@Derfs Aaah... So it's just another poorly named thingy then? ;) Well, I guess that would be a good thing since I'm not that much about holding on to old stuffs. Even though it might have been cool to dust of my old Picasso IV again. Damn it was expensive back then. ;)

@Thread

Finally caught up with the end of the thread.

The RAM configuration suggests dual channel to me. Although 4GB address space is available to 32-bit cpus, (as has been discussed many times) only around 1.8-2GB (iirc) is available to AmigaOS (rest taken up by i/o, device addresssing etc).
To need 4 ram slots strongly suggests 64-bit - will be interesting to see how this plays out (eg 32-bit 0S4.1.x sandboxed in first 1.8GB address space, hosted in OS4.2 with access to 64-bit address space?

The multi-core nature seems to be more-or-less confirmed - again I'm looking forward to seeing how this is implemented (although EDF has been hinted at), and curious what the performance gain will be.

Thank goodness all those crappy PS2/serial/parallel ports are gone! If they're still needed for debug-logs, etc they should be left as headers on the motherboard - the average user doesn't need the real estate taken up on the ATX panel.

The info about Xena is tantalizing (thanks guys, just what I need - more anticipation!). I'd love to see a classic-hardware-emulation card being created for this (Natami/clone-A), but I sincerely hope that hardware emulation of classics will NOT be on-board the motherboard - why bother given the increased development costs/time that would bring?
In fact, I suspect this is what Xena is - a specialised bus for allowing additional CPU/chipset boards to be used for hardware emulation, allowing access to the motherboard resources (pci-bus, memory).

4 x SATA - Thanks guys, good to see you're dropping PATA - the real-estate costs are ridiculous in this day and age (motherboard space and cabling).

The audio is perhaps one of the most interesting parts - optical out and a 5.1 (or even 7.1?) terminal block. I can't believe no-one has mentioned this yet! Suggestive of surround-sound on the Amiga (dependent on AHI being updated to handle 5.1/7.1).

Gigabit ethernet will be a blessing, if indeed that is what is included.

There are a lot of headers towards the "front edge" of the board - front audio? front USB? front panel connectors? Well, that accounts for maybe half of them. Option jumpers maybe? Will have to wait to find out...

The large (non-hidden) chip behind the PCIe16 slot has got me confused though.
A southbridge or something (but I would expect that to be integrated into the cpu).
Surely not a pci controller (PCIe is directly routed to the CPU)
Looks way too big for a SATA controller.
A PCIe - PCI bridge maybe?
Not a GPU (no video out ports)

I like the overall design philosophy - keep it simple, stupid!
Looking at the teaser, the motherboard design is kept as simple as possible (ie no on-board video, no legacy i/o (except probably a serial header).

Everything else seems to be provided through expansion slots: Video, etc

I like it

@Rogue

You weren't kidding about not being disappointed by the specs, and we haven't even got them yet!

Last edited by Boot_WB on 03-Jan-2010 at 09:08 PM.

_________________
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opp., the vast majority who voted silently with their feet.