If they’d sell the apollo accelerators stand alone… as just a CPU it would be interesting and viable but its rather not really an option since they are proprietary and only integrated with Amiga computers. It is what it is I guess.
No the NeXT only has a single CPU, sadly. There were very few machines with 68k in an MP configuration (not even sure it was SMP). I only know of:
- Bull DPX2 (up to 4)
- Omron LUNA-2 (up to 2)
The NET-BSD docs linked for the Luna2 specifically said the second 68040@25MHz was for SMB. I guess cache technology wasn’t there for the 40 MHz version of the '040. It’s sad that the 25 MHz pair would have been slower than a single 68060.
Based on Haiku porting notes on Tier 3, any development work is out of pure nostalgia versus need.
There are online websites and emulators, like AmiKit 12.2, retaining full OS-level hardware driver support for many of these platforms as well as the application software and games designed or ported to them.
The clarity is in the desire to boot Haiku on these Tier 3 platforms - as taken from Haiku’s porting web page. For m68k and PPC, there is still very little desire to continue any Haiku-related development or support on m68k/PPC platforms. Nostalgically, no.
The truest form of flattery, but what is gained here?!?
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The “tier 3” in that page is only meant to reflect the current status of the port. When it starts booting to the desktop it will be tier 2, and when there is an haikuports builder, and we ship an official release for it, it will be tier 1.
Developers gain experience in porting software to new platforms.
Haiku gains some “advertising”, as surely “Haiku gets a Motorola 68000 port, a CPU that has not been updated for 25 years, before the OS even started to exist” makes a good news story. And, who knows, maybe a few more users installing it?
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Also wouldn’t the code base be more ironed out the more platforms are supported?
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Continuing the discussion from Q'n'A - Recently committed Haiku kernel patches for 'ppc' and several 'm68k' architectures:
OK. As of Y2023, some hardware enthusiasts still have…
- Amiga 4000(T) w/ 128MB → 2GB RAM
- AmigaONE X5000 - dual-core PPC 5020/Radeon R9/290X (4GB RAM)
- Apollo Standalone V4+ (512MB RAM, Amiga-clone)
- Atari Falcon (modded: 95Mhz 68060, 512MB RAM)
- Genesi Pegasos II - Open Desktop Workstation (2GB RAM, Amiga-clone)
- Genesi Efika Open Client Plus (128MB RAM, Amiga Clone)
- HP 9000/400 desktop workstation (128MB RAM)
- NeXTcube Turbo Color (128MB RAM)
- Sun 3/470 desktop workstation (128MB RAM)
Apple Power Macs (PPC):
- Power Mac 7300 and 7600
- Power Mac 8500 and 9500
- Power Mac 8600 and 9600: <= 250 MHz models.
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The Apollo looks interesting somehow.
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I really like the idea.
Maybe in the future someone will develop a tui_server to be able to use applications that don’t need a GUI.
It even opens the possibility of Haiku having a server version someday.
Imagine something like OS/400. AS/400 servers are managed using a menu system.
Keep that idea.
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Re:Apollo 68080
The MMU is specifically designed to make address translations and nothing else. The memory protection unit adds memory protection features to AROS, AmigaOS 3.x and EmuTOS. Trying to implement fully functional multiple address spaces like Haiku require would be a whole different league above the other 3 mentioned. The memory protection unit uses a different granularity than the page size of the MMU also.
Considering that the maximum clock speed is about 120 MHz, single threaded, it is hard-soldered to an unexpandable 512 MiB of DDR3, the base price is equivalent to a new, modern i5 based system with 8 GiB of DDR5, and the graphics core has a fixed-function pipeline for a polygon accelerator that can barely manage 1080p, I think the work would be bigger than the reward. Are you up to such a challenge?
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The “gain” of this all:
The educational gain mentioned is in learning more about various CPUs, Haiku Loader, Kernel, and Application Server and porting these Haiku components to other computer hardware platforms.
There are some memory limitations - but maybe oversighted here…
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Hey all,
Just to let you know about the current status of the PPC “port” (well more of an architectural refresh to be honest, most changes are concerning existing code base for the time being).
I’ve managed to get a bit further in kernel initialisation (about where the vm subsystem is jettisoning boot loader allocations) but keep getting bitten by randomish OFW “lockups” at various points. I’m suspecting code alignement issues (even if the PowerPC I’m targetting shouldn’t be bothered by it…).
Anyway, I’ve decided that it was time to backtrack a bit and push the various patches I had floating around to get the PPC toolchain some love and get back on those issue with a fresh look later on(and maybe more eyes ? Wink wink).
In the process @davidkaroly spotted a nicely hidden regression in the latest binutils assembler PPC code,
(https://review.haiku-os.org/c/buildtools/+/6988) which deserve some more praise IMHO.
So well, let’s say it still moving forward, albeit at a glacial pace, but still moving !
To be continued !
Cheers,
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Hurrah ! Kudos !
I see,
it was your ‘bit further’ → hrev57313 – Various PowerPC fixes
… from 6th of October, last time
Happy new Year, dear @Yn0ga !
What about with your PPC development ?
How far you’ve got ?
Could you share some progress with us ? -(|;-))>
Cheers,
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Thx @KitsunePrefecture, Happy new year to you too !
As you may have guessed from my (really) long silence, life has thwarted my longing for progress on the PPC port, and nothing has changed since October.
IIRC I had a toolchain issue, where all compiled binaries contained a single writable text section (which is not a good idea from a security standpoint and is not supported - for good reasons - without modifying the haiku loader)
So I’ll probably need to stop procrastinating on this one before moving ahead. Hopefully, I should get some time off in 2024, hope is not lost!
Thanks for your interest (and patience)
Regards,
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Could you share a more technical explanation to this particular point/issue?
Thanks.
In this case I wish you
good luck !..
→ for some time off in 2024 ;-))
→ and happy ending in toolchain issue !..
For me, personally, just intrigued in a PPC version of Haiku as I was
trained/worked at IBM for a longer period, and although I had not owned a PPC based PC orApple product I always hoped in a Mac that would run AIX … Unfortunately THIS was a mere DREAM 8D
There was an AIX for PC grade (laptop even!) machines but it was in the really early time. So this platform is most sympathethic due to AIX. Since then I went away from sysadmin carrier, so AIX is not in the target. I felt myself lucky I started to learn knowing UNIX system on AIX - from my perspective it is the best UNIX … related commands/features. I admit that Splaris also has interesting features, but I could not accomodate to its environment/commands so well as I did/felt on AIX.
So if a new platform I could buy … it would be an Open PPC, not Risc-V or ARM.
Thanks for feeding the hope in guys who already own a PPC based machine, even an Apple or not.
There are tickets that need to be resolved: https://dev.haiku-os.org/query?status=!closed&platform=PowerPC