Amiga.org
Amiga computer related discussion => Amiga Hardware Issues and discussion => Topic started by: asian1 on January 02, 2004, 02:54:34 PM
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Hello
On Dec. 21, 2003, Mai Logic had announced new
Articia I chipset for IBM PPC 970.
Will the next generation AmigaTwo based on
this chipset and IBM PC 970?
What is the release schedule for AmigaTwo?
Mai (http://www.mai.com/news&events/PressRelease122103.html)
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Not likely to happen.
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When are the Articia-Sa and Articia-P coming anyways?
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Hopefully there will be a future model with Articia I and the PPC 970 processor. I don't see why not, but I don't think it'll come very soon.
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hehe shame genesi ditched mai :)
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hehe shame genesi ditched mai :)
Yeah, real shame (http://www.marvell.com/press/pressNewsDisplay.do?releaseID=382)
Anyway, this is all academic, 970 (G5) is not going to happen for some time.
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hehe shame genesi ditched mai :)
Of course they did. When a shark bites off one foot, you don't dangle the other in the water later!
(Of course, unless you're in complete denial about losing the foot, and say it was caused by undocumented features of the sea and not by a shark. In which case you deserve the wheelchair.)
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>hehe shame genesi ditched mai :)
Yes, real shame if you chose Marvell that already delivers samples (http://www.marvell.com/press/pressNewsDisplay.do?releaseID=382) while others are still licencing
technology only.
:-D
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hehe shame genesi ditched mai :)
Its a shame companies like Eyetech still brown tongue Mai when better companies are out there, but nothing new though as all the professional Amiga companies left years ago.
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Can it all of you. We need to stop acting like children here.
Trolling is bad enough, but taking the bait is worse.
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I don't think anyone outside of Eyetech would know anything about the "AmigaTwo". It's probably far in the future, computer timewise. The have to get their MicroA1 out then there's the smaller A1 board they have talked about.
Best to ask Eyetech. It does look like there is alot of good possibilities out there for future board design. Only time will tell.
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asian1 wrote:
Hello
On Dec. 21, 2003, Mai Logic had announced new
Articia I chipset for IBM PPC 970.
Will the next generation AmigaTwo based on
this chipset and IBM PC 970?
What is the release schedule for AmigaTwo?
Mai (http://www.mai.com/news&events/PressRelease122103.html)
I think their main focus is ment to be getting a working OS for AmigaOne other than Linux!
I doubt they would be even thinking about AmigaTwo before AmigaOne users have been satisfied.
On the other hand, if MAI can get the new chipset out bug free, it could possibly be used for the Pegasos III!!!! :-)
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asian1 wrote:
What is the release schedule for AmigaTwo?
:)
Nah, make that a :D
Bother. I'll just c&p from ANN:
But there IS a "G5 Amiga" already, since almost half a year. Apple sold 667,000 PowerMacs last year, of which a sizeable chunk are G5 PowerMacs.
Oh... We have to pretend that there still are "Amigas", so someone has to buy a license to sell them under a meaningless "Amiga" trademark, bundled with AmigaOS and a dongle, and then we would only be allowed to buy our hardware from such a dealer? Sorry. How could I ever forget that?! ;)
(http://amigapop.8bit.co.uk/newamiga-small.jpg) (http://amigapop.8bit.co.uk/newamiga.jpg)
(clicky for Biggerer & Betterer)
Anyway, good news if anything will ever materialise from this PR. There can never be too many chipsets.
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Seehund wrote:
...
(http://amigapop.8bit.co.uk/newamiga-small.jpg) (http://amigapop.8bit.co.uk/newamiga.jpg)
(clicky for Biggerer & Betterer)
At least the AmigaOne costs less than a Terron board bought straight from MAI!
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iamaboringperson wrote:
At least the AmigaOne costs less than a Terron board bought straight from MAI!
And how much would that be ? And no we ain't talking bout an evaluation-board
with full developer-support......
And even those get an hefty price-drop by just ordering 2-5 boards, and
an unknown price for 6 and more. A number even an smaller Amiga-dealer
could easily handle.
@Argo
Eyetech just resel what MAI has developed, so they are far from being the best
source for info on the upcoming boards.
But lets be realistic (or overly optimistic if we look at the delays round ArticiaS/P).
MAI has just licenced those techs, and it will take atleast a year to get a minimal
working chip. Another 6 months to get a eval-board ready and cure the chips from
it's major flaws (and those will be there as they have have 0 experience in fast busses
and DDR-interfaces). 6 months for developing a retail-ready version of said eval-board
and to get OS4.x working on it.
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I'm a little surprised by the negativity here. It's not like it's an impossibility that there will be a G5 based Amiga in the future, and to not make plans now towards the future, is pure stupidity. And, "plans" in this case is sketches, remembering what was tough to bring forth with the A1 so that it can be avoided for the next time, etc etc etc.
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lempkee wrote:
hehe shame genesi ditched mai :)
As far as i know, they use marvel chips now instead of mai and marvel have had the licences to use this technology for months. Yer real shame.
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reflect wrote:
I'm a little surprised by the negativity here. It's not like it's an impossibility that there will be a G5 based Amiga in the future, and to not make plans now towards the future, is pure stupidity. And, "plans" in this case is sketches, remembering what was tough to bring forth with the A1 so that it can be avoided for the next time, etc etc etc.
I think one of the issues here, is that while there is no doubt that a PPC970 (I'm loathed to use the Apple G5 term) machine which is able to run OS4 will be available in the future. The question becomes when... MAI have not proven themselves to be very swift with products in the past, they will need to work triple time to restore confidence in them.
The offical "Amiga" technology is now generations behind the leading edge. Had the orginal machines been in such a position I would never have bought one.
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by Seehund on 2004/1/2 16:37:55
But there IS a "G5 Amiga" already, since almost half a year. Apple sold 667,000 PowerMacs last year, of which a sizeable chunk are G5 PowerMacs.
LOL! Don't forget to include C3 mobo and a Opteron mobo as AROS 1s. ;)
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dammy wrote:
by Seehund on 2004/1/2 16:37:55
But there IS a "G5 Amiga" already, since almost half a year. Apple sold 667,000 PowerMacs last year, of which a sizeable chunk are G5 PowerMacs.
LOL! Don't forget to include C3 mobo and a Opteron mobo as AROS 1s. ;)
hmmmm... an AROS1?? :-)
Like this I suppose (http://amiga.org/gallery/index.php?n=566)
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iamaboringperson wrote:
At least the AmigaOne costs less than a Terron board bought straight from MAI!
You mean the other way round, surely?
Recently Mai don't seem to want to acknowledge the currently available Terons; you might get the same reply as I did: try asking at eyetech.com (sic!)
Before this turn, they said $500 for an 800MHz G4 Teron PX (i.e. "AmigaOne XE"). That's also the same price as Terrasoft was going to charge before they dropped the Teron idea.
Eyetech's RRP for the boards when sold as "AmigaOnes" seems to be $800, and I see from the current amiga.org ad that Forefront is selling them for "only" $750. :)
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Seehund wrote:
iamaboringperson wrote:
At least the AmigaOne costs less than a Terron board bought straight from MAI!
You mean the other way round, surely?
Recently Mai don't seem to want to acknowledge the currently available Terons; you might get the same reply as I did: try asking at eyetech.com (sic!)
Before this turn, they said $500 for an 800MHz G4 Teron PX (i.e. "AmigaOne XE"). That's also the same price as Terrasoft was going to charge before they dropped the Teron idea.
Eyetech's RRP for the boards when sold as "AmigaOnes" seems to be $800, and I see from the current amiga.org ad that Forefront is selling them for "only" $750. :)
I'm getting my prices from here (http://mai.com/products/teron%20cx.htm)
$3,900 !!
I guess these other companies are getting theirs super super bulk!
:-o
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Hello ? Anybody outthere capable of understanding what the words
"evaluation board" mean ? In contrast to retail that ...
You pay 3500 for the dev-support, and 500 for the HW.
Just look at the price-plunge you'll get from the 3rd board on.
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It is very interesting, but..... do we really need G5 on our Amiga/Pegasos? In my opinion G3/G5 is enough... at least for a "resurrection".
I really love also have the dual-g4 module on my A1 :-) I'm a dual processor fan :-P
Anyway... G4 933Mhz clockable to 1,3Ghz is enough for me 8-)
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I think that Eyetech should make a new stand and new policy to get concentrate to the latest technology that is still in development if they do that hardware wouldn't be out of date. That would mean that by the time the new Amiga hardware and software would be ready it would still be in current trend, that would be OK. But further more new technologies emerge every day the main stream now would be mobile devices and mobile multimedia. That means Amiga Inc. could be successful with their direction at mobiles. At the same time there are technologies that are not coverd yet, like stream data, Java, some other standards covered by software, and there is big hole covering wide range of external peripherial devices, their protocols and standards. There should be some Bluetooth and IrDA support, FireWire. Support of services such are special news sites with important informations about weather, traffic conditions, latest business updates, etc. Would't you like such reports waiting for you when you get up in the morning, I know I do.
Amiga hardware should be more modulised. Ther should be the same(at least) arhitecture like A4000 was, here I mean exchagable processor cards, motherboard with all supportive chipsets, exchangable doughterboard with different number of common buses like PCI, AGP, etc. ranged from those with 2 and up to at least 7 ports for big expansions. All other things should be as standard as possible. If this would be done that waywe would be covered from the smallest Amiga ever to the biggest one that is still possible.
But for now I suggest that we buy what we can to support further develpment so we could get there and enjoy Amiga computers in near and far future.Maybe there would be one gadget that would make a difference even compared to better hardware - there should be flash disks to be used as bootable devices and Amiga would be operational in les than few seconds, I thint that would hel the most. There is a wide range of applications which can't stand few minutes of inoperative states after accidental terminations or failures and had to be up and working as soon as possible. I think Amiga would get a lot of new users that way. MicroA1 would make a very nice car multimedia center with some 16:9 LCD touchscreen.
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@DrFloppy
Eyetech has zero, nada, 0, niente in engineering resources, and I somehow
doubt that Alan has enough $$$ to change that.
All he can do is buy in what ever gets developed by MAI.
Even Apple with millions of sold unit, and billions in share-value has a rather
hard time just keeping up with what Wintel&AMD develop.
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@ikir
AmigaTWO will be a dual processor system. (That's what the number in the name stands for.) If AmigaOS starts to catch on again then we'll see about dual processor support. 8-)
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SamuraiCrow wrote:
@ikir
AmigaTWO will be a dual processor system. (That's what the number in the name stands for.) If AmigaOS starts to catch on again then we'll see about dual processor support. 8-)
Where do you get that from?
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Piru: (G5) is not going to happen for some time.
Not with Apple in the way, that's for sure. It cracks me up to hear people complaining about x86 and competition from Microsoft, when x86 chips run more operating systems than any other CPU in the world. No matter what hardware you use, you'll have to compete with SOMEONE. That's business.
Downix: Can it all of you. We need to stop acting like children here.
Aw, c'mon. You know Internet forums aren't a place for serious discussion. :-)
Argo: I don't think anyone outside of Eyetech would know anything about the "AmigaTwo". It's probably far in the future, computer timewise.
God, it still amazes me that people bought Amiga hardware so long before any software was available. OS 4 on AmigaTwo is a scary thought. Even an OS 3.95 would have been welcome!
Admit it, how many people would have turned down the opportunity to buy OS 3.95? Instead, we got $50 coupons...
On the other hand, if MAI can get the new chipset out bug free, it could possibly be used for the Pegasos III!!!!
OK, I haven't followed up on this, but wasn't the bug related to the VIA southbridge and not the MIA northbridge? Besides, I thought the southbridge was responsible for handling DMA, timers, and the hard drive controller.
Any way you slice it, somebody is denying responsibility... and VIA is still crap hardware (and I speak from plenty of experience).
But lets be realistic (or overly optimistic if we look at the delays round ArticiaS/P).
MAI has just licenced those techs, and it will take atleast a year to get a minimal
working chip. Another 6 months to get a eval-board ready and cure the chips from
it's major flaws (and those will be there as they have have 0 experience in fast busses
and DDR-interfaces). 6 months for developing a retail-ready version of said eval-board
and to get OS4.x working on it.
And remember, this was all done to make sure the Amiga had a supirior platform to the PC, because those evil x86 guys know nothing about making a good computer!
OS developers and Microsoft bashers should take notes...
reflect: I'm a little surprised by the negativity here.
Four years under the rule of Amiga Inc... and no products... will tend to do that.
The offical "Amiga" technology is now generations behind the leading edge. Had the orginal machines been in such a position I would never have bought one.
The original Amigas were fully working systems with both hardware and an OS ready at the same time. Just think what would've happened if you had to run a C64-type system on the Amiga 1000 a year before Workbench 1.0 arrived.
Nobody buys computers in parts. People want prebuilt systems. For every do-it-yourself computer built in the world today, how many Dells, Compaqs, and Gateways are sold?
DrFloppy: I think that Eyetech should make a new stand and new policy to get concentrate to the latest technology that is still in development if they do that hardware wouldn't be out of date.
The closest thing they can offer is a trade-in deal.
Given that the AmigaOne was shipped with a ROM, and not a flashable EEPROM, I think that should say something about the support commitment of Amiga companies these days.
Amiga hardware should be more modulised.
Try hiring someone to build such a machine, and you'll get quite a sticker shock. For years, companies have been working towards integrated systems. Now that many CPU engineers are putting northbridges into the CPU core, I wonder how long it will be before it becomes common practice to solder the CPU into the motherboard, therefore "matching" a CPU to a chipset and thus offering a "guarentee" for the best possible performance.
See? Amiga isn't as backwards as you might think! :-)
there should be flash disks to be used as bootable devices and Amiga would be operational in les than few seconds
The reason computers take so long to boot up is because of hardware tests and verification. So long as a system has to check to see if you've swapped your video card since the last time you boot up, systems will always take a minute or so to start. Instant boot times are possible only on highly integrated systems where the hardware configuration never changes and bootup times are absolutely critical, such as PDA's and cell phones. Desktop computers will probably always use sleep mode instead of an instant-on feature.
Finicky licenses and piracy concerns will probably cease any ability to boot from removable media. It's not really a technology issue.
For those who haven't figured it out, marketing and personal issues usually trump technology issues... even on Linux!
PS - I tried Gentoo Linux today, and I can't get it to boot. I boot from the CD, hit enter to start the kernel, and it locks up immediately with no feedback. This is the *NINTH* distro I've tried to install and run into a problem.
Any advice? :-?
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iamaboringperson wrote:
SamuraiCrow wrote:
@ikir
AmigaTWO will be a dual processor system. (That's what the number in the name stands for.) If AmigaOS starts to catch on again then we'll see about dual processor support. 8-)
Where do you get that from?
yeah i was thinking the same thing.. has it even been announced yet? at LEAST 2 years then :lol:
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Now that many CPU engineers are putting northbridges into the CPU core, I wonder how long it will be before it becomes common practice to solder the CPU into the motherboard, therefore "matching" a CPU to a chipset and thus offering a "guarentee" for the best possible performance.
Please recall “Cyrix GX” Media (X86) processor. We know that was a failure for the desktop market**.
There’s a limit before the 'all-in-one' solution is undesirable for the desktop market.
**It found a place within embedded X86 markets…
AMD has recently revisited Cyrix style ‘all-in-one’ X86 media processors under the "Geode" label…Refer to http://www.amd.com/us-en/ConnectivitySolutions/ProductInformation/0,,50_2330_9863,00.html
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The reason computers take so long to boot up is because of hardware tests and verification. So long as a system has to check to see if you've swapped your video card since the last time you boot up, systems will always take a minute or so to start.
BeOS could boot in 20 seconds or less, MorphOS boots in 5 seconds, both check the hardware. So, no thats not the reason bootup time takes so long.
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minator wrote:
The reason computers take so long to boot up is because of hardware tests and verification. So long as a system has to check to see if you've swapped your video card since the last time you boot up, systems will always take a minute or so to start.
BeOS could boot in 20 seconds or less, MorphOS boots in 5 seconds, both check the hardware. So, no thats not the reason bootup time takes so long.
It depends on the hardware. Some PCI hardware seems to take ages to return after it's been probed.
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Just to clarify things for those not aware, this is the situation between MAI and Eyetech:
MAI design Articia - Eyetech Buys chip - Eyetech contracts out board design to 3rd party far eastern design house.
Thats the way it has always been, MAI DO NOT design or manufacture Mobo's.
Rassilon
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Rassilon wrote:
Just to clarify things for those not aware, this is the situation between MAI and Eyetech:
MAI design Articia - Eyetech Buys chip - Eyetech contracts out board design to 3rd party far eastern design house.
Thats the way it has always been, MAI DO NOT design or manufacture Mobo's.
That's incorrect. All Terons so far were designed inhouse by Mai Logic themselves, this hasn't had anything to do with dealers like Eyetech or anybody else outside the Atum group. That goes for all of Mai's other boards as well (Mightron, Micro Server). AFAIK Bill Mueller doesn't live anywhere in the Far East...
What's happening in Taiwan is, of course, manufacturing of the physical boards.
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iamaboringperson wrote:
SamuraiCrow wrote:
@ikir
AmigaTWO will be a dual processor system. (That's what the number in the name stands for.) If AmigaOS starts to catch on again then we'll see about dual processor support. 8-)
Where do you get that from?
The "AmigaTwo" bit? I think it was originally Fleecy that mentioned something like that, way back during (or even before?) the "AmigaOne 1200/4000" days. I don't think it's all that relevant today. It's just a label waiting for a product.
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Seehund is right about the AmigaTwo label. It won't come out until the OS supports multiprocessing anyway. It looks like Amiga is going to persue asymmetric multiprocessing according to the Q/A sessions with Fleecy on AmigaWorld.net (which would require the Virtual Processor support of AmigaDE) so we'll likely not see the AmigaTwo label in use for some time.
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True and I'm aware of that, but I also said that we should buy available hardware to support future development, with some extra founds developer resources shouldn't be problem to get.
Amiga was interesting in the past because it was way ahead competition with technology almost 15 years before others, so to be again at the same place they would have to do things that are still sci-fi today and offer them tomorrow. The most improvement would be in interaction man-machine, new interfaces, new sort of I/O devices., hologramic screen would be OK, holodeck (from ST NG) would be the proper solution, but as I said Sci-fi today.
I also think we could be pleased if we get OS that would support stream data(video/audio), Java, some up to date web browser and some kind of Office packet (maybe Open office or Star office). Of course it would have to be compatible with latest MS office and I would be happy if there would be some great Video editing program on professional level as well as such hardware.
4xG4 Amiga with 4 GB DDR2(or better) RAM and some 7.1 Digital Audio System, firewire, bluetooth, IrdA and wireless ethernet would be great.
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Minator: BeOS could boot in 20 seconds or less, MorphOS boots in 5 seconds, both check the hardware. So, no thats not the reason bootup time takes so long.
I have BeOS R5 Personal installed on a Celeron 400, and it always takes 4 mintutes to boot up. All it takes is one piece of hardware to get in the way and your boot times are shattered. Anyone know how to get Be to show diagnostics when it's booting, so I can figure out why it takes so long to boot? It would be nice if it did the "press F1 for advanced mode", like many Linux distros do.
[EDIT]:
Turns out, BeOS and Linux didn't like my Zip drive. Once I put a blank disk in the Zip drive, Be boots up in 30 seconds, and Gentoo Linux doesn't lock up. I found out because Mandrake Linux (unlike Gentoo) prints a log as it boots, and told me hd0 was losing an interrupt, which meant my Zip drive (1st channel, master) was stalling the system. Windows always worked fine, though.
Of course, I decided to swap my IDE cable to put the Zip on the 2nd IDE channel, and the HD on the first channel, and now Be won't boot at all. It goes into kernel panic, shouts it can't find a Be partition, and dumps me into the debugger!
Eh, I thought Be sucked, anyway. I think I'll just dump it. I dont' see what all the fuss was about.
[/EDIT]
It depends on the hardware. Some PCI hardware seems to take ages to return after it's been probed.
Yes, and that's why today's computers don't seem to boot any faster than the computers released five years ago. My home computer takes about 40 seconds to get through the POST screen while it performs diagnostics. An IBM system I used to use at work, by comparrision, starts booting only 1.5 seconds after hitting the power button.
Like I said, it's all hardware tests, not raw speed, that determine bootup time.
It's also worth nothing that I've seen Windows2000 systems boot in 20 seconds, too, if they're clean and have really fast hard drives, like my WD 1200JB. :-D
4xG4 Amiga with 4 GB DDR2(or better) RAM and some 7.1 Digital Audio System, firewire, bluetooth, IrdA and wireless ethernet would be great.
Definately not from "A ROM BIOS is much better" Amiga Inc. :-)
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Thats the way it has always been, MAI DO NOT design or manufacture Mobo's.
What about designing the “reference motherboard”?
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As far as I am aware MAI contracted out the design of the reference motherboard. According to Alan Redhouse MAI have no board deisgn skills. they just design Chips. I believe that Eyetech use the same board designer for the modified Teron's (Seehund: Hope that makes you feel happyi.e.) Known as A1's.
Rassilon
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Rassilon wrote:
As far as I am aware MAI contracted out the design of the reference motherboard. According to Alan Redhouse MAI have no board deisgn skills. they just design Chips. I believe that Eyetech use the same board designer for the modified Teron's (Seehund: Hope that makes you feel happyi.e.) Known as A1's.
I hope Redhouse didn't say that. It would be untrue, and coming from a party with no motherboard design skills of its own it would IMO be even more insulting to Mai than that infamous "there's no Mai without April" pun.
Mai themselves (Bill Mueller and another Mai employee unknown to me) have done all of Mai's PCB designs. The Terons sold by one distributor do not differ from those sold by another, there are no Teron modifications designed for exclusive implementation by any one particular vendor. Regardless of whether the boards are eventually sold to end users as "AmigaOnes", "Dragon Servers", "Phoenixes", "Boxers" or whatever else they are/have been/will be marketed as, they're all the exact same hardware.
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>MAI Logic - Mightron & Micro server
MAI Logic promise to release the product in 2002.
http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0EIN/is_2002_August_13/ai_90327806
"The Mightron card is a generic PCI device, which comprises of a compact PowerPC system with the Articia series chipset, IBM's or Motorola's PowerPC processor, interrupt controller, on-module memory, and two Ethernet chips. It can either work with a low cost carrier board or be used as a stand-alone PCI device, which is an ideal platform to accelerate non-Wintel system development. Samples for the Mightron-S7410 card is expected to be available in the third quarter of 2002."
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What happen to Mightron PCI card or Micro Server PCI card?
Is it possible to port AmigaOS 4 to the above PCI cards?