• Flex-ATX form factor motherboard based on the Freescale MPC8349E SoC. (400MHz to 667MHz depending on requirements and price target)
  
• 1 (one) DDR2 DIMM slot expandable to 1GB using unregistered DIMMs.
  
• 1 (one) 66MHz PCI slot for use with readily available graphics cards.
  
• 2 (two) 33MHz  PCI slots for additional expansion.
  
• 2 (two) 10/100/1Gb Ethernet Ports.
  
• 4 (four) Hi Speed USB ports.
  
• 2 (two) serial ports.
  
• 4 (four) SATA ports provided by a Silicon Image Sil3114 controller.
  
• Onboard sound provided by a C-Media CMI8738.
  
• Socketed EEPROM for U-Boot firmware.
  
• Atmel ATC2408A serial EEPROM (1kb of non-volatile storage)
  
• Dallas DS1339 RTC with battery holder.
  
• Standard ATX power supply connector.

CodeSmith you are correct, I didnt realize that I stated the battery is on the bottom, I meant to type on top of the chip. I think I typing too early here in Texas... my apologies. I can say however that the battery on a Dallas chip is NOT removable and is part of the package.. I wonder if ACK modifed them to use a battery holder?

The leads for the battery are close to the bottom and right on top of the chip..

For anyone interested....

Here is a pretty good website I have used to hack my Timekeeper chips for my Philips CD-I consoles in the past.

http://www.bhargavaz.net/nvram/nvram.html

The CD-I is an old multimedia game console that used a Dallas type timekeeper to keep your systems settings and high scores.. needless to say when it died so did any chance of keeping your place in games! Even worse about the CD-I design is that some games will not even load if the timekeeper is not alive... what a pain.

I had a devil of a time finding a replacement Dallas type chip, and I didn't want to desolder and have to resolder over and over again.. since there was no room for the Timekeeper and a socket on the CD-I, I decided to install a 2032 battery holder.. now I just replace my button batteries instead of the whole Timekeeper.

I also used this webpage to get the proper orientation to hack my Timekeepers on my CD-I units.

http://www.jmargolin.com/rdy2k/hdzram.htm

I have hacked 3 CD-I units with this hack and can confirm that it does work well, but is kinda a pain to do.. at least for me it was..hee hee..

@ACK

Adam I apologize, I did not want to offend you or your design. I went back and edited my original post to tone down my opinion too..

CodeSmith does bring up a good point about that bit about a battery holder, can you share how this is implemented in your design?

I really think that giving people an easy way to replace thier batteries without desoldering, finding replacement chips and resoldering would be great.

Last edited by CaptainN on 02-May-2007 at 05:36 AM.
Last edited by CaptainN on 02-May-2007 at 05:14 AM.

@CaptainN

Your experience must be with much older chips. This is what the DS1339 looks like:



According to the datasheets, the dimensions are 3mm x 3mm x 1mm, so there's not a lot of room in there for a battery. It must be external to the chip. The battery holder is probably something like this one:



I don't know if it's clear from the photo, but you simply slide a "button" style watch battery in the metal clip and the plastic rounded part keeps it in place. No need for the end user to solder anything.

Last edited by CodeSmith on 02-May-2007 at 07:59 AM.
Last edited by CodeSmith on 02-May-2007 at 07:51 AM.

Quote:

We need a wake up call on this thread! The previous entry level: # RAM: 2048 kB Chip-RAM # CPU: Motorola 68EC020 (14.32 Mhz NTSC, 14.18 Mhz PAL # Sound: 8 bit 4 channels Stereo, 29Khz

8 bit resolution for each channel and a 6 bit volume control. ~56Khz on certain screen modes.

With some special programming tricks it's possible to produce 14-bit audio by combining two channels set at different volumes, thus giving two 14-bit channels instead of four 8-bit channels.

Quote:

# Floppydrive: 880kB (DD, Double Density) # Harddisk: none (also available with 40MB or 80MB 2.5' harddisk) # Operating System: Kickstart 3.0 or 3.1 (later) (in ROM) BTW, Wiki claimed the A1200 went for £399, $599 in the states.

Factor in media co-processors. nVidia and ATI has ~60 percent of IGP/GPU PC market share i.e. PCs equipped better than Intel’s IGP.

Last edited by Hammer on 02-May-2007 at 10:29 AM.

_________________
Amiga 1200 (rev 1D1, KS 3.2, PiStorm32/RPi CM4/Emu68)
Amiga 500 (rev 6A, ECS, KS 3.2, PiStorm/RPi 4B/Emu68)
Ryzen 9 7900X, DDR5-6000 64 GB RAM, GeForce RTX 4080 16 GB

Quote:

I am not saying that the new Amiga hardware should be cutting edge for cheap...I understand economies of scale...but how hard would it have been to bump the specs to a 1.25Ghz G4 and a PCI express card slot? Given that the Mac Mini had that CPU a year ago and was selling at $599, I don't think the CPU is that big of a price factor.

What about AMCC 460EX @ 667MHz to 1.2GHz?

_________________
Amiga 1200 (rev 1D1, KS 3.2, PiStorm32/RPi CM4/Emu68)
Amiga 500 (rev 6A, ECS, KS 3.2, PiStorm/RPi 4B/Emu68)
Ryzen 9 7900X, DDR5-6000 64 GB RAM, GeForce RTX 4080 16 GB

@Codesmith

I think I must be too old.. thank you for your clarification, I was pulling the datasheet for the chip and it looked like the standard DIP package with the attached battery, but I might have been looking at an older datasheet as well.

Thank you again for the clarification, I really do appreciate it, this was a big deal for me due to availabiity of both chips and time.

Quote:

For 500 bux... GIVE IT TO ME! I'm fairly certain I paid more for my A500 back in the day.

Back then A500 was the most advanced computer you could buy with 500-1000$. Nowdays, ACK-EntryLevel @ 500$ is the most underpowered computer you can buy

Quote:

That further proves the point that the announced design is horribly underpowered

NO, that is not my point AT ALL !!!

The point I was making is the spec difference between the last Amiga entry offering VS what is being offered now.

I do understand your point. What's being offered is not the best possible technology VS price point.

I simply look at it as 14Mhz VS 400Mhz with a PPC OS and updated hardware on the board and figure it should run fairly well. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe OS4 and its power hungry apps need much more.

_________________
If you're going through hell, keep going. -Winston Churchill

Quote:

Nowdays, ACK-EntryLevel @ 500$ is the most underpowered computer you can buy

They aren't selling a PC!!! You're being offered a niche PPC system for OS4.

Okay, here is the most underpowered PC that can run XP Pro: bloatware:

PC with 300 megahertz or higher processor clock speed recommended; 233 MHz minimum required (single or dual processor system);* Intel Pentium/Celeron family, or AMD K6/Athlon/Duron family, or compatible processor recommended

128 megabytes (MB) of RAM or higher recommended (64 MB minimum supported; may limit performance and some features)

1.5 gigabytes (GB) of available hard disk space*

Super VGA (800 x 600) or higher-resolution video adapter and monitor

CD-ROM or DVD drive

Keyboard and Microsoft Mouse or compatible pointing device
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/pro/evaluation/sysreqs.mspx

Get it?!?!?! Okay, I'm done. Thank you for not listening.

_________________
If you're going through hell, keep going. -Winston Churchill

Quote:

The point I was making is the spec difference between the last Amiga entry offering VS what is being offered now. I do understand your point. What's being offered is not the best possible technology VS price point. I simply look at it as 14Mhz VS 400Mhz with a PPC OS and updated hardware on the board and figure it should run fairly well. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe OS4 and its power hungry apps need much more.

The issue I have is what they could have done for the same money. I don't know the motivation...my guess would be offering the least amount of horsepower for the most amount they can get for it in order to increase margins, or they are underpowering it in hopes of driving sales of the high-end machine when it is released. There are probably quite a few people who will jump on the $499 price point and then buy the new system in six months because it is 1.x Ghz.

ACK's response to my comment about the CPU not making that large of a price difference is off base...check the actual prices of the cpu's. I mean...a 1Ghz G4 Sonnet upgrade CPU board is $199.00. The 700Mhz boards actually cost more when they were available.

A raw CPU would not have made a huge difference and most Amiga users would have been glad to pay $100-200 more for a 1Ghz+ machine. That would have been a system we could have been proud of.

Your sarcasm about OS4's power hungry apps is noted and with 400-667 screaming Megahertz under the hood, that is not likely to change. 1Ghz is the bare minimum spec for any computer.

I guess we should be happy...it is in the same league with the Sony PSP. That is a step up from the Game Gear we are used to.

My $0.08

A3K

Quote:

ACK's response to my comment about the CPU not making that large of a price difference is off base...check the actual prices of the cpu's. I mean...a 1Ghz G4 Sonnet upgrade CPU board is $199.00. The 700Mhz boards actually cost more when they were available.

It is not offbase, Sonnet makes accelerator cards in significantly larger volumes. At the volumes we're looking at, moving to a separate G4 CPU and host bridge is a significant adder in component cost. A Tsi109 in the volumes we're looking at is around $125 USD by itself. Add a 7447A or 7448 in 1.x GHz speeds and it no longer would be priced as an entry level board. The entry level board is designed to be affordable by a large part of the market that want something that doesn't break the bank.

A3K, when you see the specs for the high end board, they will be more to your liking, and as mentioned earlier, they will exceed your expectations.

Adam

@CaptainN

Hey, no sweat. It's nice to be able to discuss technical stuff in the middle of all this chaos

Quote:

Okay, here is the most underpowered PC that can run XP Pro: bloatware:

WinXP Pro provides other services besides minimised desktop OS i.e. refer to Windows CE or ReactOS 0.3.1 as examples.

Windows XP Embedded** (modulized Windows XP Pro) operating system image ranges from six percent to 25 percent of the size of the typical Windows XP Professional installation. Windows XP Embedded gives developers control over 10,000 Windows XP Pro components.

Quote:

1.5 gigabytes (GB) of available hard disk space*

WinXP Pro includes a wide ranges device drivers, middleware and services e.g. system wide HTML**, ODBC (DB driver) stack**, USB stack**, multi-user/remote access stack**, web/smtp/ftp/telnet server services**, Uninterruptible Power Supply services**, wifi/network stack**, printer stack**, scanner stack/WIA/TWAIN**, CD-Burn stack, directx stack** (directshow, directdraw, direct3d, directmusic, directsound, directinput, 'etc'), cryptographic stack**, OLE stack** and 'etc'.

**all objects are govern by NT security objects.

Computation wise, an idle Windows XP Pro setup(clean install) will consume ~100 percent of i386 @20Mhz CPU.

Last edited by Hammer on 03-May-2007 at 10:07 AM.
Last edited by Hammer on 03-May-2007 at 10:01 AM.
Last edited by Hammer on 03-May-2007 at 09:52 AM.

_________________
Amiga 1200 (rev 1D1, KS 3.2, PiStorm32/RPi CM4/Emu68)
Amiga 500 (rev 6A, ECS, KS 3.2, PiStorm/RPi 4B/Emu68)
Ryzen 9 7900X, DDR5-6000 64 GB RAM, GeForce RTX 4080 16 GB

Quote:

Computation wise, an idle Windows XP Pro setup(clean install) will consume ~100 percent of i386 @20Mhz CPU

Not sure who's computation you're using, but that's what Microsoft claim as minimum specs to run XP. I'm simply informing people here that XP Pro will run on that spec, so the entry level spec by ACK surely will run the non-bloated OS4 fine.

People are running around here thinking its a PC trying to run a fat PC OS & Apps. I'm simply trying to calm some doomsayers by introducing PERSPECTIVE.

It is NOT the ideal system, however, it is also NOT a brick IMHO. For $500 it can hopefully start a market for apps. Waited a decade for this to start- keyword its a START.

_________________
If you're going through hell, keep going. -Winston Churchill

Quote:

It is not offbase, Sonnet makes accelerator cards in significantly larger volumes. At the volumes we're looking at, moving to a separate G4 CPU and host bridge is a significant adder in component cost. A Tsi109 in the volumes we're looking at is around $125 USD by itself. Add a 7447A or 7448 in 1.x GHz speeds and it no longer would be priced as an entry level board.

Sonnet buys the chips, manufactures the boards, and sells the end product for $200. How much is the CPU cost of the MPC8349E? It cannot be free. I am not suggesting the use of a CPU board, just using that board as a cost reference. Surely you can buy the 1.x Ghz processor for at least what Sonnet sells the entire board for... if the 8349 costs $100, then you are only talking about a price jump of $100...the existing host bridge was not free either...How much more is the TSI109? $100?

Quote:

A3K, when you see the specs for the high end board, they will be more to your liking, and as mentioned earlier, they will exceed your expectations.

I don't doubt it. Based on the price to performance ratio of the entry level system, I also expect that they will exceed my Amiga budget by 2x. I will buy an $800 machine but not a $1500 machine.

I firmly believe one of the contributing factors of the Amiga's demise was the hardware pricing. In North America it has been out of control for a long time...so much so that I started buying my hardware from Germany and paying international shipping.

Adam, I don't mean to bust your chops...that is not my intention, but I do feel that this machine fails to meet a reasonable spec for an entry level machine.

@ A3K

Quote:

I don't doubt it. Based on the price to performance ratio of the entry level system, I also expect that they will exceed my Amiga budget by 2x. I will buy an $800 machine but not a $1500 machine.

So really what you were looking for was more or less a mid level system. Unfortunately, demand hasn't fallen within that realm. Requests have always been for something low cost or something high end.


Regardless, I disagree with you on the following:

Quote:

but I do feel that this machine fails to meet a reasonable spec for an entry level machine.

as this board meets an adequate level of power to run OS4, at an acceptable price point. This is not a feeling, this has been based on testing.

Adam

Quote:

as this board meets an adequate level of power to run OS4, at an acceptable price point. This is not a feeling, this has been based on testing.

FIDO Adam! That's good enough for me! I expect nothing less from a finely tuned, tightly coded Amiga OS based on genius!

Let the PRESS dig this: Entry level Amiga runs at 400Mhz, but ROCKS? What? Hydrogen fueled cars available now? LMAO!!!!

JUST DON'T screw it up and not deliver... I know some Italians and -snip-

_________________
If you're going through hell, keep going. -Winston Churchill

@ ackcontrls

Adam, will these be made in Far East??? (please no bad quality from China! bad=was to be swear word).
thanks.

Also,
what about making a laptop??? I think it would be nice to have a portable amiga system.
is this feasible instead of the proposed low level end board?
Can we forget all those pci slots and have a low end portable laptop??? and make high end system with more options? (no white case, but light greyish (lighter than dells even) with Amiga on it.

@TheDaddy who said Quote:

Hey I am not stupid, now we can't even give an opinion?!

I never said you couldn't have an opinion, even if it is a stupid one...

You seem to think it's easy for someone to produce a PPC mobo in *small* quantities (say 1000) that runs at x86 speeds (2GHz) for x86 prices ($150). That's not just hard, that's impossible.

We have to have realistic expectations for the first O4 mobos. They WILL be expensive & underpowered compared to x86 mobos, it is simply unavoidable. But x86 mobos do not run OS4 (sadly). And OS4 is quite lacking in apps (I mean popular apps, not outdated 3D ray tracing) which needs high power.

If OS4 becomes successful, then we will see cheaper & more powerful mobos, due to larger batches. By then we might even have some popular apps which will need that power.

_________________
Author of the PortablE programming language.
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue...

Quote:

Adam, will these be made in Far East??? (please no bad quality from China! bad=was to be swear word).

In the small volumes we're talking about, it's more cost effective to use local manufacturers that specialize in high mix runs at high quality. Also, it allows me to deal with the manufacturers face to face without any communication barriers.

Adam