Amount of MorphOS copies sold

[Darrin]

No way to count the cheap bastards that don't mind rebooting every 30 minutes.

Or the even cheaper bastards with hacked copies.

[Darrin]

Another way to look at the graph is that the number of Morphos registrations has almost doubled during the last 2 years.

Or you could say that more people will by an OS if they can actually have some hardware to run it on.  

[Darrin]

Ha! That's hitting the nail on its head. before Mac support, you had a choice between the Pegasos and the Efika (the later underpowered and with limited memory, the former out of production for the last five years).
And Macs are cheap or free so its easy to try the Os and then buy it if you like it (a pretty good marketing method).

Yep, I have an Efika and the reason I haven't purchased a copy of MorphOS is because it is too underpowered to use it properly.  Shame really because it is such a tiny board.

[Darrin]

I do not understand why Genesi didn't give that board more memory or make the memory upgradable.

That was my only gripe about the board.  I can understand the lack of CPU power because it was a low-end board based on what was available on the market at the time and meant to be cheap to encourage sales.  However, the surface mounted memory with no expansion option was a real design blunder.

I think that at the end of the day it was a board designed for simple automated business use (cash registers, monitoring devices, etc) and not really for a home user running applications on a modern OS.

[Darrin]

I got into a big argument with one of Genesi's employees while trying to find the answers of why the memory on the Efika could not be added to (as there are solder pads on the bottom of the board just for that purpose).  It took almost a week of heated forum postings back and forth to come up with the correct answer (in fact it took a phone call from Bill Buck directly to me at my home to get a straight answer), and the answer was that the firmware of the Efika would have to be modified to have any added RAM recognized and Genesi would not do it without being paid.  Nor would they produce any new Efika boards with more RAM installed at the factory unless at least 300 boards were ordered and the price of these 300 upgraded Efika boards would naturally be higher due to the increased amount of RAM installed and the work required to re-write the firmware to recognize the added RAM.  The correct RAM that could work with the Efika was said to be difficult to find, which I find to be an odd statement, but suppose it could be true.  The Efika board was designed to be able to accept up to 512mb of RAM (in theory), but I don't know if any samples of the board were ever produced with that amount of RAM.

It would be great (although it would be against the terms of use, or what ever the legal term is for the rules that the board was sold with, to alter the firmware, or reverse engineer it) if some person or group would figure out how to alter the Efika's firmware to recognize 128mb, or 256mb of added RAM and find the correct RAM chips to solder to the provided solder pads on the bottom of the board, but it probably will never happen.

The CPU is not too slow for running MorphOS2.x, it is the limit of only 128mb RAM and the slow USB1.1 that are the worst features of the board.  The IDE controller is also not the greatest either, but for many uses the Efika running MorphOS2.x is fine, for a low end system.  It is comparable to other MorphOS2.x systems, like the difference between an stock A500 and a souped up A4000 w/68060 & 128mb RAM.

Cheers Dave for that interesting information.  

Damn, it is frustrating to know that the board "could" be modiefied into something more useful.  Hell, I had AmigaKit solder extra RAM onto my Minimig v1.1 and some people (braver and more skilled than me) have done it themselves.

[Darrin]

Wow, that IS interesting. That was a pretty straight forward answer (typical of Bill Buck contrary to what many have said about him).

So there might be answer to this if someone can make sense of the firmware.
The hardware doesn't intimidate me. Can anyone let me know what chips the Efika uses. Can I assume the pads on the bottom of the board are the same as the pads the existing memory is soldered to? Are there any gates, buffers, resistors, capacitors or other components that need to be added along with the memory.
I look into the hardware, then all we need is someone who can enable the extra memory via the firmware.

I assume the board will still work OK (as a 128MB board) with the extra memory installed so maybe we ought to explore this.

If nobody gives you an answer in 3 weeks then PM me and I'll check my board.  I'm on a business trip at the moment so I don't have access to it and if I called my wife to look for me then I wouldn't trust her answer.

[Darrin]

I can understand that. I can just picture trying to get my wife to identify and read the proper numbers off a board's memory myself and in my mind it comes off looking like a modernized episode of I love Lucy.

If no one PMs me, I'll get back to you. This interests me. I find it difficult to believe the memory would be hard to source.

I had a quick look online, here's the motherboard and you can see the two surface mounted RAM chips between the CPU and the IDE connector (The Samsun chips - looks like K44511638C-UCB3, but I wouldn't bet on it):
http://lib.store.yahoo.net/lib/directron/efikaabove.jpg

Here's the reverse side with the pads for 2 additional chips:
http://www.ppcnux.de/public/efika/efika_bottom.jpg

[Darrin]

@ Haywire:

At last, a sensible post!