ATX PPC Motherboards from Eyetech

YttriumOx writes: "Eyetech Ltd, a UK based company now has the AmigaOneG3SE for prerelease to developers. Anyone who's been craving a PPC motherboard for either Linux or the New AmigaOS can put their orders in now. The developers prerelease board comes with a TurboLinux PPC CD. While this system is targetted at Amiga owners wanting new hardware, there's no reason for anyone needing a good PPC solution for Linux can't get their hands on one. You've got until the 24th of March if you want a prerelease board (note that the only difference between it and the final board is that the ROM chip in the final board will be an AmigaOS4 ROM where as it's an OpenPPC BIOS in the developers board. Exact specifications of the board can be found here." This is also a good solution for people who want to use Linux on a PowerPC but do not want to buy an Apple machine. Price for the "beta" board is $450 and final will be $500.

Comments

Facts about Darwin, Mac ROMs & Apple HW

[maggard]

1. Apple's MacOS is not based on the exact same code as is Darwin. Any number of times Apple's developers have confirmed that while the two code-bases are regularly synched they are not one and the same and some portions of the MacOS X core code never makes it to Darwin.
2. Apple hasn't used proprietary ROMS for years. Instead they use their code based "New World ROM" that get loaded as a system component. There is no need to talk about stealing one and burning them, they're right there in any MacOS install.
3. However Apple designs their own Northbridge & Southbridge chips. It is with these that the "New World ROM" interacts which means that non-Apple Northbridge & Southbridge chips wouldn't work. Therefore unless one wants to figure out how to get Darwin to boot on 3rd party Northbridge & Southbridge chips and then to get MacOS X to accept this underpinning you won't get very far.
4. Finally, congrats; you'd have managed to make a non-Apple Mac. This has been done before, indeed it is rumored there was a version of the IBM RS 6000 that would boot MacOS long ago. However you've now also throw away that tight integration of hardware & software that makes Apple's products special and likely not saved much money in the long run anyway.