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Building a PowerPC Linux Box?

Posted by Cliff on from the build-it-and-they-will-come dept.

jglassco asks: "Building an Intel Linux box is trivial, but what about building a PowerPC based Linux box? I have searched the /. archives yet have found nothing on this topic. My purpose here is to find sources for the two components that seem the hardest to locate, namely: a motherboard (2 or 4 processors) with 4x AGP slot, and processors. I want to build the rest using the common components found as commodities. Is anyone experienced with this?"

4 of 20 comments (clear)

  1. PReP/CHRP is pretty much dead by IntlHarvester · · Score: 2

    There used to be a small bare PPC motherboard market a few years back when IBM was pushing PReP (PowerPC Reference Platform) as an open spec*, and Apple was licencing their motherboard designs. Unfortunately, that whole endevour seems pretty much dead, marketwise.

    You might be able to find a board from this era, but it would probably be 603 or 604 only and certainly wouldn't have things like AGP and PC100 memory. It would probably just be easier to pick up an old Mac Clone or maybe a Motorola PPC machine.

    * The conventional wisdom in the early 90s was that Intel x86 would fail to keep up with Moore's law. Lots of graphs were produced showing Intel's speed increases leveling out in the late 90s. IBM proposed PReP as a replacement to the x86 PC spec. While virtually everyone announced support, the only OSes that ever shipped for PReP were AIX and Windows NT (and Linux). The big problem was that Apple didn't buy in running their OS on an open platform, and of course, Intel never lost the price/performance lead for lower-end systems. PowerPC right now is pretty much an Apple and IBM midrange-specific CPU. I'd be nice if PReP had succeeded, but alas.
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  2. Clarification by IntlHarvester · · Score: 2


    Midrange ~= "Minicomputer" ~= Custom Unix box ~= not a commodity or "desktop" machine.

    BTW, while the PowerPC certainly has the technical advantages you speak of, the "true status" of PReP/CHRP is that it's dead as a consumer platform.
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    1. Re:Clarification by IntlHarvester · · Score: 2


      (Actually curious) -- Do the new iBooks run Linux out of the box?

      What I'd like to see is an actual server hardware plaform from Apple. (Rumors of such exist on the Mac sites.) This group would probably have the political pull to ensure good Linux support. If you're leaving it up to the iMac marketeers, I'm not so sure (despite one Linux evangalist).
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    2. Re:Clarification by IntlHarvester · · Score: 2

      It's great that the "_idea_ of an open PPC platform" lives on, but that doesn't help folks like me or the guy who 'asked slashdot' who what to buy one.

      My main problem with your original post is that the question was where parts for a commodity PPC box could be found. Read between the lines, and I assume that the guy doesn't want to buy a Mac and install Linux on it. Yet you essentially told him to go buy a Mac.

      (Not that I have a real problem with Macs, since the price is certainly reasonable even if don't want to run MacOS. However, Apple is in the business of selling Macintoshes, not general purpose boxes, so hardware support is always going to be more iffy than a truly 'open' plaform.)
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      Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.