Hi,
Rog�rio 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..
