Troika and Guru Meditation disclose cooperation (Update)

[System]

On the occasion of the British event Big Bash, the Swedish dealer Guru Meditation and the young hardware smiths Troika disclosed their cooperation in the development of the mini-ITX PowerPC board "Amy'05". The aimed production costs per board lie under 400 British pounds (around 590 Euros).

Meanwhile, Troika presents itself on the web with a new homepage, which, apart from remarks about the previous history of the project "Prometheus," which is now designated as "Amy," also specifies more components of this board than those known so far. However, the prototype that was announced for the event in Peterborough is no longer completed on time.

The specifications of the planned PowerPC board:

• Processor: PPC 750Fx processor with Active (fan) cooling. Soldered directly to motherboard.
  
• Northbridge: Tundra Semiconductor TSI107 Northbridge device. This provides access to SDR RAM memory and the PCI bus amongst other things.
  
• Ethernet: RTL8110 Gb/100/10 Ethernet controller.
  
• USB 2.0: 5 x High Speed USB 2.0 ports: 3 rear connectors, 2 front connectors.
  
• ATA 100/133: Sil0680 ATA133 controller. Supports 2 channels (4 devices). Full ATA 100/133 transfer rates, DMA bus mastering and RAID (Raid is dependent on OS drivers).
  
• Audio: CMI8738 6-channel 5.1 surround sound with audio headers. Support for Line In, microphone (Analogue) and SPDIF (digital input).
  
• PCI slot: 2 x 33 Mhz, 32bit.
  
• SDRAM: 2 x DIMM memory slots (REG PC133 SDRAM. Max of 1GB)
  

Update:
According to a message from the developer, differently from stated, the upper limit of 400 British pounds should not be about the production costs, but about the end user price.

Original : http://www.amiga-news.de/en/news/AN-2005-09-00125-EN.html

[InTheSand]

Great news... but....

It's still too expensive IMHO... £400 is not "low cost". I realise the cost of small production runs pretty much rules out "low cost" in the real sense of the word, but spending NZ$1000 on a purely hobbyist platform is not something I can do.

Looks like my classic hardware will continue to suffice, along with WinUAE and AROS.

Just my 2c worth...

 - Ali

[Dr_Righteous]

Price is still way too high... Especially with such limited expansion capabilities.

Try again folks. Next time try this on for size:
FULL ATX BOARD
CPU slot designed for Sonnet Encore/ST G4
5 PCI (AGP would be nice, but we CAN do without it)
2 USB
2 Serial
1 Parallel
2 IDE Interfaces
2 RAM banks
NO built-in video, sound, network or other built in costly crap we can use cheap existing PCI cards for.

Betcha that board can be made for 400USD instead of 400GBP!

[TheMagicM]

$590EU = $710 US$...   :-o  :-o  :-o  :-o  :-o

ODW = $799  US$ ....

[Dr_Righteous]

I will say this, it IS cheaper than A1.

[Lemmink]

Betcha that board can be made for 400USD instead of 400GBP!

Nope. I guess it would cost nearly double the price of the current Troica board.
Belive me, those guys arent stupid, if this could be realised for such a low price they sure would have done this.
It might be hard to accept for some people, but this is about the pricetag that is attached to any homebrew motherboard projekt. There will be absolute no cheaper Amigamotherboard made in many years to come, if you don`t go into the direction of massproduced embedded systems that run OS4 "by accident" but only have about the CPU power of an old CSPPC.

[JoannaK]

Lemmink: Etl all.. Have any of you ever designed/made even single board yourself... Or at least having even some basic knowledge of real-world PCB-design and manufacturing?

I'm asking this cause I'm grown highly bored to all of these nonsense comments that people post on various forums. Each and every time someone pre-announces a new 'Amiga' system (or some Turbo-board) there's allmost identical discussion... Never have I seen any Real and verifiable facts (like production/parts costs) been mentioned...

Ah well.. Perhaps I do expect too much from still remining Amigians.

[restore2003]

@JoannaK:

Why dont YOU design a full featured MB for under $400 then if your so bored?

[Piru]

@restore2003

That is exactly what Joanna has done.

Not that you care, or anything.

PS. And before anyone asks: No those boards won't run OS4... :-)

[cv643d]

The price is a bit high I think. But buyers who really wants a new "Amiga" will probably buy it.

Its to bad AmigaOS is stuck on PPC. If it was open and x86 we could use it on 386-486 to modern computers. I remember back in 1998 when I upgraded to a Pentium233. I thought, wouldnt it be cool if I could run 3.1 on my old 486.

[TheMagicM]

cv643d..

get AROS..

[JoannaK]

Piru: Yep. Past tense.. Last boards I did were couple MPC5200 based systems (quite comparable to Genesi Efika, but we were there allmost a year earlier) at spring 2004 ..

Anyhow.. I'm likely to leave it all behind for now. I'm in University at the moment, and It'll be possible I choose another career path after I get my Msc ...  :idea:

[Offa_]

@JoannaK

It should be added at this point that the price concerns not only the board, but also the operating system. I won't pretend to know if the pricing is fair though.

[amipal]

@cv643d

Its to bad AmigaOS is stuck on PPC. If it was open and x86 we could use it on 386-486 to modern computers. I remember back in 1998 when I upgraded to a Pentium233. I thought, wouldnt it be cool if I could run 3.1 on my old 486.

And then Hyperion would have to support every single x86 motherboard out there. The way it is now, they only have to deal with a very small selection.

IMHO, the Troika board gives most users what they wanted: an OS4-capable board which is cheaper than the current systems and doesn't use the Articia chipset.

[Prmetime]

The one thing I am confused about is the graphics.  There isn't any mention of a chip on the motherboard and there also isn't a typical graphics card slot.  So is the PCI slot the only way to get graphics output?