First Contact : AmigaOne X1000 Limited Edition

[billt]

As someone else has probably already suggested, the drivers for the on-board sound and Ethernet are just not finished yet.

I suppose it could be a botched motherboard design and they don't work, but I think that is unlikely.  Drivers take time and effort to write and manpower is limited, so I would not panic yet.

I need to go back and read some previous pages of this thread, I don't know where this came from. But let's assume it's true, and that your list (ethernet, sound) of not yet working drivers is complete. (I'll assume that you'd list more if there were more to be listed)

If the board is botched, then thre would certainly be more things on your list. Sound is inside the sb600 southbridge, same as SATA, USB, and other things.

Though the SB600 does not include ethernet, so that's obviously a separate chip, and has some chance of a board defect independent of other board features.

I'll assume that they are NOT using the 10Gb XAUI inside the 1682M for the X1000 ethernet. I don't believe this is compatible to 10Mbit/100Mbit/1Gbit, and I do believe that they will have used all available SERDES pins for PCI-Express instead.

Drivers take time, that's why the board is not available for public sale. Beta testers will check this all works when available to them. They're probably using PCI/PCIe sound and ethernet cards that already have drivers until these new drivers are done, so they're not super-suffering. If they do find a board defect, that's what the beta program is for, they'll fix it and we the public won't suffer when final production boards are selling at our local Amiga internet store. Non-beta-testers like me don't need to care.

[billt]

Are you high, lol?  You would seriously pay that kind of money to fix what is inoperable at ship date on the mainboard that you have already paid for?  What if it turns out the MB stuff just doesn't work at a HW level, EVER?  What if the board is chock full of bad traces?  

That's what beta program is for, and they're already on rev 2.1 no? Yes, some people will point to Eyetech's boards as a bad example of such program. One potential bad example does not mean that everyone out there will also fail us. What is the established reputation of Varisys products?

As for why would any sane person buy a board that he has to buy duplicate functionality plugin cards for until the board itself has drivers completed, it's his choice to do so. We know the situation. We can either wait and buy when drivers are finished, or we can buy now and wait. You obviously would wait and buy later, and that's the correct choice for you. He obviously wants it ASAP, and buying it now, with additional expense of duplicated stuff, is correct choice for him. Let each of us make our own informed choices on this. I myself am willing to buy now and wait for drivers to finish, and that also is correct answer for me if I so choose it.

I wish Hyperion would just quit dicking around with this cobbled together newfangled/embedded HW lock in crap and just roll out OS 4 for the PPC Mac's.  Pains me to see them try and maintain some silly exclusivity nonsense with "built for OS 4" hardware that sees its' way into the hands of hundreds at best, not thousands.

I'd love to see it on my iBook G4. I'd prefer that to an X1000 or any other desktop. If it's this hard and takes this long to get out a custom Amiga-only desktop, I fear I'll never see an OS4 laptop available that suits me. I'm excited about MorphOS on powerBook, but I'd prefer it on the iBook I already have of course. I just wish they had two or three "mouse" buttons. I really hate only having one, even when running OSX. It's caused me problems before not having a second real button, the faked ctrl-click is a right-click (or left, I forget which way it goes now) doesn't always work properly for what I'm doing.

[billt]

I didn't know they still made 1 GB DDR2 sticks anymore, most of what I've been putting in desktops are 4 GB DDR3.  It's actually surprising that they boast about power consumption and then don't do DDR3.  Also surprising is the hard drive at only 500 GB.  Whilst I realise that there really aren't any modern apps and that memory is fine for the old software that's available, you are up in the champaign and caviar price range and it would look nicer in the specs to see a 3TB hard drive and at least 4 GB of ram, even if it isn't really used.

The Radeon graphics card introduced 3 years ago may be a little long in the tooth as well....

Newegg still sells PC100 sticks, PC133, DDR1, DDR2, as well as DDR3. They have 40 products meeting 1GB DDR2 desktop memory search.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=100007611%20600006060&IsNodeId=1&bop=And&SrchInDesc=ddr2&Page=1&PageSize=20

Do we know if this is a single stick or a pair of 512MB sticks for this kit? If it's 512MB sticks, then Newegg only shows one.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820146521

They cannot do DDR3. The 1682M has a built-in DDR2 controller. There's nothing to connect DDR3 memory to. They cannot do what is not possible. I can't find max memory capacity information for 1682M, I'll have to find and dust off my datasheet at home. But lets assume that any DDR2 slot can take any capacity DDR2 stick, and believe the X1000 spec on wikipedia saying there are 4 DDR2 1066 slots working correctly.

Newegg's largest DDR2-1066 stick is 2GB. 4 of them are 8GB max potential for X1000 in this example, if above assumptions are correct.

If you're willing to slow down to DDR2-800, then you can have a 4GB stick, for potential max of 16GB memory.

Anyone know what the actual capacity max is for 1682M and also X1000 in particular?

Though after all this babbling, I do think that 1GB for AmigaOS is a decent start today. I have 256MB in my XE, and plan to up it to 1GB if I can. (Already have some buffered 1GB sticks of a recommended model to try, just need time...)

As for Graphics card, is it not the newest we will have drivers for? Give Hans time to get to yet newer Radeons. I'd rather have a useful oldish Radeon than a newest of the new Radeon that has no driver and thus gives me a black screen only. To get a driver working well takes time, and for Hans to keep up with every new Radeon that comes out is a very big thing to ask of him.

[billt]

What can the X1000 offer me that my $400 G5 Powermac Quad Core can't?

It can run Amiga OS4.something, obviously. But you of course already know that. If that's not a requirement, then X1000 may not be of any use at all to you. I would guess it'll do that and anything else a good bit faster than your AmigaOne G4, but if that's also not a requirement then it's also maybe not useful at all for you.

[billt]

Well, the point is.. you would spend over US$2,600 for the X1000 at least and that cannot get you any audio nor networking capabilities on it ...

Again, this is a temporal phenomena which will clear up later. You're either willing to accept this and pay now, or you're not and wait to pay later with things do work. Your own choice.

(Eyetech never promised me that sound would ever come out of my motherboard at all, heck, they promised it would not, by leaving out a chip where it belonged, but now it does audio just fine. I'm patient like that)

I'm wondering if there's an option not to buy the huge case and extras for overseas buyers to save on import fees+shipping... didn't anyone at Hyperion mention that possibility?

This thread is about the "Limited Edition", which is a defined system kit specced out on the web page. If you want some configuration other than this defined "Limited Edition" kit, then you'll want to wait for some other configuration more to your satisfaction to become available. You may want the possibly upcoming "Caseless Edition", "Motherboard-Only Edition", or some other kit that someone will sell someday, if any of their definitions suit you.

[billt]

Maybe you do, but $10 says my G5 will smoke an X1000 on any benchmark (except perhaps 3D acceleration) - and I got it for 1/5th to 1/6th the cost of this "limited edition."

If my requirement of a system is to run OS4, then your cheapo G5 will be absolutely useless to me, and ths a complete 100% waste of money. Regardless of clock rates, number of cores, or whatever, the X1000 will smoke your G5 on all OS4 benchmarks. Yea, X1000 is more expensive, but at least I CAN use it for what I want to do.

(do understand that I'd very much prefer an L1000 (L for Laptop) and that I'd love to have OS4 on my iBook. That's not possible. Nore is OS4 on your G5 possible, for much the same reason.)

[billt]

Because the enemy got there first. Simple as that.

Hyperion was against porting to Mac PPC hardware LOOOOOONNNNNNNGGGGGG before MorphOS was on PPC Macs. The reason they gave publically was the absence of datasheets, register definitions, etc. to the public (ie. outside of Apple themselves) for some chips in Apple hardware. (ie. Apple designed northbridges and such)
http://amigamac.wikispaces.com/