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Build Your Own PowerPC? 341

Posted by Cliff from the why-not? dept.
amokk asks: "Let's assume for a second that somebody would want to take the time and effort to build a Personal Computer but base it on a PowerPC architecture. Besides saying 'Buy a Mac' (I already have one) or 'Buy an IBM server', is there any way of acquirng the individual parts and slapping them together? Why you would want to do this isn't up for debate. Rather, this is one of those 'wouldn't it be neat if...' type of experiments."
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Build Your Own PowerPC? More

Build Your Own PowerPC?

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  • The other part of the question... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Dark Paladin ( 116525 ) <jhummel.johnhummel@net> on Tuesday October 29, 2002 @02:04PM (#4557227) Homepage
    Is "do I want this to be Mac compatible, or Linux/someotherOS compatible".

    The latter answer is the easier one - the former is harder, since you would have to find "official" Apple parts to make sure the OS talked nice to all the pieces.

    Either way, the idea is an interesting one.
    • For the latter I would suggest FreeBSD. Leave it in Runlevel 5, and install the OSX themese for KDE or Gnome (Your choice). But, I have this odd feeling that you are probably wanting the macintosh compatibility.
    • The author should ask to ammend the question to include (or not) compatability with Mac PPC as a goal.

      Can you buy Motorola motherboards and pop in a CPU? Sure.

      That's it??

      It would be more interesting to consider the "platform" as part of the question. Some would be exclusively interested in compliant hardware that runs MacOS. Others would just want something that runs Linux.
      • If I were to ask the question, I wouldn't be interested in Macintosh compatability. Can you give me a quick link to somewhere I can find retailers for those PowerPC motherboards? A few google searches didn't result in anything like some place I could buy one of these.
        • retailers for the Motorola VME boards? Good luck!

          I would first search the ppcLinux email archives, then consider posting the question to the list. I know it's been a subject of much discussion there. I sold my G3 ages ago so I have not kept up on things in the PPC world.

          If you are starting from scratch -- not using an old Mac -- what's the advantage?

          I mean, sure, PPC might have a "cleaner" design but who gives a rats ass? The advantage of that is LOST when one considers that the compiler and library chain on Linux PPC is nowhere near as mature as on X86. Someone with more knowledge than myself could state why X86 gcc blows away the ppc port of gcc.

          Personally, I liked PPC most because it was low-power and so needed less active cooling. But the new VIA miniboards with the VIA (Cyrix) chip are relatively cool itels also. Cool and quiet is nice for things like embedded MP3.

          For a desktop, I don't see the value in PPC. Now maybe if Motorola and IBM woke up and LEVERAGED Linux as a "write once, complile & run anywhere' platform, but PPC chips are a small part of their business. Unlike Microsoft, Motorola has no "religion"... just look up the "anti- mother-company" threads where Motorola went on a witchhunt for anything "Motorolla Inside"... be it MacOS, or PPC NT. I don't mean now, because PPC NT4 is dead, but at one time it was supported.

    • One doesn't rule out the other. Witness Macs that dual-boot OS9/X and Linux.
      • My point is not that you can't dual boot Mac/Linux machines - Yellow Dog Linux running on a separate boot from OS X is a great example.

        My query is if the author wants to build a Linux compatible PPC desktop (relatively easy), or build an OS X compatible laptop (relatively hard, and probably more expensive).

        My apologies for not making that clear.

    • Re:The other part of the question... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by dhovis ( 303725 ) on Tuesday October 29, 2002 @02:21PM (#4557374)

      You know, I keep wondering if we'll ever see the return of Mac-clones. Because Darwin is open-source, it should be possible to port it to any other PPC-based machine. Quartz and carbon and cocoa all ride on top of Darwin and don't know what is underneath, so once you've ported Darwin, you should be able to install the full MacOS X.

      This would be a better situation for Apple than their old clone prorgam was, because Apple can force the other hardware vendors to port Darwin to their own clones and support it themselves, and pay Apple for the bit that provides the interface. It would also help Apple spread the cost of Darwin development out a bit.

      Probably a pipe dream, but still...

      • Apple's never going to start up clones again after getting burned so bad on them last time (and as a result, I'm never going to get an Apple system again.)

        Also, what company would be stupid enough to throw tons of money at building up a brand only to be at Apple's mercy? That takes a lot of faith, and you saw what happened last time someone had faith in Apple not to screw them over...

        This whole thing reminds me of this (older, 680x0 era) book "Build your own Macintosh and Save a Bundle" [demon.co.uk].
        • Also, what company would be stupid enough to throw tons of money at building up a brand only to be at Apple's mercy? That takes a lot of faith, and you saw what happened last time someone had faith in Apple not to screw them over...
          I dunno... but I'd certainly say Dell is Microsoft's bitch...
      • Unless something huge happens that gives Apple a much larger share of the market, I see no reason why someone would put out the millions of dollars to startup a computer company to compete for the small piece of the pie that Apple owns.

    • Re:The other part of the question... (Score:4, Interesting)

      by bivaughn ( 235462 ) on Tuesday October 29, 2002 @02:43PM (#4557560) Homepage
      Linux compatbility is pretty much enough. MacOnLinux can run Jaguar on an RS/6000 now, so linux on a PPC system not designed by apple can work great. There is also work into getting Jaguar to boot on an AmigaOne PPC ATX motherboard, I think os9 already runs...

      -biv

    • Mac on Linux (Score:4, Informative)

      by mbrubeck ( 73587 ) on Tuesday October 29, 2002 @02:50PM (#4557599) Homepage
      Mac On Linux [maconlinux.net] will let you run MacOS (including OS X) on any PowerPC system that runs Linux -- even if MacOS won't run natively on the hardware. Mac On Linux provides a MacOS-compatible virtual machine (but it doesn't emulate the processor, so it's nearly as fast as running native).

  • FP (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 29, 2002 @02:05PM (#4557232)
    Look here [openppc.org], but it's kind of old. Oh and here [ukresistance.co.uk] also!

  • Shreve Systems (Score:5, Informative)

    by SmackDown ( 246562 ) on Tuesday October 29, 2002 @02:06PM (#4557238)
    You can buy refurb'ed Mac motherboards from Shreve Systems [shrevesystems.com] in Shreveport, LA. They are a really good source to start with.
  • He had a dozen or so free copies of Mac OS X (10.1 I believe) but no hardware onto which to place this neat new OS.

    So, he scoured eBay [ebay.co.uk] for the appropriate parts (motherboard, chip, RAM, SCSI hard disks) and pieced together all of the new machines from scratch.

    He told me the only real hard part was finding cases. I think he's still two cases short, but ended up simply mounting the components onto a piece of drywall and setting them flat on a lab table!
    • In that case have him check out this mod...

      http://www.ahleman.com/ElectriClerk.html

      It's Harry Tuttle approved!

      =TKK

    • Re:My brother built several lab machines (Score:5, Informative)

      by PCM2 ( 4486 ) on Tuesday October 29, 2002 @02:34PM (#4557491) Homepage
      He had a dozen or so free copies of Mac OS X (10.1 I believe) but no hardware onto which to place this neat new OS...He told me the only real hard part was finding cases.
      Pardon me for saying so, but I'm pretty skeptical of this comment. Knocking together PPC hardware isn't necessarily going to get you a machine that can run Mac OS X. Just the fact that you say he used SCSI hard drives makes me suspicious. Early versions of Mac OS X were known to choke on Adaptec SCSI cards -- you might have to pull the card, then install the OS (on your internal IDE drive), then put the card back in and install drivers. What's more, Mac OS X still relies on some proprietary Apple chips/firmware. If you're saying your brother went and found old Macintosh motherboards etc., then it sounds a little more likely ... but considering the difficulty a lot of people have running Mac OS X on stock, store-bought G3 towers, let alone older motherboards, I doubt people will want to get any big ideas based on your post.
  • Let's assume for a second that somebody would want to take the time and effort to build a Personal Computer

    God forbid. Would you prefer to buy a stock machine with sub-standard parts? Sure, there are several places (Dell) where you can customize the computer before you buy it, but nothing can match the customizability found in building your own computer. I just purchased a new computer, by taking some parts out of my old one, giving them to the service desk at my local computer shop, and telling them how to fill in the blanks. It runs solidly, I know I'm using compatible hardware, furthermore I know exactly what's in it. It beats the heck out of buying a computer with just a "sound card", "hard drive" and "motherboard", and no other descriptive names to tell you exactly what you're getting. Besides which I would imagine many on Slashdot would be perfectly capable of building their own computers.

    But yeah, PowerPC takes it a step farther.

    • Re:Build your own computer? (Score:3, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      > I just purchased a new computer, by taking some
      > parts out of my old one, giving them to the
      > service desk at my local computer shop, and
      > telling them how to fill in the blanks

      What is this, an AOL forum? I thought this was Slashdot, where people etch their own fricken motherboards, not drop them off at the local shop to get an upgrade.

  • AmigaOne (Score:5, Informative)

    by semaj ( 172655 ) on Tuesday October 29, 2002 @02:07PM (#4557258) Journal
    The AmigaOne G3 SE [eyetech.co.uk] is a fairly generic ATX motherboard with 133MHz DIMM sockets, IBM 750CXe PowerPC chip (600Mhz), 4xPCI, 1xAGP, etc, etc.

    It runs AmigaOS 4 or PPC Linux quite happily. Plonk one of these in a standard case and you've got yourself a DIY PPC solution .. or is that a bit too easy? :-)
    • It's a bit too expensive. Compuquick's quoting them for $550, just for a motherboard! Yikes.

    • Re:AmigaOne (Score:2, Informative)

      by Amiga Trombone ( 592952 )
      There's a Yahoo! group dedicated to the discussion of the Amiga One [yahoo.com] you may be interested in. From the group:

      This group is for the discussion of the AmigaOne series of PPC motherboards and Classic Amiga bridge cards developed by Eyetech and distributed by authorised Amiga retailers worldwide.

      You might want to post your query over there.

  • Hmmmmm... (Score:3, Informative)

    by The Mainframe ( 573877 ) <bennettprescottNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Tuesday October 29, 2002 @02:08PM (#4557262) Homepage Journal
    The limitation is really over whether or not you want to use the MacOS. If you could use, say, yellow dog linux, then your job is much easier. Buy your processors from Sonnet, your motherboard from any school (they're getting rid of those old 6100/66 machines like crazy... I have 22), grab your ram from the same places... Basically take a bunch of old machines, assemble one that works from their parts, add a new processor. Or you can do what I'm doing and chain a bunch of stock machines together via ethernet. The only problem is they draw 60 amps of current.
    Oh, yeah... see if you can get your hand on a workgroup server.

  • Try this one? (Score:4, Informative)

    by Ogun ( 101578 ) on Tuesday October 29, 2002 @02:08PM (#4557265) Homepage
    Pegasos [bplan-gmbh.de]
    Should be available now AFAIK.

    There is also the Amiga One [eyetech.co.uk] which right now is mostly vapor (E.g. not purchasable at the moment)

    See, I mentioned both.

    • Re:Try this one? (Score:3, Informative)

      by Jhan ( 542783 )

      Except, of course, that the Amiga One was finished and shipping months ago, and no-one has a Pegasos board (excepting prototypes).

      Anyway, both are based on a Mai reference design. Pegasos is clearly (IMHO) the better product since it has socketed processors (A1 has a surface mounted G3 600MHz (?)). Eyetech will allegedly release an updated version of the A1 with socketed processor if the initial version sells well enough.

      PS. Yes, A1/Amiga OS Vs Pegasos/MorphOS is a very inflamed subject in Amigaland. Three sentence summary follows.

      The Pegasos (a new Amiga PPC motherboard) and MorphOS (an Amiga work-alike OS) was started when Amiga was essentially abandoned. Then, some former employees of Gateway and some Amiga enthusiasts bought the trademarks and started working towards a new, official Amiga platform. The two groups couldn't get along, and now we've wound up with two competing platforms, with a combined market measured in 5 digits, if that (sigh).

  • This might be a good start (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 29, 2002 @02:08PM (#4557268)
    http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/09/15/ 1918233&mode=thread&tid=181 [slashdot.org] Just stating the obvious

  • PenguinPPC (Score:5, Informative)

    by BShive ( 573771 ) on Tuesday October 29, 2002 @02:09PM (#4557272) Homepage

    Are you looking for something like this [penguinppc.org]?

    From the site:

    A number of years back from folks in the Microelectronics unit of IBM came up with an idea. It was called POP for PowerPC Open Platform. Basically an open source motherboard design. Well here they are. The first POP boards. It's been a long wait and, like you, I hope it was well worth it.

    The boards do appear to be available - anyone tried them?

    • Re:PenguinPPC (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Those boards are basically the same as Eyetech's/Hyperion's/Amiga's A1 and Bplan's Pegasos...

  • another question... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by EccentricAnomaly ( 451326 ) on Tuesday October 29, 2002 @02:09PM (#4557275) Homepage
    If you could get Darwin running on such a homemade PowerPC (not made from old Mac parts, but built from 'scratch')... could you then take the pre-compiled parts of aqua out of Mac OS X and run this on your homemade powerpc computer?

    Doesn't darwin handle all of the interaction directly with the hardware? If the aqua binaries can run on your homemade powerpc, shouldn't everything work just fine?

    And a related question... what if you got Darwin running on an x86 chip with a PowerPC emulator? Could you, theoretically, get aqua to run on such a system?
    • And a related question... what if you got Darwin running on an x86 chip with a PowerPC emulator? Could you, theoretically, get aqua to run on such a system?
      This could only happen if someone could succesfully create a PowerPC emulator. So far, no one has been able to do so.

      As per running Aqua on such a system, I would assume that Aqua needs to interact with the Apple ROM chips. In the past, part of the OS has been stored in the ROM chip, and it would make sense that OSX would continue to do so.

  • Next Week On Ask Slashdot... (Score:5, Funny)

    by CySurflex ( 564206 ) on Tuesday October 29, 2002 @02:09PM (#4557277)
    Next Weeek On Ask Slashdot: "Let's assume I want to pump gas into my car through the radiator and mix in diet cherry 7-up. WHY is not up for debate. I just need the schematics and blue prints of how to achieve this, and I need this NOW."
    • This would not be too difficult. As long as you don't want the car to RUN on that mixture, it really is just a question of a nozzle in the radiator that goes to the diet cherry 7-up mixing chamber, and then stores it somewhere for disposal later.
    • As sick as it sounds I did something similar two years ago. I was running low on gas on the Mass Pike and I knew my car will make it another 2 miles. The nearest stations was at least 6 miles. So what did I do? Got soem of my diet coke and put 1/4 liter into the tank. The engine sounded like shit but made it fine. Pumped it up and my firebird has no problems.

      Please do not mod this, just wanted to add to the other poster and thought others might find it funny.
    • I dunno, but imagine a Beowulf cluster of 'em. :-)

    • Re:Next Week On Ask Slashdot... (Score:4, Offtopic)

      by Contact ( 109819 ) on Tuesday October 29, 2002 @02:36PM (#4557507)
      You may joke, but a hot topic in the UK at the moment is the idea of running diesel engined cars on used cooking fat mixed with a little white spirit.

      This does apparently work (although I'm not sure about the long terms effects on the engine, or performance), and over here, where automotive fuels run to about 5 dollars a gallon, the potential savings are huge - apparently some supermarkets have been running out of cooking oil and have had to impose rationing, and I'm sure that restauranteurs are finding themselves unusually popular...

      • Re:Next Week On Ask Slashdot... (Score:4, Informative)

        by CuCullin ( 551104 ) on Tuesday October 29, 2002 @02:51PM (#4557610) Homepage
        The common term is biodiesel or greasel for the mixture. When used with new diesel engines, they actually run cleaner than a natural gas engine. Some have made their own biodiesel for as little as $.50 USD/gallon, for quite a large savings. In NJ, the price of diesel just went up about $0.10 USD... The primary considerations are seals, older rubber seals will break down and fail, spewing all over the place. The solution? Use newer plastic seals, they last much longer anyway. There is a power loss of appr. 5%, but on new engines you don't feel all that much of a difference.

      • Real Biodiesel... (Score:2, Flamebait)

        by dman123 ( 115218 )
        Here is my biased opinion on the subject...

        Unfortunately, it's people like these people in Wales that give industrially produced biofuels (such as biodiesel manufactured to ASTM D6751-02) a bad name. A bunch of wankers that ruin engines with chip particles and undecanted glycerin deserve to have the engines fail... Not to mention that it is technically illegal to evade taxes in this manner.

        For anyone wishing to get the non-hippie version of the biodiesel industry, check out www.biodiesel.org.

      • is that in the Netherlands we are talking about adapting diesel cars to use ureum. That's a component of urine, but is also used in fertilizer. The european laws will become very strict on NOx pollution (which causes acid rain) and ureum can neutralize it.

        I'm afraid that peeing in your gas tank won't work since the ureum must be added to the exhaust gasses, but I think that you should be able to build a pee-guzzling catalyst. Imagine the look on the faces of your friends as you tell them you are going to have a leak, but skip the rest room and walk to your car.

  • Howto - Build your own Mac (Score:4, Informative)

    by kuwan ( 443684 ) on Tuesday October 29, 2002 @02:09PM (#4557279) Homepage
    This site [macopz.com] has instructions on what you need, where to get it, and how to put it all together. Pretty useful if you want to build your own Mac and don't want to pay Apple's prices.
    • The problem with building a Gigabit G4 and probably every other AGP G4 is that the chips on the bottom of the motherboard touch the case and use the case as a heat sink. When you use a standard ATX case those chips on the bottom contact nothing and are not properly cooled. This works for a while but you are going to end up with a fried motherboad eventually.

  • Similar Questions: ARM-powered Desktop? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Hanno ( 11981 ) on Tuesday October 29, 2002 @02:10PM (#4557286) Homepage
    ...are there mainboards and CPUs available to end-users that are not in the sky-high price-range that manufacturers take for developer hardware?

    I'd be interested in building an ARM-based desktop computer, but it seems there is no normal mainboard sold to end-users. Or is it? ("Normal" = standard form factor, standard RAMs, IDE, USB and VGA included, possibly PS/2 and serial too.)

    Same question for the Crusoe, btw. Seems that the only desktop mainboard available is developers only...
    • Don't know about ready-made ones, but you can build your own [slashdot.org].
    • A number of companies from the Acorn scene (yes there are still a few) are working on newer ARM based hardware.

      You should check the following links out...

      Castle Technologies (UK) - The Iyonix PC. It runs RISCOS 4 but can use ArmLinux/etc if you want it to. They've also brought out a USB podule for older Acorn systems. Castle site [castle.org.uk]

      Aleph One have a line of StrongARM based evaluation boards, and ARMLinux related info. Lots of info for ARM developers.

      Uffenkamp (DE) sell Acorn/ARM hardware and software and I guess would be easier for you to get to. See their site [www.ucs.de].

      RiscStation (UK) have their own RISCOS/ARM based systems you can check out. See the RiscStation homepage [riscstation.co.uk] for more info.

      You can get a good idea of the ARM hardware out there by following the Acorn/ARM news sites. There is a lot more but that should be enough to get you started :) chiller2

    • Acorn (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Jhan ( 542783 )

      You need to check out the Acorn [riscos.com] community [acornusers.org] (or perhaps that's where you're coming from?). Acorn was an English Arm-based home computer of the late 80's that competed (none to sucessfully, outside Britain at least) against Amiga an Atari.

      Even though the Acorn community is now shriveled enough to make Amiga look healthy by comparision, they have been the one and only group pushing Arm-based desktops over the last decades.

      There seems to be at least a couple hardware [microdigital.co.uk] resellers [castle.uk.co] still in operation. The pricing didn't seem to extortionate to me, either.

  • If you want a PowerPC system, and you don't mind paying a good bit for it, Motorola has numerous systems that run in Linux which you can sometimes get Motorola to admit that they sell, and then sell you one. There's a few other vendors which sell systems as well (Force, SBS, IBM). All of these have a PCI slot of some sort so you might be able to get a video card.

  • Procurement of the hardware (Score:3, Informative)

    by mao che minh ( 611166 ) on Tuesday October 29, 2002 @02:13PM (#4557320) Journal
    Why not assemble the unit from compatible parts from older PowerPCs with choice upgrade parts that are "Apple Certified" from online resellers of Apple hardware?

    Here are a few resellers of Apple hardware:
    Milagro [milagromac.com] and ETI Express [etiexpress.com]

  • This was a recent Slashdot story (Score:3, Informative)

    by Geek Dash Boy ( 69299 ) on Tuesday October 29, 2002 @02:13PM (#4557322) Homepage

    check it.

    Build a Macintosh from Scratch [slashdot.org]

  • Arstechnica thread (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Build your own G4 [infopop.net]

  • Easy to do (If you've got lots of money) (Score:5, Informative)

    by ivan256 ( 17499 ) on Tuesday October 29, 2002 @02:17PM (#4557349)
    If you really want to build a system from parts there are several places you can go. Motorola sells evaluation platforms that consisto of a motherboard (essentially a backplane) and CPU modules that plug into it. It's calld Sandpoint [motorola.com]. You can get third party CPU modules for it from Tundra [tundra.com] (who also sells whole kits with their own system board). Marvell/Galileo [marvell.com]sells a platform that is well suited to building a PC style machine with PPC hardware, and you can get a variety of processor cards for it ranging from low end G3 style processors up to dual 7450 processors.

    Some of the best PPC machines available right now can't be built from parts simply because they're on a single board. My current to y is the cyclades TS-100 [cyclades.com] it's only 1"x3"x3", has dual CPUs and can be had for under $200.
  • There was an article here a while back: Build a Macintosh From Scratch. [slashdot.org], which links to "a great step-by-step tutorial [macopz.com]" There's your answer.

    incripshin

  • A simple question... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by LoadStar ( 532607 )

    To be perfectly honest, what I hope is a valid, non-troll question: why?

    I mean, I can understand buying a Mac for the ease of use and integration of the Mac OS and it's associated applications. However, when you start talking about buying/building a PowerPC machine - I don't see the point.

    Those who say that the PowerPC is falling behind - fast - in processor performance have a very valid point. I'm a Mac fan, and I realize this. It is getting to the point that Intel-compatible processors are equal to or better than PowerPC processors at the same or lower cost. It's only the Mac OS that still gives reason to continuing to use the PowerPC.

    And as such, if you aren't talking a Mac OS machine, you can run Linux or BSD just as easily on a Intel-compatible processor and platform as you could if you built a PPC machine. More easily, actually, because you can get the parts to put the machine together so much easier.

    Note: I'm not talking a POWER server - that's a different beast, and there's reason for that as well. This is strictly talking about building or buying a non-Mac OS compatible PowerPC computer.

  • Try older machines (Score:4, Informative)

    by jmertic ( 544942 ) on Tuesday October 29, 2002 @02:20PM (#4557370) Homepage Journal

    Check out these [xlr8yourmac.com] guides for repackaging either a Beige G3 [xlr8yourmac.com] or Blue/White G3 [xlr8yourmac.com] in a standard ATX case. All that's needed that is "Apple offical" is the motherboard stuff; memory, video ( uses Mac PCI video cards ), HD, and CD-ROM are off the shelf PC items. They use ZIF CPUs which can be obtained from Apple, Sonnet, NewerTech, and many others.

  • why??? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by brer_rabbit ( 195413 ) on Tuesday October 29, 2002 @02:21PM (#4557381) Journal
    Why you want to do this *IS* up for debate. If you're shooting for a unix (linux/whatever) platform, does it really matter that it's PowerPC? I mean, unix is general enough that unless you've got specific hardware requirements (and processor alone doesn't constitute this -- I'm talking wierd ass PCI cards or other barnyard oddities) it doesn't matter if you're on powerpc, intel, or sparc. The cheapest bang for the buck in this category is, as we all know, intel.

    I've no idea what you'd need to do to get this MacOS compatible. Do they still use dark matter (ROM) in those machines? But if you're not going for Mac compatibility I don't know why you want to roll your own.

    If you've got a warezhouse full of PowerPC assembly programs then that's a different story. Obviously you're going to need a specific processor to run them. Or maybe you're looking to do embedded system development on a PowerPC?

    Inquiring minds want to know. Ok, we don't really *want* to know, we'd really just like to laugh at the idea a bit more. :)

    • "The cheapest bang for the buck in this category is, as we all know, intel."

      Actually, the cheapest bang for the buck is AMD.

    • Re:why??? (Score:2, Insightful)

      by demon ( 1039 )
      I've no idea what you'd need to do to get this MacOS compatible. Do they still use dark matter (ROM) in those machines? But if you're not going for Mac compatibility I don't know why you want to roll your own.

      No, the NewWorld machines (the PowerBook G3 "Lombard" and "Pismo", PowerBook G4, and all "candy-colored" Apples) use OpenFirmware, and use a ROM-in-RAM system, where the MacOS ROM image is an ELF binary with a Forth wrapper. The OF starts the Forth wrapper, which loads the image, jumps into it, then goes on like an OldWorld from there. The MacOS ROM is kinda picky about the hardware it's on from what I gather, so it probably wouldn't like a non-Apple PPC system. OS X might not care. But if you don't care about running MacOS, why wouldn't a commodity PowerPC system be the perfect answer?

  • PowerPC briQ's (Score:5, Informative)

    by myov ( 177946 ) on Tuesday October 29, 2002 @02:24PM (#4557398)
    You could try a briQ [terrasoftsolutions.com], running Yellow Dog Linux

    Specs:
    • 500 MHz G3 or G4 CPUs
    • 100 MHz 64-bit System Bus
    • 2 x 168 Pin DIMM sites (up to 1GB RAM)
    • 2.5" IDE internal drive
    • RS/232 serial
    • 10/100 ethernet
    • 64/66 expansion slot (adapts to PCI)*
    • programmable Vacuum Florescent Display (VFD)
    • weighs-in at just 1.85 lbs
    • 5.74 X 1.625 X 8.9 inches (same dimensions as CD-ROM)

    • Re:PowerPC briQ's (Score:5, Informative)

      by GlassHeart ( 579618 ) on Tuesday October 29, 2002 @03:34PM (#4558023) Journal
      You could try a briQ

      The G3 version costs $1,485, plus shipping. The G4 version costs $1,985, plus shipping. The person who asked the question wants to use it as a desktop computer, but this only has a 10 GB drive, no video card, and no CD-ROM drive.

      At the price of the G3, you can get an iMac which is superior in just about every way (for desktop applications) except the RAM size.

  • hard to do (Score:5, Informative)

    by Gizzmonic ( 412910 ) on Tuesday October 29, 2002 @02:24PM (#4557409) Homepage Journal
    i've been trying to do this for awhile. The problem is that no one offers a (non-apple, non-ibm, non-motorola) PowerPC motherboard besides chaintech in the UK (fastest you'll get there is a 600mhz G3, and prices are higher than a comparable Apple machine. they basically exist to fleece amiga people.)

    Motorola and IBM don't sell their CPUs to end users. You can order a G4 or even a G5 (PPC 8500 series) from one of Mot's suppliers like Arrow, but I believe they force you to order in high quantities (40+ at a time).

    During the dot-bomb era, several companies like Eternal Computing and Silicon Fruit promised to offer affordable PowerPC motherboards to retail customers. Nothing ever came of it (insert Apple conspiracy theory here).

    I think there's a market for retail PowerPC motherboards, or there will be once IBM's 970 hits the market. It's fun to mess with exotic hardware like the PPC, and its performance is very impressive considering its limited clock speed. IBM has published a spec for PowerPC logic boards that is available for free on its website (i'm sure someone else has posted the link by now).

    Linux would run on these things in no time (maybe we could even build our own TiVOs with 'em). And Mac OS X would be easy to port, with or without Apple's help.

    I don't think IBM would like this idea very much however, since it might undercut their huge margins on PPC-based servers. On the other hand, if they manufactured and sold the motherboard for cheap, they could bring PPC to a much larger audience.

  • Easy! (Score:2, Funny)

    by orkysoft ( 93727 )
    Just ask the "what if" machine! :-P

  • What OS? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Pan_God_of_Gods ( 620544 )
    If this was acompolished would it be any different then a mac? would you use a mixture of ibm and mac parts to make it? And assuming you could would there be anything to stop you from running OS X on it? Hell, if it works out cheaper than a G4 tower i might just be interested.

  • Amiga + PPC Linux + MOL + MacOS 7/8/9/X (Score:3, Interesting)

    by SunnyElLoco ( 621085 ) on Tuesday October 29, 2002 @02:40PM (#4557532)
    If you wanted to build a PPC system to that'd run MacOS without Apple hardware, the best (only?) way would probably be to buy an Amiga or other generic PPC system running PPC Linux and install Mac-on-Linux [maconlinux.org] on it. Linux would access the hardware, while MOL would abstract the hardware so that MacOS thinks it's running on Apple hardware. MacOS would run 'natively' and you'd get Linux on the same machine as well. Of course you'd have trouble getting drivers for your hardware, and the graphics would probably be terribly slow, but it's certainly possible to do.
  • Motorola sells a (relatively) low cost embedded controller [mot.com] that comes in an ATX form factor and includes up to a PPC 7410 (400MHz) processor. The cheapest ones are only a few hundred bucks, and come with a 200MHz PPC750 (good enough to run Yellow Dog Linux). For desktop applications you'd have to find an PMC video card with linux support, but hey, you're in this for the fun, right?
  • What's the deal with the graphic of Tux? Shouldn't this fall into the Apple category?

    I know we're not supposed to ask but who wants to go to all that trouble to build a PowerPC from scratch just to install Linux on it? Okay, I forgot, we've got readers here who would install Linux on an electric toothbrush if they could.

  • Just wait... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by wilburdg ( 178573 ) on Tuesday October 29, 2002 @02:58PM (#4557640)
    I am an engineer with Terra Soft. I have some info that I believe is applicable to this thread --expect something similar to what is discussed here in roughly a month ... with Mac OS 9/X through YDL and Mac-On-Linux.

    Stand-alone PowerPC ATX motherboards :)

    *looks over shoulder to make sure marketing isn't looking*
  • There is no commodity market for generic PPC boards, but such boards do exist. For instance we use them for early development stages of software for our embedded systems. They are standard ATX boards with a PPC chip and the usual host of connectors plus some more developer centric things like bus taps to allow easy application of data analyzers to the PCI bus etc. The thing is because there are no economies of scale these boards cost as much as a complete low end system from Apple.

  • You want PPC boards? we got em. (Score:3, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 29, 2002 @03:03PM (#4557675)

    Try here [pegasosppc.com] for resellers.

    MicroATX mainboard (236 mm x 172 mm)
    133 MHz processor slot
    600 MHz PowerPC G3 750 CXe - to Dual PowerPC G4 MPC 7450
    PC133 RAM (two sockets), up to 2 GB
    AGP slot
    PCI subsystem with three slots, optional Riser Card
    IEEE1394 (Firewire) VIA VT6306 with 100/200/400 MBit data transfer
    10/100 MBit Realtek Phyceiver 8201 Ethernet
    USB I/O system VIA 8231 with four connectors
    AC97 sound subsystem Sigmatel STAC 9766 Codec with mic input, line in/out and headset connector
    IRDA for infra-red remote control
    ATA100 VIA 8231 with two channels for upto four ATA devices
    PS/2 mouse connector
    RS232 (serial) port
    Centronics port
    Floppy
    Gameport for PC-compatible joysticks
    Open firmware

    Two operating systems included : MorphOS and Linux

  • Anyone remember CHRP? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by barfarf ( 544609 ) on Tuesday October 29, 2002 @03:04PM (#4557695)
    This was called the "common reference hardware platform". Before Apple usurped back the Power Computing, Motorola, and Umax clones, this was supposed to be one potential answer to building a non-mac powerpc box. Motorola came the closest to accomplishing this by implementing standard PC parts (like ps/2 ports) on their computer.

    At one time, back when Microsoft actually supported the PowerPC architecture, Firmworks and IBM actually made a dual-booting macintosh/NT computer in 1996. IBM's motivation was linux, I believe. Check these links out:

    http://www.firmworks.com/www/chrp.htm

    http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/C/CHRP.html

    http://maccentral.macworld.com/news/9908/19.ibm. sh tml

    I personally LOVED the thought of being able to go to a computer show and putting together an NT or a linux or a mac-compatible computer by purchasing individual parts.

    You know, it's really a damn shame this wasn't meant to be.

  • I know I'm probably being really paranoid and alarmist, but this Open PPC architecture may be necessary if Palladium and DRM succeed in keeping Linux off the PC desktop.

    The odds of Palladium locking out Linux from the PC platform are minimal at best, but in order to ensure the survival of OpenSource, it is probably best to make available an alternative computing architecture for Linux and OpenSource software in case Microsoft and the content providers get their way in crippling PCs.

    Open PPC (if I may call it that) may be essential to ensure the long-term survival of OpenSource and protect it and the internet from those who would attempt to restrict it.

  • Motorola Reference Motherboards (Score:3, Informative)

    by bill_mcgonigle ( 4333 ) on Tuesday October 29, 2002 @03:20PM (#4557878) Homepage Journal
    Motorola makes reference motherboards and pre-built [motorola.com] systems based on them. You can run MontaVista Linux [mvista.com] on them. There's a dual-1GHz model available.

    I haven't tried it myself. I suspect it's not cheaper than buying a Mac.

  • Slashdot Recursion (Score:5, Funny)

    by BiOFH ( 267622 ) on Tuesday October 29, 2002 @03:28PM (#4557982)
    Build a Mac! [slashdot.org] see Can I build a Mac? [slashdot.org] see Build a Mac! [slashdot.org] see Can I build a Mac? [slashdot.org] see Build a Mac! [slashdot.org] see Can I build a Mac? [slashdot.org] see Build a Mac! [slashdot.org] see Can I build a Mac? [slashdot.org] see ... ad infinitum...
  • Is it possible to interface an alternate CPU to a motherboard not originally designed for it? For instance, could a PowerPC be grafted onto a standard x86 motherboard? In my somewhat currently limited knowledge of such things, it seems that address lines are just address lines and it all really comes down to software. So if a new bios firmware could be connected to the new chip, and the right bus lines connected in the right places, the rest would just be software, right?

    I imagine there would be timing issues to deal with. Possibly voltage differences, too. I don't know. Like I said, I don't know much about this layer of things. :-)
    • No, address lines are not just address lines. Things worked that way in the early 80s, but these days CPUs use complex, custom bus protocols.
    • Nope. Can't be done. You could, in theory, make what amounts to a PPC motherboard that pluggs into a particular x86 socket, but this would be silly in the extreme and would serve no useful purpose. tHE chipset on an x86 motherboard are specifically designed to work a specific processor.

      A more intelligent solution would be to have a PPC daughter that lives on a PCI card and uses the host PC's memory, disk, etc.

  • well.... (Score:2, Informative)

    by chinakow ( 83588 )
    you could buy a PPC machine from these people [terrasoftsolutions.com] and if you ask real nice they might let you in on their suppliers
  • Can't remember where I got this from... probably macslash. I've bookmarked it for rainy day, so I have not gone through all the details.

    http://www.macopz.com/buildamac/

  • Pegasos G3/G4 mobo (Score:3, Informative)

    by rEWDBOi ( 169608 ) on Wednesday October 30, 2002 @05:34AM (#4562757)
    You shoul check out bplan's Pegasos G3/G4 mobo. [bplan-gmbh.de]. The Homepage isn't exactly clear as to wether it's released yet or yet another Amiga vaporware, but it sure sounds interesting:

    microATX Mainboard 236mm x 172mm ( 9"3 x 6"8 )
    • 133 MHz Processor Slot
    • Optional with 350 MHz G3 PowerPC® / 512k Cache
      up to Dual MPC 7450 G4 PowerPC® / 2 MB Cache at state of the art speedgrades
    • PC133 SDRAM Memory for a total of 2 modules
      maximum 2GB extension by availibility of modules
    • AGP Slot x 2, user selectable graphics card
    • PCI Subsystem with a total of 3 slots to be used for custom expansion, included one slot for Riser Card Option
    • IEEE1394 VIA VT6306 at 100/200/400 MBit Transfer rates with three ports
    • 10/100 MBit Network Realtek 8201 Phyceiver
    • USB I/O System VIA 8231 with a total of 4 ports
    • AC97 Sound Subsystem Sigmatel STAC 9766 Codec with Mic. In, Line In/Out and Headset support
    • optical S/PDIF output
    • IRDA for comunication with PDAs and other IRDA devices
    • ATA100 VIA 8231 with up to 4 devices
    • KBD for PS2 compatible keyboards
    • Mouse for PS2 compatible pointing devices
    • Seriell one channel RS232
    • Parallel standard Centronics
    • Floppy
    • Gameport to be used with PC style joysticks/gamepads
    • 56K Modem
      integrated

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