@Raffaele

Reflect on what has gone before .

Remember that combined AmigaOS 4.x/MorphOS have seen at least 12 motherboard designs between them thus far .Two of those twelve are not on sale yet.

Last edited by Spectre660 on 04-Nov-2015 at 03:21 PM.

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Sam460ex : Radeon Rx550 Single slot Video Card : SIL3112 SATA card

@Raffaele
The only thing that can save Amiga is porting it to a more affordable architecture like x86/x64.
And the one thing that is stopping that from happening is that hyperion only has a license for the PPC platform.
Would be a better idea to talk to Amiga INC and find out how much money is needed for them to sell Amiga OS completely or at very least give us a license that allow for other architectures.

@Tomas

Quote:

Would be a better idea to talk to Amiga INC and find out how much money is needed for them to sell Amiga OS completely or at very least give us a license that allow for other architectures.

"us", that means whom? except maybe those who applaud just anything they think is coming from legitimate "amiga", almost everybody has a different concept as what makes "amiga" up and how to proceed. anyway i dont understand all the fuss about acquiring licenses for "the name" and so on. it will cost money none will pay, and rightfully so, then there is no gain in it except some spiritual content. there is already enough projects around, that do what you or others may be proposing, and if something is missing, why not to start another one, but i dont understand the necessity to license it with amiga inc or whichever authority, that claims the label.

@Tomas

Quote:

And the one thing that is stopping that from happening is that hyperion only has a license for the PPC platform.

Source for such claim?

@Rudi

Quote:

If you want it cheaper you can remove the southbridge and add 2 x1 PCI-E slots and 2xSATA connectors direct to the chip.

Exactly, the Southbridge would use up to many PCI-e lanes.

And my PCB manufacturer has just sent me the following message about duplicating the RDB "I think we can make it. We can make MAX 16 layers boards. But the price is very expensive."

So, I need a clarification from Freescale on a few things related to their reference design that the Chinese have asked me for.

And eventually the board would have to be reworked to eliminate some of the LAN connections and add a sound codec (I'd also advocate using a T1042 instead of the T1040).

The idea about the carrier board is good to.

It could allow single, dual, and quad core variants.

"the price is very expensive", remember this type of prototyping (and the sunk costs) are what A-eon has been investing in on your behalves.

But as Tabor isn't my cup of tea, why DON'T we do it?

@Tuxedo

Quote:

But first of all...was Hyperion and MOS team interested to the thing? Will they support it?

If its well designed and made, what I am thinking of is what the MorphOS community has been asking for. The developers would probably support it.

And Hyperion may seem like a harder sell, but they are in business to sell and make a profit.

If it could sell copies of OS4, they might be persuaded to support such a board.

@iggy

Quote:

Exactly, the Southbridge would use up to many PCI-e lanes.

I disagree with that.

AMD's A75 or SB8x0 southbridges connect to the CPU vie one PCI-e link, using up to 4 lanes. The southbridge then provides at least 4 lanes on the other end. At the worst, yo uhave the same number of lanes available for slots as the southbridge connected to upstream. So no loss. If you use less than 4 lanes upstream, then you actually gain lanes. And these downstream lanes can either be combined int obigger links, or separated into more links, so you can also gain the number of slots compared to upstream. And also gain a PCI-32 bus, depending on the version of the sourhbridge chip. And after all of that lane/bus stuff, yo also gain the peripherals that make up the southbridge, the HD Audio, the SATA, etc.

Removing the southbridge might save you a few bucks - I've bought them in single quantities for under $US30 each - but compare that cost savings with what you get from the southbridge, and I'd say it's worth keeping.

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All glory to the Hypnotoad!

Why not instead of starting a new project, join this: http://www.powerpc-notebook.org/en/

Quote:

It's the right time to make new choices, a new PowerPC Notebook

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@billt

Have you counted the number of PCI-e lanes on a T10XX processor?
A Southbridge would use 2/3s of them.
And a Southbridge does NOT provide additional PCIe lanes even if it has PCI-e connections, because those still use the four taken up by the Southbridge to communicate with the processor.

Its just not a good idea.
No one connects video cards via a Southbridge.
Those 4 PCI-e lanes should be dedicated to a slot for video cards.
As they are Gen2 lanes, they should provide adequate bandwidth for a video card (while going through the Southbridge would only slow things down).

Remember the KISS principle.
That part isn't needed.

Now for a T2080 based board, there might be some point in using one.

@iggy

Have you looked at the 1040 ref manual? There are 4 pcie contollers and 8 serdes lanes. One 4lane link to gfx dedicated. 4 remaining serdes lanes.

These remaining 4 lanes can be another 4lane pcie link. Or 3 pcie links of one lane each plus a sata. Or two x1 links plus a sata and a network. They also support a x2 pcie link where we could put southbridge, and also have sata and network.

Plenty of options to plug the southbridge into along with your x4 link for gfx.

No need whatsoever to put gfx on other end of southbridge. So that is not a point to debate.

Here's a possible configuration for t1040...
X4 gfx
X2 a75 southbridge
X1 pcie (use sata on sb instead)
X1 pcie or network port (olegil may have said not needed already, I don't recall, so this might be a x1 pcie instead) plus both sb8x0 and a75 have ethernet if I remember correctly tly, so yet another way to make this lane pcie.

Southbridge then provides on souther end (and yes there is a bit more latency here due to tunneling through the pcie switch inside of southbridge chip. As Darth Cheney would say, "So?")
Sata (both HDD and CD plus extras)
X1 pcie
X1 Pcie
X1 pcie
X1 pcie
Pci32

The t4240 itself can give us max 4 pcie slots of whatever widths. Reduce that if using sata, and you have two or three pcie slots.

Add the southbridge and now you can have max 7 slots by using sata on sb instead, or 6 slots if I don't remember the need for sgmii correctly, plus Pci32 slots. Still, with sb is more slots than without.

Yes, I have been told that I could reconsider doing as many features as possible. Olegil will probably go bald in frustration telling me the same thing. :) My own philosophy is that this would be a one time design, with little opportunity it to revise after sale. So I'd make it with as many as modern as possible features as I can, to make it as useful as possible for as long into future as possible. That's my choice for my design, and I do suggest that to others. They can take and do what they want in their designs, and I'll have whatever opinion of their result, as anyone else is welcome to have whatever opinion of my idea.

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@Raffaele

This is what I have been saying. We want a new affordable Amiga something like a A500 or A1200 but built on todays tech.

So how do we do it.

1. setup a kickstarter to raise the cash (that we use to hire professional)
2. That will build a prototype

and the company/kickstarter is owned by amiga users. So that not one man can run away with the project.

@billt

I wonder if it would be possible to put a PowerPC CPU on an tiny adapter board that would drop into an Intel /AMD compatible socket on a regular PC motherboard.

Just like the PowerMac G4 had the G4 or G4's on a tiny board that would be stuck into a connector on the motherboard.
Or like the small board with the G4 that plugs into the original AmigaOne motherboard.
Or the Pegasos CPU board, or the Pentium II CPU boards.

Or does that require some logic, like the pegasos april fix.

Last edited by Lazlo_Hollyfeld on 04-Nov-2015 at 07:06 PM.

@Lazlo_Hollyfeld: not on an Intel socket. Starting from the Pentium II, Intel has an exclusive ownership on her sockets.

@Raffaele

Quote:

So I want to hire a bounty starting from the community itself, by producing these motherboards in China. As in the past the Amiga Community was capable to collect money for various projects, it should be not hard to achieve a serious result.

ARE YOU HAVING A LAUGH?



Memories of Troika spring to mind as does reports of dodgy Mai Logic Chinese prototype developer boards from Eyetech? The difference is Eyetech had built up a good reputation through retail and had garnered a lot of trust from the Amiga community. Troika were a pipe dream from the word go as this project would be.

A-Eon like Eyetech have earned our trust but this time by delivering quality engineered computers (mostly as complete systems), that actually work reliably! If you were on Dragon's Den (UK BBC TV Programme) what would your Unique Sellinng Point (USP) be over and above what A-Eon do? I can see the negatives already;

1) No AmigaOS port or AmigaOne license
2) Cheap parts with likely no return policy or customer service
3) No brand recognition
4) Far less marketing than even A-Eon have managed
5) No chance of your product being stocked by AmigaKit hence zero sales outside of some Kickstarter model.

Not interested. If you want low price than try and sell Raspberry Pi clones to the masses but there simply isn't the space in this market for any more broken promises. Sorry but it had to be said!

_________________
"Art challenges technology. Technology inspires the art."
John Lasseter, Co-Founder of Pixar Animation Studios

@Raffaele

Quote:

So then the first step is to decide main specs for our "Dream PPC Motherboard"

Maybe the community I has forgotten this project:

http://www.power2people.org/projects/mpc8610/

There are still 562.79 Euros on this account.

Maybe you could revive this project.

@tonyw

Quote:

tonyw wrote: ... earn yourself a few million. You're going to need the best part of a million dollars to get this little project off the ground.

I don't think you will need more than 250k, that only twice the money used for the new A1200 case.

But this project was not started by the 'community' it was a project started by some individuals with a plan.

Last edited by OneTimer1 on 04-Nov-2015 at 07:41 PM.

@Raffaele

This was tried about 6 year ago with the intention to design an open sourced design based on the MPC8610. The costs were high but realistic but it failed to even get anywhere near the first funding phase.

Okay, a project on Power2People would never get anywhere near the attention as on kickstarter but you'll still face an uphill struggle. I think that if you can't get a board designer with a good portfolio of previous designs at the beginning the idea will be as dead in the water as the previous effort.

However you have nothing to lose by trying.

@Raffaele

Great thread you started! This could actually be something that brings us a little closer. Cooperation around a mutual hardware platform, Nice. Thanks for starting it!

@OldFart
Tanks for the quotes. Something for us AW-members to contemplate before we are about shoot something down!

@Olegil
Your missing out on the fun!
iggy and billt have already started discussions about the design!!!

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@BigD

In US is called Shark Tank but still is a show where people introduce themselves to venture capitalists in order to have their enterprises funded

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Binary Doodles - English language AROS Blog

@Rob

Quote:

think that if you can't get a board designer with a good portfolio of previous designs at the beginning the idea will be as dead in the water as the previous effort.

You mean like the infamous Adam "Ack" or whatever his name was? You hang around here long enough and you'll have seen it all before and it all equals broken promises. A-Eon/A-Cube/Hyperion/AmigaKit are the Amiga's last hope. If you set up in competition with them not only will you lose lots of money but you will fragment the last of the Amiga market into a ridiculously small footprint. The mainstream market was able to sustain the Atari ST AND the Commodore Amiga, this present day niche hobby market cannot support more divided interests and hence you'll never get the AmigaOS license meaning this is dead in the water.

_________________
"Art challenges technology. Technology inspires the art."
John Lasseter, Co-Founder of Pixar Animation Studios