Alan Redhouse comments on the A1-Lite

[Argo]

From AmigaWorld.net:

"... The pictures published on the Soft3 website are of the first pre-prototype version - there will be 2 or 3 revisions before the actual production version is ready. The first step - this board - is basically to shrink the A1XE board to a mini-ITX formfactor and make sure it works properly. Then the other chipsets and connectors will be added and that series of boards use for developers to port OS & applications. It will also be used to demonstrate capability - and hopefully gain some significant orders - in the industrial markets that we and other dealers are targetting (display controllers, kiosks, etc). ..."

Read the whole article Here

[takemehomegrandma]

:-?

Putting together a MiniITX motherboard must be some hardcore puzzling when it comes to PCB layout and stuff like that. If you got an early prototype ready enough to be assembled in real life, like the one in the pictures, wouldn't "other chipsets and connectors" mean a lot of trouble? Kind of back to square one, with the hardcore puzzling with the layout starting all over again?

Of course, I know nothing at all about HW design so I am just guessing here ...

[JoannaK]

Well.. Board design usually is a compromice. Some people want to add
have more features, anothers want it small and inexpensive. At this
point it's only project. I have no idea at what speed they are planing
to make those 2-3 iterations but there are a lot more to do (like
Boot-rom extensions etc) before it's near sales.

[Panthro]

I got a hunch that the small one's got less PCI slots etc thats in the pics this helps the computer work out the pcb tracks to a smaller form factor

[takemehomegrandma]

Micro ITX form factor (170mmx170mm)
Gigabit and 10/100 ethernet on board
133MHz UDMA RAID IDE controller
USB 2.0 on board
IEEE 1394 (‘FireWire’) on board
2x AGP graphics on board with PAL/NTSC TV out
AC97 sound on board
1 x PCI33MHz slot (horizontal, via supplied riser card)
Cardbus slot for flash card support (diskless booting, applications, games slot etc)
Usual legacy PS/2, serial, parallel ports

+Exchangable CPU module

This is not what we see on the pictures. Obviously they threw out some pictures on the net, purpously without any explanations, just to get some feedback (or "whishlists") from the forums. Many of the "whishes" are now "official features". Perhaps they also listen to the most important whish of them all, the *price*?

BTW, perhaps the text: "The first step - this board - is basically to shrink the A1XE board to a mini-ITX formfactor and make sure it works properly. Then the other chipsets and connectors will be added" should be "An early prototype of a MiniITX motherboard has been assembled and photographed. Some time later on a completely different one will be made with different chipsets and a different PCB layout, a completely different motherboard from this one"? ;-)

[JoannaK]

Well.. at least it'll likely need a new/modified Uboot code so it wont
be runnign anything before Hyperion has some time to do low level
coding.

[lempkee]

takemehomegrandma:

get your facts straight!!

the list of stuff for the a1 lite was officialised IN TOTAL AMIGA issue 15 (JULY)... thats some time ago!! , the picture wasnt suppoed to be shown...but did anyway so ofcourse people get abit..what? ...well anyway its in the pipe so just relax! and as i said , forums didnt add this spec , it was added before the forum posts! , though not early enough (since we have pictures of another thing..)

cheers

[Argo]

Yes, people:  Please READ the article then post.

[KennyR]

Regardeless of the board's specs, it can't be competitive to Apple or to Genesi unless Eyetech kick off AInc's licencing.

[AlK]

I have no idea at what speed they are planing
to make those 2-3 iterations

Then please check back what "1Q04" means.. You have read the text, yes? :-) Otherwise I hope for a 'speed' above 1GHz.. ;-)

And yes, I'm well aware that this is just a 'planned' mark, as was every other date set from either side over all the last years from Amiga and Amiga-wannabie companies (and IT corps in general).

Looks like I'll put the 'other board II' on hold then, this looks even better for a cute small homeserver. :-D

Ciao, Alex

[AlK]

Regardeless of the board's specs, it can't be competitive to Apple or to Genesi unless Eyetech kick off AInc's licencing.

Forget Apple for now. That's just another league.. Don't know what's in five years though, here's hoping.

Genesi is marketing a mullti-OS (mostly Linux) PPC board series which just happens to ship with an Amiga-lookalike-OS (I in no way want to lower what has been achieved with MOS, but anyway this is a thread about Amiga hardware ;-) ).

The AmigaOne (Lite)'s purpose is to be marketed as an 'Amiga'. It only is an 'Amiga' when it runs AmigaOS. There must be a reason why Hyperion was in a hurry to get AmigaOS booting on the AmigaOne and I think I'm not taking to wild a guess when this was in preparation of a possible deal with those 'Li(gh)te' boards. No word of Linux or any other OS there.

Or do you just think AmigaOS is not competitive to Linux? _That_ would explain it... :-/

Fact is: Neither you nor I know with what companies are on the receiving end with Genesi or Eyetech. May well be that the former may sell 5000 boards as STB and the latter the same amount as kiosk systems. I just don't know, only that it strongly depends on the markets they target the boards at.

No rant about licensing here, I could, but.., in my book its a good thing(k).At least it leaves a possibility that we'll once again see Amiga computers that run with chipsets purposely designed for them first (like nVidia for Xbox, PPC970 for Apple.. ) Not before some time sure, but yes, here's dreaming ;-)

Good night.

Ciao, Alex

[Floid]

If we're arguing the difficulty of creating a feature-packed ITX board (note that this tiny thing has more embedded already than an SE or XE) ... note that the MegArray has probably *bought* them a square centimeter or more on the board surface, when you account for the passive components that have to ride around the CPU.

Not to mention that interchangeable CPUs are nice to have in general.  (Beyond the obvious, a 'junk-bin' economy lowers the cost of upgrading and makes the price/performance a little more palatable; G3-XE owners can take the opportunity for a G4 on their mini and swap CPUs around; Eyetech probably doesn't make that much per-CPU and seems to have a hell of a time sourcing, so maybe a deal with a third-party* supporting the larger Mac market could benefit everyone and put the focus back towards board design...)

*Something along the lines of AMD's authorized distributors; in this case, the 'slocketing' aspect adds a twist that makes letting someone else worry about it seem more attractive.  Of course, if a company was ready to step in and fill that role more affordably than Eyetech/partners have managed themselves, you'd think they would've by now.  (The more buying power Eyetech has, the less useful such an aggregator would be.)  This also assumes that Eyetech's modules *are* rolling off the same lines as the boards, and this hasn't happened already...

[Kronos]

@Alex

A few words about licencing.

The problem is that the "AmigaOne"-stamp on the board adds cost (1),
without adding any value (2). So what would be needed for "non-BAF"(3)-
costumers would be a TeronTX (4) with the capabilty to run OS4.


Such a combo would need to compete with similar x86-boards (or costum-
designs) running QNX or similar, and even as little as 10$ can make all the
difference needed here. (5)


Costum chips are realistic unless somebody plans to sell in 7 digits.
And even than the bring in the risk of developers bypassing APIs, which
ain't a problem in a console,but is still one of the major drawbacks
in Amiga-land,some 10 years after GFX-cards were introduced.

I wouldn't call the 970 a costum chip, just because Apple are the only
ones who have any need for such a beast (6).



(1) Noone knows how much that is,but looking at the prices of current A1s,
and the fact that these fees are pretty much all AInc has/will have to honour
all the coupons, makes it quite obvious that it is more than a few pennies.

(2) "Amiga" just isn't worth a dime in a kiosk-system or similar.  

(3) Try to take it with a bit of humour  ;-)

(4) Just as good as any other name,as long as it doesn't mean extra $$.

(5) I don't think Eyetech will be able to offer direct support for any big
company (buying more than 100 units),and any middleman will look
at such options. And these often tend to go the prooven path which
would be QNX in a 10:1 margin over any kind of "Amiga"-OS.

(6) Genesi/MAI(Eyetech) are still atleast1 yearaway from being able to
produce boards capable of using a 970. IBM uses Power4 and similar
for their servers, which just leaves Apple atm.

[chris]

The problem is that the "AmigaOne"-stamp on the board adds cost (1), without adding any value (2)

I disagree.  The AmigaOne stamp on the board does add value - firstly, without it you cannot legally run AmigaOS on the board (which is a pretty big value add, whatever uses you come up with), and secondly if you market these to end customers there is value added through brand recognition ("'Amiga?' I had one of those", etc).

Chris

[anarchic_teapot]

A few words about licencing.

The problem is that the "AmigaOne"-stamp on the board adds cost, without adding any value (2). So what would be needed for "non-BAF" costumers would be a TeronTX (4) with the capabilty to run OS4.

Balderdash. Without the licence, the mobo doesn't have the  legal or firmware capability to run OS4.

If the "stamp" added no value, you can be damn sure than a canny Yorkshireman like Alan Redhouse wouldn't pay for it.

(ignored the rest: it's just as full of irrational nonsense - competing with QNX, I ask you! As for support for purchases of 100+ units...)