Science fiction and technology writer

HitScan

Mon Jan 28 19:09:20 2002

For anyone who's ever wanted to play around with PPC processors, but not want to have to get them from Apple, there is some good news. A place called Mai Logic (www.mai.com I believe) is making PowerPC Open Platform ref boards, which could hit production, and get cheap enough to play with. That's the good news, that it's being done. There's also some bad news. Presently, if you want to see one of these things (presumably void of RAM, the PPC chip, etc.) it costs $3,900. Looks like Apple is finally a cheaper source than someone. ;)

All babbling aside, is anyone else curious about messing with PPC stuff? I'm itching to see NetBSD run on it, but I don't feel like putting the money down to buy an old Mac (and I won't own an iMac, thankyouverymuch. ;) ) Especially since I have a perfectly good Performa CD sitting and waiting for a new hard drive, heh.

Anyhow, consider yourselves informed those of you who care, and those of you who don't, consider yourselves spammed.

Enjoi.

Imitation Gruel

Mon Jan 28 19:20:59 2002

Holy shit. That's even worse than [url=http://www.totalimpact.com/briQ.html]this ripoff.[/url] What a crock.

Imitation Gruel

Mon Jan 28 19:22:51 2002

Furthermore, Motorola MPC74xx-series (G4-deriv.) are only really good at RC5 and a couple other things. Highend x86 procs will rip them a new one in virtually everything else.

(Edited by Imitation Gruel at 11:23 am on Jan. 28, 2002)

HitScan

Mon Jan 28 19:41:49 2002

I know good and well that they're spanked verily by any new x86 chips (which is why I've been happily running Athlons lately ;) ) I was just wishing that it would be possible to get a cheap PPC mobo and make the platform a little more common. I think IBM could get some G3 lovin goin on and speed things up enough that it wouldn't be painful to use one. I guess I just like playing with different hardware. (i.e. the "coffee table" AS/400 that I have in my basement :biggrin: )

Imitation Gruel

Mon Jan 28 19:52:33 2002

I guess I just like playing with different hardware.

Always admirable. However, in this case, the price is just utterly unreasonable. It'd literally have to drop by a full order of magnitude before I'd even consider it.

HitScan

Mon Jan 28 20:24:19 2002

Always admirable. However, in this case, the price is just utterly unreasonable. It'd literally have to drop by a full order of magnitude before I'd even consider it.

Aye, as alluded to by my "good news, bad news" theme. ;) If they could be had sans chip for 150 or 200 I'd probly look into it. But, for 3900 I expect oral favors and a complete box around it, with 22" LCD. Fuck that. (of course, they're not even final boards yet, so maybe if they ever hit real production, the price will fall. One can only hope if they really expect to sell the damn things, heh.)

Imitation Gruel

Mon Jan 28 20:28:45 2002

If you could get these for $150-200 and any G4 for another $150-250, plus some money for RAM; these could be decent in large numbers for an RC5-farm.

G4 derivatives [color=red][font=papyrus][size=25]OWN[/size][/font][/color] at RC5 due to Altivec.

(Edited by Imitation Gruel at 12:29 pm on Jan. 28, 2002)

AllYorBaseRBelong2Us

Mon Jan 28 20:46:16 2002

Hitscan,

You can pick up old Macs or Clones like my "Ghetto Mac" and perform a few upgrades, these will run the PPC BSD's and Linux real nice.

Ebay always has them for reasonable prices.

Once in awhile people try to unload them in the agora for very cheap. I'll keep you posted for this. I've seen them down to $50 for G3 upgradable stuff, and G3 cards are to be had for under $100.

The rest of the stuff you can add is merely commodity.

HitScan

Mon Jan 28 21:09:40 2002

Hold on there AYB, don't look too attentively for me. I can't really afford to spend too much on BSD toys just at the moment. Between my gf and my servers (I should be able to boot my Win2K PDC in less than a week!) I can't "splurge" just too much until the finances are a little more in order. I appreciate the thought though. :)

Harbinger

Mon Jan 28 22:54:53 2002

I'd truly like to play with OS X so that I can make my own comparison (and hence why I haven't commented on OS X at all), but I can't afford the price of the 'dongle' that goes with it. Even 2nd hand prices are too rich for my blood.

I'd gladly build my own if I could, and Mai could help us... once (as IG mentioned) their prices drop by an order of magnitude at least. Until then, I can only point at them and laugh. I think their executive officers went to the Steve Jobs School of Product Pricing.

HitScan

Tue Jan 29 01:03:59 2002

but I can't afford the price of the 'dongle' that goes with it.

LOL. That rules. ;)

Of course, you certainly couldn't use OSX on one of these unless you did the darwin hack that allows you to install it on boards "too old to be supported" heh.

Harbinger

Tue Jan 29 02:53:45 2002

from HitScan posted at 8:03 pm on Jan. 28, 2002

but I can't afford the price of the 'dongle' that goes with it.

LOL. That rules. ;)
Of course, you certainly couldn't use OSX on one of these unless you did the darwin hack that allows you to install it on boards "too old to be supported" heh.

Yeah, part of my trepidation is that the power-user in me doesn't want to run OS X on anything less than a G4... but unfortunately, the only boxen that are even close to affordable to me would be a G3 machine.

Hooray Apple, you just lost another sale. :rolleyes:

And I can't buy the "Well, you're not part of Apple's target market anyway!" argument -- that's BS. Not only BS... it's elitism at its least charming. If/when Apple can sell a G4-based box at $700 (not counting monitor, that way I can give them some flexibility -- no wait, they don't want customers to have choice), then I would consider purchasing one. Until then, I guess I'll have to be content to be one of the "unwashed masses" basking in the glow of 2GHz boxen that cost less than $1000.

Now that I'm getting a DVD-RW drive and a load of work right off the bat, I'm seriously considering building a dual Athy rig. Price is, of course, an issue so I'm considering the best way to go about it (and find best prices).

On that tip, anyone know the best (or most recommended) dual-Athlon board to get? I've not hung out in CPU/Mobo in a while, and I'll be searching it soon. But if anyone wants to summarize, it would be greatly appreciated. ;) Because of budget constraints, I'll skip on-board SCSI. Another thing is the case -- in some brief searching I did, I saw places selling ATX cases with 400-500W PSUs; are these mandatory for dual Athlons? TIA...

HitScan

Tue Jan 29 03:52:20 2002

Not only BS... it's elitism at its least charming.

ayup. Someday those who spout such nonsense will learn. Sadly, it will likely take the death of Apple to teach them. Unless Apple's "Target Market" becomes "Everybody and their damn brother" then they shall continue this market rot until they are deminished. Or atleast selling Gamecube knock-offs, heh.

As for the athlons, I still dearly, dearly want that Thunder K7, or a newer board with at least those specs. That beast was scrumptrelescent!

I think their executive officers went to the Steve Jobs School of Product Pricing.

This sadly, is true. I'm hoping that's just because they're first-run boards that are more or less single run per order, pushing people to wait until the final silicon is ready to go. If not then yes, they're a damn joke.

OSY 1.0 Thread Viewer

PowerPC fun!