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I'd like to see PPC or Sparc Motherboards and processors for sale from other people. And not just some Lowend PPC from Pegasosppc. ;_;

If you want a truly low-power board, check out the EFIKA with Freescale MPC5200B processor. It has lower specs that the board in TFA, but consumes less than 10 watts with hard drive, and has RS-232 serial port, USB and NIC. Systems with Freescale MPC5121 and MPC5123 dual-core CPUs are also in the make (see news section). :)

I'm running an EFIKA 5200B board with ATI 9250 graphics card, hard drive and CD burner with Debian Linux. Installation was via USB stick and serial port. :)

Maybe we should mention Genesis Efika aswell, cheap mobo + 400MHz PPC + 128MB ram + 100mbps.

I think this is pretty much what you were thinking of

http://www.pegasosppc.com/odw.php

It's a powerpc machine designed to run Linux, OpenSolaris, BSD and assorted OS's like that.

There's also Pegasos.

"the PowerPC architecture will be out of the personal computer market"

I know it's hardly mainstream, but were you aware of existance of the the Open Desktop Workstation?

Lack of a BIOS can be worked around (eg. the Pegasos boards have some sort of emulation built into its firmware that allows you to use normal PC graphics cards despite being PPC and OpenFirmware-based), but without drivers you ain't doing jack shit. And that's a very big problem if you're not using an x86 CPU. The open-source r300 driver is making progress but is not near production-quality and AFAIK nothing similar exists for nVidia chips yet, so unless you can convince Ati and nVidia to port their drivers to Sun hardware this idea is dead in the water.

Would this work? At $500US, it comes in well below your price range.

Hmm.. they all have fans.
I think the Genesi system is missing from the article:
http://www.pegasosppc.com/homemedia.php

macbookpro Dropped FW 800 and cardbus.

So they did have to take two very interesting -- can we say essential? -- features to get a decent notebook with Intel processors. Sad. What could have the MacBook been if they had stayed with Power or went AMD? Or if they had went with Alpha in the first place?

I was all for Power, and FireWire, and I don't want to be limited by the lack of CardBus in such an expensive machine. And I try to run all free software. So this launched has killed the Mac for me. Good-bye, Apple. Hello, Pegasos

Photos by Mikko Jokinen, taken at Assembly '03.

Some more details: It's actually no regular PC, but a PowerPC system called Pegasos. The system has a PowerPC 750CXe @ 600MHz, Radeon RV100 gfxcard, HDD (just about visible inside) and a slot DVD-drive (accessable from the above, not visible in the pictures). The display is a LCD screen modded to the microwave door. It's running MorphOS operating system.

When we demoed the system at Assembly '03, some kids actually almost tried to heat their food with the thing. Lots of fun ensued.

- Harry "Piru" Sintonen

... like the Pegasos motherboard. Put it in any roomy case with space for all those low-power HDDs. For your purposes, it sounds like you could pick an even less power-hungry G3 CPU over the standard (but still not so power hungry) G4 option.

Then there's the Open Desktop Workstation if you can't/won't build a Pegasos based box yourself.

... like the Pegasos motherboard. Put it in any roomy case with space for all those low-power HDDs. For your purposes, it sounds like you could pick an even less power-hungry G3 CPU over the standard (but still not so power hungry) G4 option.

Then there's the Open Desktop Workstation if you can't/won't build a Pegasos based box yourself.

http://pegasosppc.com/

MacOS X shows that it's still possible to introduce a new OS, and gain market share (and even if you view it as a continuation to the first MacOS, its market share seems to have grown since the "classic" days).

Also, I don't see that you need large market share of all desktop machines in order to be viable - what matters is that you can stay in business, and that the users have products to buy. Is it possible? Amiga and Genesi ( http://www.pegasosppc.com/ ) appear to be staying in business so far, I don't know how much profit they are making from their products however.

Maybe it depends on your personal definition of success...

Yes, but if market share is all that matters, then Microsoft are the only successful ones, and we should all be using Windows.

Pegasos PPC

The Pegasos G4 is not out of stock. Genesi sold out the G3
a while ago for the incredible price of 299 USD. With
their great partnership with Freescale and the advanced
AltiVec engine, they focus on the G4 with 7448 upgrades
as the next thing.

Hopefully before end of year they will release a very tiny
(less than Nano-ITX) 2 chip motherboard called EFIKA 5k2.
It is based on the Freescale 5200 CPU at 400 MHz. No heatsink
nor fan required. Very low power with ethernet, USB etc
builtin the CPU. The rest on the support chip. This will
carry 1 2.5" IDE port and 1 PCI. They are currently
looking for a good graphics chip to also put onboard.

Pictures /ironfist

Pegasos sells non macintosh, linux-based PPC machines. At least, they would if they weren't currently out of stock.

Screenshot 1, Screenshot 2, Screenshot 3, Screenshot 4, Screenshot 5, Screenshot 6

No, even if all PCs become DRM-laden, Apple (which I wouldn't be surprised if they go to DRM in their Macs in the next seven years) will not be the only "general computer" manufacturer around. There is Pegasos PPC from Genesi who is catering to the Linux PPC workstation crowd. And you can still buy Sun workstation computers too. And there are many other manufacturers making computers like this. These manufacturers probably won't ever add DRM to restrict the people that buy these machines. So if Apple never includes DRM (which I doubt, with their interest in pleasing the RIAA with iTunes, and I think they want to please the MPAA too) they will still not be the only company around making DRM-free machines.

If you want a PPC-machine for Linux with a G4
there is also the MicroATX board from Genesi
with a modern 7447, that does not suck much
energy and hence can be very silent or even
modded for passive cooling.

http://www.pegasosppc.com/pegasos.php

And you don't have pay for OSX - nice
for linux-only users, too.

This might be interesting to you:

From Desktop to Grid, the ODW (Open Desktop Workstation) is designed to assume its position and fulfill the missing link of the first true PowerPC Linux Development and Desktop System. The fully configured machine comes bundled with a variety of tools and applications that make the platform the perfect partner for any serious embedded system development based on Linux.

The Open Desktop Workstation is the only GNU/Linux PowerPC solution available on the market today that is endorsed by IBM and Freescale Semiconductor.

A while back I ran into this micro-atx form factor motherboard which uses PowerPC:
PegasosPPC

If you run linux, I imagine you could make the transition easily..

-metric

Here you go.

Hate the name. Running linux doesn't make the architecture "Open". For an affordable power based workstation look here. It runs a few different distros of linux and other os's and more are in the works.

I don't really agree with all the hype around IBM's open source moves. Seems like a lot of what they are doing is using open source as a way to get salespeople in the door to sell proprietary IBM solutions. That's not necessarily a bad thing depending on how it's done. Look at some of the Apache projects, things like Jetty where IBM was a big supporter until they decided it was good enough to fork it internally for WebSphere Portal. That's not so bad, the license allows it but it's still a bit messed up in my opinion.

But other things like Derby and Geronimo are different all together. Take a look at the IBM Cloudscape pages. Cloudscape is not open source. It's "open source-based". They released the code as the Apache Derby project, but Cloudscape is not an open source project. The download link says "trials and betas". It may be free now but it has the potential of not being free when IBM senses it can charge for more than just support. Why would IBM release this? It's not because there weren't other open source java based RDBMS's out there. Hypersonic and Mckoi were already quite popular in that space and there are more. The difference is, Cloudscape has been designed to be a stepping stone to DB2. The java rdbms's have a niche market. One segment of which is users that want an easy portable system to develop on with little administrative requirements. These types generally outgrow the capabilities of such database systems and the user needs to migrate. If you're already using Cloudscape, the logical migration path is DB2. Which definately isn't free.

Also look at their recent acquisition of Gluecode. This gives them the developers of the Geronimo project. It's going to turn into Websphere-Lite. Same type of deal with Cloudscape. Both of these will be at the expense of open source software that is trying to be real open source, not just a carrot on a stick. Hopefully people see this and projects like Jonas and JBoss continue to grow.

I feel IBM is abusing the phrase "Open Source" in it's marketting where it's not appropriate. Like a couple of days ago when they announced they were moving to a more open source type of development for all their projects. They didn't say they were open sourcing all their projects, just that they will be using open source methodologies within IBM. I guess you could call it the Bazaar in the Cathedral. Yet so many mistakenly took the news to mean that ibm was doing more with open source and releasing more products via open source.

To me it looks like IBM is turning Open Source into shareware. They have their free versions to tinker around with but when you're ready for the real thing, a non crippled version, you have to pay for it. From Jonathan Schwartz's Weblog we have this quote:

"Jonas (Red Hat's app server) is just a toy, it's just for the low end" said IBM's exec at the Smith Barney Tech Conference I just attended in NYC.

A similar message is presented (though a little less harshly) when IBM compares AIX to Linix

Also look at Eclipse. It's used as an IDE but in many respects it is crippled in that regard, it's real purpose is as a tools platform. To get real productivity out of it you need to purchase plug-ins or upgrade to professional tools based on Eclipse like WebSphere Studio. The Eclipse Foundation is working on a number of open sourc

Agree, the low-margin, large-volume (well, sort of) segment was footing part of the Power R&D bill. Maybe time to look at Pegasos although, the race is probably already run.

You mean something like this

http://www.pegasosppc.com/products.php

Theyve been around for some time it seems.

Didn't know that the Pegasos is made by Apple. Thanks for clearing this up!

Genesi is making a Open Desktop Workstation based on the PowerPC G4 processor from Freescale. Freescale I think is the PowerPC unit from Motorola that was spun off? You can get motherboards from them too. The 1Ghz PowerPC workstation costs 799. I ran across the release announcement the other day and tried contributing it to slashdot but it's obviously not that much interest to others. I don't know much about the company or PowerPC in general but with Apple moving away from PowerPC I thought it was cool. Maybe the info will help you.

"There weren't any gas stations around before there were mass produced cars.

The PowerPC machines that were around before were:
1. Random little boards like the AmigaOne
2. Hideously expensive workstations from IBM and a few others.
3. Macs too old to run OSX

And, of course, the real kicker: The underlying OS is already running on commodity hardware. The trick will just be to move the GUI code over.

Yeah, I remembered about that just after I posted. The point remains, thanks to Pegasos, though they're not really cheap either.

Itanium2, Power, SPARC, Alpha...

...PowerPC,...

It will get released when everything is ready.

I don't work for Sun but I have been in the OpenSolaris pilot from Day One and I can tell you that I have been working like mad with it as have others. Myself and James Dickens worked night and day over the past weekend to build the OS on an E4000 as well as a LX50 machine for both enterprise class implementations and server room work. You can see the results of the workstation build at Blastwave.org and you need to watch James Dickens blog as well as mine to see progress that happens OUTSIDE of Sun. Not to mention the PowerPC port project at BlastWare which will also make progress when some other bits are in place. There are partnerships in place to work on the PowerPC port and GENESI is behind this as well as others.

Power is a big deal folks. Think of OpenSolaris on your IBM big iron also.

So go make a coffee and relax. Its coming real soon now.

Dennis Clarke
Director Blastwave.org
http://www.blastwave.org/

Pegasos PPC
Amiga One

to name a few...

The Pegasos board runs Linux/ppc and MorphOS (an Amiga-like OS it seems) and others, although they don't seem to provide ppc970/G5s just yet. My bet it they would sell pretty well though..

http://www.pegasosppc.com/

By the way: Athlon-64 has 16 64-bit GPRs, not 4.

There are a lot of alternatives out there, and your inability to find/use them is not a problem which AMD and Intel are overly concerned with. For instance, here are a few of your options:

64-bit RISC:
http://www-1.ibm.com/servers/eserver/pseries/
http://www-1.ibm.com/servers/eserver/iseries/
http://www.pegasosppc.com/tech_specs.php
http://www.apple.com/powermac/
http://www.sun.com/servers/index.html
http://www.hp.com/products1/servers/HP9000_family_ overview.html
http://h18002.www1.hp.com/alphaserver/index.html

64-bit CISC:
http://www-1.ibm.com/servers/eserver/zseries/
http://www.hp.com/products1/servers/integrity/inde x.html

Now why would Intel/AMD want to make it any easier than it already is for you to switch?

Phil

Can you even buy bare PPC CPUs and mobos?

Not 970-based yet, but anyway:
Pegasos.
Terons (which are also marketed, by raping the corpse of the Amiga, to a bunch of clueless zealots as "AmigaOnes". The CX and PX models are discontinued due to hardware flaws, the jury is still out on the newer Mini model).

Freescale (ex-Motorola) sell them for $649, and Gentoo sell complete systems for $999 (of which $100 is donated to the Gentoo foundation). Genesi advertise the mobos+CPU at $600-615, depending on CPU.

But yeah, they're still beaten in price by the Mac Mini.

No article about fractals could be complete without mentioning Elenas excellent ZonXplorer fractal package for AmigaOS 3.5+ and MorphOS (running on the Pegasos PPC). Check out her stuning pictures in her gallery.
I hope her webpage can handle the load, it's sure enough worth a visit.

He's right. You can get a "clone" from PegasosPPC. Given they only sell single processor G4's as far as i can tell for eMac prices, it's hardly a competitive option to a "real" Mac.

BTW...

Seehund's Recent Submissions
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Yellow Dog Linux 4.0 (for real!) 2004.09.30 21:27 Rejected

Pegasos.
OK, it's more expensive than a used Mac, but at least it's not a Mac. ;)

Ambient is the desktop environment for MorphOS, which is the operating system for the Pegasos powerpc based computer.

Okay. Or maybe you'd rather play with the reference board?

where are the dual-proc small form factor CPU-X(where X is anything -x86) mobo's these days?

Is Micro-ATX small enough? If you'd be happy with ATX, then why not play with a dual processor 64-bit MIPS system?

it sucks. nobody seems to be pushing the CPU envelope, cheaply any more... its all x86 hegemony

Oh, cheaply. Perhaps you should take a look at some products based on ARM chips.

There are a lot of interesting CPU architectures out there. The only reason not to be using one is the need to run Windows (and even then you can use IA64, although it's not cheap.)

Thankfully there is the Pegasos running MorphOS still out there.

Well, not exactly vaporware. They did exist, but the problem was that the motherboard itself cost as much as a complete x86 system.

Speaking of which, here is Momentum's 970FX evaluation mobo. Only $4500 for a basic evaluation system. :)

There's of course the more humanely priced Pegasos II for 500 Euros, but it's rather underperforming for 2004 and compared to those complete x86 systems you speak of. I've heard Marvell, who supply the northbridge for the PegII, will sell a "Discovery III" northbridge for the PPC970, so things might improve. Mai Logic, who made the failed Articia S northbridge and Teron motherboards (a.k.a. "AmigaOne", "Dragon", "Boxer" and whatnot), are supposedly planning an "Articia I" (IIRC) northbridge for the 970. I guess it's likely that they'll make a Teron based on this as well.

Has everyone already completely forgotten about LaGrande?

The tech sites certainly don't seem to be making much fuss about the fact that Prescott has this technology already in it. I wonder how they can be that unknowing of it. There was this big Extremetech article on LaGrande though.

Even on Slashdot no-one seems to be bringing it up these days. For me, the benchmarks aren't even worth looking at with the knowledge that these processors are the beginning of the DRM revolution. Seems they're being able to sneak the technology inside every PC just as they've planned it.

Still, sticking with AMD is going to be just a temporary measure. Is there any talk about integrating DRM into the PowerPC? If not, maybe the next motherboard upgrade could be a Pegasos or one could just go with a Mac.

The Common Hardware Reference Platform (CHRP, aka PPCP) was released many many years ago, but it hasn't really taken off. IBM did sell some of these systems, and the modern pegasos platform offers G3 & G4 processors.

Here's some more technical info.

p.s. mac sleeping is perfect - sleep and wake are quick, and network connectivity (even when roaming) is very fast.