MorphOS, Pegasos, PPC Operating Systems and other Platforms

[CodeSmith]

@jedi
Oh, come on - gizzabuck is kindof a lame nick, but thindick is actually pretty funny  :-D

[anarchic_teapot]

Does this mean MorphOS is dependant upon the firmwear from bplan? If so, then it wont be able to run on A1 right?

I shouldn't think it's beyond the MOS bunch to produce a version of MOS that runs on the A1, but they'll need to buy a board first and it's not yet available commercially.

[anarchic_teapot]

@Sebastien aka Jedi

Have you not more arguments than that insults to enjoy your assembly ?...

Yes, but obviously you've missed quite a few episodes so you're going to have trouble following the plot.  :-D

[jedi]

For the specialists of technical specs and rumors,

bPlan/Thendic have just posted more interesting information concerning the Pegasos Firmware & Articia S :

http://www.morphos-news.de/comments.php?lg=en&nid=118

Comment #26 :

"bplan/Thendic (24-Oct-2002, 09:20:29) - [ Answer | Singleview ]

Hello Mr. Anonymous, you sound like an educated engineer. It would be better to speak with you face to face and not like this, but here goes...

The core specification, IEEE Std 1275-1994, IEEE Standard for Boot Firmware (Initialization Configuration) is listed in accordance with "Firmware: Core Requirements and Practices (ISBN Number: 1-55937-426-8)" and is only available from the IEEE Standards Organization. For ordering and pricing information, you have to use the searchable index at the IEEE Standards page. Here you will find what you seek.

If you would like to meet we would be pleased to discuss this with you more fully.

As to your other questions:

Is it possible to use ordinary various X86 PCI cards with the new bplan Firmware?

Yes, this feature has been added to the BIOS and was written by bplan.

Concerning the new PowerPC970: today it is not possible to use this CPU with the Pegasos; however in the future it will be. We do not have a sample yet! We cannot offer it to you until IBM releases the product commercially. We have a close relationship with IBM (and Motorola) and we do get samples of new chips to test them well ahead of product releases, but we do not have samples of this CPU yet. It should not be too much trouble for us to gets this running. The engineering that supports a product like this is at the highest professional level and the documentation is very good making our job much easier.

BeOS was originally developed for the Hobbit CPU and was very early on re-directed to the PowerPC, later shifting again toward the x86. What is interesting is that there are significant BeOS developments in both the x86 and PPC environments. What is left of the official BeOS is now owned by PalmSource (http://www.palmsource.com). What is being done there we do not know. However, OpenBeOS (http://www.openbeos.org/) and ZetaOS (http://www.yellowtab.com) for example, are active projects that interest us very much. Why couldn't we have a "B-Box" running on the Quark kernel of MorphOS?

:-)

Or, a U-Box using BSD...


@strobe

We would like to work with you on this!

We own this Firmware, parts are licensed and parts are written by us.

Sincerely,
Thendic/bplan"


And Comment #28 :

"bplan/Thendic (24-Oct-2002, 10:41:29) - [ Answer | Singleview ]

Well, you are referring to the Articia S. The Articia Sa is a 166MHz PowerPC chipset that includes advanced features like AGP, PCIX and DDR SDRAM. The Articia P has AGP4X, PCIX and DDR SDRAM features. It has 166MHz CPU bus speed, SMP for dual CPUs, a 60x and MPX Bus, 333MHz DDR SDRAM or a 166MHz SDRAM interface, DMA controllers, LPC interface, Interrupt Controller, Global Timers, Clock Generator, SMBus, iMemory, a Floating Buffer, Triple DES, and three PCI Interfaces. The Mai Articia family of chipsets are "bus-centric" and have a "5-bus" design that provides a balanced architecture that enables both powerful device-to-bus and bus-to-bus accessibility.

...and there is no "Pegasos II" -- just stack-on the next one or upgrade the CPU card!

;-)

bplan/Thendic"