The Pegasos I G3 to Pegasos II G4 Upgrade Program is now active. Original purchasers of Pegasos I motherboards can now trade-in for the Pegasos II with G4 processor for a low price of €200 – or opt to keep their original system for €300.
The Pegasos I G3 to Pegasos II G4 Upgrade Program is now active. Original purchasers of Pegasos I motherboards can now trade-in for the Pegasos II with G4 processor for a low price of €200 – or opt to keep their original system for €300.
Uhm… so they want you to buy it twice? No thanks.
No. There are two options. In the first, you return your Pegasos I board and get a new Pegasos II board. In the second, you get the new Pegasos II board and also get to keep your Pegasos I board.
I noticed on the Pegasos Homepage that a Workstation with 1GHz costs 800 USD. Isn’t it a bit expensive? Why not to buy than a Apple Mini? A Pegasos II Server – 1GHz with Debian versions of PHP and Apache and MySQL costa 1750 USD!!! That is a pride price. Why would buy somebody this hardware? I do not troll. Somebody please explain me… Thanks!
It cost alot due to the fact that Genesi does not purchase chips in massive bulk shipments, increasing the PPS (price-per-system).
Also, within that purchasing price, you are supporting alternative OS’s on alternative hardware by an alternative provider. If you ask me, each dollar is woth it.
(Unless you talk to the previous Morph OS team. >.>)
this company seems increasingly interested in opensolaris on the desktop due to their envolvement with blastwave and comments they’ve made.
I think they’re trying to rush to make some more money before apple stops PPC… then they’ll be in trouble!
There has been a lot of talk recently about performance issues when porting games from intel to powerpc (something to do with big endian?). The question: Is there a similar problem when dealing with high level platforms likes Java or .NET/Mono? Or do the runtimes take care of that kind of a problem?
Thanks in advance. And please mod this down if it’s too off topic.
Do they even have a plan post Apple move? All that work possibly down the drain. Time for the MorphoOS move?
I assume you mean the benchmarks out a few months ago for DOOM3 on the Mac? That was just a combination of the video drivers and the OSX API calls to them. 10.4 and the latest drivers show DOOM3 now runs as fast on PPC as on a similarly equiped PC (same video card, same system memory, similar power CPU, same harddrive, etc.). Given that, I don’t think there is any performance penalty due to the endianness of a processor.
Where the endianness is an issue is subtle bugs in the code. If the original game coders weren’t thinking about cross-platform when they wrote the game, they may have all kinds of code that will fail when compiled on a processor with the opposite endianness. For example, say you read in data from a file that contains a list of vertex coords. These are typically shorts or longs in the endianness of the original platform the game was written on.
If you read the file and then try to use those coords on a processor with the opposite endianness, the values can cause boundary errors due to being out of range of the video rendering engine. If you try to swap these values on the fly in the game, that could slow things down a little. What you want to do is swap the values during the loading phase – the loading will be a little slower, but the game will run at full speed.
And use AMD Athlon64… Not to follow Apple to close you know…
Good alternative OS on a cheaper platform that everybody can buy (everywhere!).
What have this to do with Apple moving or not? It’s not a mac-clone, if Apple switches to x86 doesn’t matter to them. Freescale and IBM will still make PPC chips.
>I noticed on the Pegasos Homepage that a Workstation with
>1GHz costs 800 USD. Isn’t it a bit expensive?
No it isn’t expensive (compared to a mac mini).
>Why not to buy than a Apple Mini?
The mac mini standard offers has lousy specs. Only 256MB
RAM, only a 32MB gfx card and no DVD superdrive.
If you compare both machines the Pegasos Workstation costs
799USD but offers a Superdrive, 512MB RAM, 128MB Radeon
9250, has gigabit ethernet and Linux support directly from
the manufacturer.
The mac mini with similar specs (512MB, Superdrive) costs
749USD, but still lacks gigabit ethernet and its graphics
card still only has 32MB RAM.
Also this Pegasos Workstation seems to be the favorite
machine for other open source OS developers (like
OpenSolaris).
At least with Apple computer, I just have to go to the apple site and order my mini or powermac and have it delevired to my door with no hassle.
Or I can buy or build a complete PC with everything that I want in it from just about any PC store.
It’s NOT that easy to get your hands on a Pegasos workstation. And the distributor web site are not that good or seem down. It allways look risky to do buisness with them.
By the way, i’m in Quebec (Canada). No real Pegasos distributor here.
Hello,
I got my Pegasos II from Freescale. They’re a little bit bigger than standard vendors
. The major difference between the Pegasos and other devices is the fact that it has PCI slots, and it’s actually targeted at a slightly different market than the Mac Mini. People who are going to buy this device are going to do so for development purposes. Freescale sells this device to PPC developers who need PCI slots and more than begrudging Linux support for what they do, and because it cost a lot less than their own existing Sandpoint platform 
. I will say that Debian runs incredibly well on this with full HW support for almost everything.
However, what keeps me running it is not the fact that it’s PPC (I have a Mac for that already). It’s the fact that Debian for it is incredibly well-maintained and stable. It’s going to be used for Syslog-ng a LOT over these next few weeks
.
Sounds like a big waste of money to me. Obsolete platform(G3&G4), and pretty hefty prices too.
Not as weird as those guys waiting for Firefox on their 68k Amigas though!
> Sounds like a big waste of money to me. Obsolete platform(G3&G4), and pretty hefty prices too.
The G4 is no more obsolete than the P4 is. The G5 is a 64-bit CPU just like an x86-64 with its good and bad sides. As all people haven’t abandoned x86 in favor of x86-64 not everyone will abandon the G4 in favor of the G5.
I think they’re trying to rush to make some more money before apple stops PPC… then they’ll be in trouble!
Ummm, why? Pegasos systems aren’t Apple clones. They are for people who want to run Linux or some other lesser used OS on a PPC. OS X PPC can’t run on a Pegasos system. Care to explain your reasoning?
I suppose if IBM drops AIX support for Power, then Linux on Power will be in trouble? Or if MS dropped dead, Linux on Intel would be dead?
This really isn’t making sense to me. Could you please explain. 😛
Why someone would develop anything on PPC is beyond rationality. The PPC platform other than mainframes and game boxes is dead, dead, dead.
PPC on the desktop never made sense and why companies sell outrageously priced PPC desktops… EVEN APPLE wised up and realized they had no future on PPC.
For developers who must develop on PPC, the best offering would simply be a PPC card you put into the x86 machine of your choice. Even at the rapacious prices charged by IBM and their cohorts for some of the cheapest chips in the business, it would be far less than a complete computer built around PPC.
The way the PPC program has been run… it is clearly an example of bean counter tactics and no coherent strategy. IBM has no interest in seeing the PPC architecture being successful as all IBM makes money on is POWER and PowerGC (Power game console).
I think you have a point, and G4 PPC won’t have much of a future.
But for people who want an up-to-date and mature alternative platform *now*, there’s nothing wrong with the PegasOS workstations.
PPC on the desktop never made sense
What makes you say that? While the PowerPC architecture is nowhere near as advantageous as originally claimed, it’s perfectly suitable for desktop computers. It lost mainly due to the economies of scale on the x86 side.
The G4 is no more obsolete than the P4 is.
Great reality distortion field you’ve got there.
First, the G4 has nowhere near the performance of a P4. Second, without Apple demand there probably will be no further development of desktop PPC processors.
@ goldstein
> Why someone would develop anything on PPC is beyond
> rationality. The PPC platform other than mainframes and
> game boxes is dead, dead, dead.
> PPC on the desktop never made sense and why companies sell
> outrageously priced PPC desktops… EVEN APPLE wised up
> and realized they had no future on PPC.
Although Apple and Genesi’s close partner FreeScale seems to agree with you with regard to desktop usage. IBM does not!
To me it seems that the new Cell microprocessor (PPC compatibel POWER4 core) may have something to do this. The Cell is an exciting new product by IBM, Toshiba and Sony. The Cell architecture is intended to be scalable from handheld devices, home servers up to mainframe computers by utilizing parallel processing.
IBM will hold a presentation about the Cell microprocessor at the upcoming Amiga fair AmiGBG, surely people will ask some interesting questions there as well:
http://web.kicker.nu/amigbg/startsida/
Although IMO with modern GPUs taking lots of workload of the main CPU, for most popular computer uses even low spec CPUs would be more than sufficient (office software and internet usage are not at all processor intensive tasks, and with regard to gaming the hugely popular PS2 doesn’t at aall include an insanely fast processor by today’s standards).
This comparison g4 vs. P4 is useless.
The G4 is not dead, the transition to the e600 core has just started and will continue. The e600 is not about to rule the desktop market, but more the embedded market, be it networking or multimedia.
The coming 8641(D) will be pretty interesting chip.
The G4 is not intended for those nerds who are only looking to raw computing power, they will me more happy with some intel or AMD solution.
The pegasos is a nice piece of hw, the Linux integration is surprisingly high. It targets more to networking and development. The cpu power is sufficient.
The alternative MorphOS is just flying on it – sure, MorphOS is still in need of many improvements, but it is fun to use and holds some potential.
After all, you rarely read about ppl who weren’t satisfied with their Pegasos. I really like my Pegasos and it was worth every EUR I spend.
Another word to the mac mini comparison: You cannot compare both, the mini is a result of hard compromises (slow hd, no internal ports (pci/agp). It is an embedded hardware.
The Pegasos is an embedded hardware development system.
The performance of the mini is rather poor, while the Pegasos performs surprisingly good.
1. Apple will still be making PPC Macs for at least a year, maybe longer.
2. Apple stopped using the 68k chip a LONG time ago, but you can still get 68060 chips and derivatives.
3. Microsoft is using the PPC in the XBOX II.
PPC chips will be available for a LONG time.
What I’d like to see happen is a backer that will pay for a much larger run of Peg II boards (which may be the point of this trade-in deal) to get the retail price down a bit more.
I wish there was a bare board I could buy that used Macintosh Standard Processors…
Then I could build a system inexpensively, and buy MorphOS or AmigaOS 4 and play.
But I can justify spending twice the money it would take to build a higher end PC, just to “play”.
I can buy a bare 478 Logic Board for $40.00
I’d pay up to $100 for a bare PPC board.
There’s NOT reason that they are that much more expensive.
Since no single brand of PC Logic board can be sold in very large quantities…. If THEY can be sold cheaply, it should be easy to sell PPC logic boards cheaply.
“Great reality distortion field you’ve got there.
First, the G4 has nowhere near the performance of a P4.”
Who is living in the RDF? You might wanna pull your head outta your butt and review the performance per clock cycle of the G4 vs the Pentium 4.
@Anonymous (IP: —.dip.t-dialin.net)
You slanted the numbers a bit:
A Mac-Mini with 512M and a SuperDrive is $622. It also has a faster processor (1.25GHz vs. 1GHz). If you go with the 1.42GHz Mac-Mini, then it’s $722, but that’s for a machine almost 50% faster.
Then remember we are talking about MACINTOSH’s – a company known for selling over-priced, but good looking, computers. To be priced higher than a fairly equivalent Mac is not a plus in anyone’s eyes.
The main problem is, and will continue to be for the foreseeable future, very low demand for these systems. Don’t look for the prices to drop, or large improvements in the specs. With Apple moving to x86, there will be even less demand for PPC based systems, meaning less incentive for FreeScale to work on their CPUs.
If I were to guess right now, I’d say Pegasos 3 will be either Cell based, or AMD64. Anything else would be corporate suicide.
instruction set differences were relavent in the 70s-90s… processors have developed so much since then that the instruction set makes very little difference.. and in order to get one with a good clean instruction set then you have to pay a lot (which is higher TCO)….
so why even use power pc in a PC? It makes sense in the embedded market but not pc market… sorry.
why do you think people have shifted toward x86 instead of sparc or power or anything like that? Because it’s lower tco and the instruction set (Although x86 is horrible!) it’s cheaper and gets more performance for your money.
there ya go. why hold on to technology that is too expensive?
I have read somewhere that Microsoft is considering licensing the Xbox 2 software to boost development of games and Market share.
This means that we could soon have some Xbox copycat running G5 derivative which could also be used to run any kind of alternative PPC OS.
There is still plenty of legs in PPC developpement. Actually I personnally believe that the choice of a PPC CPU by Microsoft and the risk of having people buying Xbox to run OS X on the cheap was one of the other reasons of Apple switch.
Apple could not control what runs on Xbox.
It can control what runs on Macintosh.(Intel DRM and so on..)
>there will be even less demand for PPC based systems,
>meaning less incentive for FreeScale to work on their CPUs.
Apple represented 3% of Freescale’s revenue – CPU development is and will be driven by embedded market needs, that also continue to rise.
Freescale is committed to their roadmaps which show a very interesting dual-core G4 CPU due 1H2006 with integrated dual DDR2-667 RAM controllers, two PCI-E 8x ports and several Gigabit interfaces.
After that, a new 64Bit PPC core is going to appear.