Articia I, AmigaTwo, 970

[HopperJF]

iamaboringperson wrote:

SamuraiCrow wrote:
@ikir

AmigaTWO will be a dual processor system. (That's what the number in the name stands for.)  If AmigaOS starts to catch on again then we'll see about dual processor support.  8-)

Where do you get that from?

yeah i was thinking the same thing.. has it even been announced yet? at LEAST 2 years then :lol:

[Hammer]

Now that many CPU engineers are putting northbridges into the CPU core, I wonder how long it will be before it becomes common practice to solder the CPU into the motherboard, therefore "matching" a CPU to a chipset and thus offering a "guarentee" for the best possible performance.

Please recall “Cyrix GX” Media (X86) processor.   We know that was a failure for the desktop market**.
There’s a limit before the 'all-in-one' solution is undesirable for the desktop market.  

**It found a place within embedded X86 markets…
 AMD has recently revisited Cyrix style ‘all-in-one’ X86 media processors under the "Geode" label…Refer to http://www.amd.com/us-en/ConnectivitySolutions/ProductInformation/0,,50_2330_9863,00.html

[minator]

The reason computers take so long to boot up is because of hardware tests and verification.  So long as a system has to check to see if you've swapped your video card since the last time you boot up, systems will always take a minute or so to start.

BeOS could boot in 20 seconds or less, MorphOS boots in 5 seconds, both check the hardware.  So, no thats not the reason bootup time takes so long.

[bloodline]

minator wrote:

The reason computers take so long to boot up is because of hardware tests and verification.  So long as a system has to check to see if you've swapped your video card since the last time you boot up, systems will always take a minute or so to start.

BeOS could boot in 20 seconds or less, MorphOS boots in 5 seconds, both check the hardware.  So, no thats not the reason bootup time takes so long.

It depends on the hardware. Some PCI hardware seems to take ages to return after it's been probed.

[Rassilon]

Just to clarify things for those not aware, this is the situation between MAI and Eyetech:

MAI design Articia - Eyetech Buys chip - Eyetech contracts out board design  to 3rd party far eastern design house.

Thats the way it has always been, MAI DO NOT design or manufacture Mobo's.

Rassilon

[Seehund]

Rassilon wrote:
Just to clarify things for those not aware, this is the situation between MAI and Eyetech:

MAI design Articia - Eyetech Buys chip - Eyetech contracts out board design  to 3rd party far eastern design house.

Thats the way it has always been, MAI DO NOT design or manufacture Mobo's.

That's incorrect. All Terons so far were designed inhouse by Mai Logic themselves, this hasn't had anything to do with dealers like Eyetech or anybody else outside the Atum group. That goes for all of Mai's other boards as well (Mightron, Micro Server). AFAIK Bill Mueller doesn't live anywhere in the Far East...

What's happening in Taiwan is, of course, manufacturing of the physical boards.

[Seehund]

iamaboringperson wrote:

SamuraiCrow wrote:
@ikir

AmigaTWO will be a dual processor system. (That's what the number in the name stands for.)  If AmigaOS starts to catch on again then we'll see about dual processor support.  8-)

Where do you get that from?

The "AmigaTwo" bit? I think it was originally Fleecy that mentioned something like that, way back during (or even before?) the "AmigaOne 1200/4000" days. I don't think it's all that relevant today. It's just a label waiting for a product.

[SamuraiCrow]

Seehund is right about the AmigaTwo label.  It won't come out until the OS supports multiprocessing anyway.  It looks like Amiga is going to persue asymmetric multiprocessing according to the Q/A sessions with Fleecy on AmigaWorld.net (which would require the Virtual Processor support of AmigaDE) so we'll likely not see the AmigaTwo label in use for some time.

[DrFloppy]

True and I'm aware of that, but I also said that we should buy available hardware to support future development, with some extra founds developer resources shouldn't be problem to get.
Amiga was interesting in the past because it was way ahead competition with technology almost 15 years before others, so to be again at the same place they would have to do things that are still sci-fi today and offer them tomorrow. The most improvement would be in interaction man-machine, new interfaces, new sort of I/O devices., hologramic screen would be OK, holodeck (from ST NG) would be the proper solution, but as I said Sci-fi today.
I also think we could be pleased if we get OS that would support stream data(video/audio), Java, some up to date web browser and some kind of Office packet (maybe Open office or Star office). Of course it would have to be compatible with latest MS office and I would be happy if there would be some great Video editing program on professional level as well as such hardware.
4xG4 Amiga with 4 GB DDR2(or better) RAM and some 7.1 Digital Audio System, firewire, bluetooth, IrdA and wireless ethernet would be great.

[Waccoon]

Minator:  BeOS could boot in 20 seconds or less, MorphOS boots in 5 seconds, both check the hardware. So, no thats not the reason bootup time takes so long.

I have BeOS R5 Personal installed on a Celeron 400, and it always takes 4 mintutes to boot up.  All it takes is one piece of hardware to get in the way and your boot times are shattered.  Anyone know how to get Be to show diagnostics when it's booting, so I can figure out why it takes so long to boot?  It would be nice if it did the "press F1 for advanced mode", like many Linux distros do.

[EDIT]:
Turns out, BeOS and Linux didn't like my Zip drive.  Once I put a blank disk in the Zip drive,  Be boots up in 30 seconds, and Gentoo Linux doesn't lock up.  I found out because Mandrake Linux (unlike Gentoo) prints a log as it boots, and told me hd0 was losing an interrupt, which meant my Zip drive (1st channel, master) was stalling the system.  Windows always worked fine, though.

Of course, I decided to swap my IDE cable to put the Zip on the 2nd IDE channel, and the HD on the first channel, and now Be won't boot at all.  It goes into kernel panic, shouts it can't find a Be partition, and dumps me into the debugger!

Eh, I thought Be sucked, anyway.  I think I'll just dump it.  I dont' see what all the fuss was about.
[/EDIT]

It depends on the hardware. Some PCI hardware seems to take ages to return after it's been probed.

Yes, and that's why today's computers don't seem to boot any faster than the computers released five years ago.  My home computer takes about 40 seconds to get through the POST screen while it performs diagnostics.  An IBM system I used to use at work, by comparrision, starts booting only 1.5 seconds after hitting the power button.

Like I said, it's all hardware tests, not raw speed, that determine bootup time.

It's also worth nothing that I've seen Windows2000 systems boot in 20 seconds, too, if they're clean and have really fast hard drives, like my WD 1200JB.  :-D

4xG4 Amiga with 4 GB DDR2(or better) RAM and some 7.1 Digital Audio System, firewire, bluetooth, IrdA and wireless ethernet would be great.

Definately not from "A ROM BIOS is much better" Amiga Inc.  :-)

[Hammer]

 

Thats the way it has always been, MAI DO NOT design or manufacture Mobo's.

What about designing the “reference motherboard”?

[Rassilon]

As far as I am aware MAI contracted out the design of the reference motherboard. According to Alan Redhouse MAI have no board deisgn skills. they just design Chips. I believe that Eyetech use the same board designer for the modified Teron's (Seehund: Hope that makes you feel happyi.e.) Known as A1's.

Rassilon

[Seehund]

Rassilon wrote:
As far as I am aware MAI contracted out the design of the reference motherboard. According to Alan Redhouse MAI have no board deisgn skills. they just design Chips. I believe that Eyetech use the same board designer for the modified Teron's (Seehund: Hope that makes you feel happyi.e.) Known as A1's.

I hope Redhouse didn't say that. It would be untrue, and coming from a party with no motherboard design skills of its own it would IMO be even more insulting to Mai than that infamous "there's no Mai without April" pun.

Mai themselves (Bill Mueller and another Mai employee unknown to me) have done all of Mai's PCB designs. The Terons sold by one distributor do not differ from those sold by another, there are no Teron modifications designed for exclusive implementation by any one particular vendor. Regardless of whether the boards are eventually sold to end users as "AmigaOnes", "Dragon Servers", "Phoenixes", "Boxers" or whatever else they are/have been/will be marketed as, they're all the exact same hardware.

[asian1]

>MAI Logic - Mightron & Micro server

MAI Logic promise to release the product in 2002.

http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0EIN/is_2002_August_13/ai_90327806

"The Mightron card is a generic PCI device, which comprises of a compact PowerPC system with the Articia series chipset, IBM's or Motorola's PowerPC processor, interrupt controller, on-module memory, and two Ethernet chips. It can either work with a low cost carrier board or be used as a stand-alone PCI device, which is an ideal platform to accelerate non-Wintel system development. Samples for the Mightron-S7410 card is expected to be available in the third quarter of 2002."

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What happen to Mightron PCI card or Micro Server PCI card?

Is it possible to port AmigaOS 4 to the above PCI cards?