ACK has pretty much confirmed that their high-end Amiga system will use PA Semi chips. In an IRC session, Adam of ACK replied to the question how ACK was going to build a system faster than anything Apple ever produced on the PPC side: "Think PA Semi quad-core chips." Adam also said ACK started talks with PA Semi about a year ago, while also promising specifications of the high-end system to be released coming Monday.
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Member since:2005-09-28
A lot of the reverse engineering has already been done in order to get Linux up and running on PPC macs.
I don't think there would be many people who would be willing to pay for expensive custom hardware and yet wouldn't be willing to grab an old PPC Mac from ebay to run it. At least that hardware would be capable run Classic/OSX+ a well tested and supported set of Linux dists in addition to Amiga.
I don't see how it "easier" to custom design some hardware as opposed to porting to an existing stable, cheap and fairly well understood platform.
Member since:2005-12-13
Second, Amiga would have to reverse engineer the Macs to run their OS. Seems simpler to have your own hardware.
Wherein lies the difference in supporting a newly put together, non existing platform as opposed to say Power Mac G5's? Working forwards or backwards hardly make a difference to the Amiga lovers that have been hearing news like this on and off for years, now...
Actually I'd think it'd be better to actually get someplace instead of just dreaming of it!
Plus: Since it's been possible for OpenBSD and NetBSD - not to mention Linux - to support the 'odd' Mac hardware, it should also be possible for the makers of the Amiga OS - if they want to...
Member since:
2005-07-06
While the idea of putting Amiga on old Macs may sound appealing there are two problems with this: Will someone go on eBay and buy an old Mac to run the Amiga? A small fraction might but not that many.
Second, Amiga would have to reverse engineer the Macs to run their OS. Seems simpler to have your own hardware.