Re: AmigaOne X5000

On Fri, 3 Mar 2017, Al Zick wrote:
> The AmigaOne X5000 is out! In fact, I have one.

Sweet! Congrats, Al. I took a look at the deals at Amiga on the Lake and 
it was pretty pricey. I want to say it's like $1500 - $1900 USD depending 
on options, but I might be misremembering. It's just a tad too rich for my 
blood. However, I'm still really interested.

Does it have an FPGA on board like the X1000 did? I've wondered if they 
added that so you could drop some VHDL or whatever and reproduce an "real" 
legacy Amiga in those gates, then funnel 68k through that layer rather 
than having to always resort to UAE. Is that possible with the AX5K?

> It seems fast, but AmigaOS doesn't give it much of a work out.

Yeah, it's definitely a case of hardware outpacing software. The 
post-Commodore era has sucked. IIRC, only Escom was the last non-Commodore 
company able to actually produce a "real" Amiga. Everything else has 
turned out to be a tease or a dirty lie. So, my hat is off to the A-EON 
guys for the work. My only regret is that it looks like a cheap PC in a 
crappy case.

The other sad fact was that the M68k line sorta died. Yeah, sure Coldfire 
was pretty close, but still not pin or microcode compatible. Bummer. I put 
a lot of work into learning the 68k in the '030 era when it had become 
fully 32 bit. In my (albeit limited) experience, I found it to be very 
comfortable to program on.

> I did try installing NetBSD on it with Bochs. Here it is in the 
> installer: http://datazap.net/sites/14/Bochsinstall.jpg I think it is 
> only using 1 core.

You are emulating x86 though, right? Cool screenshot. I *am* jealous.

> It looks like there maybe a new PowerPC 
> notebook:http://www.powerpc-notebook.org/en/

Huh, and they are made by A-Cube, too. The same folks who make the SAM460. 
Cool. I hope it makes it to production. If it looked halfway cool and 
could run AmigaOS, that'd be the culmination of a longtime dream since 
Commodore never produced a portable Amiga. However, it looks like those 
folks are concentrating on Linux.

> Also, Servergy has built a new PowerPC server: 
> http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1262676

I saw that come out, too. It's hella expensive, though. I can't remember 
but I just remember a sharp inhalation of breath when I saw the $$$.

> There maybe other PowerPC system too. I know that they plan on building 
> 2 more versions of the X5000.

> The problem is that Debian may drop support for PPC:

That's okay. I've dropped support for Debian. So have a lot of folks now 
that Devuan Beta 1 has been so stable and successful. Post systemd distros 
who downed the poison pill with a big jar of Lennart's cool aid are dead 
to me. Dead forever - no more chances after that fiasco.

> http://tenfourfox.blogspot.ae/2016/11/debian-drops-powerpc.html The 
> author of this article believe like me that NetBSD needs to be ported to 
> the new PowerPC system. There must be someone who can port to this 
> system.

Well, if it does happen to garner NetBSD support I'd probably buy one 
myself. I wish I was rich, and I could buy a couple of interested kernel 
devs their own rig to work with.

Anyhow, I hope you enjoy your new machine. If you happen to write up any 
blogs or other experiences with it, shoot them to the list or to me. I'd 
love to hear about your experience.

-Swift