New (?) Mini mac pics

[dslcc]

I think the bigger thing will be that it pretty much squashes any idea that either Genesi or AI/KMOS ever had about building some mystical PPC motherboard to run Linux on. Why would anyone (other than a system integrator like Tivo) buy a $700 motherboard when they can just buy a mini-mac and put the guts in their own case for $500 (probably much less in qty, or later as the hype settles).

Agreed. The mac will run out of the box linux distros that are not even yet supported for the A1/Pegasos. On my current mac I've run Yellow Dog 3 and 4, Gentoo 2004, Debian Woody and Sarge, Mandrake and SUSE. Now for $499 there is a computer that already runs all of them right out of the box. The bundled OS and software are worth most of the price of the computer.
 :-)

[dslcc]

I agree with you. The smartest thing they could ever do is just SELL OS/4 to Mac users.. Even mini-mac users..

What are the advantages of AOS/4 over OSX? Why would a mac user want that? Would it require a ROM firmware flash? Not my mac!  :-D

[dslcc]

t's officially supported by all of them but two, mandrake and suse. Suse dropped the PPC port.

Exactly my point - all but two. For $499 you can get all of them supported. Not bad. There are others - OpenBSD, NetBSD, Darwin, OSX, FreeBSD.

I don't want to discredit the Peggy's geek factor...I have a Peggy and I like it and I know what it will do and there are things coming that will make it even better - but - if I was to spend $600 on another PPC platform, this time around it'd be a Mini Mac. Now all that will need to happen is mass production of Pegs or A1's at a price of about $400 or so in order to compete.

[dslcc]

The only reasons that Macs cost more than equivilent PC are: 1) people are willing to pay, 2) Apple has a hardware monopoly, and 3) Apple uses illegal price fixing strategies to eliminate dealer competition.

Had to laugh here...sounded like a McEwen many slide presentation in St. Louis about dealer pricing, os bundled with hardware, etc.  :-D

[dslcc]

I've seen some internal shots; it's a regular DDR DIMM, crammed in on the left? side. Standard height, Apple likes to use cheap commodity parts where the user can't tell the difference.

DIMM0/J21:

  Size:   256 MB
  Type:   SDRAM
  Speed:   PC100-222S

DIMM1/J22:

  Size:   256 MB
  Type:   SDRAM
  Speed:   PC100-222S

DIMM2/J23:

  Size:   256 MB
  Type:   SDRAM
  Speed:   PC133-333

DIMM3/J24:

  Size:   64 MB
  Type:   SDRAM
  Speed:   PC100-222S

This is how my mac ram is reported in OS X system profiler. The top two are good sticks that I bought from OWC. The third was taken out of a PC, and the bottom one came with the mac. The lower latency ones are better (the top two and the bottom -2225). In this case Mac supplied the better ram. Doesn't always happen though. Mac sometimes uses the higher latency memory. It is possible to tell what the ram is like without opening the case.