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Amiga News and Community Announcements => Amiga News and Community Announcements => Amiga Hardware News => Topic started by: jumpship on July 25, 2002, 09:02:55 PM
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Taken directly from Yahoo, Alan updates us with the AmigaONE:
Original LINK (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/amigaone/message/19215)
From: "eyetech_group"
Date: Wed Jul 24, 2002 10:39 pm
Subject: Re: More Foolishness Was: Yet more delays
--- In amigaone@y..., "jtsiren" wrote:
> --- In amigaone@y..., NeRP wrote:
> > Hello jpkurki
> (...)
> > [cutting all the whining, sniveling, crying, doomsaying, and
> generally
> > negative attitude out]
> (...)
> > Regards
> > NeRP
> This post is not to say anything other than to acknowledge, at
least
> by someone, that Joanna, despite her views as they have been
> presented here, has truly given something back to the community and
> supported a cause she hoped she could belive in.
>
> I respect her for that, and I do believe she deserves to be treated
> better than called "whining, sniveling, crying, doomsaying, and
> generally negative" without any effort to offer constructive
> arguments.
I have to say I agree with Joanne and Janne. If I was in Joanna's
shoes I'd be asking exactly the same questions. The problem is that
this list is public, and whatever I (or the rest of the Amigaone
partners) say it gets copied, misinterpreted and severely criticised
on the other newslists like ann etc.
So what do we do? We make a closed list like the A1G3dev list - which
is highly democratic, productive and busy but is by invitation only -
or we release interim information to this list with all the time
consuming extra explanations needed after cross postings by the
cerebrally-challanged or malicious readers hereabouts.
Nevertheless I think its time for a brief update.
Many dev board purchasers were clearly motivated by the 10% discount
rather than their ability to contribute to the developer process. The
initial boards were therefore shipped to those who could make a real
contribution to developing drivers etc, and porting Linux/UAE
distributions. Their progress has been astounding IMO with no less
than 5 different linux distributions (SuSE, Debian, Mandrake, Yellow
Dog and TurboLinux) being ported within a couple of weeks.
However the Softex open firmware we had originally shipped with the
dev boards (incidently as seen on the Pegasos video) has several
shortcomings (although this has been used to boot the 5 linux
distributions and the OS4 kernel) and we are currently
developing/extending the alternative PPCBoot open firmware for use on
the production AmigaOne boards. This will allow us to build in Amiga-
specific boot etc options, a well as a more comprehensive multi-boot
environment.
We are not shipping the remainder of the dev boards (or any of the
user boards) until this code is complete because of the expense of
shipping update ROMs and chip changing tools. This is anticipated to
be towards the end of August.
This revision to the boot ROM is being undertaken by Hyperion as part
of the work necessary for booting OS4 on the A1.
Meanwhile the Amiga Inc club membership/coupon program results
(coupled with our own market extrapolation processes) means that the
future of the AmigaOne is in no doubt.
Finally several people have asked us why we are not delivering the A1
board to Linux users in advance of the release of OS4. Well there are
two main reasons:
1 - This is a product we are producing for the Amiga market and IMO
it is proper that the Amiga community get their hands on it first.
2 - I still cannot see why there would be a significant market for
Linux on the A1 given that the main focus of Linux is the x86
platform, which - because of sheer sales volumes - will always be an
order of magnitude cheaper than a ppc-based product.
Hope this helps
Alan
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At least now we know it will be around the end of August.
Coder
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At least now we know it will be around the end of August.
Don't get too many hopes up ... he seemed to be saying the rest of the dev boards going out in August. :-(
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Don't get too many hopes up ... he seemed to be saying the rest of the dev boards going out in August
That's what I mean. Now I know when I can expect the board.
Coder
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Well, I believe Eyetech made a BIG mistake by making the Flashrom on the AmigaOne board non-flashable. We could all have our developer boards by now and could update the flashrom simply with a floppy like on a PC. By the way, nowadays all PC's have dual BIOS, one flashable and the other as a backup. That's the way it should be! :-D
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@CD32Freak
The BIOS is flashable just like in the TeronCX, but I see two problems:
Eyetech doesn't seem to have a full licence from SofTex (only evaluation),
and you can't call ~200 boards an evaluation run.
Hyperion wants to keep the flash-util closed, so noone can just reflash
a Teron to an A1.
There is offcourse still the possibilty that the BIOS isn't the only problem.
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@Kronos
No, you can't flash the ROM ón the AmigaOne board, you'll have to take it out and flash it somewhere else. The socket is made non-flashable :-(
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Hyperion wants to keep the flash-util closed, so noone can just reflash
TeronCX + A1 Flash BIOS NOT= AmigaOne.
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@CD32Freak
Beeep wrong (atleast AFAIK :-P )
The TeronCX_MK2 (aka A1) has two ROMs:
a) a normal flash currently containing the evaluation-only SofTex.
b) a "real" ROM in a extra socket that will contain the dongle-code.
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@agafaster
Sad but true ....
If they really do a non-OpenFirmWare-compatible BIOS (as it seems atm)
they will close out all other OSes until these are adapted to it, you will
still get Linux but not the latest version (just like APUS-Linux) and you
can allmost forget all the real geek OSes.
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@Kronos
Beeeeeeeeeeeeeep..lol :lol:..One day you'll see I am right :-D
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I think Alan was saying that OS4 will hopefully be ready at the end of August so that all A1 can be sent out with the final roms.
Nice to see he is confident enough to have an Amiga first policy.
Valan
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@Valan
I think Alan was saying that OS4 will hopefully be ready at the end of August so that all A1 can be sent out with the final roms.
That is wishfull thinking. :-) He hopes the rest of the devboards will be ready to ship at that time.
Coder
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@Valan
We are not shipping the remainder of the dev boards (or any of the
user boards) until this code is complete because of the expense of
shipping update ROMs and chip changing tools. This is anticipated to
be towards the end of August.
He says that he hoped that the BIOS-replacement would be finished
by the end of August, and that the missing DEV-boards would be
delivered shortly afterwards, but no word (date) about the
consumer-A1.
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He says that he hoped that the BIOS-replacement would be finished
by the end of August, and that the missing DEV-boards would be
delivered shortly afterwards, but no word (date) about the
consumer-A1.
yup thats how I read it. The last comment was sensible too.
bloody hell ! I agreed with Kronos ! :-o :-D
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@agafaster
:-D :-D sooner or later I get them all :-D :-D
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After re-reading...
Oh no! I have to agree too.
Thanks for the correction.
Valan
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According to the PPCBoot page (http://ppcboot.sourceforge.net/) (PS: it's GPL by the way!) which I got from ANN, it also supports QNX! In fact it looks like any OS that uses the Linux Style boot loader will work with this firmware.
Edwin