Two New Mainboard with MPC7448 Soon?

[SHADES]

@Matt_H

"And ACK's board doesn't sound so great either. A bare board with a gazillion slots on it is a huge step backwards - that's how PCs were sold in the 286 days. Hopefully their "2007" board will be better."

That's just your opinion though Matt. There's nothing wrong with having an expandable mainboard. It allows for easy expansion and opens up a lot of development for 3rd party add on cards.
It's just what i'm looking for. If you want high speed USB, plug it in. if you want a mulit I/O plug that in. Dual NIC? Firewire?  
Digital Tuner, Hi Res toaster etc etc etc.

At least people won't have to pay for features they won't need or want, they just add in what they do want to use. A most perfect solution for me and i don't have to pay for that stupid on board slow firewire port that perhaps you do want.

I totaly dissagree with you here I'm afraid. Just because something is expandable doesn't make it old technology either. I'd like to see a G4 expandable mainboard that's from the 286 days
Nothing backward about it.

[SHADES]

@ Matt H

The problem is we're still locked in to specific components - none of these boards ship with Amiga drivers, so we need Amiga developers to write them for us. And when the manufacturers phase out and replace their cards with new designs, well, there goes the argument that PCI hardware is cheap and plentiful. Amiga drivers don't exist for the new card - I still need the old one. And I can't go to my local PC megastore and get an SIL680 card - I still need to get it from an Amiga dealer. Look at how much trouble people have had finding a Radeon compatible with OS4. Mounting essential items onboard eliminates these problems.

Why would an Amiga HW developer 3rd party or otherwise, release hardware for AMIGA OS without a driver for it? I don't see your point here. My Z3 fastlane wasn't made by commodore and it came with it's own driver. It won't make a difference if a new mainboard gets produced with a new ATI on board that's not compatible Vs a new ATI graphics card put in to the PC. The good thing about the expandable PC is u can always put your compatible card back in till the new driver is released.

Don't get me wrong, I love slots, it's just that I'd rather be filling them with fun things like MPEG decoders and TV tuners, rather than essential system components like IDE and USB.

And with an expandable system, you could do that.
Better than 1 or 2 slots and having to compromise on what's going in to them.

[SHADES]

@ Matt_H

No, I understood, I just didn't agree with everything u said.

1. Dozens, if not hundreds, of different IDE PCI cards exist. Dozens, if not hundreds, of different USB PCI cards exist. Dozens, if not hundreds, of different Firewire PCI cards exist. Etc.

Great! bring it on. If a hardware manufacturer sticks to the design standard for IDE (not hard) and releases a card for AMIGA, they will release a driver along with the hardware. I don't care if it's a phase 5 IDE or a commodore IDE card or ATI, or VIA or whatever, in fact I think it's a great idea. Every company can compete to make a better AMIGA IDE card, with it's own driver. If you're talking about supporting existing IBM-clone/PC hardware, that's a totaly different story, but it wouldn't be developed for AMIGA then or by an AMIGA - HARDWARE company would it.
Who says u have to buy a PC graphics card. Someone  may make Picasso07-3d that is AGP complient or PCI-X form factor. Nothing to do with ATI. Or perhaps NewTec make a toaster to plug in to pci-X. They provide their own drivers. If your expecting the new AMIGA OS to support ALL PC complient harware with drivers from get go, you better chuk in the towel now.
Just because something is on a main board doesn't mean u don't need drivers for them. I'd rather buy a card from the company who sold me the mainboard so I know it's for AMIGA OS and so I can have say SCSI instead of the IDE card. Perhaps their card will have both? What I was talking about was choice. Choose your platform. Don't pay for stuff u dont want or will use. Plus this way I'm suporting the AMIGA hardware development, not ATI or VIA or ITE who are all less than interested in AMIGA platform and OS

2. With the limited resources of the Amiga developer community, we'll see Amiga drivers for one, maybe two, IDE or USB or Firewire cards, tops.

So? will those cards be somehow inferior because they are from AMIGA H/W manufacturers? perhaps those cards will have USB/FIREWIRE/Paralell/Serial/PS2 all on one card?

3. The manufacturers of those cards don't give a damn about the Amiga.

Oh, but a motherboard manufacturer does?

4. The manufacturers of those cards stop producing them in favor of new ones - for which the Amiga driver is incompatible. This has already happened with PCMCIA Ethernet cards.

Good!. Progress.
I'll have a USB3 card thanks. And it will be just as compatible because the manufacturer will be designing the card for AMIGA OS and provide the driver with the hardware or they wouldn't make the card.

In the case of this hypothetical Amiga, IF you already have a compatible card. IF a new driver is ever released. See points 5 and 2.

Why is this hypothetical, I was just re-iterating what u previosly were saying. You were complaining that nothing over a certain series with ATI was working. So plug in a card that does work. If it was soldered to the mainboard, you be stuffed.

Yes! Right! See, I think we actually do really agree here. I'm saying that a board should have essential components integrated AND have around 4 slots. That way, developers can focus their efforts on producing drivers for fun expansion cards rather than trying to support all the different IDE/USB/Firewire cards that people might end up buying.

My point is that by offereing add-on cards as another avenu for development wil encourage further hardware to be made for AMIGA by AMIGA hardware companies and allow those companies to compete for better and better designs. It was never about trying to support all PC hardware, that's not possible. Those companies don't develop for AMIGA, they develop for Windows and are not interested in a small community. At least this way, you support the AMIGa hardware manufactures and make it attractive for other h/w companies to make stuff for this platform. Weather it's IDE, SCSI, RAID, Graphics, Wireless or HD-TV, there would now exist an oppertunity to create a h/w soultion and end user device to suit anyone. Just plug in what you require and support further development on the AMIGA h/w scene. Catweazel 6?

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@ matt_h

Yes, it would be great if we could have different manufacturers producing competing IDE cards for the Amiga, but our market's far too small. Plus no Amiga hardware gurus are going to develop their own IDE boards when so many exist already.

Who's saying match that? No reason to not use it though, you are with your soldered on board chip, why is that harder to support on a card. Manufacture costs for the mainboard are down if it's not included and traced on to the maotherboard, those readly availible chips from Nvidia, ATi available to purchase on their own, not solderd to mainboards and cheap 3rd party cards as well. The driver has to be written either way for the chipset, why not! besides, Catweazel was produced for AMIGA, there's a new clock card, IDE cards what was it, fast IDE or something else. It just creates oppertunities for producing h/w for a platform. It can attract de4velopment even though there is not much at the moment.

. ATI, nVidia, etc. literally have armies of researchers and engineers at their disposal. An Amiga developer couldn't possibly match their collective capabilites

Why not? NewTec do. Besides ATI and NVidia sell their chips to 3rd party manufactures. Why not use some of the existing chips and design a AGA/nvidia PCI graphics card, I dunno. OR make a driver company. A company tht writes drivers for cards depending on a pool of funds. There's so much I can think of to do for the platform once it arrives. Or like I said above, use an exisitng cheap 3rd party card! The driver has to be written for the rotten chip regardless if it's pasted to a mainboard or on to a card and if it's offered for a particular system, it will be INCLUDED or there would be no point. The point is, you can plug in other cards from other manufacturers that may see a niche or need for something else and that my friend is an oppertunity which is not restricted by on board devices that can't change.

If they're intending to sell that board as an Amiga they should!

And the same for a h/w Card and it's driver

Got to find one first.

Another reason to develop an AMIGA card, even if using existing ATi chips or whatever.
If you want to get it all now, there's a list of supported h/w from Hyperion.

No, because the motherboard would have been sold with drivers.

So would an AMIGA made or supported h/w card! Why does it HAVE to be on the mainboard! Drivers have to be written regardless! lol
What you think they are going to design a 3d chip to solder to the mainboard? if they are going to write the driver anyway, why not put it on a card! Makes the mainboard less expensive to design and produce, and the driver is coming anyway ... I don't get your point. ATI or IDE or whatever on motherboard is the same chip to be used on a card instead.

And my point is that the pool of Amiga developers is stretched far too thin - if we don't have the resources to write drivers, how can anyone be expected to design and manufacture redudant PCI hardware from scratch?

That's so not true. If anything at all it opens up the door for other h/w manufacturing to take place. Writing a driver for a mainboard is just as easy to wite for an add-on card and if they want to supply a mainboad with the card to do IDE, they would also provide a driver. That's the end of it. It would make no sense otherwise and weather they make their own IDE card or write a driver for someone eles's, they will be writing the driver regardless. So you see my point now?