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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."
Is "do I want this to be Mac compatible, or Linux/someotherOS compatible".
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.
Either way, the idea is an interesting one.
52 Weeks, 52 Religions with John Hummel
Look here, but it's kind of old. Oh and here also!
You can buy refurb'ed Mac motherboards from Shreve Systems in Shreveport, LA. They are a really good source to start with.
He had a dozen or so free copies of Mac OS X (10.1 I believe) but no hardware onto which to place this neat new OS.
So, he scoured eBay for the appropriate parts (motherboard, chip, RAM, SCSI hard disks) and pieced together all of the new machines from scratch.
He told me the only real hard part was finding cases. I think he's still two cases short, but ended up simply mounting the components onto a piece of drywall and setting them flat on a lab table!
Department of Physics and Atmospheric Science, Dalhousie University, Halifax, N.S., Canada, B3H 3J5
Let's assume for a second that somebody would want to take the time and effort to build a Personal Computer
God forbid. Would you prefer to buy a stock machine with sub-standard parts? Sure, there are several places (Dell) where you can customize the computer before you buy it, but nothing can match the customizability found in building your own computer. I just purchased a new computer, by taking some parts out of my old one, giving them to the service desk at my local computer shop, and telling them how to fill in the blanks. It runs solidly, I know I'm using compatible hardware, furthermore I know exactly what's in it. It beats the heck out of buying a computer with just a "sound card", "hard drive" and "motherboard", and no other descriptive names to tell you exactly what you're getting. Besides which I would imagine many on Slashdot would be perfectly capable of building their own computers.
But yeah, PowerPC takes it a step farther.
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?
If you could get Darwin running on such a homemade PowerPC (not made from old Mac parts, but built from 'scratch')... could you then take the pre-compiled parts of aqua out of Mac OS X and run this on your homemade powerpc computer?
Doesn't darwin handle all of the interaction directly with the hardware? If the aqua binaries can run on your homemade powerpc, shouldn't everything work just fine?
And a related question... what if you got Darwin running on an x86 chip with a PowerPC emulator? Could you, theoretically, get aqua to run on such a system?
There are 10 types of people in this world, those who can count in binary and those who can't.
Next Weeek On Ask Slashdot: "Let's assume I want to pump gas into my car through the radiator and mix in diet cherry 7-up. WHY is not up for debate. I just need the schematics and blue prints of how to achieve this, and I need this NOW."
The author should ask to ammend the question to include (or not) compatability with Mac PPC as a goal.
Can you buy Motorola motherboards and pop in a CPU? Sure.
That's it??
It would be more interesting to consider the "platform" as part of the question. Some would be exclusively interested in compliant hardware that runs MacOS. Others would just want something that runs Linux.
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
...are there mainboards and CPUs available to end-users that are not in the sky-high price-range that manufacturers take for developer hardware?
I'd be interested in building an ARM-based desktop computer, but it seems there is no normal mainboard sold to end-users. Or is it? ("Normal" = standard form factor, standard RAMs, IDE, USB and VGA included, possibly PS/2 and serial too.)
Same question for the Crusoe, btw. Seems that the only desktop mainboard available is developers only...
------------------
You may like my a cappella music
If you want a PowerPC system, and you don't mind paying a good bit for it, Motorola has numerous systems that run in Linux which you can sometimes get Motorola to admit that they sell, and then sell you one. There's a few other vendors which sell systems as well (Force, SBS, IBM). All of these have a PCI slot of some sort so you might be able to get a video card.
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.
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.
incripshin
To be perfectly honest, what I hope is a valid, non-troll question: why?
I mean, I can understand buying a Mac for the ease of use and integration of the Mac OS and it's associated applications. However, when you start talking about buying/building a PowerPC machine - I don't see the point.
Those who say that the PowerPC is falling behind - fast - in processor performance have a very valid point. I'm a Mac fan, and I realize this. It is getting to the point that Intel-compatible processors are equal to or better than PowerPC processors at the same or lower cost. It's only the Mac OS that still gives reason to continuing to use the PowerPC.
And as such, if you aren't talking a Mac OS machine, you can run Linux or BSD just as easily on a Intel-compatible processor and platform as you could if you built a PPC machine. More easily, actually, because you can get the parts to put the machine together so much easier.
Note: I'm not talking a POWER server - that's a different beast, and there's reason for that as well. This is strictly talking about building or buying a non-Mac OS compatible PowerPC computer.
Debian. See http://www.debian.org/ports/powerpc/ and http://penguinppc.org/ .
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
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.
Why you want to do this *IS* up for debate. If you're shooting for a unix (linux/whatever) platform, does it really matter that it's PowerPC? I mean, unix is general enough that unless you've got specific hardware requirements (and processor alone doesn't constitute this -- I'm talking wierd ass PCI cards or other barnyard oddities) it doesn't matter if you're on powerpc, intel, or sparc. The cheapest bang for the buck in this category is, as we all know, intel.
:)
I've no idea what you'd need to do to get this MacOS compatible. Do they still use dark matter (ROM) in those machines? But if you're not going for Mac compatibility I don't know why you want to roll your own.
If you've got a warezhouse full of PowerPC assembly programs then that's a different story. Obviously you're going to need a specific processor to run them. Or maybe you're looking to do embedded system development on a PowerPC?
Inquiring minds want to know. Ok, we don't really *want* to know, we'd really just like to laugh at the idea a bit more.
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)
PowerPPC lost out to the competition. YellowDog, Debian, NetBSD, Mandrake, SuSE, and a few others have taken up the slack. I use YellowDog on my iMac and am very happy with it.
OSX with XWindows installed is about all one needs.
I have considered building. A PPC machine would be nice.
photosMy Photostream
Just ask the "what if" machine! :-P
I suffer from attention surplus disorder.
Macopz.com "build a Mac" page
They have links to all the parts suppliers, the parts add up to $800
I think the person is probably asking about commodity parts. Anyone can go into a local hole in the wall PC shop and buy an Intel/AMD compatible mobo and plug commodity hardware (video, NIC, sound, IDE HDs, etc...) into it and get a working computer out of it. But, is it possible to get a PowerPC based mobo with PCI/AGP slots, an IDE controller, USB in an ATX (I'm not a hardware guy, so ATX could be the wrong term) form factor and have it work with an OS like Linux? That would be a great way to get away from the WinTel world and avoid paying the steep prices that Apple fetches. However, since any mobos like this are likely to be made in a much smaller volume and harder to find (implying a small customer base), they would probably be fairly expensive anyway. It's a beautiful idea, but it's not a reality at this time.
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
Microcode Solutions are writing an iMac emulator now, both an all-software emulation and a hardware emulation solution (PPC CPU on a PCI card). It currently still vaporware, but they say it is nearing completion.
--
Ralmin.
The cpu slot is VERY finicky.
Does Aqua interact with Open Firmware directly, or does it go through Darwin?
If got a fully functioning Darwin system running X-Windows on a PPC, couldn't you just copy the binary files for the Aqua windowing system over?
(This would violate the OS X EULA -- but is it possible in theory?)
There are 10 types of people in this world, those who can count in binary and those who can't.
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).
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
There is no commodity market for generic PPC boards, but such boards do exist. For instance we use them for early development stages of software for our embedded systems. They are standard ATX boards with a PPC chip and the usual host of connectors plus some more developer centric things like bus taps to allow easy application of data analyzers to the PCI bus etc. The thing is because there are no economies of scale these boards cost as much as a complete low end system from Apple.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
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
This was called the "common reference hardware platform". Before Apple usurped back the Power Computing, Motorola, and Umax clones, this was supposed to be one potential answer to building a non-mac powerpc box. Motorola came the closest to accomplishing this by implementing standard PC parts (like ps/2 ports) on their computer.
. sh tml
At one time, back when Microsoft actually supported the PowerPC architecture, Firmworks and IBM actually made a dual-booting macintosh/NT computer in 1996. IBM's motivation was linux, I believe. Check these links out:
http://www.firmworks.com/www/chrp.htm
http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/C/CHRP.html
http://maccentral.macworld.com/news/9908/19.ibm
I personally LOVED the thought of being able to go to a computer show and putting together an NT or a linux or a mac-compatible computer by purchasing individual parts.
You know, it's really a damn shame this wasn't meant to be.
Unfortunately, it's people like these people in Wales that give industrially produced biofuels (such as biodiesel manufactured to ASTM D6751-02) a bad name. A bunch of wankers that ruin engines with chip particles and undecanted glycerin deserve to have the engines fail... Not to mention that it is technically illegal to evade taxes in this manner.
For anyone wishing to get the non-hippie version of the biodiesel industry, check out www.biodiesel.org.
--
dman123 forever!
Filtering out the -1s and 0s since 1999.
I'm no EE so maybe I'm way off, but I don't understand why a single mobo maker (e.g., Abit, Asus, Tyan) couldn't make just one PowerPC-based mobo, since all the other parts (IDE, PCI/AGP, et al) are the same. I would think minor changes to the clocking of the board and the right kind of CPU socket is all that's needed. Oh yeah, it would also need Open Firmware for booting.
Sure the market is tiny compared to the x86 mobo market. But there's also no competition. Linux works great on the PowerPC so it would be easy to support a board like this. Someone take a risk and create the market!
You need to check out the Acorn community (or perhaps that's where you're coming from?). Acorn was an English Arm-based home computer of the late 80's that competed (none to sucessfully, outside Britain at least) against Amiga an Atari.
Even though the Acorn community is now shriveled enough to make Amiga look healthy by comparision, they have been the one and only group pushing Arm-based desktops over the last decades.
There seems to be at least a couple hardware resellers still in operation. The pricing didn't seem to extortionate to me, either.
I choose to remain celibate, like my father and his father before him.
I know I'm probably being really paranoid and alarmist, but this Open PPC architecture may be necessary if Palladium and DRM succeed in keeping Linux off the PC desktop.
The odds of Palladium locking out Linux from the PC platform are minimal at best, but in order to ensure the survival of OpenSource, it is probably best to make available an alternative computing architecture for Linux and OpenSource software in case Microsoft and the content providers get their way in crippling PCs.
Open PPC (if I may call it that) may be essential to ensure the long-term survival of OpenSource and protect it and the internet from those who would attempt to restrict it.
This space left intentionally blank.
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)
Build a Mac! see Can I build a Mac? see Build a Mac! see Can I build a Mac? see Build a Mac! see Can I build a Mac? see Build a Mac! see Can I build a Mac? see ... ad infinitum...
- I am made of meat.
Is it possible to interface an alternate CPU to a motherboard not originally designed for it? For instance, could a PowerPC be grafted onto a standard x86 motherboard? In my somewhat currently limited knowledge of such things, it seems that address lines are just address lines and it all really comes down to software. So if a new bios firmware could be connected to the new chip, and the right bus lines connected in the right places, the rest would just be software, right?
:-)
I imagine there would be timing issues to deal with. Possibly voltage differences, too. I don't know. Like I said, I don't know much about this layer of things.
Hexy - a strategy game for iPhone/iPod Touch
you could buy a PPC machine from these people and if you ask real nice they might let you in on their suppliers
No, becuse Quartz, Carbon, and Cocoa are shipped as PowerPC binaries.
is that in the Netherlands we are talking about adapting diesel cars to use ureum. That's a component of urine, but is also used in fertilizer. The european laws will become very strict on NOx pollution (which causes acid rain) and ureum can neutralize it.
I'm afraid that peeing in your gas tank won't work since the ureum must be added to the exhaust gasses, but I think that you should be able to build a pee-guzzling catalyst. Imagine the look on the faces of your friends as you tell them you are going to have a leak, but skip the rest room and walk to your car.
The Drowned and the Saved - Primo Levi
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/
I know this really doesn't answer his question but couldn't the transmeta chip be programmed to emulate PowerPc chips.Not that I have see a whole lot more transmeta mobo's out there.
Motorola makes a couple of PowerPC based microcontrollers. These come with a number of usefull peripherals (USB endpoints, ethernet interfaces, serial ports, parallel I/O ports, etc.), some RAM and some EPROM all on a single chip. In decades past, Steve Ciarcia built a small publishing empire on the practice of building homebrew personal computers on similar microcontrollers (Z80 variants, in his case). The same approach could be used today. If you don't want to use a PowerPC, there are similar beasts available based on other popular architectures.
you'd need to figure out how to talk to all the other busses on the motherboard (memory, AGP, USB, Firewire). I suppose that it would be best to use a bare-bones board that has lots of PCI slots and just insert a card for each bus you want to support. Perhaps the daughterboard would have a ribbon cable that attaches to the processor slot on the motherboard to control those items it can't directly access???
science is a religion
... but I'm typing this reply on a Mac that I pieced together for less than $250 all figured. I run OS 9.1 currently, but another $100 worth of parts and I can put OS X on here.
Basically, I started with an old PowerCenter 120 (a PowerPC Mac Clone) with 32MB of RAM. Total cost? $47 from Ebay
Next up, I added 128MB of RAM from Computer Renaissance... it's fussy about is RAM (5V DIMMs). Total cost: $30
Next... I added an old SCSI drive I had knocking around (4Gb drive from an old server of mine). Total cost: $0
THEN I added a Powerlogix G3-400 upgrade card, $85 from Other World Computing. Finally, added a $49 copy of OS9.1 and OSX 10.1 (a bundled special also from OWC).
So what can I do with it? Well, I love the fact that I now have a machine that's relatively trouble-free, runs the applications I use most often with aplomb (word processing, email, Mozilla etc.) and provides me a REAL upgrade path to OSX. Yeah, OSX isn't strictly compatible with my hardware, but the only piece that's truly critical is the video; to be fixed by the addition of a Radeon 7000 in the next few weeks. Everything else can be worked around using XPostFacto.
Worth a thought if you REALLY want to play with OS X but don't want to outlay on the hardware. FYI, this thing runs OS 9.1 faster than my neighbor's 400Mhz Imac... still remains to be seen how X will run.
Total cost for the project: $300 or so
Value of knowing my 5-year old Mac is more reliable and stable than anything with Microsoft OS's on it: priceless!
Build a Macintosh From Scratch
Anyone know where I can pick up parts to build an alpha system? From what I can tell building a PPC system from scratch is going to leave me with a somewhat rigged/dated machine. Personally, I have always been interested in building my own Alpha box. Where can one get Alpha processors/motherboards? I've so far had no luck finding such things...
Russian Russian Russian RussianDollSig DollSig DollSig DollSig
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
just send me $500 and I'll sent you some diverse items.
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
The hippies round here use bio-diesel.
I know cos I take 25 liters out of the 1000 a month the co-op buys.
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
So your motives mean nothing to me 8)
Want to stop the war in Iraq and reduce the stranglehold?
Want to reduce the carcinogens?
Like the smell of fish and chips?
Use Biodiesel
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
**RANT**
...and a whole bunch of people pretending to be experts and just talking out of their ass.
Ya know, no one answered my original message... there has just been arguments over mac ROMS should be called open firmware and Aqua and other silly little nits.
Sometimes Mac people are really assholes.
I'm sure some Mac Zealots will now mod me down to -30 for this comment... I wish they would all just go back to macslash and stop destroying the discussions over here at slashdot. Enough with the mindless cheerleading already!
harumph!
There are 10 types of people in this world, those who can count in binary and those who can't.
Pssst! Don't let the "build your own PC" guys hear that.
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
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!"
Nice site. Now if I could find something the like for Europe, better yet for Switzerland...
Leandro Guimarães Faria Corcete DUTRA
DA, DBA, SysAdmin, Data Modeller
GNU Project, Debian GNU/Lin