Pegasos review thread volume II (The on topic thread)

[Kronos]

@Paul_Gadd

Atm there are only 2 ways to turn a Peg down.
a) Pull the plug  ;-)
b) Hold the PWR-button for a few sec till the PSU shuts off.

I'm sure you would notice quite a difference if you ran the 68k
version of a renderer and than compare it to an PPC one, but as
long as you use "normal" 68k-SW you won't notice any slowdown
even with the static-emu (JIT is still only for Betatester_1).

Stuff like GoldED (with highest coloring-setup in C++-mode) or
IBrowse work just as fast as on 1-2ghz WinUAE-setup.

The reason for this lies probraly partly in the missing under-
lying OS (like Windows), completly refusing to do any chipset
emu and the fact that these kind of SW runs mainly in the OS
(for calling GFX-routines/doing GUI-stuff) which is allready in PPC.

[Hooligan_DCS]

I'd like to add one thing to Kronos' comment. 68k emulation is not only fast, but it is also very finished... pretty much anything systemfriendly you throw at it, it works.

/me napping fingers onto table and waits for JIT

[Paul_Gadd]

interesting.

[Calen]

Does it have support for USB modems? (alcatel adsl)

Whats the power requirements to run a fully stocked board, 200 or 250 watt be enough?

Does it fit inside a Power Tower?

Does it come shipped with 3d drivers for the newer video cards? or available to download

Can it run newer Amiga PPC titles like Heretic 2/shogo/Quake 2?

How well do they run?

Will it eventually have support (licence) for OS4?
If i read correctly having OS4 on the peggy 2 may be impossible?  (this may be aimed more at BBRV so apologies)

While on paper the pegy /2 looks like a nice bit of h/w and something i would even look at, but no os4 would mean i will only have 1 New h/w of choice for the New amiga OS ex. Classic PPC Amiga's.
Having both the Amigaone and pegy for choice on the new Amiga OS opens up alot more sales for Genesi.

@Calen,

Good questions, but some of these things appear to be much better suited for an online FAQ than a review.  Perhaps you should consider sending these to bbrv?

Wayne

[Kronos]

@Calen

There is a licence (and driver) for Poseidon included, so
if that supports your modem so will  MorphOS.

If the PowerTower meets ATX-standard (which I doubt).

3D-drivers or in the work/testing.
Those games have been reported to run in SW-renderer, but
I have no personal experience as none of these games interest me.

About OS4 on the Peg.... oh well that is flame-war terretory ...

But I will say this:
As long as OS4 isn't out, Genesi isn't missing a single costumer,
and no we don't want to discuss how long it is till the A1-version
of OS4 (which would be the base for a potential Peg-version) is out.

I also think the "no OS4 for Peg" will mean more lost costumers to
Hyperion as it would to Genesi.

And yes this is just my opinion.

[downix]

Calen wrote:
Does it have support for USB modems? (alcatel adsl)

Check with the Poseiden documentation, but I think "no" at this time.

Whats the power requirements to run a fully stocked board, 200 or 250 watt be enough?

I'm running mine on 125W, if that helps

Does it fit inside a Power Tower?

Depends on which model.  I believe there was a model that fit both an ATX and A1200 motherboard, so that model would work.  But if it's straight Amiga form factor, then no

Does it come shipped with 3d drivers for the newer video cards? or available to download

Not at this time, as they are still in beta

Can it run newer Amiga PPC titles like Heretic 2/shogo/Quake 2?

I've seen it run Quake2, and someone told me they had Shogo running.

How well do they run?

Q2 ran like a champ

Will it eventually have support (licence) for OS4?
If i read correctly having OS4 on the peggy 2 may be impossible?  (this may be aimed more at BBRV so apologies)

Up to Hyperion, as we have tried to discuss some kind of accomidation to no luck

While on paper the pegy /2 looks like a nice bit of h/w and something i would even look at, but no os4 would mean i will only have 1 New h/w of choice for the New amiga OS ex. Classic PPC Amiga's.
Having both the Amigaone and pegy for choice on the new Amiga OS opens up alot more sales for Genesi.

Have you given any thought to MorphOS?

[Calen]

Thanks for your comments Kronos & downix

Have you given any thought to MorphOS?

I take into consideration its cost, what it can run and what support it has, OS4 has been and still is my OS of choice, having pegy to give me the choice to run whichever i want when i want is a big selling point to me, without OS4, it pretty much rules pegy out of my future h/w purchases which is a shame.
Not just for me but for other buyers who might have had pegy as one of there options but they to rule it out cause of no future OS4 and beyond...

[Targhan]

If I may have the soapbox for a moment...  Here are some facts, please take them with a grain of salt.

The motherboard is a fairly standard micro-atx design (save for the backplate, which a replacement for most pc-backplates is included).  Even some of the larger towers support this design.  The screw-holes match up with any case that supports micro-atx.

The memory is picky.  If you consider this solution, do your homework on memory before purchasing any dimms.  I cannot emphasize this enough.  I had no trouble, but I did my homework first.  There are horror stories around about using the wrong memory, so this is where you must be careful.

Use UDMA cables, they allow for better data-transfer (btw, this also applies to amithlon setups).  Remember disk-access affects anything that reads/writes a cache.

General perfomance:  It's faster than my Amithlon ( 950MHZ ).  No if's, and's, or but's... this thing is FAST. It makes Win2k on the same 950MHZ peecee (as amithlon) look like a Timex Sinclaire trying to run Quake.  

Compatability:  You're going to find mixed answers for this.  I've got a compatability FAQ on MorphZone, with links to some other compatability links as well.  The biggest thing that doesn't work, that I would like to work, is AmiDock.  However, if you run Magellen or NetConnect's dock--you will hardly miss it.

To get back to my original point: do your homework.  Whether you are building for MOS, OS4, Amithlon, or a PeeCee--do your homework.  If you spend the time up front to check with others about what hardware works, and what does not, you will save yourself all kinds of headaches.

[zacman]

>Can it run (...)

There is a (German) list done by DJBase of software
he uses with his Pegasos and MorphOS. You may
have a look here and check if your dialy
used software is listed there. Of course this list is
not complete, however everyone is free to send
DJBase a list of the software he or she used so that
it can be updated.

is it possible to choke on vitamins suchas flintstones vitamins?   :-?  

(/me hehehehhhehe)

[KennyR]

edited by admin : off topic

Hehe no, that's a fake edit. :-D

I just wanted to say that, even though Red's review will no doubt be interesting, if all goes well I won't need it. :-)

And something Wayne and Red don't need me to advise either: you'll have to be sharp on that edit button, since the trolls will have a field day when you do post the review.

[Hammer]

Targhan wrote:
If I may have the soapbox for a moment...  Here are some facts, please take them with a grain of salt.

The motherboard is a fairly standard micro-atx design (save for the backplate, which a replacement for most pc-backplates is included).  Even some of the larger towers support this design.  The screw-holes match up with any case that supports micro-atx.

The memory is picky.  If you consider this solution, do your homework on memory before purchasing any dimms.  I cannot emphasize this enough.  I had no trouble, but I did my homework first.  There are horror stories around about using the wrong memory, so this is where you must be careful.

Use UDMA cables, they allow for better data-transfer (btw, this also applies to amithlon setups).  Remember disk-access affects anything that reads/writes a cache.

General perfomance:  It's faster than my Amithlon ( 950MHZ ).  No if's, and's, or but's... this thing is FAST. It makes Win2k on the same 950MHZ peecee (as amithlon) look like a Timex Sinclaire trying to run Quake.  

Compatability:  You're going to find mixed answers for this.  I've got a compatability FAQ on MorphZone, with links to some other compatability links as well.  The biggest thing that doesn't work, that I would like to work, is AmiDock.  However, if you run Magellen or NetConnect's dock--you will hardly miss it.

To get back to my original point: do your homework.  Whether you are building for MOS, OS4, Amithlon, or a PeeCee--do your homework.  If you spend the time up front to check with others about what hardware works, and what does not, you will save yourself all kinds of headaches.

Do you have any 68k-based benchmarks (e.g. Amiga Mark)?  

(All of my AMD Athlon based boxes exceeds 1.3Ghz…)  

[bbrv]

Hi All!  

Of course, we are interested in getting as much feedback as possible.  Sending out the motherboards as we have was a risk as the number of configurations conceived and implemented is beyond our control.  Nevertheless, the feedback has been useful and tremendous.  The next thing are of course the applications.

Information about this is the subject of discussion here and on the Phoenix mailing list.  Anton Reinauer is starting to get the whole bundled application list organized and once this is fairly solid we will start putting the whole thing together.

We are thinking this package might be a tool to assist the Resellers in getting their efforts off the ground.  Just ideas at this point that we will begin discussing at PhReseller@phinixi.com this week.

Thanks to all you new Pegasos owners!

Best regards,

Raquel and Bill  :-)

[Targhan]

[Amiga Mark]

Unfortunately, I've not had the time to devote to benchmarking.  Instead, I've written an installer to fix something that annoyed me about MorphOS (it has cool skins, but they were annoying to install/change.  So, I had to do something about it!), and of coarse that means I hosed it up a lot.  Now that I've got that released, I'll be adding software and testing things.

I've been meaning to give AmiGOD a whirl, but haven't got off of my tail to do it yet ;-)  

I would love to have done a review of the Pegasos, but it's difficult to not be biased.  It's one of those things that when you get it in your possesion--you know you've got something special.  I guess it's worth noting that it was easier to install Pegasos than Amithlon, but not as easy as an Amiga (from floppy) install.

[Warface]

Targhan wrote:


I would love to have done a review of the Pegasos, but it's difficult to not be biased.

This was the case with my review too. Many things changed since I wrote it, I've discovered new bugs, and new stunning features I didn't dream of before (have u checked what your middle mouse button can make with an ambient window? and when you click it twice?  :-)), yet I think the review is still fair as being only 6 days after receiving my Pegasos.

And for a full depth review I still don't feel myself experienced enough. These days I'm busy watching all the huge movies which my BVPPC/060 was not fast enough for.  :-)