Amiga netbook?

Has there been any news about the Amiga netbook that was announced last fall? I haven't seen anything, though I've seen lots of info about the X1000.

It looked like the hardware was going to just be sourced from LimePC, so I wouldn't think that would be much of an issue. Have any of them been seen at any of the assorted Amiga shows?

No news.

I imagine the porting is a little bit harder than for higher performance HW. Need to do a lot of optimizations before showing the result, otherwise the showing just puts off interest towards the system.

Some progress report / update would be nice, though.

I must admit, it would be nice to have some news on this.

My money waits to buy one.

I don't have the money, but i'd even sell a kidney to have one

The LimePC Z9 is an 800 MHz PPC with 512 megs of RAM. Assuming that's the machine they're OEMing (and it seems likely), shouldn't it at least be as fast as a Sam440ep-flex?

Maybe they're having driver issues. I just hope they haven't dropped the idea completely.

Or maybe they just don't have enough people to work on the X1000 and Z9 ports at the same time.

"The LimePC Z9 is an 800 MHz PPC with 512 megs of RAM."

It's not 800Mhz. It's 800MIPS. (IIRC PPC440/667 does 1200+MIPS)
(PPC+DSP+3DGPU in one chip)

Max RAM is 1024MB. I hope AOS4 version comes with 1024MB.

If miracle happens and we get 800Mhz netbook, it would be with Verisilicon (PPC460+3DGPU integrated) or ChinaChip SoC. But the only existing solution uses MPC5121e.

I believe everyone is eager to hear some news on this front :@)

djirikki you bet pepole wanna know.

i dont thinkt it will be like sam 460, but just to see amiga os 4.x running on a netbook is nice. and anyway its a low buget solution something that wee have lacked since the last classics came out...

I'm really looking forward to see this netbook available. I would probably have got it anyway, but since I'm without a working OS4 system for some months now it would be nice if it was available soon.

On the other hand if the waiting time results in better specs. I'm ok with that as my biggest worry was the slow (rumoured) CPU.

Wait until MorphOS announces official distribution for laptop ppc macs and you will surely heard from Hyperion as well.

The building of a support for PowerBook in MOS has been ongoing about four years (since the first demo), still no release.
If it takes 5 years to get MOS to another HW, I wonder if Hyperion manages to do similar job in less than a year....

Quote:

I think the only specs that can be more than the existing hardware (LimeBook Z9) are memory (512MB for example, instead of 256MB on the one I own) and storage (8 GB was the default size AFAIK).

About the slow CPU ... MPC121e has a 400 MHz PPC core. That's not very high these days but even on LimeOS (Ubuntu based), it is not bad.
I would dream about the use of the AXE core.

CPU speed might not be a problem for the OS itself, but for applications and overall usability I see some problems.

@corto

I think 400MHz was really low performance also for OS4.x...
Not fo overall system usage that will be good for sure, but a general user wont use its computer only to joke with windows and drawers I think...

today a netbook was used primarly to browe and you think its enough for that? I'm not sure honestly...

To use SimpleMail/YAM/some simple os app(like mp3 players or word/calc with old softs) no problem but for the rest...

In my opinion 600/700 Mhz is the min request for using AmigaOS with atleast a modern browser opened and a few program active or in standby, even the RAM are important, having 512 MB on this netbook would be enough, less memory would be a bit problematic expecially if you use the system with a certain regularity

Quote:

Well, there are people using AmigaOS 4.x with blizzard PPC cards, which max out at 240 MHz. While clock speed isn't directly related to processing power (the CPU's design also plays a big role), I'm pretty sure that a 240 MHz 603e is slower than the much newer MPC5121e at 400 MHz. You might want to ask some classic AmigaOS 4.x users what usability is like on their classic machines.

Hans

For me its kind of clear: if cpu speed will be less than 400 (or 400) mhz and without any HW accleration in gpu (even just compositing lets say), then, still, for such not big price netbook will be sold, just for mostly coders, who want to do their work while they not at home.

But for sure TW will be very slow on such a cpu, muiowb will be also kind of not fun to use, and its just will be slow for everyday today's use.

But if it will be more than 400mhz, even 600mhz, or better 800, then it even can have some kind of success. As there will be possible to use normally browser.

Any will be good, but faster cpu will be for sure much better for many of us.

@thread

FWIW, I spent a bit of time doing some demos and surfing
the net with OWB on a CSPPC/4000 at AmiWest last year.

I was shocked how well it ran (being used to my SAM & XE)
and having an X1K on the other side of the demo table.

Frankly, memory (128MB RAM and ZorRAM) limitations seemed
to be the biggest shortcoming of the 4000 running OS4.

So with sufficient, fast RAM, I'm cautiously hopeful with
how the OS4 netbook experience will be.

Patiently awaiting... ;)

PJS

Here a review of the LimeBook Z9, the possibly next Amiga netbook :

http://obligement.free.fr/articles/limebookz9.php