Open source PPC laptop bounty

[Raffaele]

@bloodline and toRus:

If your little interest amount at least at one dollar, please consider donate it. It is very cheap amount of money but ny donation will help this fab project to reach its goal! You're welcome in this project!

Remember that the team will release any design and Gerber CAD files for free as they believe in Open Source movement.

[Raffaele]

Given that this is supposed to be an "open source" laptop how did you manage to get licenses to use Radeon and PPC/Altivec ? Last time i checked these were proprietary. If the only open source component is Linux , whats the point ? might as well stick with Intel , which also runs Linux ? This sounds like making a rod for your own back.

AW! Come on!

We already have Altivec software both on AmigaOS and MorphOS so there will be no problem porting it.

Linux Drivers of this machine will be available Open.
Any Amiga Developer enough skilled could made a port for AmigaOS or MorphOS of its Graphic Chip drivers.

What's the problem if Linux Drivers are reversed engineered from original proprietary ones?

This machine is a very interesting beast, more powerful than any Amiga ever, and people calculated its cost will be from 600 to 900 Euro (I talk personally with Mr. innocenti of the Laptop Project Team on about price) and the fact it sports Laptop design, it just means you need no extra money to buy case, memory modules, power supply and GFX card.

If Hyperion and/or MorphOS team will realize a porting of their respective Operating Systems we'll have the coolest fastest Amiga ever and it will be reasonably cheaper than X1000 or X5000!!!

It will be same price of AmigaONE (850 Euro at its launch) but with enormously more horsepower and remember it will need no extra money to assembling it in order to make it run!

I cannot believe you will renounce donating from 1 to 5 Euro for that. i is a very small sum suitable for any people's pocket, and you will keep a door open to Amiga too, and contribute maintaining the dream alive...

At least it is like playing your state Lotto but with chances to win in the orders of 1 to hundreds, instead than impossible 1 on 47 millions as any lottery jackpot.

[Raffaele]

I was thinking the same thing. Maybe I'm missing something but why do we want a Opensource PPC laptop? How is this an OpenSource PPC Laptop? Just because it runs Linux doesn't make it an OpenSource laptop in the way you are using the term.

This seems fraught with issues.

You must first build the computer and test it working with software in order to release the full design as Open Source...

At this moment the team almost decided the hardware components they want to use, ACube helped them to find the correct chip parts.

Now it is the moment to realize the first circuitry design and then assemble it for real in a PCB mainboard prototype.

You need weeks of hard job at Electronic CAD designing, and then hard work at manufacturing. This all requires money to repay the efforts. Or you believe a computer builds it all by itself?


If you want to help donating you are welcome.

If you think it is a fraud then stay on your own.


In the worst scenario that this project will remain just a Linux project, at least ACube will acquire the necessary know-how to realize a LapTop.

In the best scenario the Linux Laptop will be built and then Amiga Software Houses (Hyperion already announced they follow with interest this laptop project) will be free to decide to port their Operating System on it, and we will obtain brand new hardware up-to-date with modern specifications.

It is up to you decide.

If you want you may just donate only a single dollar.

I think you should have enough money to risk just a single dollar.

[Raffaele]

There are plenty of laptop/mobile computing projects for the Raspberry Pi, and as for running AOS4, this project doesn't do that either. It may never do that.

Unfortunately actually is just AmigaOS that is not running on Raspberry Toy neither on any ARM architecture and we don't know if it will be ever available for...

If you prefer using AROS instead of AOS then prego... You are welcome.

If you want to run AOS4, then you would be better served by getting a cheap pc laptop and running the latest WinUAE. That is perfect for emulting a PPC Amiga, and excitingly/upsetingly (depending upon your position), it runs faster than my actual BlizzPPC.

Any solutions that run any Amiga-Like OSes sitting on top of the virus called Windows are not solutions. NEXT!

And sincerely simply running faster than BlizzardPPC at 120MHz, not even yet emulating PPC FPU even on i7 beasts is sure a little satisfaction... You are flying low pal...

For example my satisfaction will be seeing AmigaOS running NATIVE on multiple GHz cores at fastest speed with multimedia streaming Altivec coporocessor. X1000 and X5000 are too expensive and still AmigaOS is single core. This still not fulfill my dreams. What a pity.

This project is for a low power Linux Box, the Raspberry Pi already does that for £30.

My consideration in your post ended when you compared CPU: NXP T208x, e6500 64-bit Power Architecture with Altivec technology, 4 x e6500 dual-threaded cores, low-latency backside 2MB L2 cache, 16GFLOPS x core, with Raspberry toy...

If only you used RasPi clones like PandaLatte (that is even Windows10 compatible) or OrangPi (that sports Mini SATA connector and has twice horsepower than Raspberry at 49 euro) as examples for anyday computing like Amiga with Amiga feel of use experience, I could had understood... But Raspberry is a little underpowered card computer... No surprise its price is so cheap.

[Raffaele]

Living in Europe (at least until the fascists push through their Brexit agenda), I am away of hardwarei could buy. But again I'm not prepared to waste valuable Apartment space on a TV for one purpose.

Sorry but why you asked then?

This Linux PPC laptop is little more than a vanity project, which offers us as Amiga users very little.

Actually is a project by people who think PPC architecture has still things to say in the world of information technology.
But instead to struggling and crying (as in our Amiga preferred sport) that there are no firms building PPC computers, they squeezed oil on their elbows, and start working to build one themselves.

These guys (as being Linux ans Open Source supporters and believers), made in two years what entire Amiga Community was not capable to made in the last 10 years (i.e. start the project, made 4 appearances at crowded linux meetings to promote the idea, set up a forum site to discuss how to build computer with the help of the users of various OSes, they reached a consensus on specs and electronic parts after listening various users requests, started a ONLUS -so are called no profit orgs in Italy- and in the end contacted ACube in order to be helped in manufacturing). Now they started the funding campaing.

I think they deserve respect not to be considered fancy vanitY.