Genesi’s OpenDesktopWorkstation (ODW) is now directly available from Freescale, it is reported.
Freescale: OpenDesktopWorkstation available
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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68 Comments
Anonymous
http://www.genesi.lu/morphos_statement.php
It is right there on web page — “plan b”! When one OS goes bad, just switch to the next one!
This is why Genesi with G4GE will be most important computer company of all time.
If Genesi developer need food, they can come to my bakery and eat fresh bread. It will be just like old times.
Remember, only forward thinker like Genesi is building computer that uses full capability of special chip G4. This is ultimate silicon for developer and power user.
Everyone at Genesi is amazing power user! Buy new Genesi system and you too can learn about power of Genesi!
2004-11-29 12:13 am
Anonymous
…we will answer this tomorrow.
dpi, you have incomplete information or possibly even misinformation, but you sound sincere enough to answer through the open source idea generation system — the present day BBS. 😉
Good night!
R&B
2004-11-29 1:36 am
Anonymous
and i remember the openBSD-thing. . .
Another example can be taken from http://www.phinixi.com/tiki-index.php?page=OpenBSD-Peg+Wrap-up .
2004-11-29 2:52 pm
Anonymous
Remember that by buying a Pegasos you’re buying a machine that consumes really nowhere near to the standards. VERY LOW power usage, as to make it possible to use fanless 100W PSUs.
You may say you don’t care, but companies that need 50+ machines care more than you, because energy costs and doesn’t cost the same in all countries.
Moreover, the cost of a complete Pegasos1 system is very low. No more than 500-600$ monitor and all the needed peripherals included. And you get a full-featured linux box which can run StarOffice and other powerful software without any problems.
Don’t think always in terms of power-computing. There’s low-power-computing too in the world where you live.
2004-11-29 3:25 pm
Anonymous
VERY LOW power on the Genesi side…
Caution! This is ad-aware! 
Read the following link about the guy named RockmanX and BBRV!
http://www.morphzone.org/modules/newbb_plus/viewtopic.php?topic_id=…
2004-11-29 4:47 pm
Anonymous
“Don’t think always in terms of power-computing. There’s low-power-computing too in the world where you live.”
G3s/G4s can nice power-wise, but I got a VIA EPIA Mini-ITX server running off a 55W PSU. Evidently there’s x86 CPUs that are very low on the power usage and trust me, I did not pay anywhere near $600 for my system (yes, _system_, not only motherboard + CPU). By the way, there’s fanless 1 GHz VIA Eden CPUs if VIA EPIA has too little juice for your needs.
2004-11-29 7:56 pm
Anonymous
Well their have been many post about how expensive the ODW is, and I must disagre. Why? Well I don’t live in the USA, and I don’t live in a country using the US dollar as the main currency, I live in Sweden. Which means the following for ~2 year the US dollar has gone from being worth 11 SEK to 6.7 SEK. In Sweden an Emac cost 8295 SEK and a ODW station (at GGS-data) 7675 SEK, ad a CRT for ~1500 and sure it is more expensive. BUT the ODW I can expand the Emac is almost impossible to expand.
2004-11-29 9:21 pm
Anonymous
>one, PowerPC is a good processor and since it runs cooler >than Pentium/AMD it makes a good base for a quiet system.
Actually, AMD Opteron EE 1.4Ghz (~30Watts) is about same as 7447A @1.42Ghz (~30Watts).
Refer to
http://www6.tomshardware.com/cpu/20041115/pentium4_570-20.html
2004-11-29 9:25 pm
Anonymous
Other 130nm A64 @2Ghz is pretty much in line with Opteron HE @2.0Ghz (55Watts).
2004-11-29 9:28 pm
Anonymous
>one, PowerPC is a good processor and since it runs cooler >than Pentium/AMD it makes a good base for a quiet system.
Factor in ‘Pentium M’ in laptops and AOpen/DFI motherboards.
2004-11-29 9:58 pm
Anonymous
>Actually, AMD Opteron EE 1.4Ghz (~30Watts) is about same as 7447A @1.42Ghz (~30Watts).
Note that you are comparing the 90nm generation against the 130nm PPC.
The next G4 7448 will probably have around 12W power consumption at 1400MHz – refer to http://www.ppcnux.de/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=4298 .
You can see a table of the current 7447A at http://www.ppcnux.de/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=4176
2004-11-30 12:47 pm
Anonymous
And what would my posts on MorphZone demonstrate? I’m not affiliated with Genesi in any way. I posted to:
1- Let you understand that you’re criteria, when comparing Pegasos to other machines, did not take in count some factors
2- Make you understand that competition is the basis of commerce and what YOU promote are big companies that block competition, causing big problems WORLDWIDE.
These are my ideas. Not Genesi’s (bbrv’s) suggestions.
So mark as “ad-aware” (LOL) something else.
2004-12-01 12:00 am
Anonymous
Okay, i’m waiting…
2004-12-01 8:26 am
Anonymous
Don’t hold your breath. Bill Buck only shows up to attempt some damage control and since this topic no longer is visible by default at OSNews you’re likely to have to wait like the rest of us have done many times before.
2004-12-01 12:18 pm
Anonymous
I won’t, and figured that non-frontpage advantage out already. Given my answer is unanswered, i’ll try get an answer in the next MorphOS thread.
Also, making an appointment which is then worth nothing fits in their overal business practice.
The reason i’m interesting is, its interesting to hear the other side of the story, especially if it is a direct REPLY of the allegations of the ‘attacking’ side.
From Morphos.net
*bbrv* David, this is our last warning. We will sue you for libel in Switzerland and begin this effort with the lawyers this week if you do not take down the site. This is not an idle threat. We have no legal contractual obligation to you or any one on you list. As for Wayne, this has been completely documented and Sjoerd NEVER returned the board to Genesi. I am sure your parents will not be happy this time for sure.
*bbrv* Instead of paying you anything we will use the money for the lawyers
BBRV please specify wether this quoted text is authentic or not. Thank you.
2004-12-01 1:36 pm
Anonymous
1. It is authentic text that was written into a private IRC window between David and us. He has chose this negotiation technique. He is 26 and lives with his parents.
2. The other side of the story was posted earlier in this thread.
3. David has been paid for the work/development we distribute. We do not agree with the financial demands he is currently making or the actions he has taken. He has no contract.
You can *always* email us. It is probably a more suitable place for this discussion.
R&B
2004-12-01 10:23 pm
Anonymous
“It is authentic text that was written into a private IRC window between David and us. He has chose this negotiation technique. He is 26 and lives with his parents.”
Okay, thanks for confirming.
“The other side of the story was posted earlier in this thread.”
1) What about the specific claims i quoted? You say i spread dis- and misinformation without stating what exactly is untrue. This is your chance to debunk what i said.
2) According to Morphos.net, there are currently 8 developers who claim Genesi owe them money (now including Dale Rahn from OpenBSD). How are you going to solve the current situation? Whats your story behind all of these 8 specific conflicts or where can we read yours?
“You can *always* email us. It is probably a more suitable place for this discussion.”
I prefer to discuss in public so readers are able to read your statements so they can draw their own conclusions. I started quoting allegations in public and it would be unfair to not disclose your defense. Futhermore, if i quote you, a public reponse is more authentic than a private one.
Situations like this one are your chance to convince the public (which may include potential customers).
2004-12-01 11:21 pm
Anonymous
We have always been very public about these sorts of things once the other party has decided to take one side of the story public.
http://www.genesi.lu/morphos_statement.php
That takes care of the first four.
5. Wayne Hunt (this has been posted before because Wayne chose not to follow Paul’s advice)
From: “Paul Adams” <pauladams@genesi-usa.com>
Date: January 3, 2004 4:11:04 AM CET
To: “Wayne Hunt (E-mail)” <wayne@genesi-usa.com>
Cc: “Raquel Velasco and Bill Buck (E-mail)” <bbrv@genesi.lu>
Subject: Official Corporate Position
Reply-To: <pauladams@genesi-usa.com>
Wayne
From all reports, you have completed your responsibilities to transfer all required access data relative to the Genesi web sites. Now that we have complete access to the site, we will evaluate what you have actually delivered to Genesi and determine within the next two weeks whether or not we believe you are owed any further consulting fees.
As for expenses, please scan and email to me the phone bill you mentioned in your email of this afternoon. Also, regarding your New Orleans trip, please send me an email breaking down those expenses, with scanned receipts as well. Upon receipt of the breakdown, I will advise you on the timing of any reimbursement.
Effective immediately, you are no longer to use the email address wayne@genesi-usa.com for any purposes. That email address will be shut down and forwarded to me. After this email, I will contact you on your amiga.org address.
Now that all is safely within our corporate control, I will respond to your actions over the past several days.
You were brought on as a consultant on April 9, 2003 with the task of managing the Genesi web development effort and with the goal of having a completed web site with a fully functional on line store completed by July 15, 2003. At your consulting rate of $5,000 a month, the budget for the first phase of the web site was $15,000, not including the consulting fees to the people you were required to manage.
You did not deliver the functional site and additional expenses were incurred to conduct a web developers meeting in Sacramento to bring the effort to focus. Each month, the site was delayed. Faced with a deadline of October 15, 2003, you scrambled, coded with bubble gum and duct tape and put a marginally functional site on line. Over the next two months, you were requested to bring to the site the functionality you were being paid to deliver. You never did.
As of today, you have been paid a total of $38,000 in consulting fees, which represents full payment through December 1, 2003. You were paid more in consulting fees than any other Genesi consultant and delivered the least. As you may recall, you received your first check for a full month of consulting 9 days after being brought on board. I am attaching a full breakdown of payments that have been made to date. Even assuming you have earned any consulting fees through December 30th, the most you would be owed is $5,064.52.
Since you seem to think it may be somehow clever to disparage Genesi in your online postings, please be advised that we are prepared to respond. Genesi is a start up company, so delays in payment of obligations are not that unusual. Should we be required to respond to any on line postings, we will show that, for a start up, we exhibited a tremendous degree of tolerance for your incompetence before terminating your consulting services.
You were paid over twice the budgeted amount for your services yet never delivered the product you were contracted to deliver. In our dealings, you demonstrated a fundamental inability to manage either people or products. You also do not appear capable of even managing yourself.
Your action in changing the administrative password to deny access to the site was appallingly unprofessional. Attempting to hold a web site hostage while demanding twice what you may reasonably be owed is despicable. Your mingling of corporate and personal data at zone edit jeopardized corporate data and made the access transfer process much more difficult than it should have been.
You have demonstrated without a doubt that you are not fit for any position of trust. Your posting of inappropriate images on the web site demonstrated your complete lack of judgment and fundamental unfitness for any position of responsibility or discretion. Finally, your false statements to me that you were told to post those pictures “ASAP” establishes your utter lack of integrity.
You never seemed to understand that consulting fees are earned by performance, not simply because you survived another 30 days. Considering your poor performance and failure to deliver the contracted product, your demand for anything demonstrates an incredible level of arrogance.
This email will be placed in the corporate records as the official position of Genesi regarding your performance as a consultant. Should you desire to provide a response to Genesi’s official position, I will include that in the corporate records along with this document. Having said that, I have no intention of engaging in a debate with you over your performance.
We have no intention of making any aspect of this position public. If, however, you decide to commence an on line discussion of Genesi, I can assure you that we will identify you as a disgruntled former consultant and post a response containing the points outlined above to place your comments into perspective.
Paul Adams
Chief Operating Officer
Genesi – USA
6. Sjoerd de Vries
We provided him a reduced cost board to through a program we developed for Journalists. He spent that money to buy the board. The understanding was that if he return the board we would give him his money back. He did not return the board to Genesi. He returned it to a Reseller. We never received the board. We feel the Reseller should return the funds as the Reseller resold the board and it was never returned to Genesi.
7. This has been discussed on many Forums. Jens Schoenfeld organized this show in which we participated:
http://www.pegasosppc.com/gallery.php?id=1
We paid Jens in cash and in full at the Show. He signed the invoice. There were also witnesses. Jens came to us *after* the Show and claimed additional funds we due. We refused to pay. We were the #1 draw without question for the Show. He kept all the admission proceeds (eight DM or something like that) and we paid him $2000+ for the space.
8. Dale. We made a statement on this thread and then there is this:
http://www.phinixi.com/tiki-index.php?page=OpenBSD-Peg+Wrap-up
This includes all the discussion.
===
If this does not satisfy you please ask more questions. You may need to send us an email to remind us you are still here.
R&B
2004-12-02 1:29 am
Anonymous
>Note that you are comparing the 90nm generation against >the 130nm PPC.
Opteron EE 1.4Ghz is processed in 130nm.
PS; I don’t think you can purchase an Athlon 64 @1.4Ghz.
if I can get this for cheap, I would buy this like <snaps> that.
talk about sweet hardware 🙂
I wonder, can OS X be run on that machine?
The price is U$1,400 which completely puts it out of reach of anyone other than a rich collector who already has every other toy. Because for the rest of us, $1,400 for a 256mb RAM/40 GB HD (the rest of the specs are equally low-end, see their page) just does not compute…. and that’s a pity. I would love to have a viable non-intel solution, but at that price it just isn’t viable as far as I am concerned.
I found this link more interesting:
http://www.ppcnux.de/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=4453
Non-Apple G5 board with nForce 4 chipset–neat.
On page it says http://www.pegasosppc.com/odw.php“>PC2700 PC2100″ rel=”nofollow”>http://www.pegasosppc.com/tech_specs.php”>PC2100 RAM, two sockets for 266MHz DDR for up to 8 Gigabytes total. Something like this really makes this seem very unprofessional, especially considering http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=6499“>past . Regardless,if I could get just the mobo at a decent price I’d go for it. Considering <a href=”http://cedgec.com/express.htm“>”ASRock K7S41GX Slot,Video,5.1Snd,Lan,Usb & Sempron 2200 & Fan
$145ASRock K7S41GX Slot,Video,5.1Snd,Lan,Usb & Sempron 2200 & Fan $145″(bottom right corner) I guess I’d probably balk at anything above $200CDN+S&H.
@modman: I think you probably can run OS X, but in a virtual machine under Linux PPC – http://www.maconlinux.org/ .
To be honest it’s probably easier just to get an eMac …
We could get some bakers’ racks and slide this little Genesi boards in, probably at least 6 to 8 per rack.
In one baker’s rack, we’re talking an entire render farm using the amazing Freescale power.
Unfortunately because PowerPC does not generate much heat, it will not cook our bread too.
To cook bread, we need Pentium 4 Prescott.
Well, PowerPC is not all powerful after all.
I do not see how this compares even roughly to an 17″ iMac for desktop use. Maybe people will want this to build their own devices or something…
The RAM is PC2100. There is little point putting faster RAM on the board, and in fact bad SPD practise from some RAM suppliers would actually give you a substandard system if you put in higher specced RAM (PC2700 or PC3200).
The ODW page was a typo, thanks for noticing it. Sorry for any inconvenience caused. To be honest the site is starting to get unruly and is contradicting itself in minor details on things, it has been posted up on my todo list for a rework (as you will see for the other Genesi sites in the next week or so)
~
By the way we are looking for people to translate our websites into other languages than English. We do have a global computer platform in 40+ countries and I get a lot of people asking if we’ll have our pages in other languages. We used to delegate this to our resellers (http://www.pegasos-tr.com/ for example) but it’s too hard to maintain this off-site.
Do we have any volunteers here? You’ll maybe get a credit on the “flag” page
~
As for the price, it is significant value for money for an OEM board sold via Freescale. Check the price on a 7447 Sandpoint model and compare. The Pegasos is price competitive with a Mac (easily with the current PowerBook line) enough that we don’t think we have much of a problem here. There is ALWAYS space for cost reduction, and this comes from simple economies of scale; order 10,000 from us and they will NOT cost you anywhere near that.
Neko
By the way the US dollar price might have been less if the exchange rate wasn’t so ludicrous. Buying an ODW from the UK right now gives you a £800 machine. This certainly *is* competitive with the eMac
Congratulations, you win the prize for most meaningless name of the day.
What? No NetBSD?
This isn’t a troll, I just want to know. What is the point of any of this. Its not like someones for fun software exercise where the reason is clear. These guys have put a lot of money into making hardware and the OS. But in the end, who would want this, no matter what the cost. What practical stuff could you do with it? I can only see this as being some thing for massive geeks with plenty of money to burn and nothing else to do. This looks like a financial nightmare.
There is no Joe User types who would every buy this. It would only be Geeks, and then it would have to be an amiga geek, most of which have probably long since moved on in their lives.
Alan is still porting it.
Neko
Development of PowerPC Linux, in general.
Specifically, in terms of the Freescale sales, Pegasos has a market in being able to speed up the development of PowerPC-based software for other devices.
Previously you’d perhaps run Linux on some embedded board the size of the palm of your hand.. but it wouldn’t be up to compiling, so you’d grab an Intel PC running Windows/Cygwin or Linux, and cross-compile.
With Pegasos, you can run Linux on it, run your software, and not have to touch your embedded board until you are really and truly ready to install and test your software on it (for instance after it’s been through a few revisions). Before you ask why you can’t just use that Intel PC and cross-compile; the simple reason is you run into the limited specifications of your embedded board. It’s hard to do real performance counter usage on the embedded board, or increase memory size on the embedded board when you run out (mm.. desoldering flash ram.. fun!) or try out an off-the-shelf chip solution available in PCI form factor (or even AGP) on your embedded board.
The ODW therefore is good as a surrogate for your target device. For proofs-of-concept, where you want to see if a certain application might work, before you spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on design and prototypes of hardware.
Then of course you don’t have to use Linux either. Genesi is entertaining a LOT of ports of other operating systems, including QNX.
There is also nothing stopping someone eschewing hardware development altogether and just producing PowerPC software for the existing market – or using the Pegasos itself as the target hardware platform in a kiosk or control environment.
I think you unwittingly restrict the market to “end users”, I realise OSNews is obsessed with making every OS a Desktop OS, and every user has to be Grandma, but most commercial development of PowerPC hardware and software is not targetted at the people who buy Dell PC’s to do a bit of Microsoft Word work.
That said, it’s not incapable of doing that either, it’s just not intended right now to be sold in that way.
Genesi is also collaborating with the Avalanche consortium to produce a service-based Linux offering which straddles the line between outsourcing IT and not using Windows. If we can successfully get through the pilots, we will have a solution (actually we think, and the current pilot members do to, that we already have that solution) which can provide a genuinely easy and remotely administered Windows migration, which includes a cost effective, low powered thin client all the way up to fileserver and database cluster.
Does that answer your question?
Well, for me there are two points:
one, PowerPC is a good processor and since it runs cooler than Pentium/AMD it makes a good base for a quiet system.
two, just having hardware that isn’t Intel/AMD. Just like I want to see variety of OS’s, and a number of distributions in Linux world, so too I want to support choice when it comes to hardware. I am the consumer. For me, choice is good, monopoly is bad (duopoly being just as bad as monopoly).
Sadly, for me both of these points are rendered irrelevant by their pricing.
$1400 for a G4 with 256Mb RAM. Koff. Ouch.
If the Pegasos is a “cough”, then the alternative is a “choke”, right?
http://www.freescale.com/webapp/sps/site/prod_summary.jsp?code=PPCE…
Is the Pegasos not value for money in comparison? This is only a very small part of the rollout of the Pegasos, ODW and other products in the platform roadmap. Freescale are not the same as Dell or Alienware.
Neko
You don’t have to be an amiga geek, a linux geek would be ok aswell. And you can get the mobo + cpu card quite cheap if you don’t buy a complete ODW from freescale.
Pick your country – http://www.pegasosppc.com/purchase.php
For example, sweden, http://tiw-pro.web.internet.telia.com/~1698137/ 5769 sek for 1GHz G4.
United Kingdom, http://www.pegasos.co.uk/ £300 ex. vat for 600MHz G3, $340 with 1GHz G4 (allthought out of stock it seems).
Neko, I see your point but what you need to understand is that I, and probably others who balk at the price, are simply using Intel/AMD desktop systems we could put together as a reference point. And what we see is that we could get an AMD64 based system that would out-spec yours by the factor of 2, for under a thousand. This might not be fair to you, but that’s just how it is.
Sure Dvorak hinted on this. Wait 5 years and you will see IBM branded “Blue Linux” running on their PowerPC architectire. Wait and C!
A buddy of mine used to try to get these things running Linux, talk about effort. I have enough problems with AMD64!
“If the Pegasos is a “cough”, then the alternative is a “choke”, right?”
If you really need to buy something from Freescale, then, yes, the Pegasos might be ok.
I’d rather consider an iMac as an alternative (in fact, when I decided to leave the Intel platform, I went for an iBook G4 800, instead of buying a nonportable Pegasos G3@600MHz without display for a couple 100 less).
I understand that small volume means higher price, but until Genesi can sell at least somewhat competitively priced products, I won’t buy anything from them, and so will most other people I guess.
Is G5 coming?
Also wouldn’t offerings like Xbox2 hurt your hardware sales, especially if hack is found for those early? And Xbox2 would have three G5’s, and somewhere between 256-512mb of memory. And it should sell below the $500 range, even if not less.
If right now installing Linux on Xbox is kind of meaningless, because it’s just an old celeron/700Mhz with 64mb of memory, then running Linux on tripple-dual (meaning 6 virtual) G5’s with much more memory is another matter.
If you are unwilling to pay for the alternative, then don’t go around whining when you are stuck with the choice of Windows XP or Linux running on Intel or AMD processors. The lack of choice in the marketplace is simply a consequence of your decisions in the past. You simply made it too uneconomical for small players to compete in the market.
Then again, I’m a customer of Apple. I’m used to paying the premium. I’m not rich either, so the rich collector bit is nonsense. All most people need to do is get their priorities straight if they *really* want to buy a $1400 computer. (Yes, there are some people who genuinely cannot afford it. On the other hand, I doubt that many of them have enough time to spend bickering on OSNews.)
How is any money not a good price for the power of PowerPC? This is amazing chip designed by genius at Motorola.
Only on this platform can you write all your own code and also get your name on the company web page for translation. This is true community spirit!
This is one cool platform. It is far more elite than Mac system. I can’t wait until there is xlr8yourgenesi.com. It will really tell all the overclocking secrets hidden inside amazing chip G4.
I will have render-bakery with many Genesi boards on trays in my baker’s rack. You just cannot do that with iMac. Little perfect Genesi board just fits on the tray. And with super G4 chip, will render graphics while you breathe smell of fresh bread.
Plus G4 has authentic Altivec, not IBM clone. Only real G4 is supercomputer. And G4 is so small. It should have been called “the precious”.
Once Genesi gets rolling and sells more rendering gear, then Mac in trouble.
Intel will do good as you have to buy Prescott to cook bread, especially bread with crust. Even heavy duty vector pipeline Altivec code on G4 precious does not heat oven enough to make tasty French bread.
I think everyone should buy Genesi and then get together to try new voltage for overclock. Then we can put pictures of community party on xlr8yourgenesi.com. It will be amazing!
Oh, the irony!
The price of choice? Oh yes, but that should mean lower prices for me, the customer – not an excuse for charging premium!
OK, OK, I understand economies of scale, and I understand some reasonable increase in price for small volume products. I just don’t think in this case the premium can be justified. Justified BY ME, not by the manufacturer! It might be that they really cannot make them any cheaper. But I simply cannot buy them at this price. Not because I cannot afford it, but because I cannot justify it to myself, when I compare prices of other solutions of comparable performance. And that is precisely because I’ve got my priorities straight!
Price of choice refers to people being able to justify the additional cost on the grounds that it isn’t AMD/Intel/Via. That if you want choice you get to pay more. You are confusing choice with competetion. They are not competing.
These companies aren’t interested in offering the lowest prices for your good. They’re doing it to undercut the competition and put them under. The moment the competition is gone, you are going to be paying sky high prices. If you don’t believe that, look at the price of Windows these days (the full version, not the upgrade). When averaged out over the 10 years since Windows 95 was introduced, the price of Windows has been going up at over twice the annual inflation rate. Not bad in an industry where prices go down even though performance is going up.
Yes you could price an AMD64 system for half the price and twice the power.. but..
.. how are you going to natively develop PowerPC software for PowerPC hardware on an AMD processor?
Neko. Oh, by the way, I should paste in my signature so you remember me;
—
Matt Sealey
Manager, Genesi, Developer Relations <matt at genesi.co.uk>
Pegasos.co.uk: Premier UK Reseller <matt at pegasos.co.uk>
> how are you going to natively develop PowerPC software for PowerPC hardware on an AMD processor?
I am not – I am a Linux desktop user who would like to have another option mainly because like others pointed out, and I’ve been saying all along, I believe monopoly or duopoly are not in my best interest. However I am not going to protect myself from monopolists jacking up their prices sky-high by paying sky-high prices voluntarily! It just doesn’t seem like a sound strategy
Now Neko/Matt, I understand I am simply not the market you’re after, and that’s your call, naturally. I’m just saying that’s a pity because I would love to play – but not at this price point.
Thanks for that link, I’ve been trying to find some
other PPC Mobo makers other then Apple.
It’s a shame this mobo doesn’t seem to have USB, nor an AGP slot… I wish the cheap x86 mobo makers would jump on this bandwagon.
If you want to run linux, you can get a cheap $100 x86 box. If you want morphOS…well I guess then you would buy this overpriced box
Why all the comments about this being an expensive option compared to cheap x86 or even apple?????
It is like saying, “that light airplane there cost 3 times more than my suv and it won’t get me to the shops any faster!”
You wan’t to drive to the shops (do your work processing) – get an suv (x86).
You want to fly (develop for ppc embedded systems) – get a plane (ODW).
Otherwise, stop wasting my time with pointless comments.
“The Pegasos is price competitive with a Mac (easily with the current PowerBook line)”
How can you possibly compare a micro-ATX borad to a laptop? As long as Genesi makes these kind of ridiculos comments and fail to pay its developers, it will never play anywhere near Apple.
Those prices are ridiculous. What is the object here–to duplicate every nuance of failure, including the high prices, that accompanied their beloved Amiga in the past? Nobody is going to buy it.
AMD64 rocks. Anybody check out Abit’s motherboards lately? They kick butt.
–EyeAm
“Sir, is there anything that Neko could cut & paste to make us FORGET him?”
http://s87767106.onlinehome.us
“Otherwise, stop wasting my time with pointless comments.”
Sorry, but that just made me laugh. You’re wasting your own time here, friend
“Sorry, but that just made me laugh. You’re wasting your own time here, friend
”
I am interested in the ODW – so I am here reading about it. I am not interested in how much people like their emac/amd64/whatever else.
It is only a waste of my tiem because of the drivel people are posting.
matt
$1400 doesn’t include the monitor. So for $100 LESS you can get a 17″ iMac that beats the pants off this box. And you can do exactly the same cross development using exactly the same OSes (minus MorphOS). What would be the point of this system at this price point? It’s not even on-par with the eMac, which rings in at $800 (including monitor).
And comparing this to the Sandpoint board is plain silly. The Sandpoint uses PCI mez cards that can actually be used in industrial systems – with MTTF ratings, etc. Which is why the price is so much higher – there has been that much more engineering and testing time put into the hardware.
I’m still watching this platform with interest, and will consider one when a couple of other related items fall into place. In the meantime it would be nice to see some explaination of the bad press they’ve had and reasons behind it.
Living in the states you can easily get a bad impression of business ethics in general. I’m at the point where I seriously consider the company behind a product and if I feel comfortable supporting them anymore. Gates is NOT an example of good business simply because he’s the richest man in the world and many of our corporations need reigned in a bit to protect consumers and their employees.
funny…
the hardware (except the board and the cpu) is really funny…
from which trashplace was it taken?
a CDRW-drive .. cool..
a 40 Gbyte HD .. big..
256Mbyte Ram ..fat
3 years ago this could have been a good configuration.
but not now, and: not for this price..
and i remember the openBSD-thing:
http://www.openbsd.org/pegasos.html
looks not very serious..
but hey: you got 1500+ supported linux-distris…
Very nice…
To begin with Genesi have been very nice to their customers, the os upgrades have been free, you could trade in your Pegasos 1 for a Pegasos 2 to a very nice price and so on. Secondly the price of the Pegasos 2 have been the same since it was released 1-1.5 year ago or so, so the price where more competive then. But you do have to understand that developing hardware and software isn’t free and that they have to make money on something, they can’t just spend a millon dollar or so on hardware and then sell it with $10 profit because they won’t sell machines in the 100.000 range. I do doubt they make much of a profit currently aswell thought.
Anyway, the price have been the same for a while, it’s not dropping like the regular x86 stuff, and the same thing is true for apple hardware aswell. You release a product, sets a price, and the price is there until the next release, with x86 hardware the price drops all the time and the second hand value is very small.
Anyway, as I said you don’t have/had to buy the freescale open desktop, you could buy the motherboard with a cpu card and get the rest of the hardware yourself. When released I think the Pegasos2+G3@600MHz price was $299 and $450 or $500 for the 1GHz G4. And the motherboard contains a quite nice chipset which offers 1gbps ethernet (aswell as one 100mbps port aswell), usb, firewire and pci-x (which is used for the agp-slot). Also the $299-500 is including MorphOS + (don’t know if it’s currect longer, but it was) the superbundle.
And sooner or later freescale will release higher clocked dual core G4s which seem to have the “chipset” included in the same chip aswell, I have no idea if those can be used or will be used in a later version thought.
“To begin with Genesi have been very nice to their customers, the os upgrades have been free”
Sure, it’s just their developers that are constantly being screwed over and over again.
From http://www.morphos.net: “Since july 2003, Genesi started to not pay their bills. They told it was a temporary problem and payments were on their way. They did so for months, while people kept working. They claimed many times to have issued payments. Those never arrived.”
All in all, if Morphos, as others in this thread claim, was the only thing making a ODW interesting, they can mostly forget about buying one as there won’t be any new versions of Morphos for a while. Given the latest developments, Genesi has lost the rights to any new (possibly old too) versions of MUI and Ambient. A Morphos without them is like UNIX without any Motif/GTK/QT-style library and without a desktop/window manager.
Another example can be taken from http://www.openbsd.org/pegasos.html. “Finally, due to the inability to work with bPlan/Genesi and the fact they owed the developer over 3 months pay, it was announced that pegasos support would be dropped” and “The parties involved with the building and sale of the Pegasos boards appear to not be financially sound enough or trustworthy enough to merit further development.”
Now, I don’t know about you, but I prefer buying into and developing for a platform that at least got a somewhat stable and trustworthy future. With Genesi/Pegasos/ODW it’s all up in the air and their track record leaves quite a bit to be wished for.
All in all, Apple hardware is both cheaper, more powerful, and more future proof to buy into than this.
https://www.pegasosppc.com/store.php?category=1
check there, if you want only mobo WITHOUT support
Hate to say it, but that price + “features” v. Apple machines loses: Powermac single G5, iMac, eMac, ibooks all better specced at lower or slightly higher price. Even factoring in the annual OSX “upgrade” extortion Macs are a better deal.
Lennart, you are here just to bash and criticize an alternative to what you promote and/or understand. That, of course, is fine in itself, but let’s be clear: you are not an owner or a potential customer. Your interest is purely to damage and dismay.
At least, we made it into the forties of posts before this sort of trolling appeared. That is an improvement!
Here is a statement we have made about MorphOS:
http://www.genesi.lu/morphos_statement.php
As for OpenBSD, we have been in communication with Dale this past month. When OpenBSD is restored to the status he achieved for the ODW, he will be fully paid for what he was retained to do. We are asking nothing more.
So, Lennart, what part of these statements don’t you understand. Please be prepared to document any further allegations you make. As for customer opinions on our service orientation you are directed to this thread started yesterday.
http://www.morphzone.org/modules/newbb_plus/viewtopic.php?topic_id=…
🙂
R&B
“Lennart, you are here just to bash and criticize an alternative to what you promote and/or understand. That, of course, is fine in itself, but let’s be clear: you are not an owner or a potential customer.”
No, you have seen to that quite well.
“Your interest is purely to damage and dismay.”
Damage and dismay? Try warn and inform.
“At least, we made it into the forties of posts before this sort of trolling appeared.”
Of course, anyone not singing your praise is a troll.
“As for OpenBSD, we have been in communication with Dale this past month. When OpenBSD is restored to the status he achieved for the ODW, he will be fully paid for what he was retained to do. We are asking nothing more.”
OpenBSD is not Dale’s project and I think that Theo has had enough of you to last a life time. You are of course free to try.
“As for customer opinions on our service orientation”
Sorry Bill, we’re not talking customer service here, but rather the way you treat developers. Next!
@ Vesalia (German reseller) you may get a complete PegasosII setup
(G4/1000 + 512 MB Ram + 80 GB HD (MorphOS & Superbundle installed
already) + ATI Radeon 9200/128 DVI, *no kbd + mouse + case) for
773,90 EUR.
For 40 EUR more you’ll get a similar setup but also including an
installed Debian.
Sure, MOS is more for the Geek, but once you’ve tried you’ll love it
or hate it – I love it and never regreted my Pegasos purchase.
The ODW is defenitely for typical Freescale customers, not for
hobbyists, they may prefer offers like the above mentioned.
Every corporation, NGO, individual can claim it ‘does its best’…
Here is a statement we have made about MorphOS: