Genesi, the company behind the Open Desktop Workstation and Pegasos platform, has decided to open up all aspects of the PegasosPPC. “We have decided to make the complete design and component listing for the PegasosPPC available for free download.”
Genesi, the company behind the Open Desktop Workstation and Pegasos platform, has decided to open up all aspects of the PegasosPPC. “We have decided to make the complete design and component listing for the PegasosPPC available for free download.”
It’s time to really build a computer instead of simply plugging stuff together.
It has been a very long time since motherboards (or a lot of the more modern electronics) have been built using only a single layer with front and back. These days, a large portion of things are at least 4 layers of wiring sandwiched in a board, and often more.
What that means is that if only for the board alone, someone somewhere needs to put up a fairly hefty bit of capital for doing small runs of boards, whether they build them themselves (not something likely in a home shop) or have it farmed out. This isn’t something that would be economical for short runs, because the costs are too high: you’d be better off buying the unpopulated board from Genesi directly in terms of costs, complete with all sockets installed.
And even once you have a board that has all the sockets, there’s still a hellish amount of soldering involved with surface mount devices, etc. which will take a fairly large amount of time for the best hobbiest to complete, assuming they are very careful and are sufficiently coordinated. That sort of work is more commonly done in mass production using wave soldering, or automated equipment.
The days of building a “modern” computer by hand that’s even remotely financially viable for the money saved (if that’s possible at all) is long past. At best, it only makes sense for prototyping a system that doesn’t exist.
Jonathan Thompson
Screenshots coming with an announcement of open hardware specs. Methinks this trend of supplying eye-candy has officially reached the lunatic fringe.
Bastian, the shots are about PPC Java.
I see a lot of empty talk and nothing actually happening.
They haven’t actually released anything yet, and you need a Power.org membership (I assume that’s a paid membership since they say that a free membership option is “on the way”).
They also say that they will charge an unspecified “nominal” fee for the HAL.
And does this “complete design” include schematics for the board? Or just the layout stuff needed.
power.org membership is free.
It will be interesting to see this materialize.
Porting AOS4 to other PPC-based platforms seems to me to be even more important now
http://www.morphos-news.de/comments.php?lg=en&cpp=1&nid=1192&page=2…
I really hope they reach a critical mass. Hell, I even wish my desktop melts at this moment so I can buy their box.
That’s just a marketing stunt – who with the resources to do so would actually be interested in building these? It doesn’t look like a very profitable business to me.
@ stew
So what are they marketing here?
They are giving it away for free, no obligations. If anyone on this planet can come up with a business idea around the Pegasos2, with some volume prefereably, they will now be able to go ahead and build computers!
🙂
@ Stew:
You wrote:
> It doesn’t look like a very profitable business to me.
Well… Now groups of Linux users (or Amiga users, don’t forget Pegasos was born by amigan engineers aimed at amigans and amiga market) they could hire a bounty and send blueprints of the Pegasos Motherboard right to manufacturers worldwide (preferably in China or South West Asia) choose the cheapest “on-demand” manufacturer and get their computers with little expenses and little effort in the requested quantities…
This move from genesi t will cut all problems of prices due to copyrights. manufacturers could be interested in an complete free machine…
…even engineers worldwide could pick the blueprints and modify designs of Pegasos improving it with new hardware solutions…
It is a complete open computing solution:
Open Motherboard + Open Source OS like Linux…
A new future is coming…
Also Genesi, strange to know, it could keep its business by certifying new future Open models of Open Pegasos motherboards trusting that these new motherboards accomplish Pegasos standards, Also Genesi could test hardware motherboard to ensure these accomplish quality standards, and/or it could became a repair center which could serve the open-users worldwide.