Sven Harvey returns with news from the Amiga
market
A Cube Systems have announced the
availability of a new run of the an earlier SAM PowerPC board that can run
AmigaOS 4.1.
These low-production-run boards have been
re-released at a lower price to encourage as many people as possible to try out
AmigaOS 4.1. Featuring the Applied Micro PowerPC 440ep SoC (System On A Chip)
at either 667MHz or 733MHz these Flex-AT boards offer the lowest -cost option
to get into the next-gen AmigaOS ever offered.
SAM
PowerPC board
The Uboot on this new batch has been
upgraded also to enable the ability to boot from PATA devices connected to the
VIA VT6421 controller. Specifications remain as follows:
·
FlexATX form factor (21,6x17cm)
·
CPU Applied Micro PowerPC 440ep (667 and 733MHz)
·
Integrated DDR 266 memory controller
·
Integrated PCI controller
·
Integrated flash memory devices controller
·
Integrated USB 1.1 host and 2.0 device
controller
·
Two integrated Ethernet 10/100 ports
·
Up to four serial ports
·
Two I2C interfaces SPI interfaces 64-pin for I/O
general purpose
·
Two DDR DIMM slots, max 1GB RAM
·
USB 2.0 OHCI/EHCI NEC PCI controller (two
external ports, two internal ports)
·
Audio Cirrus Logic CS4281 and Realtek ALC655
Codec
·
Silicon Image 4 Serial ATA ports
·
Pericom 8150B PCI bridge
·
FPGA Lattice XP with 80-pin I/O expansion
connector
·
One PCI slot - 32-bit, 66Mhz
·
Two PCI slots -32-bit, 33MHz
It may seem somewhat underpowered in the
world of Windows, but AmigaOS isn't a system resource sucking behemoth. Such a
machine based on this motherboard is more than usable and really can only be
beaten for 0S4.1 use by the bigger SAM and of course the AmigaOne X1000, which
will come in at a much higher price.
the
AmigaOne X1000
Prices start at around $344 (plus local VAT
and shipping) for the motherboard with the 667MHz processor installed from
ACube in Italy. AmigaOS 4.1 comes in at $136 plus VAT and shipping on top, and
of course you'll be better off sourcing RAM, a hard disk, optical drive and
casing here in Blighty. You will of course want to secure an AmigaOne keyboard
and mouse from AmigaKit too!
News Bytes
New Morph
MorphOS 3.1 has been released with an
array of bug fixes and improvements for those with supported hardware (which
includes certain PowerPC-based Apple Macs including a couple of the G4
Powerbooks). Take a look at tinyurl.com/cwa4twa for more.
It's Back...
After being away for a while, the
original Amiga marketplace returned on 1st July. Amibench is essentially a
classified listing site geared specifically towards Amiga products including
for sale and wanted ads, and can be found at www.amibench.org.
Linux + AROS
Debuting on x86 and more interestingly on
ARM, AEROS is a hybrid distribution of Linux with AROS taking the place of
the desktop manager, in the form of AROS Broadway. Ironically AROS as a
hosted OS actually uses less system resources than the Linux desktops (go
figure...). Or in other words, it flies on slower ARM systems, making the other
desktop distros look like they're running in molasses, while having all the
driver benefits of Linux sitting underneath. Oh and then you can run
JanusUAE, so that'll be me playing Settlers then... Now wheres my Raspberry
Pi got to? Pop along to www.aeros-os.org for more!
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