Hi, Rogério Brito wrote:
On Jan 19 2003, Craig Morehouse wrote:Has anyone tried running Linux on this poard? If successful, please reply both on-list and off, if you don't mind.Please, forgive my ignorance on the subject, but I see that lately people are talking more and more about such boards for PowerPC's and I read a tiny bit (very tiny) about such boards and they are basically an ATX motherboard with a PPC CPU stuck on them, right?
That is right.
If that is correct, what would the benefits of using one of those machines? Is it cheaper than purchasing a x86 system with equivalent horse-power? Is it just the techno-lust of using a PowerPC CPU?
They are not cheaper than x86, they are manufactured in much smaller scales. I think for some people it might be techno lust, but they do have potential uses that x86 might not cater as well for.
The 600 Mhz "G3" PowerPC CPU on my board is comparatively cool running and needs no fan, yet it is faster than a 600Mhz Celeron (from what I have seen). I will soon move to an 800Mhz G4 on a similar board. As you see the boards are cooler running and quieter than x86, but can be just as powerful.
There might also be interest because they can be used e.g to run MacOnLinux, but the hardware is cheaper and more flexible than a real Macintosh.
Some of the boards (like the AmigaOne) have an open source firmware (http://www.sourceforge.net/projects/u-boot) which might be of interest to some people that want to customise it, and use the board for specific purposes. Perhaps in some sort of embedded system, running Linux even.
As a standard desktop computer they are also fine, I suppose this is where the techo lust comes in, or where people might say they want it because they hate x86 CPUs and want to use a PowerPC CPU, yet they want the flexibility of a standard ATX motherboard with standard stuff like PCI/AGP, SDRAM slots etc.
Regards, Ross..