Amiga.org
Amiga News and Community Announcements => Amiga News and Community Announcements => Amiga Retail News / Sales => Topic started by: Troika on September 07, 2005, 04:02:33 AM
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Troika the new PPC motherboard is pleased to announce our web launch.
http://www.troikang.com
It's scheduled launch date is September 24th 2005, in corordination with Big Bash 3 at www.amigabigbash.net.
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Is is an A1 competitor? Does it have AI approved apecs or is it only a 99% compatible A1 clone?
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Iwin :banana: :banana: :banana:
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Smells a bit like Vapor. And the Specs of the Tundra bridge isnt really better then Articia. I wonder how they will manage to get a license. "AmigaONE" is exclusivly for Eyetech and AI dont even take money for a new license.
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Nice page..but where is specification and price for this board ? :( or this is only a fake..
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well if you read the page, everything will be revealed at the Amiga show in the UK on the 24th.
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Does this mean that the AmigaOne is dead and the Pegasos really won the AmigaMarket ?
Why is there no specs ? :-?
that's too strange...
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strange indeed.
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I taken this from AmigaWorld forum..topic (Troika Web site)
Mini-ITX
CPU: PPC 750
Northbridge: Tundra TSI107
Network: RTL 8110
Sound: CMI8738
USB: µPD720101
2 PCI-Slots
2 RAM-Slots
its cool!
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I'm hoping the following:
1. This isn't fake
2. It's very inexpensive compared to the A1 or Peg
or
3. It runs more than OS4
To me, the most important thing to look for in hardware these days is versatility. The A1 is a huge ATX-sized board that only runs OS4 well. The Pegasos is a microATX board that runs MOS and most PPC Linuxes well. If this thing can run OS4 and Linux in a miniITX board, that'd be pretty darn cool. If it only runs OS4, a lower cost should reflect that, hopefully.
Still, I'm not holding my breath on this one. We've been duped many times before.
My top hardware purchase priority remains the Pegasos...
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Hmm, since I couldnt get a license for A1 on the Pegasos I wonder how these people plan to or maybe even got it done? It sounds nice, but I would still rather see OS4 come to the Pegasos I and II first. That site is a joke, it has no onfo and is just a simple one page announcement.
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@Acill
Did you ever get any kind of response for your efforts? And are you going to try again once OS4 is fully released?
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How can a page that says "this site will open xx date" be a joke ??
It's not open, offcource it doesn't have any info right now. ? Am i missing something.
Do you think http://www.morphos-team.net/ is also a joke ?
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From what I gather reading the thread at AW.net, they've been working on this thing for about a year.
It also looks like they DO have an OS4 license (plus the web site says that the board is for OS4).
I think the specs are fine -- similar to the A1 but with the "possibility" of a better Northbridge.
Have to wait and see, I guess.
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Hmm, since I couldnt get a license for A1 on the Pegasos I wonder how these people plan to or maybe even got it done?
Just because you aren't able to get license for A1 (That should be AOS) for the Pegasos, doesn't mean that nobody else shouldn't be able to get license for other hardware platform. As far as I know the Ariana board makers also had conversations with Amiga inc, but they refused since they didn't liked the terms. The could had it if they wanted to! With the Troika board makers this might be other case. It sounds nice, but I would still rather see OS4 come to the Pegasos I and II first.
Are you working on this, or just want it anyway?
That site is a joke, it has no onfo and is just a simple one page announcement.
What about wait and see before posting negativism all around? I am sure if there was an announcement about a site with petition about port of AmigaOS 4 to the Pegasos, with just a simple one page announcement, you wouldn't have talked the same way.
Sorry if this might cause flamewar but I can't stand the double standarts of some people.
Moderator please edit out some of the lines if you see them inappropirate.
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True or not the fact remains that the more AOS motherboards there are out the better it is for sales of software, hardware and increased future development. If this is false then who cares we stay where we are for the time being.
If it's true, on the other hand, then there are now two companies marketing Amiga specic motherboards and pushing their sales forward - the competition will hopefully lower each others prices in the interim.
Lots of positive from where I'm sitting. Ver Very little negativity.
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Ian Stedman posted some more info on the board here:
http://amigaworld.net/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?topic_id=14912&forum=3&start=40&viewmode=flat&order=0
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:banana: :banana: :banana:
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@xeron
News travels fast.
I only posted that within the last hour!
To all, have a read of that article, it explains how and why the design evolved.
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I wonder how 'low cost' this is.... will it be able to run Linux? (not interested in running anything else on it)
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Yes ;-)
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Looks promising... However, as other posters on the linked article have said, it really does need to be inexpensive - perhaps enough to be affordable to the expanded A1200 owner who just uses the machine for fun rather than serious work.
If it's cheap enough, and if either OS4 or MOS are ported to it, I'll get one! Hmm... lots of "ifs"!
- Ali
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@mr_khyron: then count me in!!! :-o
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@ Matt-H
My real concern is the mini ITX design.
What I want is an expandable cheap system.
Sure get rid of legacy stuff, but more PCI slots for expandability. Plug in USB, nic, sound etc. Also the lack of AGP is nasty. I will want to add a good graphics card that can do fast 3d etc for games I may want to play. Sorry, doesn't need to be PCI, was just an example as a cheap expandable bus design. I want the ability to plug in functionality if I need it or top up the speed in a CPU replacemet/upgrade.
so
1. Expandable system
2. good performance on the expansion (pci or express or something else)
I'll add the cards to my system to add functionality as I need them.
I'd love to see a cheap yet expandable mother board for a new AMIGA platform. This is just my desires however.
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> Does this mean that the AmigaOne is dead and the
> Pegasos really won the AmigaMarket ?
If Pegasos won, then why doesn't OS4 support it, and why would there be reason for Troika to do anything?? It's just yet another offering in the marketplace, not an indicator of anything between two other products.
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>Also the lack of AGP is nasty. I will want to add a
>good graphics card that can do fast 3d etc for
>games I may want to play.
Read up on the Olegil motherboard threads on AW.net where he talks about making a PCI to PCI-Express bridge riser card that should work in any PCI slot of any motherboard/classic bridge. That should let you plug in a pretty decent graphics card, even if it would limit you to conventional PCI speeds in Troika, AmigaOne or Peg, or whatever bottleneck limits classic Amiga PCI bridges.
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@billt
Yeah I see that, but I want the perfomance out of my system. The limitation in this would be flooding the PCI bus with data esp if it's video data. That's why the AGP design came into effect.
If I have firewire, fast graphics and a fast ethernet solution plugged in, the system would crawl because of the lack of system bandwith.
Just won't suit my needs.
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If it's true (and I hope for OS4's sake, it is), who will want to order a Teron based A1 when they could wait to have this one?
Dammy
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While I will agree a full-sized board would be ideal, I appreciate that cost was a major factor in the design of this board. I'm far more receptive to a $100-200 board than I am to an $800 board... That kind of cash for a "toy" system is insane. Yeah, IF application support comes, and things pick up, then I'll be concerned with better graphics cards and expadability. Untill then, I'm all for a cheaper solution.
Perhaps my faith is being restored in OS4... Hmm...
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No Mai! :-)
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It is funny that no one mentioned how their OS4 license is going (they havent said single word about it) and neither they announced what kind of BIOS they are using.
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While I will agree a full-sized board would be ideal, I appreciate that cost was a major factor in the design of this board. I'm far more receptive to a $100-200 board than I am to an $800 board...
Ditto. Can't/won't touch OS4 for the prices most vendors are asking.
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@Billt : "If Pegasos won, then why doesn't OS4 support it" <<-- Because they don't want to pay for that, and some others high "ranked" people don't want to see that (but OS4emu exist)! more than 90% of the Peg machine sold are used with Linux, I have no informations about A1 most used OS. Any one got informations about ?
Who still care about the power consuption ?
Here more than 86% of the electricity is created by nuclear systems and it may rise soon up to 96% due to the need, the petrol price, the inefficience of the "clean" energy source (the Sun at night ?)... maybe the sound of fans inside... so put a larger and slower one.
I still wonder why you want to put a poor old 6 or 7 years old G3 when the G4 delivers so much for 50% more. Some people told me that G3-800 could outperform the G4-933 in their Aone in some CPU functions.
For me, if I want a powertoy, i'll buy a MacMini for $400 or a Pegasos 2 G3 (for $150 you can find a Peg1 G3 !).
I don't find word about the RAM. DDR ? DDR for notebook (like the microA1... out of price) ?
Why too few connectors ? why not an expensable PCI bus like the Mediator SX or the system found in some DELL desktop ?
I need at least 5 Pci connectors if I want to replace my actual PC (TV/FM/FW 1394-II/more USB2 ports/U2W-SCSI/Sound 7.1/SATA/...) or my good old 1200T PPC+GREX.
Take a closer look at that if it's not too late.
In fact there is 2 Amiga school's mind and that's the problem : the A600 class and the A4000 class.
Still no Amiga G5 project ahead ... :madashell:
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Conman Redhouse sells faulty hardware without warranties and when questioned he remains quiet, Then out of the blue we have a so-called new OS4 motherboard?.
Buyers prepare yourself for another raping.
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Call me cynical but this looks decidedly dodgy to me.
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we shall see.. 16 days.
Are they going to show the actual WORKING motherboard or just a new site with "designs" and "tech talk" ?
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I look forward to this. It's about time someone showed Eyetech how to do it. (I'll ditch my Eden plans for this if it works!)
Questions for Stedy or Troika
1) Is there an estimated/established price point?
2) Is this the "mystery" hardware that Gary Hare mentioned running AOS4?
3) Do you need any testers? :D
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> Does this mean that the AmigaOne is dead and the
I would also add the AmigaOne is far from dead, with a new shipment this month, so Eyetech has said.
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Adolescent:
You are making an assumption thinking that this ISN'T Eyetech. You never really know?
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@Magic-Merl
And you're assuming that it is? :crazy:
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@Dr_Righteous
How expensive could an expandable system be!!
If you ripped out the USB, Ethernet, Sound, IDE Raid
On board graphics etc etc and just put on more PCI slots or PCI express slots, maybe a cpu riser. AGP slot? C'mon, Video badwith is a major factor on boards, that's why AGP was developed in the first place, an AGP slot has got to be cheaper than adding in a AGP complient graphics chip and technology. Mind you I don't think this board even will have that from reading of the article, it's PCI only so it's going to choke when graphics gets heavy. Why not just go PCI express!
A simple bus slot is cheaper than a graphics chip or firewire controller!! it's just a plastic connector! Sure there logic and design around it to impliment, but hey, you already have done some of that with adding a PCI bus, scrap all the technology features for extra bandwith and let the user plug in the cards if they want it.
Being expandable, I have heaps of connector slots. I can pop in a card with firwire, USB, RAID or whatever I want. At least this way I choose what I need and will use. Cost is kept to a minimum, and with the CPU connector, I can upgrade!
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>it's PCI only so it's going to choke when graphics gets heavy.
Pegasos2 would then suffer the same problem as its AGP slot connects to a PCI port of the northbridge via a logic bridge of some sort.
For those of you demanding an AGP slot, name each and every PowerPC northbridge that provides one natively. Of these, how many are acceptable northbridge chips to you? Yep. Not much of a choice is there?
Anything we're going to see in our market will either use Articia or have to use an FPGA chip to build a PCI to AGP bridge, which is then limited to PCI bandwidth. Pegasos2 does this, and that may be acceptable. If so, why not just use a PCI to PCI-Express bridge and have the even newer graphics cards available to you?
If anyone would start a new design today, I'd say he's crazy to put any effort into an FPGA AGP bridge, as AGP is already on its way out. PCI-Express is on its way in, in a big way, and any design that would hypothetically start today should use that for graphics instead, IMNSHO.
> A simple bus slot is cheaper than a graphics
> chip or firewire controller!! it's just a
> plastic connector!
It's simply not that easy with PowerPC. If you don't want an Articia northbridge, then you need a logic chip to convert PCI into AGP for the plastic connector to wire up to. Life's never as easy as you'd like. :)
> Why not just go PCI express!
Read up on Olegil's solution to this on AW.net. Troika's board would be able to have PCI-Express this way, same for AmigaOne, Mediator, Prometheus PCI, Grex, Pegasos, etc.
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> Website without any content
Is this similar website as KMOS Inc's website?
Is this another hoax / scam without any REAL address, phone / fax number?
If the board is REAL, CHEAP, support fanless CPU, and +12V power supply, the board will be great for automotive / car / ship / boat embedded applications.
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@billt
There is a difference between having the GFX-card on one bus (which in most times won't satured 1xAGP) and everything else on the 2nd compared to having all on one.
In the 2nd scenario on bigger HD-read might allready be enough for an animation/movie/game to drop some frames due to chocked access to GPU.
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asian1: For Automotive/car use it's not recommendable/optimal, cause it does not have desired chips.. In those environments you'll need to have specially designed chips with extra wide temparature range.. (see Freescale MPC5200 for comparision).
BillT: Yes.. it's possible to Stack various busses one after another .. but you should consider couple facts..
- Price .. each bus-bus bridge costs money and nees board space, wiring and support components.
- Speed. No matter how you'll add Pci-express atop of OLD Pci it's limited by the PCI bus as long as data needs to pass through it..
You'll can do the maths yourself .. This Troika card has *SINGLE* PCI-controller running at 33Mhz/32bit.. thus offering about 133MB/s theorethical max bandwidth.. Real delivery is only about 50-70% of maximun, so we can take 80MB/s. (megabytes)
Now we need to add together 2D/3D GFX-update-feed, Hard disk IO, USB, Ethernet etcetc.. and you'll soon see that sum will far exceed capabilities of single PCI-bus. (maths left for excercise to reader.. all numbers can be deduced or found on Web) :-)
PS: I know that in above i'll mention Maximum values, but it's proof enough ... It would be possible to analyze awerage needs, response time/real time conflicts (usually audio drivers) etc..
PS2: I'm not saying it would not work. I'm only trying to remind people not expecting miracle performance out of it.
PS3: Did some editing.. Hopefully i managed to fix more spelling mistakes than make a new ones.
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[d]You are making an assumption thinking that this ISN'T Eyetech. You never really know?[/d]
No we aren't Eyetech, but Alan is welcome to our motherboard. How about marketing some in China?
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> Extended Temperatures.
AFAIK there are versions of PowerPC 750 and TSI107 with extended temperatures from -40 Degree C to 85 Degree C. IMO this specification is sufficient for automotive / car (inside the dashboard) applications. There is also a MIL STD 883 version, but it's rather expensive.
But first Troika should provide details of the company (address, fax, phone, history, reputation, warranty, availability etc).
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@billt:
>Anything we're going to see in our market will
>either use Articia or have to use an FPGA chip
>to build a PCI to AGP bridge, which is then
>limited to PCI bandwidth.
PCI-X 1.0 has the bandwidth of AGP4x.
Ole-Egil's prefered PPC440SPe chip provides
PCI-X 2.0 with a bandwidth similar to AGP8x.
>Pegasos2 does this, and that may be acceptable.
Are you sure?
>If so, why not just use a PCI to PCI-Express
>bridge and have the even newer graphics cards
>available to you?
Sure - only who writes the drivers and will they
be available for all systems that can make use of
that particular PCI-PCIe bridge card?
>If anyone would start a new design today, I'd
>say he's crazy to put any effort into an FPGA
>AGP bridge, as AGP is already on its way out.
Just a moment please - can you point me to the
"FPGA" on the Pegasos II board that according to
your opinion bridges the PCI to AGP?
I am not entirely sure there actually is one,
but maybe you have more insight...
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@joannak
The PCI bus in the TSI107 is a 66MHz bus:
http://www.tundra.com/Products/PowerPC/Tsi107/index.cfm (http://www.tundra.com/Products/PowerPC/Tsi107/index.cfm)
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@Codesmith:
This may be the case, but the Troika board uses
a 33MHz bus (e.g. the slots are 5V-keyed which
only allows 33MHz) just like Pegasos II uses a
33MHz bus instead of the 133MHz the Discovery II
chip may provide.