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Build Your Own PowerPC?
amokk asks: "Let's assume for a second that somebody would want to take the time and effort to build a Personal Computer but base it on a PowerPC architecture. Besides saying 'Buy a Mac' (I already have one) or 'Buy an IBM server', is there any way of acquirng the individual parts and slapping them together? Why you would want to do this isn't up for debate. Rather, this is one of those 'wouldn't it be neat if...' type of experiments."
You can buy refurb'ed Mac motherboards from Shreve Systems in Shreveport, LA. They are a really good source to start with.
The AmigaOne G3 SE is a fairly generic ATX motherboard with 133MHz DIMM sockets, IBM 750CXe PowerPC chip (600Mhz), 4xPCI, 1xAGP, etc, etc.
.. or is that a bit too easy? :-)
It runs AmigaOS 4 or PPC Linux quite happily. Plonk one of these in a standard case and you've got yourself a DIY PPC solution
Meep meep
The limitation is really over whether or not you want to use the MacOS. If you could use, say, yellow dog linux, then your job is much easier. Buy your processors from Sonnet, your motherboard from any school (they're getting rid of those old 6100/66 machines like crazy... I have 22), grab your ram from the same places... Basically take a bunch of old machines, assemble one that works from their parts, add a new processor. Or you can do what I'm doing and chain a bunch of stock machines together via ethernet. The only problem is they draw 60 amps of current.
Oh, yeah... see if you can get your hand on a workgroup server.
--Bennett Prescott
Former Lord Of Packets
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.
I found a fast warez site: http://warez.it.kth.se
http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/09/15/ 1918233&mode=thread&tid=181
Just stating the obvious
Are you looking for something like this?
From the site:
The boards do appear to be available - anyone tried them?
This site has instructions on what you need, where to get it, and how to put it all together. Pretty useful if you want to build your own Mac and don't want to pay Apple's prices.
infested with jello like fishes no melotron wishes
Here are a few resellers of Apple hardware:
Milagro and ETI Express
check it.
Build a Macintosh from Scratch
I say we take off and nuke the entire site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.
The latter answer is the easier one - the former is harder, since you would have to find "official" Apple parts to make sure the OS talked nice to all the pieces.
There's nothing "official" about Apple parts. Just like any other computer company, their parts are manufactured and primarily designed by other companies. For example, their PowerPC processors are traditionally made by either Motorola or IBM. It's not as if Apple has a huge research team designing "Apple(TM)" hard disks; they simply buy Western Digital or Seagate drives just like the rest of us.
Department of Physics and Atmospheric Science, Dalhousie University, Halifax, N.S., Canada, B3H 3J5
Build your own G4
If you really want to build a system from parts there are several places you can go. Motorola sells evaluation platforms that consisto of a motherboard (essentially a backplane) and CPU modules that plug into it. It's calld Sandpoint. You can get third party CPU modules for it from Tundra (who also sells whole kits with their own system board). Marvell/Galileo sells a platform that is well suited to building a PC style machine with PPC hardware, and you can get a variety of processor cards for it ranging from low end G3 style processors up to dual 7450 processors.
Some of the best PPC machines available right now can't be built from parts simply because they're on a single board. My current to y is the cyclades TS-100 it's only 1"x3"x3", has dual CPUs and can be had for under $200.
My point is not that you can't dual boot Mac/Linux machines - Yellow Dog Linux running on a separate boot from OS X is a great example.
My query is if the author wants to build a Linux compatible PPC desktop (relatively easy), or build an OS X compatible laptop (relatively hard, and probably more expensive).
My apologies for not making that clear.
52 Weeks, 52 Religions with John Hummel
incripshin
Check out these guides for repackaging either a Beige G3 or Blue/White G3 in a standard ATX case. All that's needed that is "Apple offical" is the motherboard stuff; memory, video ( uses Mac PCI video cards ), HD, and CD-ROM are off the shelf PC items. They use ZIF CPUs which can be obtained from Apple, Sonnet, NewerTech, and many others.
Specs:
I use Macs to up my productivity, so up yours Microsoft!
Motorola and IBM don't sell their CPUs to end users. You can order a G4 or even a G5 (PPC 8500 series) from one of Mot's suppliers like Arrow, but I believe they force you to order in high quantities (40+ at a time).
During the dot-bomb era, several companies like Eternal Computing and Silicon Fruit promised to offer affordable PowerPC motherboards to retail customers. Nothing ever came of it (insert Apple conspiracy theory here).
I think there's a market for retail PowerPC motherboards, or there will be once IBM's 970 hits the market. It's fun to mess with exotic hardware like the PPC, and its performance is very impressive considering its limited clock speed. IBM has published a spec for PowerPC logic boards that is available for free on its website (i'm sure someone else has posted the link by now).
Linux would run on these things in no time (maybe we could even build our own TiVOs with 'em). And Mac OS X would be easy to port, with or without Apple's help.
I don't think IBM would like this idea very much however, since it might undercut their huge margins on PPC-based servers. On the other hand, if they manufactured and sold the motherboard for cheap, they could bring PPC to a much larger audience.
(-1, Raw and Uncut is the only way to read)
Macopz.com "build a Mac" page
They have links to all the parts suppliers, the parts add up to $800
Apple doesn't use a BIOS, they use OpenFirmware which is designed by Sun. Mac OS X does not require any type of "boot ROM" on the motherboard to load, so you wouldn't need an Apple part. There are a multitude of other reasons why you don't see Mac clones-think about it.
(-1, Raw and Uncut is the only way to read)
Darwin is not open source. Darwin is based off an opensource kernel, but itself is not. And from there, there's compatibility with the rest of MacOS to work with.
In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!
Breakfast served all day!
This is incorrect. The Apple ROMs you're referring to haven't been used in a long time, like more than 5 years. All modern Macs use Open Firmware. This is exactly why people are asking about do-it-yourself Macs so often. It's now possible.
Darwin is not open source.
/bin/sh, and adds python and ruby as scripting languages.
Here is a quote from the Darwin Website:
We are pleased to announce the immediate availability of Darwin 6.0.1, the Open Source core underlying Mac OS X v10.2 "Jaguar". The Darwin kernel features many enhancements from FreeBSD 4.4 and the KAME IPv6/IPsec code, and is one of the first Open Source operating system releases to be built using GCC 3.1. Darwin 6.0.1 features improved support for POSIX threads and adds several reentrant C library functions, as well as numerous new and updated libraries including ncurses, bzip, and SASL. Darwin now uses bash as the default
We are updating the Darwin Tools package enabling you to build Darwin components on top of Mac OS X itself. [Sep 23 2002]
GPL no, open source yes...
-Craig
Mac On Linux will let you run MacOS (including OS X) on any PowerPC system that runs Linux -- even if MacOS won't run natively on the hardware. Mac On Linux provides a MacOS-compatible virtual machine (but it doesn't emulate the processor, so it's nearly as fast as running native).
A FAQ is available.
I believe that there are a few components of MacOS X that Apple has licenced and cannot release the source to, so Darwin has replacements for those components, but it is supposed to be binary compatible with MacOS X.
--
The internet is the greatest source of biased information in the history of mankind.
The common term is biodiesel or greasel for the mixture. When used with new diesel engines, they actually run cleaner than a natural gas engine. Some have made their own biodiesel for as little as $.50 USD/gallon, for quite a large savings. In NJ, the price of diesel just went up about $0.10 USD... The primary considerations are seals, older rubber seals will break down and fail, spewing all over the place. The solution? Use newer plastic seals, they last much longer anyway. There is a power loss of appr. 5%, but on new engines you don't feel all that much of a difference.
The main problem building a Mac PPC using a refurbished motherboard seemed to be the power supply, IIRC. Needs a 28v trickle feed.
Anyway, worth a read.
Slashdot looked deep within my soul and assigned
me a number based on the order in which I joined
Try here for resellers.
MicroATX mainboard (236 mm x 172 mm)
133 MHz processor slot
600 MHz PowerPC G3 750 CXe - to Dual PowerPC G4 MPC 7450
PC133 RAM (two sockets), up to 2 GB
AGP slot
PCI subsystem with three slots, optional Riser Card
IEEE1394 (Firewire) VIA VT6306 with 100/200/400 MBit data transfer
10/100 MBit Realtek Phyceiver 8201 Ethernet
USB I/O system VIA 8231 with four connectors
AC97 sound subsystem Sigmatel STAC 9766 Codec with mic input, line in/out and headset connector
IRDA for infra-red remote control
ATA100 VIA 8231 with two channels for upto four ATA devices
PS/2 mouse connector
RS232 (serial) port
Centronics port
Floppy
Gameport for PC-compatible joysticks
Open firmware
Two operating systems included : MorphOS and Linux
You should check the following links out...
Castle Technologies (UK) - The Iyonix PC. It runs RISCOS 4 but can use ArmLinux/etc if you want it to. They've also brought out a USB podule for older Acorn systems. Castle site
Aleph One have a line of StrongARM based evaluation boards, and ARMLinux related info. Lots of info for ARM developers.
Uffenkamp (DE) sell Acorn/ARM hardware and software and I guess would be easier for you to get to. See their site.
RiscStation (UK) have their own RISCOS/ARM based systems you can check out. See the RiscStation homepage for more info.
You can get a good idea of the ARM hardware out there by following the Acorn/ARM news sites.
- Acorn Cybervillage
- Riscos.org
There is a lot more but that should be enough to get you started--- Commission free trading & free stock up to $500 - use http://share.robinhood.com/kelvinp6
retailers for the Motorola VME boards? Good luck!
I would first search the ppcLinux email archives, then consider posting the question to the list. I know it's been a subject of much discussion there. I sold my G3 ages ago so I have not kept up on things in the PPC world.
If you are starting from scratch -- not using an old Mac -- what's the advantage?
I mean, sure, PPC might have a "cleaner" design but who gives a rats ass? The advantage of that is LOST when one considers that the compiler and library chain on Linux PPC is nowhere near as mature as on X86. Someone with more knowledge than myself could state why X86 gcc blows away the ppc port of gcc.
Personally, I liked PPC most because it was low-power and so needed less active cooling. But the new VIA miniboards with the VIA (Cyrix) chip are relatively cool itels also. Cool and quiet is nice for things like embedded MP3.
For a desktop, I don't see the value in PPC. Now maybe if Motorola and IBM woke up and LEVERAGED Linux as a "write once, complile & run anywhere' platform, but PPC chips are a small part of their business. Unlike Microsoft, Motorola has no "religion"... just look up the "anti- mother-company" threads where Motorola went on a witchhunt for anything "Motorolla Inside"... be it MacOS, or PPC NT. I don't mean now, because PPC NT4 is dead, but at one time it was supported.
One thing you can try to get parts is going to your local 'authorized mac repair specialist.' The local mac repair shop where I live is usually okay about it. Aparently the only problem with building MACs is the bus structure between all of the cards for NIC etc... You are going to have to make sure all of your hardware is MAC compatible because the bus addressing etc... is supposedly a little different from that of PC's.
Erutangis ym si siht.
Motorola makes reference motherboards and pre-built systems based on them. You can run MontaVista Linux on them. There's a dual-1GHz model available.
I haven't tried it myself. I suspect it's not cheaper than buying a Mac.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
OpenFirmware is a consortium (granted dominated by sun.) It is a non machine specific framework that provides a standard boot time interface. It may look nothing like a pc's bios, but still could be considered a bios, without some type of bios, your system doesn't boot. While it's true that apple now uses openfirmware, that was not the case prior to the powerpc. And even though it's an open standard, it still must be implemented at a level that is specific to the specific hardware. A simplistic anology would be OpenFirmware:bios Posix:Linux
Go away, or I will replace you with a very small shell script.
you could buy a PPC machine from these people and if you ask real nice they might let you in on their suppliers
E is for E-Bay, that's good enough for me...
(Sing to the tune of C is for Cookie, Copyright 1998-2002 Sesame Workshop)
Can't remember where I got this from... probably macslash. I've bookmarked it for rainy day, so I have not gone through all the details.
http://www.macopz.com/buildamac/
Build a Macintosh From Scratch
I recently wanted to buy a PowerBook G3 but did not have the 1200 Bucks that they are currently selling for. Solution. I got the parts in bits over Ebay and built one. I got Mac repair guides as well to help me with the instalation (all off ebay) and WAM for 500 bucks I got a brand new laptop and the satisfaction of building my own computer.
microATX Mainboard 236mm x 172mm ( 9"3 x 6"8 )
up to Dual MPC 7450 G4 PowerPC® / 2 MB Cache at state of the art speedgrades
maximum 2GB extension by availibility of modules
integrated
If you'd followed stories on OS NEWS you would be aware that there are at least two available (or close to being available):
The AmigaOneSE and the Pegasus.
Both are to be shown at the WOASE show in the UK this weekend.
Look for the story on http://amiga.org
and on http://ann.lu
As well as the OS' being developed for these, BOTH boards run Linux.
.
(David Bowman, EVA near HUGE Monolithic Win-PC in orbit around Jupiter) "My God - its full of Malware!"