UltimatePPC and everything else

[takemehomegrandma]

Not sure if this is another IWin/ACK/Troika (aka deliberate fake) or another ColdFire, BoXer,Brainstormer .... (aka someone completly out of his depths).

Amiga OS 68k has no need for PPC, and for the PPC OS:s the old 68k Amiga HW is a burden rather than a possibility. It's PowerUP all over again, 20 years after the era where something like PowerUP would have made sense (and probably without PowerUP/WarpUP as well...?)

[takemehomegrandma]

But having the PowerPC on the board brings a lot of peripherals to the "classic side" such as USB, SATA and network. You can choose to never use the PowerPC but just enjoy the expansions...

I'm not sure I understand; the SATA, USB and network is part of the PPC SoC, meaning you would have some kind of PPC OS (some kind of custom Linux?) transparently running on it to handle all this in the background, and then "relay" the data to the Amiga 68k side in some way? To me it sounds a bit expensive and over complicated way to get this kind of peripheral connectivity? You are using a FPGA, probably to "glue" it all togehter, but wouldn't it be better to simply "glue" some PCI-interface to the 68k and simply connect some standard controllers to this? Or perhaps even having the peripheral controllers inside the FPGA entirely?

As for the PPC part (as a "desktop" CPU, beyond being a "peripheral devices master controller") - I'm far from being the experts you are in these matters (I'm merely a user, so please forgive my ignorance), but from what I have read online, the FPU in e500/e500v2 is incompatible with the ones we have been using (in the e300, the e600, the  PPC4xx, the PPC7xx and the PPC970 for that matter), meaning it isn't really suitable for MorphOS/OS4/PowerUP/WarpUP and their existing software base?

And I'm sure a faster 68k would be preferred by most classic users, otherwise it would be a *down-grade* for most people...?

[takemehomegrandma]

Jason McMullan has said that if somebody gives him a Mac Mini he would be willing to add MorphOS compatibility to AROS-PPC.

Oh. :lol:

BTW, please define "MorphOS compatibility"...?

[takemehomegrandma]

beautiful project, but since there is no support from os4, morphos nor warpup or powerup soultion holders respectively i wonde3r why the choice fell for ppc? if starting clean from the scratch wouldnt some other processor choice be more promissing?

A good point, maybe something like the i.MX535! Would offer a lot of more, for a lot less, with an extremely low energy/heat profile! I'm sure there would be a way to bolt on the old Amiga HW to it somehow...

[takemehomegrandma]

@thread

the FPU in e500/e500v2 is incompatible with the ones we have been using (in the e300, the e600, the  PPC4xx, the PPC7xx and the PPC970 for that matter), meaning it isn't really suitable for MorphOS/OS4/PowerUP/WarpUP and their existing software base?

"addition of double precision floating point support. this is not compatible with any other PowerPC floating point unit, and in fact the instruction set overlaps with string and altivec instructions as well."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PowerPC_e500#e500v2

[takemehomegrandma]

Challenges yes but not huge challenges

Yes, a *huge* challenge! Adapting and porting the OS and all applications for this new platform (yes, you could consider this a platform change) and then *keep* this fork (of some 100 users or so) supported in parallel in the future, will be a big undertaking. And if you are about to consider this ISA-change anyway, you should as well consifering changing to some better, faster, future-proof ISA like the x86 (or ARM even).

Changing the PPC CPU in the design would be a far less of a challange...

[takemehomegrandma]

At least we are moving forward now, instead of being stuck with 199x hardware

:lol:

maybe in future this will be the compatible CPU and all currently in use PPC's will be the incompatible ones...

:lol: :lol:

[takemehomegrandma]

major components are - which was the point - that amiga projects benefit from open source, yet often give back very little.

good thing that other developers don't have the crappy amiga attitude to source releases,

And while I'm not demanding or expecting anything, buzz has a point. For someone who's doing some impressive work based on other people's code, you show remarkably less enthusiasm for opening the MorphOS code.

Source Code Releases

APDF    Download
Ambient    Download
Multiview    Download
VPDF    Download
    
ahi.device    Download
ahi-handler    Download
ascii.datatype    Download
asl.library    Download
binary.datatype    Download
c    Download
clipboard.device    Download
colorwheel.gadget    Download
commodities.library    Download
datatypes.library    Download
diskfont.library    Download
dos.library    Download
gadtools.library    Download
gradientslider.gadget    Download
intuition.library    Download
ixemul.library    Download
keymaps    Download
locale.library    Download
more    Download
realtime.library    Download
reqtools.library    Download
text.datatype    Download

http://morphos-team.net/downloads

There might be valid reasons for that (like ego, and the OS4 paranoia fed by said ego), but "open sourcing isn't neccessary" doesn't sound very convincing, coming from you

So I guess it's that "ego" and "OS4 paranoia" that brought Fab's MorphOS version of mplayer, as well as his own browser Odyssey (based on an OS engine, the browser itself is an application written from scratch) to both OS4 and AROS then? Without any demand for bounties, donations whatsoever? Hmm, very much ego and paranoia indeed...