DDR2 SODIMM for Sam440-Flex?

[takemehomegrandma]

I concur. The "flex" Sam is a joke. Let's remove the VGA, still use obscure ram modules and overclock the same CPU, but jack the price up another 40 Euro. Why the hell has Hyperion not ported OS4 to the Efika? I hate to say it, but even with the low amount of ram, I'd readily buy one, if OS4 ran on it.

If they got OS4 to boot on the Pegasos2 through Genesi's firmware (which I believe they did), it wouldn't be a biggie to at least boot it up on the Efika as well.

Hans-Joerg Frieden himself:

"The Pegasos Firmware has something called RTAS (Run Time Abstraction Service) that makes supporting the chipset itself (for which I had zero documentation) quite easy. As the name implies, it is a part of the firmware that stays around and allows access to some of the features of the board without knowing the hardware."

Guess what - it turns out the EFIKA has the same Firmware! They probably already tried this long time ago, for curiosity if for no other reason.

It's not like I would need more, right now. I spend too much time doing art and music on my Hackintosh Lappy, which dual boots for all my needs.

Then wouldn't a port to Mac hardware be even better?

[takemehomegrandma]

amigadave wrote:

It would be great if during the alteration of the Open Firmware to get AmigaOS4.x working on the Efika,

You *don't* need to do any alterations to the firmware, that's the whole point! Think of it as a Hardware Abstraction Layer for the OS. :-) The RTAS (in Friedens quote above) is available in current firmware, both the Peg and Efika has it (and a few other boards).

Beyond that, Genesi has been working towards "AURA" (their "NG"/v2.0 firmware) for some time. I found an old post I wrote about this. If I understand things correctly it looks like AURA will make it easier and faster for hardware manufacturers bring various OS's to their hardware (and their products to the market), and easier for OS manufacturers to expand their hardware base for their OS's. Also read this if you want more info. BTW, AURA supports PPC, x86 and ARM.

they also unlocked the secret that would allow the installation of an additional 128mb of system RAM to it on the pads already provided on the underside of the Efika mobo.

Maybe that would motivate someone to unlock the OF for MorphOS to recognize the extra 128mb of RAM too!  (just dreaming)

It's not the firmware preventing you to solder another 128MB to your board, it's a hardware thing. They set up the Efika this way prior to production, and now we will have to live with it. It's not like hitting a secret switch in OF, a new production run of boards that's built with more memory is required. And I don't think that will happen. I think Genesi is 100% focused on the ARM right now.