Re: [MiNT] Efika

[Rob Mahlert <rmahlert@charter.net>]

Roger Burrows wrote:
> Hi Odd,
> On 6 Feb 2008 at 3:21, Odd Skancke wrote:
>   
>>   A while ago Rob Mahlert fixed an Efika board for us, with the intent 
>> of porting MiNT and friends to it. As it has turned out, I am no longer 
>> able to do any Atari-related work. Therefore I hope someone else can 
>> take this board and port FreeMINT to it.
>>
>>     
>
> I took a quick look on the net for Efika.  Looks like a neat board, but the 
> chip seems to be RISC/PowerPC related, quite far away from the 68K/Coldfire 
> architectures.  Am I correct?
>
> Roger Burrows
>
>
>   

Yes, it's a PPC based board. Originally they promised a PegasosPPC board
for development, but then they stopped making them. Instead we got the
Efika, after YEARS of waiting. At the time the PegasosPPC was a nice
system and the cost was reasonable.  Some of us thought going to PPC was
another choice for the platform. I can remember Czuba even proposing a
PPC based system, the Hawk.

One of the reasons for using the Efika is the price for them.  $99USD
for the board!

Basically it's an all in one board featuring a Freescale(Motorola's
former CPU division) MPC5200B PowerPC SBC 400MHz with 128MB DDR RAM, PCI
slot (can use an AGP Riser card for AGP cards) with built in IDE,
Ethernet, USB and a RS-232 Serial port.

I am NOT suggesting completely moving to the PPC platform. This would be
in addition to 68k.
Like most of you,  I just would like to see some newer more modern
hardware We can use!

Some links on the Efika..

http://www.efika.de/ (German and English)
http://www.genesi-usa.com/efika.php


Rob

(Roger- sorry for the double message, I sent to you only by mistake)