The reporters of a French Amiga magazine called AmigaPower have been so kind to post some pictures of an AmigaOne computer running TurboLinux. Initial AmigaOne ATX motherboards come with a soldered 600 MHz G3 PowerPC CPU, built-in 10/100 ethernet, USB, AGP (2xSpeed), AC97 Soundchip, MC97 modem, UDMA100 IDE controller and costs 600 Euros (ex. VAT). A more expensive version is expected to be released later this year, having a socketed CPU and a 4xSpeed AGP bus, which will allow the installation of one or two G4 processors. Boards can be pre-ordered from Computer City, KDH Datentechnik and Vesalia.
I notice that they have a PCI video card installed. Perhaps the hardware is not quite ready for the general population yet.
It is said that the motherboard is ready for production. They used a cheap PCI ATI Rage card to demonstrate the system using TurboLinux. The choice for this graphics card may be driver related.
A view on the newly intergrated functionality and look of AmigaOS4 is soon expected to be revealed to the general public. The best graphic card support is expected for ATI Radeon and Matrox G450/G550 graphics cards.
If I could buy one of these boards and drop it my ATX case, utilizing most my existing periphials/drives etc. AND BeOS PPC ran on it I’ll buy one – FOR SURE. When is general availability expected? What version of Amiga OS is going to run on them, 4.0?
A general release is expected simultaniously to the consumer release of AmigaOS4.0, which is expected for May/June.
Anyone think that we will be able to install this board and add an SBLive!, our own hard drive, ram, cd/dvd drive, and video card and install macosx on it. I mean, most Apple hardware is the same as PC hardware except the motherboard, processor, and power supply.
apple are makeing a lot of money on their hardware… they won’t let mac os run of anything but macs. that includes that story from a few days ago abot an x86 os x. IMO – not gonna happen.
It won’t be possible with this motherboard because MacOSX requires that magically boot ROM to be present, and since this is not a Mac motherboard it would not have that special boot rom.
To be at the forefront of a new Computing standard.. Open PPC as it were.. until now , to get PPC you had to buy a mac or a clone, or a server machine..
Presumably the PPC Linux distributions will all extend their coverage to these machines.. and I wouldnt be surprised if some hacker ports openFirmware to it , or an emulation thereof…
Anyhows, PPC Linux includes MOL – Mac On Linux, a PPC mac emulator, that lets one boot OSX and Classic in any PPC Environment.
Also..
Some firm – i forget the name, produces a program called ” unsupported utility” ( do a google search for it ) which allows one to boot OSX on unsupported machines such as UMAX / Daystar G3 clones and they even got it running on powerPC non-G3 clones!!!!
Who knows, might be applicable here too…
> Anyone think that we will be able to install this board and add an SBLive!, our own hard drive, ram, cd/dvd drive, and video card
No problem so far…..
> and install macosx on it.
Apple is very anti-competitive regarding alternative OSes and hardware solutions. Regardless work around solutions may become available later on, to allow you to boot 68k and PPC MacOS versions. For instance the rights to the PPC MacOS emulator iFusion (for use with PPC Amigas) is now owned by a company called Virtual Programming Ltd, which currently develops AmigaDE/Intent software. There are talks between them and AmigaOS4 developers. http://www.vpltd.com/
In fact many Amiga users used a software 68k MacOS emulator called Shapeshifter in the past, which allowed 68k Amigas to emulate 68k MacOS faster than equivalently powered Apple hardware at the time. This was cool because there was software available for MacOS, which never found its way to AmigaOS, Adobe Photoshop or Duke Nukem for instance. And you could still use the great AmigaOS pre-emptive multitasking abilities while doing so. This way you could have a multitasking virtual Macintosh allowing you to switch between different MacOS emulations and AmigaOS.
Almost nobody was impressed by MacOS at the time though, seeing it run alongside a much more powerful AmigaOS, only made the OS seem more retarded. Well IMO MacOS wasn`t as retarded as MSDOS though.
MacOS X has some nice eyecandy and some much more powerful features, so there will be some demand for emulation this, but it surely is a bloated inefficient performance killer also.
…there’s a way. Somebody will be getting Darwin PPC running on the thing very shortly. After that, it’s only a matter of time before somebody releases a utility to extract the necessary files off of the Mac OS X install disc and create a working Mac clone. IT WILL HAPPEN.
Mike,
What are your thoughts on the next 2 months for Amiga? AmigaOne and Amiga OS 4.0 ready for consumer consumption? Can you give us any ideas on the available applications and/or who is working on them?
just curious…
🙂
Ah, at last… but why is it running Turbo Linux. Don’t they have enought of Amiga OS for PPC to at least get a screen shot???
I never thought of the fact that there were few PPC computers available. With Linux for PPCs being around, I am surprised others haven’t come out with PPC hardware.
Like I said, maybe the builders of AmigaOne will make money selling hardware to Linux people…. but the Amiga OS should be first….
Again, couldn’t they have had it running anything of the Amiga OS yet?
‘cos Jim Drew of Microcode Solutions Inc, original creator of iFusion, has been busy promising a PPC mac emulator for Windows PCs, based on a PCI G3 card working with a software emulator to allow PPC macOS to be installed in an emulated mac environment.
OK, so he keeps promising to release it and then missing his release date, and hasn’t even demonstrated a test system.. but he has published photos of the hardware and it looks real.
If PPC MacOS can be run on a x86 PC, it can certainly be run on these… http://www.emaculation.com has some info.. and a lot of HEATED debate among its more infantile users, about JDs project.
I think I remember reading about a linux utility for running MacOSX on any Linux computer with G3/G4 processor. It emulates the hardward by intercepting system calls and using linux calls instead. Well, it may be worth a shot.
Amiga, Ince had to outsource, they had no choice, but when you outsource, the others may not have the same fervent interest.
Having Amiga people doing the OS software and hardware works to a point…. but if it occurs to anyone that they can make $$$ coming anything that might make more money elsewhere, watch out.
AOL was mostly a Mac internet service at first….
Still it seems to me that if all you need is a basic PPC machine, you should be able to get the motherboard easy enough?
cool thinking.. someones already done it apparently…
http://eshop.macsales.com/OSXCenter/XPostFacto/
“I put together the kernel extensions that make Mac OS X work on unsupported machines, based on the source code that Apple made available in the Darwin project.”
> and I wouldnt be surprised if some hacker ports
> openFirmware to it
PC’s have their x86 BIOS. What does this have?
*Man* this is cool.
600 MHz, the Amiga OS should scream on such a machine.
Should be cool.
CattBeMac wrote:
> What are your thoughts on the next 2 months for Amiga?
Very promising indeed. 🙂
> Can you give us any ideas on the available applications
> and/or who is working on them? [AmigaOS4]
There’s alot of interest and work being done by software developers. They will announce their projects after AmigaOS 4.0 becomes available. More software for the new AmigaOS is always welcome though.
The AmigaDE/Intent has an even larger developer community. The AmigaDE will be integrated into future PPC AmigaOS releases, allowing access to hunderds more software titles and the most efficient Java engine currently available. If you want to make good money, this is where you will have a good chance for success.
Roger M wrote:
> Don’t they have enought of Amiga OS for PPC to at least
> get a screen shot???
Hyperion will soon release AmigaOS 4.0 screenshots. For the most part the OS was developed on existing classic PPC hardware in combination with bridge solutions like the Prometheus.
I hope that many other alternative OS supporters will jump onboard for new Amiga hardware solutions. Over the years Amiga fans have toyed with and tested almost any alternative OS solution out there, in the hope of finding something which resembles AmigaOS’ elegance, power and efficiency in any way.
In the past it was often better even for an alternative OS newbie to ask stuff about Linux within the Amiga community, than within the Linux community itself. Apart from having a more helpful community, Amiga fans are able to see things from many different perspectives.
I myself still think that consumer desktops have transformed into extremely unelegant machines. Back in the golden days of desktop computing you could simply put a diskette or CD into your Amiga home computer, turn on the machine, and start your application or game. Finished? Turn off the computer! IMO computing should have stayed this simple for general consumers and should have been extended upon this. Instead general consumers, had to walk the pain of BIOS configuration nonesense, limited command lines interfaces, instability issues and all the marketing hype pursuading consumers the need of a 1GHz system for internetting and word processing usage?
Some people may think this is cool though, so they can look important while searching through directory structures and re-installing faulty software. I believe general consumers shouldn`t have been bothered with this. I hope the elegance of computing will soon return, although I understand this will not happen overnight.
IMO a general consumer should not have to think like a computer. A computer should have to think like a consumer. It is laughable though that many people who tried to convince others during the eighties that multitasking, stereo sound, GUIs, pre-emptive multitasking, color graphics, etc was all but useful, now own the latest and greatest WindowsOS/sound cards/graphic cards available to them. 🙂
>>> MO a general consumer should not have to think like a computer. A computer should have to think like a consumer. It is laughable though that many people who tried to convince others during the eighties that multitasking, stereo sound, GUIs, pre-emptive multitasking, color graphics, etc was all but useful, now own the latest and greatest WindowsOS/sound cards/graphic cards available to them. 🙂 <<<
I agree. The Mac and Amiga made more of an effort to make the computer user friendly. Others took the approach “the user can learn the OS”.
The Amiga was just ahead of its time, people didn’t appreciate (or need) the features in the 80s. Of course part of the problem was the failure of the company to properly promote the Amiga.
Anway, they want the features now, the problem is the OSs have become huge – overkill for what people want. Having a compact OS like that can do the same (or better) things as the 256 mb, 2.2 Ghz systems will be nice indeed.
All we need now are AmigaOS4 screen shots. I knew they wernt gonna come out on the 10ty of april. Especialy after Ben from hyperion said they wernt due to an employee being sick for several days.
However, Ben said they should appear a few days of target, hopfuly, they will apear monday!
Let’s just hope that it’s not vaporware again. I don’t believe any new Amiga computer until it is shipping. Anyone remember A/Box, pre/Box, PiosONE or Boxer?
Okay seedy you’ve got some wrong information. XPostFacto is for PowerMacintosh computers that were released before the Beige G3 PowerMac’s. This is not at all a patch so that unsupported PPC computers can run OS X. It patches the old PM’s OF, then it loads a different version of BootX and a lot of kernel drivers for the older powermac’s.
This does apply to the same topic but it’s not for unsupported computers, plus you have to be running a computer with a valid Mac Rom to be able to use Mac OS.
It’s in their liscense agreement about the software.
This project is not a standalone project, most of the code for this project was developed by Apple Computers for their first beta versions of OS X and later was dismissed for final releases. But now certain PM users (myself), can run OS X on our unsupported computers (pre G3).
stew:
This time it’s officiall development. But yes, still anything can happen.
(AmigaOneG3-SE will be a modified TeronCX motherboard. And TeronCX already exists.)
I think OS4.0 will basicly be like OS3.9, except that it runs on PPC. Later updates/boingbacks and finally OS4.1 will deliver all announced features & functionality & new look & stability.
http://www.eyetech.co.uk/amigaone/
The Post 8.1 mac OS uses a software ROM included on the MacOS CD, instead of the hardware ROM built into some Mac Motherboards. This is why some PREP Computers and the BriQ server are mac compatible without using a Mac motherboard, and also how the pending iFusion for Windows emulator will run MacOS on a G3 PCI card.
In that context I feel that, even if XPostFacto applies solely to Mac machines, the technology used by its author ( taking the pure PPC Darwin OS and using it to patch the G3/4 OSX ) is applicable here, as Metalgeeksolid suggested.
It is vapor till the moment it is NOT. Meaning it is on my desk.
I have “seen” a dozen new Amiga’s that never hit my desk.
Of course this time it’s different, is it??? My only objection in the layout of the AOne is a SMD G3 600MHz.-more or less outdated-.
The A500 revisited.
I would really like to know.
The first batch of “developer” boards with Turbo Linux should be
delivered in 2 or 3 weeks. Somebody is bound to try to get BeOS
working on one.
Until then, nobody knows.
There seems no obvious reason why not.
But isn’t the x86 version of BeOS a later version? If so, why run it
on PPC?
Yes that is true, but you’d need to develop all the motherboard drivers, and I’m sure Apple would put their foot down on the project because your not actually using a Machine with a Mac Rom in it.
>>But isn’t the x86 version of BeOS a later version? If so, why run it on PPC?<<
BeOS 5 was released for both x86 and PPC… both versions come on the install disk.
And a question for your question… why not run BeOS on PPC? Not all people are x86 savvy!
In having a computer and being able to quote a spec involving a PowerPC processor running amid standard PC parts..
For those of us who enjoy new challenges, one of these machines could provide plenty. A genuine Microsoft-fre zone – no Windows disks to fall back on if it all goes wrong.. comparatively little pre-compiled software – it wouldn’t be easy
but it just might catch on.
is a Mac emulator that allows Mac OS PPC versions to run on PPC-upgraded amigas. It also runs on this PPC Mobo combination… CEO Jim Drew announced this on http://www.emaculation.com on sun 14th april.
Anyone know it the Amiga OS would run on a Mac PPC that is a few years old?
And what the cost of the A1 will be?
> Anyone know it the Amiga OS would run on a Mac PPC that is a few years old?
It could, but don’t hold your breath. Such hardware is unlikely to be supported, unless Apple wants this to happen and there’s a considerable consumer demand for it.
> And what the cost of the A1 will be?
You mean an entire system? Why not follow the Computer City link to find out.