Amiga.org
Amiga computer related discussion => General chat about Amiga topics => Topic started by: runequester on April 14, 2011, 07:20:54 AM
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Not interested in yet another thread of "PPC is dead" gibbering. We've all been there enough times.
What I am wondering about is.. what is the absolute earliest talk and from who, about amiga going powerPC ?
In other words.. where did it start? :)
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Not interested in yet another thread of "PPC is dead" gibbering. We've all been there enough times.
What I am wondering about is.. what is the absolute earliest talk and from who, about amiga going powerPC ?
In other words.. where did it start? :)
I would suggest it started back when the first PowerMacs appeared.
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I would suggest it started back when the first PowerMacs appeared.
Hmmm, even then I think we were still very 68060 oriented... No one really took the PPC seriously as an Amiga CPU solution until Phase5 (who built Mac CPU cards) suggested it... And then did it :)
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Not interested in yet another thread of "PPC is dead" gibbering. We've all been there enough times.
What I am wondering about is.. what is the absolute earliest talk and from who, about amiga going powerPC ?
In other words.. where did it start? :)
Overly simplified: It started with the guys that later brought us the Pegasos and MorphOS...
;)
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Phase5 had the first ppc-kernel PowerUp to my recollection. First hints about ppc for Amiga I read either in AmigaFormat or CU Amiga.
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What I am wondering about is.. what is the absolute earliest talk and from who, about amiga going powerPC ?
http://www.amigahistory.co.uk/ppchistory.html
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Not interested in yet another thread of "PPC is dead" gibbering. We've all been there enough times.
What I am wondering about is.. what is the absolute earliest talk and from who, about amiga going powerPC ?
In other words.. where did it start? :)
It's kind of strange when Commodore was making x86 boards for Amiga's before PPC ever came along. Amiga's real roots are more x86 than PPC.
(http://img.auctiva.com/imgdata/0/4/5/1/2/9/webimg/109174313_tp.jpg)
(http://img.auctiva.com/imgdata/0/4/5/1/2/9/webimg/109174402_tp.jpg)
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It's kind of strange when Commodore was making x86 boards for Amiga's before PPC ever came along. Amiga's real roots are more x86 than PPC.
That's not really relevant, those are for running typically DOS apps on the amiga without going through emulation, and has nothing to do with being "real roots" of Amiga at all. Same type of cards also existed for Macs and Atari, for example.
IIRC, Commodore engineers were looking at going PA-RISC after m68k, PowerPC at the time did not exist yet.
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Overly simplified: It started with the guys that later brought us the Pegasos and MorphOS...
;)
And you feel proud for this?
;)
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Not interested in yet another thread of "PPC is dead" gibbering. We've all been there enough times.
What I am wondering about is.. what is the absolute earliest talk and from who, about amiga going powerPC ?
In other words.. where did it start? :)
Phase 5 started the first advertsiing of the power ppc design for the amiga 400 and 1200
I think was talk for the 2000 but never happened
I remember fondly looking at there adds for 030 040 060 boards and cool adds
Showing how fast in comparrsion to stock machines
Think amiga mags of the day amiga format etc ran storys on coldfire and power pc
many talked the talk but german phase 5 where ones that deliverd big time
unfortunaly they went broke in process maybe wasint good biz decsion at the time
But was awsome to own one and i did build quality was very good in my opion
seems european design is very good esp these days and all built to high standred
am not sure was phase 5 idea but time was no commodroe to make forward plans
so feel on private companys to fund devolpment must cost alot was brillent design
to merge and have 2 seprate cpus diffrent design never had problems with mine
working toghter whould like to learn more on phase 5 design folks there names what doing know did they go help with pegeasas boards
ebox and another company did float there boards but weather down to not enough
market or the ran out design time who knows.
whould make intresting read was alot activty bit like there is today with x1000
sam flex and nat ami
go amiga sure been interesting journey
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I've two PPC computers, first on cost me about 250€ 3 years ago, it has only 160gb hd and ram is limited to 256, second is better it has 384 ram and 500gb hd, price was 120€
Both have usb/lan, first one has d-sub, second have DVI and wlan
OS used is linux, you can buy one from every home electronic store.
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I would suggest it started back when the first PowerMacs appeared.
I would say the first A4000/3000/1200 PPC accelerators for Amiga myself :)
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IIRC it started with Phase5 (known before as advanced systems and software). Later Amiga International agreed with P5 to go ppc. I think P5 came along with ppc when Amiga was lost in limbo - somewhen after the crash of C= and before Escom/AI started.
P5 did a good job though, the successor company bplan, too.
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Overly simplified: It started with the guys that later brought us the Pegasos and MorphOS...
;)
So they are the ones to blame for it. :(
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I've two PPC computers, first on cost me about 250? 3 years ago, it has only 160gb hd and ram is limited to 256, second is better it has 384 ram and 500gb hd, price was 120?
Both have usb/lan, first one has d-sub, second have DVI and wlan
OS used is linux, you can buy one from every home electronic store.
What are these computers?
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I've two PPC computers, first on cost me about 250€ 3 years ago, it has only 160gb hd and ram is limited to 256, second is better it has 384 ram and 500gb hd, price was 120€
Both have usb/lan, first one has d-sub, second have DVI and wlan
OS used is linux, you can buy one from every home electronic store.
I have a riding lawnmower I got at the hardware store. I've fitted it with taillights and a top, so now it's a car.
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So they are the ones to blame for it. :(
...because Phase 5 done some PPC accelerators for A4000 and A1200, and people started the MorphOS project on them.
But at that time, thinking to go elsewhere (X86?) would raise very strong angst (just imagine! :-O )
BY!
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Back in the days the decision to go ppc was quite good. ppc was pretty much on par with x86 then, if not leading. Also the cpus were smaller and less energy hungry - important for A1200 expansion boards.
That ppc eventually more or less failed in desktop land was rather bad luck.
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...because Phase 5 done some PPC accelerators for A4000 and A1200, and people started the MorphOS project on them.
But at that time, thinking to go elsewhere (X86?) would raise very strong angst (just imagine! :-O )
BY!
1995 is when AROS was started so there was already a start for x86 Amiga-like OS the same time the ill fated PPC was announced by AT/EScom. Then AI announced the next generation Amiga OS, DE, would be primarily targeting x86 and even had a low end K6-2 Dev machine being sold.
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I'm going to invent a time machine, go back to 1985, and port the Amiga OS to the PDP-11 or something, just to pre-empt this bickering about which non-68k processor the Amiga was on first and is therefore totally the real New Amiga.
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Hmmm, even then I think we were still very 68060 oriented... No one really took the PPC seriously as an Amiga CPU solution until Phase5 (who built Mac CPU cards) suggested it... And then did it :)
Allow me to elaborate.
Back in the day, we were all hailing the 68060 as the holy grail, but let's not forget that it actually arrived late and with lower performance compared to the Pentium (particularly in floating point terms). It was clear to everybody back then that the 68K was falling behind. When apple introduced the first PowerMacs, people started talking about the possibility of making the same jump (the PA RISC idea pretty much died with Commodore). Amongst those people were Phase5.
The PowerPC was seen as an obvious choice back then as RISC was still seen as the future (which indeed it was, but just not in the way it was envisaged), it shared the same native endian representation as 68K, supported the same basic datatypes (except for long double). The x86 was still looked down upon (IMNSHO deservedly so as wasn't until the Pentium Pro that the architecture became any good) and was seen as too slow by most people in the day to provide any realistic emulation potential. Remember, JIT emulation of 68K didn't have an obvious precedent (I think even Apple's first 68K emulation for PPC was interpretive) and so things like register count mattered. You could statically map the entire 68K usermode registers into PPC and a well written assembler interpreter could fit the most common handlers into cache.
Not long later, Phase5 announced their intentions to produce a PowerPC accelerator for Amiga. Back then, the talk was of 68030 + 603e. The rest is history.
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Motorola offered a compatibility library to assist migration to PPC (essentially emulate 68k) to make the move more 'natural' which probably is why Apple chose that path. RISC was en vogue and most ppl wouldn't have bet for x86 to have a future at all. Endianess definitely was an issue that ruled out x86, too. Additionally Intel architecture was closely associated with ISA, singletasking and DOS and nobody really wanted that.
Those were the days when computers hadn't really arrived in mainstream yet and many medium-sized companies could afford developing CPUs. Then the internet hype began, manufacturing volumes and thus development budgets skyrocketed and most were lost on the way. It's an irony of of history that the architecture that seemed least fit sank all others. Today it's just an abstraction layer to an underlying - RISC architecture.
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Hi,
See http://www.bboah.com/index.php?action=artikel&cat=9&id=1960&artlang=en
"Met@box: AmiJoe 1200"
"This was the promised competitor to the PhaseIV PPC accelerators promising vast performance increases via the use of the PowerPC processor, providing that applications were written for it.
It is not certain whether this card was intended to be compatible with existing PowerUp or WarpUp software, but it's likely it would have been.
Unfortunately, the card was never released although prototypes were built."
I remember seeing an advert in one of the Amiga Magazines around the mid 1990`s for this accelerator.
Regards, Michael
aka rockape
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Hi,
See http://www.bboah.com/index.php?action=artikel&cat=9&id=1960&artlang=en
"Met@box: AmiJoe 1200"
"This was the promised competitor to the PhaseIV PPC accelerators promising vast performance increases via the use of the PowerPC processor, providing that applications were written for it.
It is not certain whether this card was intended to be compatible with existing PowerUp or WarpUp software, but it's likely it would have been.
Unfortunately, the card was never released although prototypes were built."
I remember seeing an advert in one of the Amiga Magazines around the mid 1990`s for this accelerator.
Regards, Michael
aka rockape
That was after the demise of Phase5.
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Phase 5 started the first advertsiing of the power ppc design for the amiga 400 and 1200
I think was talk for the 2000 but never happened
I believe there was an addon to one of the 2000 accelerators (060?) that was used by Phase 5 as an early develpment system. If you search around you can find pictures of one setup and running. But yes, a PPC for the 2000 was never sold as a consumer product.
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I believe there was an addon to one of the 2000 accelerators (060?) that was used by Phase 5 as an early develpment system. If you search around you can find pictures of one setup and running. But yes, a PPC for the 2000 was never sold as a consumer product.
There is a video of the board in an A2000 on youtube.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=foWfXhmi1wY
It was an addon board for the Blizzard 2060.
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And you feel proud for this?
;)
I certainly do. By the time that a move to PPC was considered the 68K was a dead issue. X86 was still pretty primitive and thank god the didn't go to PA RISC.
Even now, PPC is capable of producing competitive, competent performance.
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Even now, PPC is capable of producing competitive, competent performance.
Competitive against what? Don't get me wrong, I like the PPC architecture but it's not competitive outside of a few niche (mostly embedded) markets. In the desktop market, there is no PPC processor that isn't totally smoked by an x86 part available less.
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Competitive against what? Don't get me wrong, I like the PPC architecture but it's not competitive outside of a few niche (mostly embedded) markets. In the desktop market, there is no PPC processor that isn't totally smoked by an x86 part available less.
I would compound Karlos' comment, and say that I can't think of a single Market where I would choose a PPC over an ARM or an x86... Unless I was working with IBM who don't have a licence or the latest versions of those architectures ;)
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Im guessing he's referring to the PPC stuff thats already out there.
My wife's laptop runs a G4 and still works perfectly fine for the stuff she uses it for.
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1995 is when AROS was started so there was already a start for x86 Amiga-like OS
In 1995 AROS wasn't even close that could be called an Operating System. Back then AROS was a hack running on top of X.
Claiming that it would have been potential OS for some kind of x86 Amiga is worst kind of historical revisionism. AROS was years away even from AmigaOS 1.x kind of functionality. IIRC it took something like 4-5 years for AROS to actually boot on a x86 system natively.
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That's not really relevant, those are for running typically DOS apps on the amiga without going through emulation, and has nothing to do with being "real roots" of Amiga at all. Same type of cards also existed for Macs and Atari, for example.
IIRC, Commodore engineers were looking at going PA-RISC after m68k, PowerPC at the time did not exist yet.
PowerPC was introduced sometime in 1992.
From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PowerPC
"In 1991, the PowerPC was just one facet of a larger alliance among these three companies".
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That's not really relevant, those are for running typically DOS apps on the amiga without going through emulation, and has nothing to do with being "real roots" of Amiga at all. Same type of cards also existed for Macs and Atari, for example.
IIRC, Commodore engineers were looking at going PA-RISC after m68k, PowerPC at the time did not exist yet.
1992 = PowerPC
(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/7d/IBM_PowerPC601_PPC601FD-080-2_top.jpg/220px-IBM_PowerPC601_PPC601FD-080-2_top.jpg
)
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In 1995 AROS wasn't even close that could be called an Operating System. Back then AROS was a hack running on top of X.
Claiming that it would have been potential OS for some kind of x86 Amiga is worst kind of historical revisionism. AROS was years away even from AmigaOS 1.x kind of functionality. IIRC it took something like 4-5 years for AROS to actually boot on a x86 system natively.
IIRC, AROS something of a joke until Aaron Digula set out the initial goals after publishing his RFC in '97... Then Michal Shultz got x86 native booting sometime in '99, not long after I joined the project, but even then intuition didn't work properly and it was some months (in early 2000) before AROS would boot to intuition, with a nice mouse pointer (serial mice only at that time) and a window to play with...
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Allow me to elaborate.
Back in the day, we were all hailing the 68060 as the holy grail, but let's not forget that it actually arrived late and with lower performance compared to the Pentium (particularly in floating point terms). It was clear to everybody back then that the 68K was falling behind. When apple introduced the first PowerMacs, people started talking about the possibility of making the same jump (the PA RISC idea pretty much died with Commodore). Amongst those people were Phase5.
All?
Due to cheap hardware cost, I switch to Intel Pentium Classic 150Mhz after my Amiga 3000/030 @25Mhz.
The PowerPC was seen as an obvious choice back then as RISC was still seen as the future (which indeed it was, but just not in the way it was envisaged), it shared the same native endian representation as 68K, supported the same basic datatypes (except for long double).
During that time, there are RISC processors i.e. from ACE camp it's MIPS or DEC Alpha.
From Amiga mags, Newtek(?) was promoting DEC Alpha(?) based Raptor workstations.
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I certainly do. By the time that a move to PPC was considered the 68K was a dead issue. X86 was still pretty primitive and thank god the didn't go to PA RISC.
Even now, PPC is capable of producing competitive, competent performance.
C= Amiga PA-RISC might lead to C= Amiga Intel Itanium.
Intel Itanium was designed to replace Intel's own X86 CPUs, but AMD64 (X86-64) hammered Intel Itanium in X86 software protection and sales volume. Also, AMD64 hammered any shift towards non-X86 64bit ISA e.g. PowerPC 970.
The battle is between two large OEM/ODM clone armies of X86 vs ARM. Other CPU ISAs will be caught in the crossfire.
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I certainly do. By the time that a move to PPC was considered the 68K was a dead issue. X86 was still pretty primitive and thank god the didn't go to PA RISC.
Even now, PPC is capable of producing competitive, competent performance.
This is such a LOL statement in so many ways!
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PowerPC still has a market in network equipment, routers and switches by Cisco and Juniper, for example.
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PowerPC still has a market in network equipment, routers and switches by Cisco and Juniper, for example.
It's used in all three of the current generation of games consoles as well.
Although the ps3/360 cpu is a step back, like the pentium 4 it's designed for high clock speed at all costs.
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Not interested in yet another thread of "PPC is dead" gibbering. We've all been there enough times.
What I am wondering about is.. what is the absolute earliest talk and from who, about amiga going powerPC ?
In other words.. where did it start? :)
It was a decision made by Amiga.
Amiga goes Power PC (TM) (http://www.cucug.org/amiga/aminews/1995/at951111.html)
During his key note address held in Los Angeles at the Video Toaster Expo, Petro Tyschtschenko, CEO and President of Amiga Technologies officially announced the Power PC to be the processor used in the future generation of Amiga computers.
The first POWER AMIGA will be available 1st quarter 1997 and will feature the Power PC 604 RISC CPU. Further models will be available later in the entry-level, as well as in the mid-range.
(...)
The development of the native RISC AmigaOS will be made internally at Amiga Technologies.
(...)
More good news for all Amiga users: The Power PC technology will not only be available for new Power Amigas. Thanks to a close co-operation between Amiga Technologies and Phase V, a German turbo board manufacturer, a full range of Power PC boards will also be available for the A1200, A3000 and A4000 series.
(...)
First Power PC boards for current Amigas will be available before end of 1996.
(...)
That was it.
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PowerPC still has a market in network equipment, routers and switches by Cisco and Juniper, for example.
And they are still very useful components in automotive enviroments (Renesas, Freescale, ...). Our company sells thousands of PowerPC derived systems to our customers. They usually drive around with our products. :-)
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It was a decision made by Amiga.
Thanks, I wasn't able to find this link - but I knew I read this somewhere...
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@itix
Excellent find! While reading this I think I can even remember parts from it.
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It's kind of strange when Commodore was making x86 boards for Amiga's before PPC ever came along. Amiga's real roots are more x86 than PPC.
(http://img.auctiva.com/imgdata/0/4/5/1/2/9/webimg/109174313_tp.jpg)
(http://img.auctiva.com/imgdata/0/4/5/1/2/9/webimg/109174402_tp.jpg)
Thats a spin you put on it amiga as in jay miner never went x 86
The commodore Brand may be loved by people but there biz plan sucked
mac also went to clones nearly killed them same with Commdore pcs i seen one
in shop looked yuk and sold poorly no one saw the point of it was just like ever other
Pc of the time hmmmmm reminds me of today
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Overly simplified: It started with the guys that later brought us the Pegasos and MorphOS...
;)
they might been paid to work on software but was phase 5 that did funded the event
also warp up programs as well they where more system freindly but did love quake ppc that was power up
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It's kind of strange when Commodore was making x86 boards for Amiga's before PPC ever came along. Amiga's real roots are more x86 than PPC.
Bridgeboards served no purpose beyond hardware compatibility for guest operating systems (MS DOS et al). The AmigaOS host didn't use them for anything AFAIK.
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Not interested in yet another thread of "PPC is dead" gibbering. We've all been there enough times.
What I am wondering about is.. what is the absolute earliest talk and from who, about amiga going powerPC ?
In other words.. where did it start? :)
gee when read through amiga folks been blessed if your half glass full person look all good hardware of the years made me think getting a cheap cheerfull ppc card forget what its called still avaible i think it can run os 4 well orginal one anyway
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Bridgeboards served no purpose beyond hardware compatibility for guest operating systems (MS DOS et al). The AmigaOS host didn't use them for anything AFAIK.
Well, they are used for working with ISA cards...from 68k software ;)
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Bridgeboards served no purpose beyond hardware compatibility for guest operating systems (MS DOS et al). The AmigaOS host didn't use them for anything AFAIK.
Only because nobody wrote a PowerUP/WarpOS style kernel to run on the x86 chips on the cards. ;)
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Even now, PPC is capable of producing competitive, competent performance.
The current top end desktop PPC is the dual core 2.5Ghz PPC 970MP.
Well, it would be but they've probably stopped making them now.
Intel have been through 2 Architecture revisions since then, any advantages the PPCs had have long since gone.
Adequate, maybe.
Competitive, certainly not.
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Not interested in yet another thread of "PPC is dead" gibbering. We've all been there enough times.
What I am wondering about is.. what is the absolute earliest talk and from who, about amiga going powerPC ?
In other words.. where did it start? :)
Wonder no more....
http://www.amigahistory.co.uk/ppchistory.html
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Wonder no more....
http://www.amigahistory.co.uk/ppchistory.html
PPC isn't even close to dead, hundreds of new users join each year. And the hardware improves each year.
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Maybe its just because Im drunk, but you guys are totally awesome :)
Thanks for all the good information, interesting links etc
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Only because nobody wrote a PowerUP/WarpOS style kernel to run on the x86 chips on the cards. ;)
Which would have been quite an achievement considering that both CPUs were completly seperated except for those 128kb Janus-Mem while PPC and 68k could both directly access the whole addressrange.
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Only because nobody wrote a PowerUP/WarpOS style kernel to run on the x86 chips on the cards. ;)
Alas, bridgeboard cards weren't anything like the later PPC+68K cards so such a kernel could not have been developed. The x86 and x68K had their own physically (as in hardware) separate memory spaces for one thing...
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Kronos beat me to it.
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A500 when it arriver was a economy choise for people, in that time computer with HD was about 2-3 times more expensive.
Lets not forget that. Its all about software, NOT hardware.
There are plenty of PPC based computers, in every electronic store, at least here in Europe. You can get about 150€ computer, with lan, usb, dvi/scart and probably with WLAN. OS they uses is Linux. CPU is from 350mHz to 1000mHz, ram is 128mb to 512mb
Those computer are cleverly disguised to Digital TV set top boxes. ;) About 50% them are actually PPC based computer Linux inside. I call them computer, because they have all the needed connectors, usb, hdmi/dvi/lan etc They are digitv boxes only because the way OS is installed and configured.
"cleverly disguised", about that here is nice joke about it :D
http://www.dontevenreply.com/view.php?post=84
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Alas, bridgeboard cards weren't anything like the later PPC+68K cards so such a kernel could not have been developed. The x86 and x68K had their own physically (as in hardware) separate memory spaces for one thing...
-edit-
Kronos beat me to it.
What about Vortex's boards? These seem to have access to the Amiga address space :)
http://www.amiga-hardware.com/showhardware.cgi?HARDID=346
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What was the first software that made made people buy PPC cards? I heard some Video Toaster users got their PPC boards for faster Lightwave that was using PPC compiled modules. When I looked at P5 PPC boards in 1999 it was terribly expensive without any good software to get it into consideration. In 1999 the 68060 was the better option for me.
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@bloodline
Being connected to the 68k-socket (or turbe-slot in the A2000) doesn't mean they have full access to the Amiga-addressspace.
Having 2 (different) CPUs on the same bus was what made the P5 cards so expensive and there was no need for that on a bridgeboard. All you needed is some form of communication and some helper task on the 68k-side to emulate PC-GFX, ports and massstorage (or on the x86 side if you were useing stuff from the Amiga side).
By that definition RiscOS would also been x86 as atleast the RiscPC could host small 386 (486 ?) system via a special slot on the mobo.
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@bloodline
Being connected to the 68k-socket (or turbe-slot in the A2000) doesn't mean they have full access to the Amiga-addressspace.
Quite! But this particular board used system ram and I/O via the Amiga's I/O... So I'm guessing that the 286 must have more access to the Amiga than most :)
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Lets not forget that. Its all about software, NOT hardware.
Some people define Amiga as "everything that has a Paula chip". So not everyone would share this view. Actually it is quite modern, because in a world that is dominated by GHz and virtual machines you can indded claim it is all about software.
To reach a certail level of cleanness and performance however, your software has to be written with the hardware in mind. You have to avoid things it can´t do very well and make heavy use of its benefits. At least this is what Amiga programmers tried to do.
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What would be minium requirements that A OS could competitor in mainstream market. That just in theory.
Hardware could be something like 600mHz, with cpu caches and with proper drivers. Video coding done by GPU.
Software needed is office suite, with possibility to use and save MIcrosoft office docs. Modern Web brwser, with suppor media streaming, working youtube etc.
Versatile selection of games, sport, driving, fps, rts etc, maybe couple of games for childrens.
All that could done with reletively cheap Digi TV box, wich has PPC cpu and other needed parts. Price less than 200€
Lack of latest graphical triks would be possible bypass with talented graphic designers. Like in old days, there are amazingly good looking games with 32 colors in 320x200 screen.
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And the history clearly shows why purists don't consider PPC machines to be "real" Amigas.
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Lets not forget that. Its all about software, NOT hardware.
In the late '70's, when buying a computer was still regarded as a very strange idea, the advice was to choose the software you wanted to use and then buy the hardware it ran on.
It was Supercalc that sold the Apple 2 not the other way round, if there had been software for the PPC it could have been successful, although it was expensive (like most Amiga hardware).