Apple and Genesi do not have a monopoly to provide consumer-oriented PPC hardware.

Out of the Amiga sphere two new companies come forward with the intend to offer new desktop options based on Freescale's most powerful G4 chip ever.

The first company is ACK Software Controls from Canada, a four person operation that will develop a carrier board for their 1.7 GHz MPC7448 card which will be compatible with AmigaOne-XE and going to be demonstrated at a public event on June 10th, 2006.

Due to the nature of AmigaOne's limited capabilities supporting 133 MHz 60x bus and SDR SDRAM, but neither 200 MHz operation or the G4 MPX bus protocol, the 7448 card needs a better board infrastructure and northbridge.

ACK's Adam Kowalczyk has been in contact with Tundra for about one year and chose one of their new Tsi108/109 system controllers to base the "PowerVixxen TL" design on.

To be able to implement the new platform in time with limited ressources and still keep the price in line for a small volume production, the board only provides the most basic functionality which the user can expand via standard PCI addon cards for maximum flexibility.

Originally aimed at becoming a microATX board with AGP slot, the preliminary specs changed to the following:

• 200 MHz CPU interface, MegArray Connector


• DDR2-400 RAM


• 2x Gigabit Ethernet
  
• PEG slot (with 1x physical PCIe link) for gfxcards


• PCI 66 MHz slot for interface combo cards


• 4 PCI slots

The northbridge's single native PCI(-X) bus is likely to be converted to PCI-Express and a second PCI segment with bridge chips like the PLX PEX 8111 and PCI 6150.

The feasibility of such a PCI-PCIe bridge for compatibility with newer gfxcards has already been demonstrated with an AmigaOne and Radeon X300 on a developer risercard.

While the 1.7 GHz 7448 CPU card will retail for about 850 USD - due to the high G4 component pricing - the complete system is going to be available for a target price of 1000 USD. The board will run AmigaOS 4 and Linux.

ACK plans to continue development and provide a board with native PCIe functionality by 2007.

The second board comes from the mystery company "Troika", firmly rooted in the Amiga community. Aside from a Flex-ATX low-cost G3 board developed inhouse, Troika intends to offer an additional higher end board with MPC7448.

The design by Beijing UD Technology Co., Ltd. (UDTech) is an evaluation board similar to the MAI Teron that started a second life under Eyetech as the "AmigaOne" commercial product.

The features are:

• MPC7448 with up to 1.7 GHz


• Tundra Tsi109 Northbridge


• DDR2 DIMM slot


• 2x Gigabit Ethernet


• 2x SATA and 1 PATA connector


• 4x USB2.0 ports


• 1x PCI-66 and 1x PCI-33 slots


• 2x MiniPCI slots, e.g. for WLAN or Tuner cards


• Smartcard slot


• Stereo or S/PDIF Audio In and 5.1 or S/PDIF Audio Out


• Serial port


• Infrared interface


• 16 MB NOR Flash


• ATX power connector

UDTech suggests the use of an XGI PCI graphics solution with both video in and outputs for this consumer electronics style board.

UDTech is a "DOOR" company (Electronics Design House, ODM service provider, OEM service provider, Value-Added-Reseller) that already did a complete PowerPC 405EP "Taihu" evaluation kit for AMCC.

ACK Software Controls IRC log - Part 1

ACK Software Controls IRC log - Part 2

Troika MPC7448 board teaser