Interview with A-Eon's Trevor Dickinson

[Iggy]

Thanks, maybe if Trevor offers one of the X2000 boards (or better two) to the MorphOS team they will consider it.
After all, they don't seem adverse to porting to the SAM460.

We'd probably get stuck with limited video card support though (R500 maybe).

Bounty to buy a beta board for a MorphOS developer?

[Iggy]

thanks for honestly outlining the situation, trevor.

Yes, this new board has been anticipated for awhile (and the earlier revision has already been seen by a few before).

[Iggy]

I am still surprised that there is still enough need for two high-prize machines after the X1000 is already sold to interested people. But he can do with his money what he wants to do.

Probably only one board offered with different processors.
I'd buy one.

[Iggy]

Lower priced variants of the processors Trevor intends to use will be available in about one year.
These two, the T1040 and T1042 are slower, but use the same e5500 core.

A board based on these might come in at Acube levels while outperforming the SAMs.

[Iggy]

Trevor does not want to make competition to Acube (even if he could). He will make it more expensive to protect Acubes hardware sales (he mentioned something like that)

Well then maybe someone else needs to pursue it.
But I'm not interested in this as an AOS4 machine.

[Iggy]

Bill Buck acheived a hell of a lot more for our community but he was driven away by the pitch fork weilding village idiots.

Bill would still be willing to do something for the community (which shows his forgiving nature).

[Iggy]

Bill Buck did.  For less money too.

I can confirm that.
While they have no stock amigakit.us still list PegasosII mainboards with a 1 GHz G4 processor at $461.70.

So more powerful than a SAM and cheaper.

Oh, and the OS was supplied.

[Iggy]

When I said Aros/Morphos/AOS4 I meant Aros OR Morphos OR AmigaOS 4 ...
Just as long it is cheap and it is called Amiga ...

Enter new users ...

Make it only AmigaOS 4 and make it expensive and there will be no new users ... But I wasn't clear , I agree ... Although new users may come for one camp only most of them will be at least curious about other camps ...

But it's gotta be cheap and called Amiga(something.something) ...

You've got a big stumbling block there, Hyperion.

[Iggy]

He's still quite willing to do it all again and release the mobo design under an open licence.

He's just not willing to fund it himself so there's a bounty on power2people website.

Can't be done, the design is not Rohs compatible.

I still think we'd be better off with a cheaper e5500 cored product.
Four cores @ up to 1.4 GHz.
That's four times the power of the fastest PegII CPU card.

[Iggy]

No , I don't think so ... Benjamin got you all a little bit to scared in 2005 and now everyone thinks that is the case.

Wrong. not scared, pissed and insulted by an inferior hack.

But stumbling block that exists is AmigaOS 4 users and I see no reason why
they would be the enemy ...

They never have been, just Bill, Ben, and his two German game programmers.

Trevor could make custom case keyboard and mouse , put G5 motherboard in there and Ben would be only to happy to let him port AmigaOS 4 to this new
A-Eon machine ... Sure , he would scream a lot but than he would have no choice , we could all buy it than and live happily ever after ...

G5s are dated, currently Trevor is very much right.
More powerful Qorlq based products are coming out.

If anyone is serious, we can start now by raising money.
Talk is cheap.
Motherboards with SMD components and several layers are not.

[Iggy]

All PPC is dead unless you're building a router or something like that ...
I don't hate Trevor's idea because it's Trevor's , I would hate your idea
to do the same thing even more because of the prior knowledge ...

Here's an idea :

Build a PCI-E PPC expansion card for Mac or PC , it would cost less
and you could run all NG oses on that machine ...

It would still cost more than used G4 Powerbook ...

Consider the highlight.
I was talking to Paul Gentle at about the same time Trevor (unknown to me) initially was (in my case about MPC8641/8640 SoCs, which Paul also had experience with).
And no, it wasn't Trevor's idea, it was McBill's and Ack Systems (they set the spec that the Nemo meets).
Paul, on the other hand, wanted to use Qorlq processors (and that is what the X2000 will be based on).
Don't assume you know what your talking about.
Our design was about 75% done (and oddly enough without knowing it used the same Southbridge as the X1000).
At the same time Bill Buck and at least two other parties were considering MPC8610 based boards .

What I respect is Trevor went to the right company, threw his own money in, and got it done.
And I'm really impressed with Paul Gentle.
I backed out when the estimated costs would have meant a second mortgage on my home.

And I don't care what you do or do not 'hate'.
Actions speak louder than words.

Don't want to join us?
You are free to use AROS.

PPCs have more than enough power for our demands and there is always ARM if the need to migrate occurs.

[Iggy]

Some people seem to have selective memory. Don't find the reference anymore but Buck hasn't all MorphOS developers, one of them even released Ambient under GPL as reaction.

Buck still has Andre Siegel.

[Iggy]

Well I'm speechless ...
Old Macs are good enough for me , Morphos is fast enough OS on G4 ...
And you're right , you clearly have much better idea about this than
me ... You will probably get less users than Trevor though , he has the
advantage of am Amiga name ... I'm really done now ...

Old Macs?
I've got four G4 PowerMacs (I promied to give two of them away), three partially disassembled Powerbooks, and an iBook.
You're damned right they are adequate.

And no, you're not done, we didn't talk about any of the projects on this site much.
Piru probably knew.
Andre Siegel now about my interest becuase we just exchanged messages.

And the design tasks for a project like this are horrifying.
I used to work for a company that designed its own 68K systems.
Easy stuff in comparison.
2 or 4 layer boards vs as many as 12.
Very careful calculation for lead length and tough considerations involving routing.
In substituting an ATI SB600 for the ULi Southbridge I basically had to consider every connection (ATI multiplexs several pins reducing pin count).

Then there's glue logic. No more simple dip devices, no you need an fpga.

And lots of the components are surface mounted (including the CPU).

So after its designed, it needs to be farmed out to a firm that can handle fabbing it.

A lot of people are using Chinese sources for this (even on small runs).

That, and the overprice processors makes it more expensive.

Anyway, the more I go back over this, the more I realize why I dropped it.
It is an over-priced option.

Anymore consideration, and I would be talking to Staf about an AROS bounty project.

[Iggy]

I am not currently working for Mr. Buck.

Sorry, I made that false assumption due to our contact related to power2people.

[Iggy]

The only thing I don't like is the probable lack of AltiVec. Otherwise great news, even if the price is not what we wanted.

Yep, the processors Trevor is considering (P5020 & P5040) lack AltiVec instructions.
There planed successors (T5020 & T5040) return them (even improve on them).
But the processors Trevor is considering already exist (at up to 2.2 GHz).