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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.
You could probably get MacOS X to boot on it, now that the OS's rom is stored on disk.
That, and Darwin comes with source, so you could likely get it going on the hardware.
This will be kinda cool....
God save our Queen, and Heaven bless The Maple Leaf Forever!
Finally some open Amiga PPC mother boards! Amiga returns....
Of course, there are already Amiga PPC expansion boards..
http://linux-apus.sourceforge.net/
and
http://www.netbsd.org/Ports/amigappc/
Anyone thought of porting these to daystar PPC upgrade cards for 68k macs (Turbo601 ?)
Isn't $500 a little expensive for the board? A new iMac only costs $1,299.00 from the Apple Store and you get much more for the same price. There is also the matter of supporting Apple.
--Metrollica
I am not particularely impressed by the specs of the board. When the BeBox came out with its dual Hobbit chipset, I wanted to get my hands on one of these bad ass mother. But looking at the specs (and high price) of this board, why should I put money into that? To run a Linux port on it? Gee, that's a luxury item.
I'd rather get a second ipaq instead. Actually I start to prefer the ARM architecture over the PPC one lately (Thanks for Mot for goofing heavily on the performance side too.) So I'd rather go light and wireless than underpowered and chained on the desktop.
PPA, the girl next door.
-- I feel better now. Thanks for asking.
I'd be interested to know whether or not it will run Mac OS X. On one hand, Apple built into their operating system a list of computers that it can run on. They did this so non-G3 users wouldn't try to do an install.
1 68&db=mac. Although it's not the one I used, you can see that as an example.
On the other hand, there are several utilities available that override Apple's settings. I've personally used one to get OS X running on my Power Mac 7300. One such utility is XPostFact, http://www.versiontracker.com/moreinfo.fcgi?id=11
Does anybody with more knowledge than me have any insight?
You mean AmigaOS isn't a vaporious dream?
Blar.
I always thought the Amiga was a neat inovative computer. Friends of mine were doing production video animation on them backin the early 80s. They were clearly more powerful than the Mac at that time. Still I can t help but think that without the latest IBM G5 or whatever its called, its not going to hold up against the best Athlons and P4s.
See http://www.bplan-gmbh.de/news/pegasos_e.html for more details.
It can take up to two G4 w/ 2Mb cache each.
The mainboard works perfectly, and two OS are expected to run on the system when it ships(one xxxBSD if I remember correctly and MorphOS).
As a matter of fact, the board will be shipped when MorphOS (http://www.morphos.de) will be ready, in the next two monthes.
Sheesh, I just posted that, how can there be so many comments already?!
Anyway, regarding MacOS - I can't say for certain about getting MacOS to run on it, not being a Mac person at all myself, BUT I have heard it's almost certain that Mac-On-Linux will run fine. Also, once AmigaOS4 is on this baby, iFusion (a brilliant PPC Mac emulator for AmigaOS) will also run fine.
Regarding the CPU being soldered on. Eyetech are quite likely to make a G4 version at some stage, however a socketed solution seems unlikely due to the massive price increase unless there is sufficient demand and people willing to pay the extra. Alan from Eyetech posted the following on the AmigaOne mailing list:Regards,
Ben de Waal
AKA YttriumOx
I've seen this behavior with every computer that has had any sort of a following. It doesn't matter what brand or OS: Amiga, Microsoft, Mac, Linux, TI, or TRS-80 -- what you describe is common to fanatics of any flavor.
Now the real reason Amiga died is because Commodore waited years before they even began to advertise the computer in any comprehensive way, and even that lasted only a handful of months. From acquisition to bankruptcy, Commodore had no clue how to handle a computer that was hands down superior to and cheaper than any competition.
550 bux for the G3/600 or 600 bux for the G4/700mhz
:)
Not bad, but soldered on cpu really sucks. And 15% seems rather high just to add a socket.
I might have to get one of these bad boys, maybe someone will have an OS/X hack for it too.
I've never considered running Amiga before, what are some of the highlights of runnning it? Is it just so people can tinker around, or can you do things with it where Linux/Windows isn't cutting it?
I'm genuinely curious, not being a negative smart ass.
"Derp de derp."
Check out the briQ by Terra Soft Solutions (makers of Yellow Dog Linux).. Full specs are here. Pricey, but very cute. YDL sells a few other LinuxPPC hardware solutions.
I am the king... of No Pants! www.penny-arcade.com
Amiga's strength in the 80s and early 90s was multimedia. You could do AMAZING things with video and sound that were unsurpassed by anything in it's pricerange (you could only really get similar performance on dedicated video editing hardware).
Later, as the rest of the world caught up, the people who stayed with Amiga did so for several reasons:
1 - some were fanatics. Sad but true fact of any computing group is that fanatics exist.
2 - The Amiga can do pretty much anything any other machine can do with a fraction of the processor and RAM (My old 68030-25MHz performed about as well as a P200 easily, so now think about how a G3-600 will perform...)
3 - The AmigaOS is elegant. It gives you power and flexibility not found in MacOS or Windows, and ease of use not found in Linux (yes, Linux CAN be easy, but as soon as you want to start tinkering it gets complex. You can tinker with AmigaOS even with a minimum of knowledge - greater knowledge just means you can tinker MORE)
4 - There are still some AmigaOS applications that I far prefer to anything on other platforms. Many of these are seriously showing their age, but now that a new AmigaOS is coming out, there are likely to be many developers updating/rewriting the old software and even writing new software. We have a rather large base of ported software (mostly games) too for those that "just can't live" without Quake, Freespace, Heretic, Wipeout2097 etc etc etc.
Regards,
Ben de Waal
AKA YttriumOx
By the time you put together a complete system, this motherboard doesn't look price competitive to buying a recent Mac, and you have to put everything together yourself. Unless you have a religious reason to avoid Apple, it looks like they are a better option. Don't get me wrong, I think competition is a good thing, but this doesn't look like something that is going to give Apple a run for their money, so I don't think it helps there. And I like putting together machines myself, but if I was going to put toether a new machine for myself today, I could buy a dual Athlon motherboard and two Athlon XP 1700's for not too different than what this 600MHz G3 PPC motherboard is selling for. And that is from a local to me shop.
i ce sheet.htm
Don't believe me?
http://www.laboratorycomputers.com/laboratorypr
ASUS A7M266D AMD760MPX DUAL $249
PALOMINO XP 1.7PR $128
That's only $56 more than the $450 price they mention for the PPC motherboard, and it doesn't have the CPU's soldered down to "save costs" either. And there is no freaking way that a 600MHz G3 is faster than one Athlon XP 1700, let alone two.
I like PPC, don't get me wrong, but as much as I wanted one, I wouldn't buy it because I was left with only 1 vendor, Apple.
For a while, apple had the right idea. They tried IBM's strategy of making the platform open, then they chicken shitted out and went back to making their own boxes. I can't recall the manufacturers name, but there was PPC boards made by other manufacturers for a while. Why apple did an about face on this issue I will never know.
Thing that has allways kept me next to my trusty PC is I never have had to buy a "Whole new computer" I can get the latest chipset or CPU merely by replacing my motherboard. Mac's never gave me that option, sorry apple.
I think i'll give one of these boards a shot. Word to the manufacturer though, could you drop the price down to the less than 300 dollar range? I know you're going for a niche market but you gotta understand, the only people who are really going to be interested in these things don't really have a lot of money left over to do impulse buying anymore.
That were I to buy the OpenPPC bios board, and run AROS on it, that it would be more of an amiga than the final version?
I want one, just to have a home server that is not x86, is this board really for real???
Depending on what type of server and how heavy of use it's going to be getting, then why bother with a $600 motherboard that you just have to buy more parts for anyways? If you're willing to do a little messing around, just get an old PowerMac for cheap (make sure it's at least a 2nd generation PowerMac as anything before doesn't have PCI, and try to avoid those with the 601 processor, especially the 7200.)
Although it's not quite the same thing that you want to use it for, my router is a PowerMac 7600/132 (604 processor at 132MHz, 92MB of RAM) which was purchased for ~30 USD (+ shipping). As of this post it's been running for 32 days, 7 hours and 24 minutes without any sort of problems.
Only possible problems are the hardware quirks, but NetBSD has a good model support page detailing most of them for anyone who wishes to run any *nix, and the fact that if there isn't enough storage space then you may have to pay a bit for it depending on whether or not the drives are SCSI or IDE. But, with PPC you tend to pay a bit more for the hardware anyways...
Either way, PenguinPPC is a good place to check out info on Linux on the PPC architecture. (And for old Mac owners, MkLinux is a good place to check for solutions to problems that may be missing from the documentation of your chosen distro (*cough*Debian*cough*) )
"I won't mod you down - I feel the need to call you a twit explicitly, rather than by implication."
the Amiga is a mythological computer from before the dawn of the Web. Some say it was 6 feet tall and had a case constructed entirely from diamond encrusted platinum. Others tell tales of it's mighty computing feats, such as it's reputed ability to fold virtual space with a magical application known only as "Imagination...". I once met a traveller who claimed to have once owned such a computer, but he was full of wild tales of a game called "Xenon 2 - Megablast" and talked of a holy ritual required to conjure the Amiga into life - apparently you had to circle it three times before picking it up above you head, holding its platinum case by opposite corners and bending as hard as you could. Mind you, these stories sounded rather fanciful to me, and I told him so. He quickly became very angry, insisting that the Amiga would rise again and we'd all be using "Wordworth" instead of Office before long.
That was classic intercourse!
$450 is a little steep compared with Intel hardware, but this is worlds better than the $3000 developer boards that have been options before. I don't think I can afford it now, but if the final publicly available version is anywhere near as cheap I will get one eventually.
"(Man) tries to live his own life as if he were telling a story. But you have to choose: live or tell." --Sartre
The PowerPC 750's front-side bus is only ~1GB/s; using faster DDR memory wouldn't help because the FSB is the bottleneck.
I believe that they should let you flash the board's rom with a Mac ROM.
That won't work, because the Eyetech board has a different northbridge than Macs, so Apple's ROM wouldn't know how to initialize it.
Nobody really knows what to do with the Amiga but the users and coders. Commodore didn't market it worth a shit, but I remember going into the back of the bookstore and seeing an a500 running demos and just drooling. Eventually I got an a600 and it was fun..
Anyway, look how many times Amiga has changed hands over the years. Nobody knows what to make of it. Someone tried using Amiga tech for a game machine, someone tried making set-top boxes...it's just a really strange anomaly.
I looked around on the web and found these numbers in a IBM pdf:
IBM PowerPC 750CXe 600MHz
specint95 - 25.6
specfp95 - 16.3
AMD Athlon 600MHz
specint95 - 27.2
specfp95 - 21.5
This will probably be good for an Amiga system but don't buy it to replace your shiny new AMD Athlon XP 2100+ box. It definitely is a lot cheaper than those old Motorola developer motherboards though.
On the other hand Apple did try using licensees to get into markets they couldn't enter themselves. The idea was 3rd parties could buy Mac licenses and purchase Mac ROMs and MacOS 7 and sell into education, far east markets, gamers ("Pippin"), and super high-end markets that Apple hadn't the capacity or margins to work in. Instead they promptly began cannibalizing Apple's own markets and were eventually shut down before they bled Apple to death. Every box they sold was one Apple didn't and their licensing fees didn't nearly make up the difference.
Finally, there have been any number of third parties making PPC boards over the years as well as Motorola. However there's little economy of scale so Apple PPC boards are generally just as cheap or cheaper. There is also always IBM PPC hardware. If you're just looking for a constant flow of motherboard upgrades yeah, that's not where the market is at. On the other hand Apple hardware holds it's value a lot longer then PC stuff so you can usually sell it and buy a whole new box with a better return on value then you'd get with a generation or two behind x86 box.
I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.
Microsoft is an exceptional monopolist able to extract monopoly rents. I wish that Slashdot posters would stop suggesting that if Apple shipped an x86 OS, they'd become Microsoft.
Microsoft is the ONLY pure OS vendor. Redhat is a service/support company that also sells pretty boxes. Sun ships Iron. IBM ships Iron and does support. HP ships Iron. Until Compaq bought them, Dec shipped Iron.
Microsoft is the ONLY COMPANY, EVER, to establish itself as a large vendor selling the "virtual computer." They managed to make the hardware underneath them a commodity and provided a universal middle level that software rights to.
Forget the IE vs. Netscape web browser/middleware, Windows is middleware.
Most computer companies sell a whole widget. Microsoft functions like a hardware monopoly with outsourced production of hardware (its an economic model), you can't make money selling PCs unless you are the lowest cost provider like Dell, or you sell 'services' or 'addons' like Compaq/Dell/HP's enterprise server lines, etc.
Alex
I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.
If no one makes MacOSX chipset drivers (you know like the VIA 4in1) for IBM's OpenPPC platform chipset or whatever chipset the boards use, you're going to have buggerall luck loading MacOSX.
Especially when you take into account that Windows already has rudimentry VIA chipset drivers built in (the VIA 4in1s just add more functionality/compatibility/performance at the cost of occasionally fucking things up). Otherwise odds are Windows would not load fullstop.
Look how after Intel bought into BeInc, BeInc refused to reverse engineer post beige G3 MacOS chipset drivers (using the escuse it was patented/copyrighted/whatever, but they could of just reversed engineered the Linux PPC chipset drivers that were post beige compatible) making new PPC hardware off limits
Microsoft is not an OS company. They sell - and historically made most of their money with - applications as well.
This made me react weidly.
/. users hate microsoft :), I want a technical explanation of that ram issue before trusting my money into a system that "could" have a "potential" of bad design or architecture limitation, and I wouldn't tolerate "don't worry, everything is fine and that's normal" for an explanation. I'd rather hear "look, implementing DDR ram would only give a 5% boost and cost too much of R&D than hearing BS. Still, I am aware that honnesty doesn't drive the computer industry but I can always wish :)
I quote:
---
Memory speed concerns The AmigaOneG3-SE supports 133MHz FSB SDRAM. (According to our engineers DDR memory doesn't gain anything in help PPC board design).
----
Now, I didn't mess deeply with powerPC chips or any architecture, my last CPUs from motorola were the 68040 series on my amiga 2000 (with fusion forthy) and 4000, but unless the memory controller has some sort of on-die SRAM for caching, I don't see why faster than 133mhz memory, especially with 600+mhz CPU, wouldn't help. Anyone care to explain the technicalities?
A comment like that without technical backup would probably make most technical people tend to think "oook... if that comes from the engineer that designed the board, I should stay away from getting this"
Of course I don't want to bash, I "worship" the amiga cause more than most
--- Metamoderating abusive downgraders since my 300th post.
You are all (mostly) missing the point. The board is designed foremost to run AmigaOS4. Linux is supported only as an aide to development while OS4 is being finished. Why run Amiga OS? I don't know. :) I love it...it's a sweet, responsive operating system that I've used for over 10 years. It lacks some modern OS features but it is still viable and performs well. It has a small footprint.....I have one 880K disk with the OS, a TCP/IP stack and an IRC client on it that will run on a 1 meg Amiga 500 with motorola 68000 7mhz cpu. We crazy, fanatical amigans have been waiting for nearly a decade for a new amiga. Many thought it would never come. It may not be practical but it's an Amiga. :) Jay Miner was a genious.
The AmigaONE I've been familiar with for months now as a completely *BAD* implimentation of a PowerPC ATX board. It is using the MAI northbridge, one of the slowest, least comprehensive northbridges made. In short, this system would make even a Cyrix 5x86 look like a speed demon by comparison, irregardless of CPU it has.
Check out the docs. Lack any kind of I/O handling, using the CPU for every last function. End result, a dog slow system. Pass this one by fellas.
Karma Whoring for Fun and Profit.
Linux runs fin on my x86, I am not going to buy a PowerPC box just for linux. I would buy the box to install mac OS X but the article does not detail if it would install. This seems to me, seems like valid information to include in the article. legal or not.
Saying Java is nice because it works on all OS's is like saying that anal sex is nice because it works on all genders.
Bitchin! Anybody runnin Lightwave on it yet? ;)
"Derp de derp."
PowerPC Reference Platform. 1993-ish IBM strategy for building standardized PPC motherboards.
CHRP:
Common Hardware Reference Platform. 1995 AIM Alliance (Apple, IBM, Motorola) strategy for doing the same thing but with details like OpenFirmware defined. Motorola lost several hundred million dollars when Apple killed it's licensing program and they were stuck with warehouses full of CHRP motherboards. Be's BeBox were based on a superset of CHRP. This evolved into Apple's modern line of Macs as well as IBM's RS/6000.
Operating systems that were to run on this hardware:
Windows NT (up to versions 3.5.1 and 4.0, Service Pack 2), AIX (still does on the RS/6000 & AS/400), OS/2-PPC, Solaris, ChorusOS, Netware, Taligent (never released), WorkplaceOS, LynxOS, MkLinux, LinuxPPC, Yellow Dog Linux, MacOS.
Most folks aren't aware that Apple actually did ship some fully CHRP boxes, the Apple Network Server 500 & 700. These ran AIX by the way, from Apple.
Also any number of other CHRP-derived boards have shipped over the years, most based on Motorola's VME series but IBM has also released plans.
On a related topic there was a widespread rumor in '95 that had lots of legs of IBM's PowerPC 615 project. This was supposedly an x86 (486?) core on chip alongside a PPC (604?) core. They'd share data paths, cache, other portions but would be able to run either x86 or PPC OS's. Nothing ever publicly came of it.
I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.
Can I buy a version of the board for running Linux PPC only? We are currently considering making this available. However you should note that it will not be possible to run Amiga OS4 on such a board without purchasing a special copy of OS4 which comes with a firmware update ROM. This is (obviously) to prevent OS4 piracy which is essential if Hyperion/Amiga Inc. are to continue to develop OS4.
What bothers me about that statement is that there will be people who still feel justified in pirating the OS anyway. "Software wants to be free. They owe me the OS. I don't pay for shit. I'm not buying it because it's just AmigaOS and nobody uses it anyway. It's not piracy if I don't sell it. Information wants to be free!"
The sad fact is that this OS is coming from a company that is trying really hard to keep an OS alive that was elegant in it's time, and had some concepts that still haven't been realized by operating systems of today. And even though AmigaOS isn't perfect, I'm very glad to see it develope further because with some modern touches it could easily be one of the best operating systems ever.
Could be, except there's that money issue. Amiga, Inc. isn't Microsoft. They're not even Apple. Hell, they're not even Redhat. They're just a few pennies and a nickle above what BeOS was a couple of years ago (if that much). So I think it goes without saying that pirating from this company is pretty fucking rotten, but that's not going to stop people from doing it anyway.
"But I'm doing them a favor by using the OS and making it popular." That's another argument I can already hear befor esomeone says it. To answer that shit before someone spews it... "Wanna help Amiga? Buy the OS. Punk."
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
Moderation Totals: Wrong=2, Stupid=3, Total=5.
Seriously, this is a bit of a milestone. All the independant PPC boards have been around the $2,500 mark. The only way to get a cheaper one until now was to buy an Apple Mac and bin all the bits you don't want.
Deleted
Those old Amigas truly rocked for video performance, there is no doubt. Small parts of that had to do with AmigaOS, but it's my understanding that the real key to that amazing performance was always the custom hardware. Amiga DMA was stellar, allowing offboard hardware (such as the VideoToaster) to do their own thing without having to wait on the slow CPU, the whole setup with the blitter and the copper - all of this was way ahead of its time, and made for the sort of performance that makes it impossible to even discuss those old boxes today with people that never had the opportunity to use one without sounding like you're telling tall tales.
Now maybe I'm missing something, but I just don't see any chance of the new Amigas being able to live up to those days. The custom hardware, obviously, has long been passed by and the very concept abandoned. The OS is, still, very nice. Put it on this sort of modern hardware and, well, you might well have a better Mac. But hardly an Amiga as-of-old, right?
I must point out, though, that this board would make a base for a positively bitchin' Linux/PPC box.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
You simply can't buy PPC motherboards for less than $2,500 at the moment unless you go to the hassle of buying an entire Apple Mac and chopping it for bits. That's a bit of a waste.
Deleted
AFAIK lightwave ran on Amiga before it ever ran on anything else. Support was dropped quite a while ago however.
-- MartinG To mail me: echo kewyjlcxyzvjfxbqwh | tr bcefhjklqvwxyz
Xenon 2 was running on my ST. And the ST/Amiga versions of Defender of the Crown had prettier graphics, but worse gameplay than the C64 port (particularly the jousting).
Yeah! Let's all open the great Amiga/ST wars of the late eighties/early nineties again! Oh. On second thoughts, let's not.
Cheers,
Ian
ST did everything the Amiga could... just slightly shittier. The only thing it really had going for it was it's excellent MIDI support, in every other sense it was just a Diet Amiga.
That was classic intercourse!
Once you have put together an entire system based on this board, you will have spen nearly enough to buy a brand new iMac straight from Apple. Let's look at a parts-list:
While these numbers are approximate, I think I've been quite generous and estimated on the low side for most parts. You might be able to shave a bit more off the monitor or hard drive, but I'd bet that I'm within $50 either way on the total.
You can buy a used iMac for around $500 at any number of recycled computer shops, so even if you can reuse a bunch of stuff you have lying around, you aren't really ahead of the game, especially if you really want to get OS X running on the beast.
All that said, I think that it would be really nice to have a mass market PPC motherboard (and Eyetech's board looks pretty nice, as far as on-board peripherals and expansion options go) that you could run Linux on. It's too bad that they want to tie it to their proprietary OS (why are they concerned about people pirating the OS if it will only run on this PPC motherboard, anyway?). A nice, integrated, low-power system is just what I need to replace the aging 486 I use as a firewall.
hawk
Now there was one clone vendor that made some damned good hardware. Power Computing did an excellent job. Their engineering team should be commended for their efforts. Apple could have learned a bit from Power Computing.
Still Apple had to pull the plug. How else do you get rid of the problem? Can you think of any other way to kick Epson and Umax in the nads and make them get their shit together? I can't. Apple did the only thing they could do.
Now I won't attack the rest of your comment because I tend to agree. I'd love to be able to buy PPC hardware from people other than Apple. When I want a Mac, I'll buy it from Apple. When I want a solid PPC Linux machine, I'd rather get it somewhere else. I think I might buy one of these boards as well. I'm a bit intrigued by them.