From: ganoe@cs.vt.edu (Craig H. Ganoe) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.misc,comp.sys.amiga.hardware Subject: Re: PPC cards Date: Wed, 03 Sep 1997 04:02:37 GMT Organization: Virginia Tech Message-ID: <340cd624.393915440@news.vt.edu> References: <5tgbru$m2k@proxy5.proxy.ozemail.net> <13216814@sourcery.han.de> <5u3mif$c3e$1@coranto.ucs.mun.ca> <34209d4d.70207396@nntp.ix.netcom.com> <5u8nq5$mpc$1@coranto.ucs.mun.ca> <342ced73.116017177@nntp.ix.netcom.com> <34083b7a.92177133@news.vt.edu> <340ADE78.734D@mtek.chalmers.se> <340b0874.275723279@news.vt.edu> <340C1F46.167E@elixir.e.kth.se> NNTP-Posting-Host: as2511-27.sl016.cns.vt.edu X-Newsreader: Forte Free Agent 1.11/32.235 Lines: 65 Path: 195.95.96.10!news.unisource.be!planetinternet.be!newsgate.unisource.nl!bullseye.news.demon.net!demon!dispatch.news.demon.net!demon!news.maxwell.syr.edu!newsfeed1-hme1!newsfeed.internetmci.com!198.82.160.249!solaris.cc.vt.edu!not-for-mail Xref: 195.95.96.10 comp.sys.amiga.misc:151839 comp.sys.amiga.hardware:150741 On Tue, 02 Sep 1997 16:14:30 +0200, Carl Skedinger wrote: >Craig H. Ganoe wrote: >> >> but I'll take that over vague statements from Phase5. Try answering >> a simple question like "will the A/BOX's OS run on their PPC boards >> for current Amigas"? Back this up with a statement from Phase5. >> Maybe there is such a statement, but I haven't seen one. > >This sentence from www.phase5.de(OS strategy part) >might answer it for you :) > >"During late summer 1997, we plan to start alpha and beta > releases of the A\BOX OS for developers running on our > PowerUp accelerators." > Thanks for pointing this out. This is on http://www.phase5.de/news/projectinfo/ose.html Well, that's at least some good news for people considering Phase5's PPC cards. Unfortunately, I did figure out some other stuff from going over Phase5's web pages again. The same web page mentioned the PPC exec.library they developed, "As we had announced earlier, we do have a fully AmigaOS 3.1 Exec running, and had other OS-compatible functionalities under development." (note it said "had") and proceeds to say: "However, a next generation OS needs significant enhancements, so we can't see that an OS which is extremely close to the AmigaOS 3.x can fullfill the demands." Which essentally seems to be an excuse as to why they won't use it (my guess some Copyright issues may some into play there as well). Then I found some other pages that seem to explain how the PPC will work under AmigaOS 3.1. On the web page: http://www.phase5.de/news/oldnews/cybppce.html it says: "While the original AmigaOS 3.x continues to run on the 68k CPU - as well as all existing applications do, what provides 100% compatibility - the PowerPC CPU is supported by a comprehensive PPC Library developed by phase 5, which provides all functionality to integrate the PowerPC into the Amiga multitasking environment. Software developers can easily optimze their programs step by step by porting single tasks to PowerPC code, which then can run parallel with 68k tasks." Well, there's the PPC.library that people mentioned. I read this as AmigaOS 3.1 running on the 68k and if a programmer wants to run PPC code, the programmer creates a subtask on the PPC using the PPC.library. Well, that's multiprocesssing, but it's none of the fancy schemes people were posting here where parts of AmigaOS were on the 68k and others on PPC. Looks to me all the AmigaOS is the same old 68k code (which makes sense to me since this is all Copyrighted) and the programmer can write their own PPC subtasks to do stuff for them. Of course this still leaves some open issues (like what level of access the PPC has to the AmigaOS), but this fits a lot closer to how I thought these boards would work. On a brighter note, I did see a post in c.s.a.misc "AmigaOS, Linux on PowerUp" that implied that a Linux port for these boards may be in the works (I don't know if this is from a reputable source or not, so don't quote me on it). Craig