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Technology (Apple) Businesses Software Apple Linux Technology

Terra Soft Withdraws Plans for PowerPC Motherboards 137

Posted by pudge from the oops dept.
DamienMcKenna writes "Terra Soft has just announced it is not going to produce PPC motherboards: 'We regret having launched a product initiative and built expectations prior to receiving first shipment. We have clearly learned a powerful lesson and do extend our apology to you, our existing and potential customers. As the Teron mainboard and associated systems will be made available through other resellers, we will encourage them to sign-on as official Yellow Dog Linux resellers in order that we may continue to support movement of what we hope to be a very popular product.' This leaves Genesi as the only company who still has PowerPC motherboards for sale, with a new board design due later this year."
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Terra Soft Withdraws Plans for PowerPC Motherboards More

Terra Soft Withdraws Plans for PowerPC Motherboards

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  • .....cluster of vaporware!

    • Re:Imagine a beowulf cluster..... (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      I've recently been looking into building a computer. I looked at their motherboards, and was certainly interested for a while in them. I eventually arrived at the conclusion that I wouldn't buy one of these things. Reason number one is cost. They were damned expensive, and the novelty of having a non-x86 chip isn't worth what they were asking. The other reason is support. The x86 has been dominant for so long that projects are beginning to be tailored to it. Look at the GMP benchmarks. The Pentiums

  • new IBM 970 chip, New IBM motherboard? (Score:4, Informative)

    by acomj ( 20611 ) on Wednesday April 09, 2003 @09:02AM (#5692557) Homepage
    IBM seems serious about the new PowerPC 970 chip working with lower end workstations. Hopefully they'll provide inexpensive motherboards for use with the chips so that reasonably priced PPC linux systems become a reality.

    Remeber the good old days and the promise of CHRP (Common Hardware Reference Platform.). It seemed like such a good idea but just never took off when apple killed macos for CHRP.

    Maybe Apple will allow clones again, but I'm not holding my breath.
    • Apple won't allow clones, period. And without the promise of Mac OS X, current PPC motherboards are too expensive to both with (if you just wanna run Linux, you can do it much cheaper on x86).

      IBM made the CHRP spec publicly available in 1998, and I don't know of any production motherboards that have been made from this design. It's just too expensive for a small company to produce PPC in bulk.

      I seriously doubt that IBM will be releasing the motherboard spec for the 970 anytime soon. Because people migh
      • So...Apple will probably be the cheapest place to get a PPC motherboard. If IBM and Apple's motherboard designs are similar enough, it's conceivable that you could run Mac OS X on the IBM, but it wouldn't be very useful.

        I think it would be very neat if Apple licenced Mac OS X Server to IBM for use on its PowerPC machines. There would be options for which OS to use on the IBM machine: Linux, IBM's house OS (AIX I think), and Mac OS X Server. No client, of course, as that would threaten Apple's market for

    • Re:new IBM 970 chip, New IBM motherboard? (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      IBM is the hardware monster. Think MCA. Price some RAM from some of the old PS/2 machines.

      They truly are like a Shaido with one goat.

    • Remeber the good old days and the promise of CHRP (Common Hardware Reference Platform.). It seemed like such a good idea but just never took off when apple killed macos for CHRP.

      Remember that the last company to pull out of the CHRP was Apple. The CHRP was long dead before they pulled out. In the begining Windows, OS2, MacOS and various other OSes were meant to run on the CHRP.

      OS2 died, Microsoft pulled out, and the CHRP was just Apple opening up its *hardware* market to cloners. Not suprisingly, Appl
      • Remember that the last company to pull out of the CHRP was Apple. The CHRP was long dead before they pulled out.

        They were also the ones that never delivered their part of the bargain (ie: hardware).


        • They were also the ones that never delivered their part of the bargain (ie: hardware).

          According to http://amiga.emugaming.com/c.html, the CHRP was meant to be a platform for all PowerPC hardware. Not just Apple's. Certainly PowerComputing and Motorolla had plans for the CHRP, though I suspect they were never released as their licenses were pulled.

          I can't find anything confirming that other hardware companies were going to ship CHRP...I thought IBM were too. Was Apple the only CHRP hardware manufactu

  • Why *would* people do "open platform macs"? (Score:3, Informative)

    by lingqi ( 577227 ) on Wednesday April 09, 2003 @09:04AM (#5692570) Journal
    I mean, it's not like there hasn't been mac clones before. And if y'all remember it didn't work out all that well, for Apple OR the clone makers, IIRC.

    And back in the days I remember the clones (and maybe apple in general?) would have windows emulation that would run pretty much anything (that's before the directX days) you wanted... now that I think about it, I really wonder why so few switched over - I mean, back then Apple wasn't cheap either, but neither was PCs, to tell the truth...

    Granted, Apple design wasn't as artistically meticulous as today either. The mac community, I think, had about the same amount of elitist / snobishness though. Actually Linux community too - except no KDE / Gnome / etc that we all take for granted.

    Ahh the old days.

    Anyway - Hardly doubt this will impact the mac world...
    • And if y'all remember it didn't work out all that well, for Apple OR the clone makers, IIRC.

      The problem was that it worked out a little too well for the consumers. Who knows what Apple is thinking these days...Mac OS X is really nice, but even their high end PowerMacs are well behind the x86 world. Maybe Steve has something shit-hot ready to release soon (maybe a PPC970 system) and isn't worried in the short term...or maybe he's just worn one turtleneck too many and Apple is doomed. I don't suppose we'
      • The problem was that it worked out a little too well for the consumers.

        this may be... but if it didn't work out well for any of the companies involved, then cancelling the program was quite the no-brainer. i owned a UMAX clone that I was moderately happy with; cheap macs can't be a bad thing for me... but i'd rather have expensive macs than no Apple.

        people forget that Apple was footing almost the entire cost of the license, and leaving the cloners to collect all the profits. this situation was one of the
        • people forget that Apple was footing almost the entire cost of the license, and leaving the cloners to collect all the profits.

          You're right, I did forget that's the way it worked. Oh well...maybe they could try again one day with some more reasonable terms attached to the agreement, like splitting R&D costs or something. With Apple now using commodity technologies for so many things (USB, FireWire, PCI, AGP, DDR-SDRAM, Ethernet, 802.11 etc) maybe it wouldn't be prohibitive for both Apple to not have
    • Not only is there interest in a Mac clone, these guys [2khappyware.com] are in the process of getting systems together to ship.

      According to a recent message [pstheme.com] by John Fraser (co-creator of the iBox) on the Think Secret message board, these systems will made available for pre-order in about 2 weeks.
    • I mean, it's not like there hasn't been mac clones before. And if y'all remember it didn't work out all that well, for Apple OR the clone makers, IIRC.

      It didn't work out because the Mac OEMs failed to differentiate their Macs away from desktop PCs. Nobody was selling "server-grade", rackmount Macs, embedded systems with MacOS and its GUI, set top boxes with MacOS, network appliance Mac clones, laptop or PDA Mac clones, network-enabled scanners or copiers that ran MacOS, etc, etc. Sure, PowerComputing clo

  • As usual completely factually incorrect.. (Score:4, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 09, 2003 @09:05AM (#5692573)
    enisi are not the only company. Eyetech also produce PPC mother boards and you can actually buy them unlike the Genisi boards (which they are no longer making).

    http://www.eyetech.co.uk/

    http://www.eyetech.co.uk/amigaone/
    • > Genisi are not the only company. Eyetech also
      > produce PPC mother boards and you can actually
      > buy them unlike the Genisi boards (which they are > no longer making).

      Incorrect, but nice try. Genesi is still producing Pegasus I board for developers. Genesi's Pegasus 2 model will be released sometime around Sept.

      Now if Teron thinks this generic mobo is a POS, why on earth would anyone want to buy a BIOS doggled, generic MIA mobo? Oh yeah, it's got a Boing Ball decal and the Faithful Follower
    • Nice troll, Mr Bouma, but as ever you are completely wrong in everything you say.

      First of all, Eyetech do NOT manufacture any PPC motherboards at all. NONE. (They were going to be shipping the Teron board, but they waffled and lied about the various reasons for delay - and now we start to see the real reason they can not ship the board which, it must be stressed, Eyetech do NOT make).

      Second, Genisi are still producing PPC motherboards and systems, currently in small numbers pending the launch of the Peg
  • I had been looking at getting one of the G3 600mhz jobbies as a spare box for a server, cause of the different arch then x86, and its bloody friggin hard to find boards that arnt from apple.

    There is a place in the UK which sells G3 and G4 boards and procs for Amiga systems (really cool that the new OS3 runs off of PPC), but with VAT, its a pain to import them back to America.

    For those interested: http://www.eyetech.co.uk/search.php?SearchStr=&Se a rchCat=AMA1 is what I had bookmarked as the search for

  • Genesi FUD? (Score:4, Informative)

    by An Ominous Cow Erred ( 28892 ) on Wednesday April 09, 2003 @09:08AM (#5692586)
    Uh, you can still buy an AmigaOne [eyetech.co.uk] from Eyetech [eyetech.co.uk] . (The AmigaOne uses the exact same reference design as the Teron, and is more or less the same thing, although the firmware chip has some different stuff on it for running AmigaOS).

    There are also various [softhut.com] resellers [compuquick...direct.com] who will sell you one if you do a little searching.

    Supplies are a little bumpy (shipment stopped for a little while while waiting for a newer board revision that fixed some issues with the northbridge), but I know people who have AmigaOnes already. (Regular people, not just people in developers like Hyperion (us))
    • " Uh, you can still buy an AmigaOne from Eyetech. "

      No you can't.

      They are not for sale yet.

      A VERY small number of beta testers have managed to touch one, but they are NOT yett on general release. No non-AOS4 beta tester or developer has ever managed to buy and receive an AmigaOne (not that there is even an AmigaOS to run on it yet either, by the way).
    • That's simply incorrect/uninformed. The so-called "AmigaOne" is simply another name for the Teron motherboard, but the distributor of those renamed Terons, Eyetech, has invented/acquired a license from Amiga, Inc. to sell it to AmigaOS users under the trademark "AmigaOne".

      There are no differences, not even in firmware. No "more or less the same thing". All Teron distributors (will) sell the exact same boards, Mai's design made by the same manufacturer. If you're really Hyperion, as you seem to claim that
      • I was referring to the added dongle code in the firmware (not part of U-Boot, but still part of the overall firmware of the system). Whether or not you like it is not important, it's part of the license agreement for AmigaOS. If you want to change it, the best way to do it would be to put up the money to purchase the rights. Amiga Inc. paid millions of dollars for them, and they set the terms. Your petition is another way to try to get totally open hardware support, but it will have to be backed up by somet

  • hmmmm (Score:2, Informative)

    by the-dude-man ( 629634 )
    We were truly excited to bring this particular ATX PowerPC Linux product to market.

    You get excited over that and you think the halting of the atx PPC is your biggest problem?

    PPC is great in theory, troble is in the real world its just so damn expensive you may as well go the x86 route. its actually so much cheaper that the cost of having the architechure fail is balenced by the fact you can go down the street and buy a replacement. I like PPC, its a nice archatechure, but its exensive, and its still comi
  • There are other PowerPC motherboard suppliers our there still, notably Genesi Sarl which ships a Micro-ATX board of its own design [pegasosppc.com], as opposed to the OEMed Mai Teron board [mai.com] that both TerraSoft [terrasoftsolutions.com] and Eyetech [eyetech.co.uk] have been licensing. There are a limited number of Pegasos 1 motherboards available [phinixi.com] from Genesi and a Pegasos 2 motherboard is in development for release later this year. Additionally Eyetech has been pre-selling their "AmigaONE" boards, which as I mentioned are based on the old Mai Teron design.

    Please note that the current Peagsos 1 boards use the same chipset as the Teron boards, except for the addition of a chip dubbed the April which fixes some bugs in the chipset. The new Pegasos 2 boards will use a completely different chipset [marvell.com] from Marvell [marvell.com].
    • To explain for those not familar with the Amiga-market of the recent about two years why Genesi isn't going anymore to produce the Pegasos-I in volume but designs a successor with different northbridge instead:

      The Pegasos-I uses the same northbridge from Mai as Mai's own reference design mainboard called Teron (also sold by Eyetech but labelled "AmigaOne" there). This northbridge is the Articia-S. Unfortunately this northbridge didn't work as advertized, it had bugs. (And maybe still has, so that this coul
  • Is it possible to build a machine w/ one of these mobos and run OS X on it?

    • Not really. (Score:4, Informative)

      by dmaxwell ( 43234 ) on Wednesday April 09, 2003 @09:40AM (#5692729)
      These boards won't contain a SWIM chip, Apple power manager chip, Apple firmware and some other fiddly bits to boot. A OS X install cd might not even start to boot and if it did it would probably lock up without so much as a Sad Mac.

      Now, you could install Linux on of these and then Mac-On-Linux. That WILL let you run OSX but with non-accellerated video and no automagic use of attached periphreals.
      • A SWIM chip is a floppy controller, which is hardly crucial to running MacOS X.

        -fred

      • These boards won't contain a SWIM chip,

        The SWIM chip (Which stands for Super Woz Integrated Machine), was last used in the Beige G3 machine. As somebody already pointed out, it is basically a floppy controler chip - which you might have noticed, Macs don't have anymore.

        Apple power manager chip, Apple firmware and some other fiddly bits to boot

        Apple uses open firmware [openfirmware.org] which is an open spec. As for the other bits, remember that darwin boots on intel machines.

        An OS X CD will indeed not boot such

    • Re:stupid question (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Okay, the current score is:
      • YES : one vote (RevAaron)
      • NO : one vote (dmaxwell)

      Stay tuned.

  • What I don't understand... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by mattbot 5000 ( 645961 ) on Wednesday April 09, 2003 @09:21AM (#5692644) Homepage

    ...is why this would have been a Good Thing in the first place. I'm genuinely curious about this, but why would anyone shell out cash for a PPC mobo that only supported G3s? It's a good chip, yeah, but for similar cash you could get a much better x86 solution and run some variety of Linux on it, no?

    Obviously there must be some advantages to a PPC board running YDL as compared to an x86 board running a comparable Linux distro that I don't understand, but I can't imagine what sort of market would pay for a board that would run such an aging processor.

    • Less confusing mouse.
    • I'm equally baffled.

      If you simply must have a G3 machine, for whatever reason, why not get an entire second hand Mac for the same sort of price that these people were trying to charge for just a mobo?

    • I tried to understand... (Score:5, Informative)

      by Bobartig ( 61456 ) on Wednesday April 09, 2003 @10:34AM (#5693053)
      I listened to a QT audio broadcast of an interview with TerraSofts's prez, as he talked about their choice of hardware for the boxer boxen. He couldn't really give concrete reasons that a 600Mhz G3 should carry droolfactor. He said stuff like "our webserver is a 350Mhz G3 running YDL. It handles all our traffic without any problems" and "I think people will be impressed at how well a G3 performs running YLD compared to faster machines. Its just that efficient."

      I even asked Terrasoft how they expected to compete with the 2nd hand mac market, and their response was as follows:

      As a long time mac/PPC user, and linux hobbyist, I'm very
      interested in buildling a custom atx PPC box. You guys are really
      spearheading this market, so I guess all my requests should go to
      you :).

      Thank you, and yes.

      Originally, the announced specs for just mobo+cpu was something
      like $495 for a 600Mhz G3, and atx board. I realize that you're
      probably positioning this as affordably as possible to grow the
      platform. My concern is that there's no way I could pay that when I
      can get either a 600Mhz iMac or 500Mhz B&W tower for just $100
      more. Is the component price expected to come down any time soon?

      It is an issue of volume of production. When volume of production
      goes up, price comes down. We are not able to reduce the price at
      this point in time. As for iMac and B&W, it is not appropriate to
      compare a 4-yr old computer from eBay to a new computer with
      Warranty.

      Will there be options for faster G3 chips, or multiprocessor
      configurations? You probably can't discuss most of this, what is
      the expected price range for the G4 based teron board? Do you have
      any benchmarks for a teron based linux system vs. a comparable
      Macintosh offering (to show off the architectural advantages of the
      Mai system, if any)?

      We will be shipping an 800 MHz G4 CPU at approximately $650. The
      demand for the G3s was limited in comparison to the G4s.

      We do not at this time have benchmarks, but will in the near future.

      Sincerely,
      Amanda

      ------------

      so basically, it was inappropriate to compare a teron board to "older systems" with similar hardware specs, and they had no benchmarks. I drafted a fairly inflamatory response outlining their extreme arrogance, which I havn't sent, but I'm pretty sure they got the message without me.

    • Re:What I don't understand... (Score:4, Interesting)

      by bedouin ( 248624 ) on Wednesday April 09, 2003 @11:57AM (#5693550)
      ..is why this would have been a Good Thing in the first place. I'm genuinely curious about this, but why would anyone shell out cash for a PPC mobo that only supported G3s? It's a good chip, yeah, but for similar cash you could get a much better x86 solution and run some variety of Linux on it, no?

      Well, one reason to go this route is because if you use it for something like a firewall, the usual x86 script kiddie exploits won't work quite as well. Another reason is just the plain coolness of having something different.
    • You probably haven't USED a PPC/Linux box. They make great servers. Here are my reasons:

      The G3 and G4 have caches comparable to most Xeon chips, making them a happy medium between consumer CPUs and expensive server CPUs. An Apple blue+white G3 with a SCSI card is blazing-fast for most server purposes, much faster IMO than a comparably clocked PC.

      The G3 uses very little power and does not need a fan on its small heatsink, making it ideal for 24/7 uptime. High power-use not only costs money directly, but it

  • Apple? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by g4dget ( 579145 ) on Wednesday April 09, 2003 @09:21AM (#5692645)
    Why is this in the Apple category? What does Linux running on a non-Apple PPC motherboard have to do with Apple?

    • Re:Apple? (Score:1, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      The apple icon is on this story so that people can get huffy and claim, with no evidence or indication of such whatsoever, that this was done out of fear of legal reprisal from Apple.

      Flamewar is plusgood for masshappy.
    • Well, many more people who are interested in Apple-related things would find this interesting versus other people, I suppose.

      I agree with you though... it's mis-catagorized.

      --Richard

  • This would explain it.... (Score:5, Informative)

    by An Ominous Cow Erred ( 28892 ) on Wednesday April 09, 2003 @09:22AM (#5692649)
    A quick Google search [google.com] would give some indication as to why the submitter would want people to think of Genesi as the only option.

    Now I'll be the first to admit that I'm not unbiased -- Google is a double-edged sword [google.com], but the original submission is pretty clear and blatant FUD.

  • This is wrong (Score:3, Informative)

    by Black Perl ( 12686 ) on Wednesday April 09, 2003 @09:27AM (#5692679)
    According to the site, they are simply not going to sell them directly. They are still going to manufacture them for OEM partners.

  • reasons vague (Score:1, Interesting)

    by drgroove ( 631550 )
    Its interesting that the given reasons for dropping the PPC motherboard production by TerraSoft were so vague. It makes one wonder if the legendary Apple legal department made some kind of threat or crackdown on their effort. Notice also that TerraSoft puts the focus on encouraging other PPC motherboard buyers to become dealers of their Yellow Dog Linux OS; perhaps Apple wanted to keep TerraSoft tied to using their own hardware for TS' computer systems, fearing that a TerraSoft which was both hardware and O

    • Re:reasons vague (Score:4, Insightful)

      by MalleusEBHC ( 597600 ) on Wednesday April 09, 2003 @11:31AM (#5693402)
      Come on now mods, interesting? This guy is ignorant at best, and a blatant troll at worst.

      It makes one wonder if the legendary Apple legal department made some kind of threat or crackdown on their effort.

      How in any way could Apple make a legal threat against a company attempting to produce a generic PPC computer to run Linux that would NOT be able to boot into Mac OS or OS X? Just because Apple is the most prominent user of the PPC arch doesn't mean that they control the market.

      As for Apple actually caring about what TerraSoft is doing, that's about as equally preposterous as your first point. Very few people buy Apple hardware solely to run Linux. Of those few that do, the vast majority are laptop users. So in the end you have a minority of Apple hardware using Linux users (which are already a minority to begin with) that TerraSoft would legitimately be competing with Apple for. Do you honestly think Apple is going to lose any sleep over that? I think not.

      Most likely, there were unexpected delays and/or the mobos just simply weren't a quality product. In that case, I would expect TerraSoft to be as vague as possible. No company wants to go out and advertise the fact that they couldn't deliver like they had earlier said; it's embarassing.
      • While I'll avoid making beligerent attacks against your post (I'm not going to lower myself to your level - 'blatant troll' indeed!), I do stand by my initial post. From my viewpoint, Apple's concern wouldn't be Linux as a competitor; it would be having another full-fledged manufacturer pumping out PPC compatible products, and the threat of pirated copies of OSX running on it. Hence why, in my view, TerraSoft would put the focus on Linux in their press release; to show Apple's legal dept that they are not t
        • my understanding is that TS's mobos aren't capable of running OS X. just because it's PPC, doesn't necesarily mean that OS X will run on it.
      • I would agree that maybe the parent post blows the significance of this out of proportion to some extent...but right now, TerraSoft DOES actually resell Apple hardware [terrasoftsolutions.com], dual-booting MacOS and Linux.

        I can't imagine they sell enough macs for Apple to be worried about losing that market to generic systems, but then Apple is notoriously petty about these things (see zealous legal action against dubious trademark conflicts, market rumours, etc.), so its not out of the question. If these systems were being sold
    • Remember, too, that their reasons for selling these things in the first place were somewhat vague, given the pricing. Maybe someone finally woke up and said "Oh, wait, nobody's going to buy these things at this price". Their decision to not go through with this after all certainly makes more sense than the decision to do it in the first place.

  • Technowarehouse sells best solution... Dual G4 PCI (Score:3, Interesting)

    by adzoox ( 615327 ) on Wednesday April 09, 2003 @10:16AM (#5692948) Journal
    I have a friend that has beta tested this card. It is a little slower but the processor compliment and the fact that it can just integrate into a G4 or x86 tower that's already installed make it a great proposition:

    The Dual G4 Linux card:

    Found here [technowarehousellc.com]

  • It's not an Apple competitor;
    Apple didn't make them say this;
    It would not enable Apple clones...
    Did I miss something or is it a black helicopter day?
  • Pekka Nissinen had recently updated his AmigaOne (and Pegasos) benchmarks comparison webpage [personal.inet.fi], providing information on various benchmark performance tests for AmigaOne-SE and AmigaOne-XE motherboards.

    Do note however that the G4 benchmarks do not include any Altivec optimised software tests, in which case the overall performance can be significantly improved, depending on the software type used and degree of optimisation.

  • A Powerful Lesson (Score:1, Flamebait)

    by LamerX ( 164968 )
    "We have clearly learned a powerful lesson and do extend our apology to you..."

    Yeah they realized that Macs and PPCs are slow...
  • That is why they call it...
    the Present.

    Soooooo Awesome. [domicile.fr]

    Kind of a strange company... They seem to be having a bit of a rocky beginning, but their products are enticing. Hardware support is a little lacking, but most of the important stuff is supported.

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