacOS OSes on Macs, thereby leading to them to "give back to the community."

Where's the hardware, dammit?

The Apple SMP systems seem fairly nice, but rather expensive.

It's not a realistic alternative unless I can specify the specs rather than living with whatever AAPL tells me I can buy.

I've idly watched the OpenPPC project; apparently the direct offspring, Pop Computers, found that they had severe procurement problems.

This does not a viable market make.

Unfortunately, IBM never released the layout files ("Gerbers") because of problems with the northbridge. The project's pretty moribund these days, but who knows? Maybe IBM will revisit the idea of creating a reference design for the 405 chips (and similar), and we'll have inexpensive, third-party PPC-based motherboards yet.

Tom Geller, co-founder, The OpenPPC Project

Now IBM's investing in Linux development, and I have to wonder: What role (if any) will the PowerPC processor have in all of this? Will Intel's involvement help drive a one-OS, one-processor world? I hope not, especially as Intel's processors leave a lot to be desired, especially in the area of power consumption.

--Tom Geller, co-founder, The OpenPPC Project

Now IBM's investing in Linux development, and I have to wonder: What role (if any) will the PowerPC processor have in all of this? Will Intel's involvement help drive a one-OS, one-processor world? I hope not, especially as Intel's processors leave a lot to be desired, especially in the area of power consumption.

--Tom Geller, co-founder, The OpenPPC Project

• Linux isn't yet, by itself, a good enough reason for the existence of a laptop product.
• Unless you can get economies of scale from selling lots of 'em, the problem of low volume will result in high prices.
• No WordPerfect, and limited maturity of web browsers.

I'm still watching for the first release of OpenPPC hardware; it too is not expected to be inexpensive. TotalImpact cards sound rather cool, but are apparently expensive enough that the vendor isn't willing indicate any pricing information on their web site; reportedly about $1K per CPU.

The "pricing structure" behind the PPCs just doesn't seem suited to laptop deployment that occurs "because they're low powered."

POP is IBM's PPC-based reference platform, which will (we hope!) allow OEMs to build inexpensive and clever PPC-based applications. Design files for the first version of POP never came out due to a bad part (the Northbridge, from Winbond); according to Brad, a "POP2" is on its way.

As always, further info is at http://www.openppc.org.

--Tom Geller
Co-founder, The OpenPPC Project

POP is IBM's PPC-based reference platform, which will (we hope!) allow OEMs to build inexpensive and clever PPC-based applications. Design files for the first version of POP never came out due to a bad part (the Northbridge, from Winbond); according to Brad, a "POP2" is on its way.

As always, further info is at http://www.openppc.org.

--Tom Geller
Co-founder, The OpenPPC Project

--Tom Geller
Co-founder, The OpenPPC Project

--Tom Geller
Co-founder, The OpenPPC Project

• Indeed, there are no cheap, commodity motherboards.
• This lack is important.

I'd love to see the OpenPPC Project do something to provide sources of PPC motherboards that don't cost thousands of dollars.

Unfortunately, what I'd really want to see is a mobo that costs only a few hundred dollars, and which allows hooking up a couple or four PPC chips. And it looks like there's not going to be any combination like that any time soon.

Remember: The Intel alternatives may not be "pretty" hardware, but they do make for a compelling lowest common denominator. I can head to Aberdeen and locate an SMP Pentium III motherboard costing a couple hundred dollars, toss in a couple CPUs, and have some reasonably powerful hardware for about $1000.

For PPC to provide a realistic alternative, it needs to either:

• Provide compelling amounts of computing power that are unavailable on Intel;
• Provide reliability unavailable on Intel;
• Provide a price that is not too much more expensive than an Intel-based system of similar power.

Feel free to s/Intel/Athlon/g or s/Intel/Alpha/g as needed.

The critical point here is that if the PPC system is outrageously more expensive than an IA-32 system of relatively comparable power, it just won't sell. There are some that are sufficiently bigoted against Intel hardware that they'll pay more for something else, whether PPC, Alpha, or SPARC. I'm not going to pay a $1500 premium to run the same code, recompiled for PPC in order to have a PPC label on the CPU that may not be visible in any meaningful way unless I put a sticker on the case.

By the way, you may not be quite right about the "only" PPC motherboard being from Motorola; Cogent Computers appears to have one that costs around $1200. Of course, the CPUs to toss into it seem to add another $1200 or more in price, so I could be off here...

I'm certainly with you in being disinterested in "buying a Mac and ripping its guts out."

I can hear the yowls from here... "What non-Apple PPC machines?" Right now, there aren't many other than IBM's server line, although you can buy a Sandpoint reference board from Motorola and miscellaneous boards from smaller vendors. (See http://www.openppc.org/vendors.html for a full list.)

But back in August, IBM announced that it would be releasing an open, reference motherboard design for PPC ("POP", or PowerPC Open Platform). The schematics came out quickly, but the whole project's been bogged down in testing because of a faulty northbridge. In the meantime, however, a small community project has sprung up to track POP, at http://www.openppc.org. Interested parties are encouraged to sign up for the mailing list and plumb the Web site for tasty nuggets of goodness.

--Tom Geller
Co-founder, The OpenPPC Project

I can hear the yowls from here... "What non-Apple PPC machines?" Right now, there aren't many other than IBM's server line, although you can buy a Sandpoint reference board from Motorola and miscellaneous boards from smaller vendors. (See http://www.openppc.org/vendors.html for a full list.)

But back in August, IBM announced that it would be releasing an open, reference motherboard design for PPC ("POP", or PowerPC Open Platform). The schematics came out quickly, but the whole project's been bogged down in testing because of a faulty northbridge. In the meantime, however, a small community project has sprung up to track POP, at http://www.openppc.org. Interested parties are encouraged to sign up for the mailing list and plumb the Web site for tasty nuggets of goodness.

--Tom Geller
Co-founder, The OpenPPC Project

I can hear the yowls from here... "What non-Apple PPC machines?" Right now, there aren't many other than IBM's server line, although you can buy a Sandpoint reference board from Motorola and miscellaneous boards from smaller vendors. (See http://www.openppc.org/vendors.html for a full list.)

But back in August, IBM announced that it would be releasing an open, reference motherboard design for PPC ("POP", or PowerPC Open Platform). The schematics came out quickly, but the whole project's been bogged down in testing because of a faulty northbridge. In the meantime, however, a small community project has sprung up to track POP, at http://www.openppc.org. Interested parties are encouraged to sign up for the mailing list and plumb the Web site for tasty nuggets of goodness.

--Tom Geller
Co-founder, The OpenPPC Project

I can hear the yowls from here... "What non-Apple PPC machines?" Right now, there aren't many other than IBM's server line, although you can buy a Sandpoint reference board from Motorola and miscellaneous boards from smaller vendors. (See http://www.openppc.org/vendors.html for a full list.)

But back in August, IBM announced that it would be releasing an open, reference motherboard design for PPC ("POP", or PowerPC Open Platform). The schematics came out quickly, but the whole project's been bogged down in testing because of a faulty northbridge. In the meantime, however, a small community project has sprung up to track POP, at http://www.openppc.org. Interested parties are encouraged to sign up for the mailing list and plumb the Web site for tasty nuggets of goodness.

--Tom Geller
Co-founder, The OpenPPC Project

See The OpenPPC Project to get in touch with the community. The mailing list is essential for those interested in this subject.

IBM has basicly given to any serious takers the full specs for their reference ppc board.

Not yet, they haven't. Because of problems with the Northbridge, they've held off on releasing the all-important Gerber (layout) files. The schematics are there, though.

--Tom Geller
Co-founder, The OpenPPC Project
President, Pop Computers (to build motherboards based on open designs).

See The OpenPPC Project to get in touch with the community. The mailing list is essential for those interested in this subject.

IBM has basicly given to any serious takers the full specs for their reference ppc board.

Not yet, they haven't. Because of problems with the Northbridge, they've held off on releasing the all-important Gerber (layout) files. The schematics are there, though.

--Tom Geller
Co-founder, The OpenPPC Project
President, Pop Computers (to build motherboards based on open designs).

1. Red Hat already has a PPC distribution, albeit an unsupported one. It's on their "Rough Cuts" CD. (A complete list of PPC distros is on the OpenPPC software page.
2. There are business problems at LinuxPPC -- I personally had to sue them to get paid for work I did. (Follow-ups in private, please.) In the process, I discovered that their papers of incorporation weren't in order and other irregularities.
3. LinuxPPC Inc. has only two assets: (1) A (sort of) well-known name, and (2) connections with the community. I'd argue that the latter is tenuous at best, and that developers would put their efforts behind a Red Hat brand without any money changing hands.

--Tom Geller, co-founder, The OpenPPC Project, for PPC hardware based on open designs.

P.S. I'm talking about LinuxPPC Inc., the corporation, not LinuxPPC.org, the community collaboration. And there are some individuals at LinuxPPC Inc. who are quite good (get well soon, Jason!). But Red Hat would be foolish to throw any money their way IMHO.

1. Red Hat already has a PPC distribution, albeit an unsupported one. It's on their "Rough Cuts" CD. (A complete list of PPC distros is on the OpenPPC software page.
2. There are business problems at LinuxPPC -- I personally had to sue them to get paid for work I did. (Follow-ups in private, please.) In the process, I discovered that their papers of incorporation weren't in order and other irregularities.
3. LinuxPPC Inc. has only two assets: (1) A (sort of) well-known name, and (2) connections with the community. I'd argue that the latter is tenuous at best, and that developers would put their efforts behind a Red Hat brand without any money changing hands.

--Tom Geller, co-founder, The OpenPPC Project, for PPC hardware based on open designs.

P.S. I'm talking about LinuxPPC Inc., the corporation, not LinuxPPC.org, the community collaboration. And there are some individuals at LinuxPPC Inc. who are quite good (get well soon, Jason!). But Red Hat would be foolish to throw any money their way IMHO.

Ask abit or asus to make one. No one is stopping them. See here for more info.
--

Apple's current machines are just CHRP systems. CHRP is well-documented, and companies like IBM, Prophet Systems, and SiliconFruit are coming out with CHRP systems.

See openppc.org.

What's next? PPC overtaking Intel marketshare?

Unfortunately, part of the Athlon's success is due to the fact that there's still a lot of demand for legacy x86. AMD is laking the low road, and it's paying off. I don't think this bodes well for PPC (or Intel's upcoming 64-bit CPU).

Motorola needs to get off their asses on PPC. They'll never get leading marketshare if they don't learn how to supply the existing PPC demand. I have wanted to buy a generic (non-Mac) PPC box for a long time, but there have been so many delays with everything from CPUs to memory controller shortages, that even Apple is having to slow down and wait. It's getting to the point where I'm about to lose my patience, wimp out, and get an Athlon. (And that's a shame, because this is for a box that's going to be on 24/7, where PPC's lower power usage would be attractive.) Failing to sell PPCs to people who want them, isn't a good way to gain marketshare. Motorola must have ex-Commodore people working for them.

--Tom

Want to be that source? See http://www.openppc.org.

--Tom

People interested in doing this are gathering even as we speak at http://www.openppc.org.

With an ATX style MB you'd pay a slight premium over x86 hardware

After the 20,000th unit, maybe. Economies of scale, you know. But getting to that point will be a challenge.

but they benefits would be great

What he said!

Hopefully Apple isn't able to put pressure on anyone to prevent them from doing this.

The biggest thing Apple can do is pressure IBM to stop giving out these mobo designs. All the more reason to download them now at http://www.openppc.org/make.html

--Tom

People interested in doing this are gathering even as we speak at http://www.openppc.org.

With an ATX style MB you'd pay a slight premium over x86 hardware

After the 20,000th unit, maybe. Economies of scale, you know. But getting to that point will be a challenge.

but they benefits would be great

What he said!

Hopefully Apple isn't able to put pressure on anyone to prevent them from doing this.

The biggest thing Apple can do is pressure IBM to stop giving out these mobo designs. All the more reason to download them now at http://www.openppc.org/make.html

--Tom

There will be at least 2 makers of PPC motherboards. One company is Prophet. For more info on the open PPC mobo project, check out this link.
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