Teron non-Apple PowerPC motherboard

wmf

I'm surprised no one else posted about this yet.



<a href="http://www.terrasoftsolutions.com/products/boxer/teron_cx.shtml"; target="_blank">http://www.terrasoftsolutions.com/products/boxer/teron_cx.shtml</a>;



No doubt it's only a matter of time before OS X is booting on it. (Clones? I don't know what you're talking about... Of course it's so expensive that it doesn't really matter.)

noahj

I doubt that anyone will get OS X booting on it since it does not have the Mac Rom chip on it. However, as a board it is not terribly expensive since it comes with the processor as well. It is more expensive than a generic PC board, but not as expensive as an Apple board.

wmf

OS X does not require a toolbox ROM.



You can't buy a G3 iMac motherboard separately, but it's probably cheaper than the Teron CX.

quarem

If someone did manage to get OS X to run on these, I might consider getting one to be a LAN gaming server.



A PC would be cheaper to do this of course, but I buy Mac games and therefore it is easier for me to run the server on a Mac, since not all games have Linux dedicated servers.



If people can get OS X to run on old unsupported hardware, I think they can probably get it to run on new unsupported hardware.



[ 12-05-2002: Message edited by: Quarem ]</p>

token

Its should be possible with a combination of this motherboard, a linux installation and mac-on-linux.





Mac-on-linux is now cabable of booting into MacOS X and state explicitly on their web that they support these motherboards.





See:



<a href="http://www.maconlinux.org/"; target="_blank">http://www.maconlinux.org/</a>;





/Token

tigerwoods99

I wonder if it would be possible at all to put a G4 CPU on that board and have it work. If it were G4 I'd be thinking about it, or maybe if it used the 1 GHz 750FX w/200 MHz bus support.

splinemodel

Hmmm. This looks a lot like a CHRP board. I bet it's an updated version of CHRP, which Linux does support, by the way. If you've ever built a LinuxPPC kernel, you may have noticed.



Anyway, I almost bought a CHRP board on eBay once. (Yellowknife model) They exist.

razzfazz

[quote]Originally posted by TigerWoods99:

<strong>I wonder if it would be possible at all to put a G4 CPU on that board and have it work. If it were G4 I'd be thinking about it, or maybe if it used the 1 GHz 750FX w/200 MHz bus support.</strong><hr></blockquote>



That G3 600 looks pretty soldered-on to me, so I guess no go.



Bye,

RazzFazz

wmf

It is a CHRP board.



The CPU is soldered on, but there's a different version called the Teron PX that has a CPU slot.

serrano

[quote]Originally posted by RazzFazz:

<strong>



That G3 600 looks pretty soldered-on to me, so I guess no go.



Bye,

RazzFazz</strong><hr></blockquote>



The G4 version is 'in the works'.

tigerwoods99

Where's the link to that? I'm interested because I'm thinking about building a Mac, but I would build a G4.

stagflation steve

Why are people acting like this is some earth-shaking development?



This board has been around for TWO YEARS already, and it will run Mac OS X with a certain degree of hacking

tigerwoods99

Hmm this is interesting.



Here is what it says about the Teron PX:



Having similar features of the Teron CX platform, Teron PX is also an ideal platform for 64-bit system development. Teron PX's architecture features Articia S chipset and a 300-pin MegArray connector.



With the MegArray connector, Teron PX can be easily configured to different development platforms driven by single processor (PowerPC? 750CX, PowerPC? 750FX, or MPC74XX) or dual processors (PowerPC? 750FX or MPC74XX) CPU cards. It offers more flexibility to system developers and system integrators for system configurations.



MegArray 300 Connector: supports single PowerPC? 750CX, PowerPC? 750FX, or MPC74XX compatible processor, as well as dual PowerPC? 750FX or MPC74XX processors up to 133 MHz CPU bus speed Articia S Chipset Three 32-bit 33MHz PCI slots on board One AGP/PCI (66 MHz AGP 2X or 33/66 MHz PCI) slot on board Supports 72-bit (with ECC) SDRAM up to 2Gbytes Two 168-pin DIMM slots on board PowerPC Linux Kernel





Note this is using the Arcticia S PowerPC chipset, so I went and found the Articia P chipset.





Articia P contains all features of Articia Sa. It supports PowerPC compatible processors up to 166MHz CPU bus speed and enables 166MHz SDRAM and 333MHz DDR SDRAM interface options



The key difference is that Articia P adopts new standards, such as AGP4X for better system performance. With AGP4X, it provides enhanced video/graphics and 3D capabilities. Articia P is a combination of Northbridge and Southbridge designs and specially tailored for use in servers, embedded systems, mobile wireless devices, and multimedia products.



Here's another quote I found on penguinppc.org:

" Tratech is working on a consumer board, (called Barbie) which should have dual gigabit ethernet, a 750FX processor, IDE RAID and probably some other fun things while removing the floppy controller."

ghost_user_name

[quote]Originally posted by TigerWoods99:

<strong>Where's the link to that? I'm interested because I'm thinking about building a Mac, but I would build a G4.</strong><hr></blockquote>



And we'll end up seeing pictures of something completely different after *years* of build-ups

wmf

[quote]Originally posted by Stagflation Steve:

<strong>Why are people acting like this is some earth-shaking development?



This board has been around for TWO YEARS already, and it will run Mac OS X with a certain degree of hacking</strong><hr></blockquote>



Last month this board cost ~$3700; today it costs $500. That's why it didn't matter two years ago but it matters today.

fotns

Does this board have Open Firmware?

wmf

[quote]Originally posted by FotNS:

<strong>Does this board have Open Firmware?</strong><hr></blockquote>



No.

fotns

Well what kind of boot time program does it have?

barto

All generic PowerPC boards use OpenFirmWare. Tenon's is probably no different.



Older versions of Darwin supported CHRP machines, so it should just be a kernel-recompile away from native OS X support.



Barto

fotns

[quote]Originally posted by Barto:

<strong>All generic PowerPC boards use OpenFirmWare. Tenon's is probably no different.



Older versions of Darwin supported CHRP machines, so it should just be a kernel-recompile away from native OS X support.



Barto</strong><hr></blockquote>



I thought so, Apple doesn't own Open Firmware, it?s and open standard.

<a href="http://www.openfirmware.org"; target="_blank">Open Firmware Home Page</a>

It might be a kernel recompile would not be necessary. Wouldn't a set of kernel extensions and some sort of utility like XPostFacto do the trick?

wmf

[quote]Originally posted by FotNS:

<strong>Wouldn't a set of kernel extensions and some sort of utility like XPostFacto do the trick?</strong><hr></blockquote>



Exactly. Although the Teron uses PPCBoot which isn't OF compatible (since there's no open source implementation of OF yet).