@pavlor

for that you do not need a new 1600 EUR system ;)

@BillE

tt is certainly faster than 68k (without having the retro feeling) but for what software?

for some ports of old games and a aging browser who is not updated for years?

@redfox

Nice selection of software and it sounds like you got your money out of your hardware!

I still love Ibrowse even with it limitations. Fun to use for Amiga websites that support it.

Also like AmigaAMP - it is my favorite for 3.x for sure. Nice to see it and Ibrowse still updated.

FinalWriter is a love hate thing for me, I moved over to PageStream for my wordprocessing on my main system as it is a native program and works well. FW is kinda a hack/twitcy code the MorphOS runs but it has some annoyances.

I haven't run OS4 in a long time forgot about NetSurf and Odyssey.

Enjoy!

@Matt3k

Thanks. I hope you continue to enjoy using your MorphOS system.


redfox

@OlafS25

Quote:

for that you do not need a new 1600 EUR system ;)

Well, if it was faster or as fast than what I have now and had no issues with 3D, I would probably not hesitate to buy. There are some things newer computers do better than good old Pegasos 2: eg. 3D support (well, not A1222 ; how I would like to play Jedi Academy again!) or 4K video playback (this one works on the A1222).

My 3D gaming screen resolution on Pegasos 2 is 800x600, so if A1222 manages to get to such "performance", it may be my purchase next year.

@pavlor

Quote:

pavlor wrote: @cdimauro Quote: Do you know what kind of beast you can buy for much less that 1600 EUR? Take a look at Raptor Lake processors Well, sustained single core performance is most important design choice here,

Exactly. Especially for emulating systems with... just one core.
Quote:

I will probably opt for some AMD APU.

Up to you, but Raptor Lake Refresh should have slightly better single core/thread performance.

Albeit not that much relevant for this type of emulation, the integrated GPU is modern and Intel is making HUGE improvements at the drivers level, even with 3 digits increase with the last releases.


@amigang

Quote:

amigang wrote: @cdimauro Quote: That's plainly wrong. It was evident already on 2000 that PowerPCs weren't competitive anymore. Maybe you don't know it, but even Apple, which co-founded the PowerPC consortium, was about to abandon its PowerPCs on 2000 and moving on Intel's x86 (the first version of MacOS X was already running on those processors. And this was the MAIN hardware platform: PowerPC was the second / backup). This decision was postponed by 5 years only because a rampant IBM manager (which was the former Freescale CEO, AFAIR) promised to Steve Jobs the infamous G5. In short: going to PowerPC on 2001 (the year when it was decided to go for OS4) was already a bad decision. Dont forget it wasn't just Apple,

No, I don't: to me IT history is quite clear.

Apple was the most evident because it was part of the PowerPC consortium and the plan to drop those CPUs in 2000 was shocking, of course.
Quote:

games consoles, like Gamecube, Wii, PS3, Xbox 360 all went PPC base, it still had a lot of momentum behind it until 2007 Id say. I think from that point it was clear with Apple out of the market, the issues Devs had with games on PPC consoles, the momentum of PPC really slowed down.

No. As I've said before on the previous comment and I've repeated above, Apple's plan was to move from PowerPCs to Intel's x86 CPU already on 2000, because PPCs performance weren't competitive anymore since some years and especially they weren't competitive because they were running hot / consuming too much power (so, they weren't so much suitable for laptop / mobile devices).

Those were/are FACTs.

Now, talking about consoles, the adoption of PowerPCs on most of them does NOT imply that those CPUs were good / competitive. The decision here comes entirely from a price perspective: how much convenient (cheap!) was the agreement for the console maker.

In fact, you "forgot" that the first XBox had an... Intel's Pentium III-based (with halved L2 cache) CPU which provided way the best in class performances among all consoles of that generation.
It was the most expensive, but Microsoft's plan was to enter the consoles market and it was already part of the business plan to sell the console at huge loss but making them very appealing to the customers tanks to the best hardware (even the GPU and chipset/audio were phenomenal) = best videogames possibles (XBox had the option to run the games at 720p@60FPS or 1080i@30FPS/interlaced, whereas GameCube was limited to 640x240@60FPS or 640x480@30FPS/Interlaced and PS2 usually used 320x240@60FPS because higher resolutions were super problematic considered how the video subsystem worked).

The Wii was just a GameCube 1.5 (with exactly 50% increased clock on all components. So the CPU was exactly the same, but shrunk due to the 90nm process adopeted).
The PS3 and XBox360 used a PowerPC only because it was more convenient for Sony and Microsoft. Not because the CPU were good: they sucked a lot and you read the developer's comment at the time, especially on Beyond3D's forum (their favorite place).

This is the (real) history and those are FACTs.

So, again: for OS4 going to PowerPCs on 2001 was already a BAD decision.

@cdimauro

Quote:

Up to you, but Raptor Lake Refresh should have slightly better single core/thread performance.

That would be nice, hope Intel finds its way, it started to look like 2005 again.

Quote:

Albeit not that much relevant for this type of emulation, the integrated GPU is modern and Intel is making HUGE improvements at the drivers level, even with 3 digits increase with the last releases.

For hypothetical OS4 laptop system, Linux compatibility and low TDP are crucial features. However, I will replace my current Win10 "gaming" nobebook in 2 years and will look again for some low TDP computers. If Intel improves its GFX (truth be told, its reputation is terrible right now), I will ceartainly consider this option. Intel HD graphics in my notebook works well for 6 years of its service.

Quote:

Apple's plan was to move from PowerPCs to Intel's x86 CPU already on 2000,

Could you provide source for such claim? Sure, they had some back-up solution with portability of NeXT, but I don't remember anything like that so early in 2000.

@pavlor

Quote:

pavlor wrote: @cdimauro Quote: Albeit not that much relevant for this type of emulation, the integrated GPU is modern and Intel is making HUGE improvements at the drivers level, even with 3 digits increase with the last releases. For hypothetical OS4 laptop system, Linux compatibility and low TDP are crucial features. However, I will replace my current Win10 "gaming" nobebook in 2 years and will look again for some low TDP computers.

Well, on mobile devices Intel have the leadership in terms of processing power and low TDP.
Quote:

If Intel improves its GFX (truth be told, its reputation is terrible right now), I will ceartainly consider this option. Intel HD graphics in my notebook works well for 6 years of its service.

I know Intel's reputation in terms of iGPU, but it changed on the last years. Of course, it should continue on this direction...
Quote:

Quote: Apple's plan was to move from PowerPCs to Intel's x86 CPU already on 2000, Could you provide source for such claim? Sure, they had some back-up solution with portability of NeXT, but I don't remember anything like that so early in 2000.

I've written an article about it very long time ago: https://www.appuntidigitali.it/15709/apple-e-i-processori-non-e-amore-eterno/
It's in Italian. I've reported the source for this: http://news.cnet.com/Is-the-PowerPC-due-for-a-second-wind/2008-1006_3-5983157.html
However web archive has only cached that page ( http://web.archive.org/web/20120417151623/http://news.cnet.com/Is-the-PowerPC-due-for-a-second-wind/2008-1006_3-5983157.html ) but not the second one...

@cdimauro

So your claim was that Apple had planned to ditch PPC in 2000 and your source is an article from 2005 written after Apple did it?

Looking at it from the outside it would seem that in 2000 Apple was quite happy with both the G3 and G4 (minus some earlier teething issues with the G4) and it still looked good for the following years. Only when the Moto G5 failed to materialize and Apple was forced to ask for cut down Power4 (aka the IBM G5) for the high end cracks appeared.
A bit later they kind had a potential fix for the lower end (P6T for everything that was G4) but the high end had already maxed out what was feasible with the IBM chip with no viable upgrade path.

So I'd say that did start to invest into a Intel switch somewhere around 2003 with the final decision in 2004.
Similar to what has happened with the ARM switch, ground work started long ago with the switch being pulled relatively shortly before the 2020 announcement.

_________________
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@cdimauro

Quote:

Well, on mobile devices Intel have the leadership in terms of processing power and low TDP.

And on desktop introduced abomination like BTX.

Quote:

However web archive has only cached that page

The site has that interview in full:

https://www.cnet.com/tech/tech-industry/is-the-powerpc-due-for-a-second-wind/

From what I read here, there is probably misunderstanding about time frame (5 years from 2005 is really 2000, but the mentioned incident happended later - 2002+).

@Kronos

Quote:

Kronos wrote: @cdimauro So your claim was that Apple had planned to ditch PPC in 2000 and your source is an article from 2005 written after Apple did it?

The interview was made on 2005, but you've to look at the facts reported on it:

"Mayer: In my previous job, I ran IBM's semiconductor business. So I've seen both sides of the Apple story, because I sold the G5 to Steve (Jobs) the first time he wanted to move to Intel."
Quote:

Looking at it from the outside it would seem that in 2000 Apple was quite happy with both the G3 and G4 (minus some earlier teething issues with the G4) and it still looked good for the following years. Only when the Moto G5 failed to materialize and Apple was forced to ask for cut down Power4 (aka the IBM G5) for the high end cracks appeared.

See above: Jobs wasn't that happy at the time. Otherwise, why he wanted to transition to Intel?
Quote:

A bit later they kind had a potential fix for the lower end (P6T for everything that was G4) but the high end had already maxed out what was feasible with the IBM chip with no viable upgrade path.

Apple acquired PaSemi to use its know-how for building the new ARM chips: not for the PowerPCs...
Quote:

So I'd say that did start to invest into a Intel switch somewhere around 2003 with the final decision in 2004.

That was the time of the SECOND decision to move to Intel...
Quote:

Similar to what has happened with the ARM switch, ground work started long ago with the switch being pulled relatively shortly before the 2020 announcement.

Yes, but see above: there was a first decision to move to Intel.

There are some traces of is here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mac_transition_to_Intel_processors#Early_2000s


@pavlor

Quote:

pavlor wrote: @cdimauro Quote: Well, on mobile devices Intel have the leadership in terms of processing power and low TDP. And on desktop introduced abomination like BTX.

Which is ANOTHER opportunity.
Quote:

Quote: However web archive has only cached that page The site has that interview in full: https://www.cnet.com/tech/tech-industry/is-the-powerpc-due-for-a-second-wind/

Nice, thanks! I'll add it to my article.
Quote:

From what I read here, there is probably misunderstanding about time frame (5 years from 2005 is really 2000, but the mentioned incident happended later - 2002+).

Incident = do you mean the Motorola's G5?

@cdimauro

Quote:

That was the time of the SECOND decision to move to Intel

Third you mean? Who’s counting? They had an effort in early 90s with Classic System 6 or 7 for Intel, then when Apple bought NeXT they got an Intel OS which during the porting to PPC (Rhapsody) they also tried to sell as-is, or as OSX Server. Then your story and finally, the “move” to Intel. Meanwhile they were also selling various AMD x86 based Airports.

_________________
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@pavlor

Quote:

The site has that interview in full:

From the article:
Quote:

Mayer's $6 billion Austin

Does he mean Steve Austin, the $6 billion dollar man?

@cdimauro

Quote:

Incident = do you mean the Motorola's G5?

There is another incident with the G5. Continuing in the trend of Motorola backwards compatibility the G5 was broken. As if 64 bit loads were bad enough on the G5, needing 5 instructions, against only 2 for a 32 bit load on G4 and before. The G5 misses out on little endian support. And cannot I have read either switch endian or load/store in little endian. This is a major oversight, as it means the G5 is not bi-endian like its predecessors, and cripples software. In particular, VirtualPC, needed for Windows compatibly (or emulating) was slower on the G5 because all the endian swaps had to be done by hand in software. It breaks any software using optimised codes. I found recently GCC actually has specific endian support to mark objects as an endian. XCode used to use GCC in the PPC days but I don't know if GCC supported endian scalars back then or if Apple code used it.

@cdimauro

The fact that he was able (or at least claims to) to convince Steve not to switch to Intel is a strong indicator that Steve at that time wasn't really planning a switch.


And sure they bought PASemi for the IP, doesn't change the fact that the P6T would have been a suitable SoC for a 2006 PowerBook but would not have solved the lack of a G5 successor.

Last edited by Kronos on 11-Nov-2023 at 02:12 PM.

_________________
- We don't need good ideas, we haven't run out on bad ones yet
- blame Canada

@Kronos

Also, just looked it up and it seems dual core Xeons were only released in 2004 so any switch before would have been a side step at best.

Same with consumer CPUs were the P4 at full speed would have been to hot to replace anything G4.

So maybe Steve thought about it, it is just that what Intel could have offered at that time was nowhere as convincing as it was in 2005.

_________________
- We don't need good ideas, we haven't run out on bad ones yet
- blame Canada

@kolla

Quote:

kolla wrote: @cdimauro Quote: That was the time of the SECOND decision to move to Intel Third you mean? Who’s counting? They had an effort in early 90s with Classic System 6 or 7 for Intel, then when Apple bought NeXT they got an Intel OS which during the porting to PPC (Rhapsody) they also tried to sell as-is, or as OSX Server. Then your story and finally, the “move” to Intel. Meanwhile they were also selling various AMD x86 based Airports.

The context was: transitioning from PowerPCs to Intel's x86s.


@Hypex

Quote:

Hypex wrote: @cdimauro Quote: Incident = do you mean the Motorola's G5? There is another incident with the G5. Continuing in the trend of Motorola backwards compatibility the G5 was broken. As if 64 bit loads were bad enough on the G5, needing 5 instructions, against only 2 for a 32 bit load on G4 and before. The G5 misses out on little endian support. And cannot I have read either switch endian or load/store in little endian. This is a major oversight, as it means the G5 is not bi-endian like its predecessors, and cripples software. In particular, VirtualPC, needed for Windows compatibly (or emulating) was slower on the G5 because all the endian swaps had to be done by hand in software. It breaks any software using optimised codes. I found recently GCC actually has specific endian support to mark objects as an endian. XCode used to use GCC in the PPC days but I don't know if GCC supported endian scalars back then or if Apple code used it.

OK, but here you were talking about IBM's G5, right? Not the Motorola's one.


@Kronos

Quote:

Kronos wrote: @cdimauro The fact that he was able (or at least claims to) to convince Steve not to switch to Intel is a strong indicator that Steve at that time wasn't really planning a switch.

The claims are coming from the former Freescale's CEO, which I think knows how was the situation at the time.

There are some other traces, which I've reported, about this switch.

Plus, Apple already switched from 68k to PowerPCs.

Plus #2: Apple was already maintaining an x86 version of the future MacOS X.

So, why do you think that Jobs wasn't planning any switch?
Quote:

And sure they bought PASemi for the IP, doesn't change the fact that the P6T would have been a suitable SoC for a 2006 PowerBook but would not have solved the lack of a G5 successor.

This is purely wishful thinking.

1) Apple's transition started on 2005, so one year before.
2) On 2005 Intel already was way ahead of PowerPCs in terms of performances and efficiency / power consumption.
3) Apple never used any PaSemi's chip on its subsequent products, and for very good reasons: it had Intel's CPUs for the computers and used PaSemi IPs for its mobile devices (iPhone, iPad, iShuffle).

1 + 1 + 1 = 3
Quote:

Kronos wrote: @Kronos Also, just looked it up and it seems dual core Xeons were only released in 2004 so any switch before would have been a side step at best.

Non sense: you've to provide to your customers a good replacement for the old technology. This is the only thing which matters.

Specifically, Intel's CPU simply destroyed any PowerPC equivalent of the time.
Quote:

Same with consumer CPUs were the P4 at full speed would have been to hot to replace anything G4.

Same as above: Intel had Pentium-III for this specific market.
Quote:

So maybe Steve thought about it, it is just that what Intel could have offered at that time was nowhere as convincing as it was in 2005.

Just one question: have you ever saw the benchmarks of the time (I mean: NOT the one published by Apple's marketing division)?

Then maybe you should have understood why Jobs was inclined to move to Intel...

@cdimauro

Apple switched to PPC because 68k was deemed EOL by Motorola, something that did not happen to PPC before the Intel switch.

Apple was "maintaining" the x86 port of OSX due OSX being mostly a PPC port of the x86 version of NextStep.
So SJ got back into Apple with an x86 OS in his backpack got it ported to PPC only to realize his true idea of backporting it to x86?

PASemi was started with Apple in mind in 2003 and Apple for sure knew they existed and looked at it as an option. Maybe just to put pressure on Moto or as a last resort option.
How far these thought came and why they went the other way is up for debate.

We could fling cherry picked benchmarks at each other, reality is that anything Intel suitable for MacMini, iBooks or PowerBookx would not have been powerful enough to make them attractive. It would have been similar to early PPCs that were in real life slower than the last 040 based Macs, crippled when trying to run 68k SW (and a laughing stock once you got MacOS running on a 060 elsewhere).
In 2006 it was different, a CoreDuo could run cool enough to fit into these devices and outperform the G4 even on PPC code. The iGPUs were pure trash compared to the discrete Radeons used before but that pain was considered acceptable.

_________________
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- blame Canada

Quote:

Kronos wrote: Also, just looked it up and it seems dual core Xeons were only released in 2004 so any switch before would have been a side step at best.

Apple went from a 64 Bit platform to a 32 Bit platform ...

Quote:

Kronos wrote: Apple switched to PPC because 68k was deemed EOL by Motorola, something that did not happen to PPC before the Intel switch.

Well the 68040 was not really that jump foreword that was needed by Apple, and Motorola didn't had any good ideas for faster chips, so a switch supported by Motorola was a logic consequence, like it seemed to be for Amiga.

But when Motorola failed with a successor to G4 and a performant power saving variant for a Laptop, they had to look for something else. PPC might not have been EOL then but it didn't look so promising any more.

Last edited by OneTimer1 on 12-Nov-2023 at 11:22 AM.
Last edited by OneTimer1 on 12-Nov-2023 at 11:20 AM.
Last edited by OneTimer1 on 12-Nov-2023 at 11:09 AM.

@Kronos

Quote:

Kronos wrote: @cdimauro Apple switched to PPC because 68k was deemed EOL by Motorola, something that did not happen to PPC before the Intel switch.

OK, but you don't need an official EOL to understand that an hardware platform wasn't in a good shape, right?
Quote:

Apple was "maintaining" the x86 port of OSX due OSX being mostly a PPC port of the x86 version of NextStep. So SJ got back into Apple with an x86 OS in his backpack got it ported to PPC only to realize his true idea of backporting it to x86?

That was different. NextSTEP was already running on different architectures, and even on 68ks.

However the problem for Apple was that the PowerPCs weren't competitive anymore compared to PCs. Hence, the idea to switch to Intel's processors...
Quote:

PASemi was started with Apple in mind in 2003 and Apple for sure knew they existed and looked at it as an option. Maybe just to put pressure on Moto or as a last resort option. How far these thought came and why they went the other way is up for debate.

No, PaSemi was started explicitly with the embedded and military markets in mind (as it was, in fact).

Something which, at the time, was completely outside of Apple's business...
Quote:

We could fling cherry picked benchmarks at each other, reality is that anything Intel suitable for MacMini, iBooks or PowerBookx would not have been powerful enough to make them attractive. It would have been similar to early PPCs that were in real life slower than the last 040 based Macs, crippled when trying to run 68k SW (and a laughing stock once you got MacOS running on a 060 elsewhere).

Yes, you can cherry pick the benchmarks like Apple did all the times.
For example, when it was publishing that its G5 PowerMacs had up to DOUBLE the performances of comparable PCs just the day before the announcement of the transition...
...and then, the day after, publishing that its new Intel's based Macs had up to QUADRUPLE the performances of its old G5 PowerMacs.
No, it was NOT a joke: that's EXACTLY what Apple's site was advertising its products on those days!

And that's why it's better to take a look at independent results.
Quote:

In 2006 it was different, a CoreDuo could run cool enough to fit into these devices and outperform the G4 even on PPC code. The iGPUs were pure trash compared to the discrete Radeons used before but that pain was considered acceptable.

Even on 2005 was already very very late: Apple's hardware was pure crap since years.