Pegasos advise

[steven]

  Hi guys. New on here but was after some help with an item i'm thinking of buying.

It's listed as:
Pegasos 1 computer - a dream setup for Amiga fans


An Pegasos 1 package with

* 600MHz G3 processor
* professionlay put together in Mini ATX case
* last of the CeBit units I purchased 4 years ago

- 256 Megs RAM
- 40 Gig HD
- slot loading DVD drive
- ATi Radeon 7500 card with TV out (the best card for a Pegasos 1)
- Morphos 1.41 pre-installed

* Absolutely minimal use for 'chillout' sessions


A really nice setup - you supply keyboard, mouse & monitor & enjoy...


** please note monitor, keybaord & mouse are NOT included


  Is this considered a true amiga? and would you say it's a good "getting back into" point? my last was an amiga 500 back in their day.

  Any info or comments would be greatly appreciated.

  Steve

[whiteb]

Pegasos 1 is Okayish, but its Greatest Achilles-heel was the northbridge chipset, before laying out serious dosh, I'd find out from the seller (Yes i know its ebay) what VERSION it is.

The MAI Logic Northbridge has SERIOUS bugs, LATER versions had a bugfix (Called "April"), and then "April 2".  The bugs were related to RAM and DMA ? i believe.

[steven]

i have read about that,
Later versions of the Pegasos I came with a hardware fix which was designated "April". Further improvements were made in an "April 2" design which solved further problems. It has been replaced by the Pegasos II.

 Is that still available to fix or was it just in later releases?

Also, will this be usefull to me at all, can i get software etc??

  Sorry for the stupid questions.

 Steve

[whiteb]

steven wrote:
i have read about that,
Later versions of the Pegasos I came with a hardware fix which was designated "April". Further improvements were made in an "April 2" design which solved further problems. It has been replaced by the Pegasos II.
 Steve

I have emailed the seller for ya , its an April 1..

I have decided i do not want it (I was thinking of slapping a nice proxy bid on it)

But as I said, it IS an April 1, not April 2. (Seller told me its 1A1, Pegasos April 1).  

Why dont I want it ?, Its dependant on running software that DOESNT take over the system, that counts out MOST games.., so you need E-UAE to run games, so why not just run Winuae.

[Lando]

whiteb wrote:

steven wrote:
i have read about that,
Later versions of the Pegasos I came with a hardware fix which was designated "April". Further improvements were made in an "April 2" design which solved further problems. It has been replaced by the Pegasos II.
 Steve

I have emailed the seller for ya , its an April 1..

I have decided i do not want it (I was thinking of slapping a nice proxy bid on it)

But as I said, it IS an April 1, not April 2. (Seller told me its 1A1, Pegasos April 1).  

Why dont I want it ?, Its dependant on running software that DOESNT take over the system, that counts out MOST games.., so you need E-UAE to run games, so why not just run Winuae.

Indeed.  If you just want to run old Amiga games then there's little point in buying a Pegasos over a cheap PC.

The Pegasos isn't really meant as a device for playing Amiga games - Like you say, WinUAE already has that covered.  It's a good upgrade for people who have expanded classic Amigas with graphics cards and accelerators or for people who don't own an Amiga but would like to run Amiga applications, or those who just want to try something different.

[magnetic]

Whiteb

If you are looking to play games yes winuae is cheaper. However, with the PEgasos you can run Linux as well as Mac OS 9 + X. Not only that but if you like the Amiga os feel,  you get that with Morphos and Ambient and get to use familar software and lots of new and mostly free stuff.

magnetic

[whiteb]

My thought is... if i am gonna pay AU$500 (which is what i suspect the Pegasos will go for), then i will put it toward a Dualcore AMD system when the DDR2 core is released next month and *REALLY* make Winuae fly.

Besides, my A4000/060 will suffice for now (especially when my picasso finally arrives from Austria).

[krize]

The pegasos 1 is a beta development board, get the proper Pegasos 2 board!

[Piru]

@steven

Is this considered a true amiga?

Well, it doesn't run the amiga games (floppy ones) out of the box, so in that sense it isn't. It does run many amiga applications/OS friendly games and it's exactly like high end amiga system with gfxcard and accelerator, except that's even faster. Pegasos doesn't have any amiga custom chips in it, so naturally it won't run any HW hitting apps/games/demos, except though UAE.

and would you say it's a good "getting back into" point? my last was an amiga 500 back in their day.

It depends on what you want to do. If you're just about to do some gaming, I'd recommend WinUAE like others. WinUAE is cheap and relatively easy to set up. If you get interested about desktop use aswell, you can still "practice" that on WinUAE setup.

Once you've played with WinUAE enough you'll also know if you want to get more involved, maybe even get some real hardware. Then you can reconsider Pegasos. However, I'd recommend Pegasos II, it's the later revision of the board and is faster and more reliable.

[pVC]

The Pegasos Book (http://thepegasosbook.wikipeg.org/) contains almost everything you need to know about Pegasos. So download and read it

I myself have Pegasos1. It is nice machine for Amiga users, but if you can afford, go Pegasos2 instead. Pegasos1 has some small things which don't work as well as on Peg2. Like little sound distortion when using 3D acceleration, picky for memory units, Linux distros and Mac-on-Linux is easier on Peg2, not so polished Forth support in OpenFirmware, slower than Peg2 (but still lightning fast compared to classic Amigas)... but if you can live with those and get Peg1 really cheaply, it's certainly is a nice computer. But as others said, it's not for old Amiga games, it's for Amiga apps

BTW, there is now 3D support for better gfx cards for Peg1 too. Radeon 7500 is really nice, but I'm not sure if it's the best anymore

[InTheSand]

Piru wrote:
If you get interested about desktop use aswell, you can still "practice" that on WinUAE setup.

And don't forget - if you want an Amiga-ish experience on PC hardware, be sure to look at AROS.

 - Ali

[itix]

@steven

Is this considered a true amiga?

Nope. It is not one of original Commodore-Amiga machines but faster than any original Amiga.

and would you say it's a good "getting back into" point?

It is not the best possible Pegasos but being G3/600MHz it doesnt have CPU fan and is silent. If you are interested to run Amiga apps mostly it is ok setup.

@whiteb

Its dependant on running software that DOESNT take over the system, that counts out MOST games.., so you need E-UAE to run games, so why not just run Winuae.

I agree. I had Peg1 and have Peg2 now but if you intended to run those games WinUAE is just better.

[CLS2086]

I agree. I had Peg1 and have Peg2 now but if you intended to run those games WinUAE is just better.

Me too, but for those WB friendly apps/games it's faster than WinUAE or as fast as a high end Athlon 64. I also have a Peg1 April1 G3+640Mb, Peg2 rev1.2 G4 +512Mb.
E-UAE is still in progress (thanks to Fab ;-) ).

My advice :
As you could have guess by the replies here, You can buy it and resell it later quickly  :-D .
Ask the seller to install MOS 1.4.5, 3D update v2, Poseidon v3.3, Mui 4.0, Installer v44.xx, etc...  :-).  The best card

The big problems there are on Peg1 April 1 :
- few compatible SDRAM sticks, but high end simms goes well
- could have a MAC Adress of 00:00:00:00:00.... but a cheap PCI card based on a RTL 8139 chipset (like AIX systems ^_^ ).
- don't move your mouse when initialising the machine !
- don't plug some MassStorage device when initialising the machine !
- some Radeon card have an imcompatible bios

Up to you !