Re: (offtopic and quite possibly silly) BeBox architecture, next generation

["Scott Lindsey" <wombat%gobe.com@localhost>]

Sorry to be a parade-rainer, but..

In order to be a "BeBox", it'd have to run BeOS.  If it doesn't use 
chipsets that BeOS expects to find (i.e., compatible with supported 
BeBoxen or PowerMac's), then don't expect Be to spend engineering time 
getting BeOS to work with it.  Keep in mind that Be is a very small 
company still struggling to make it, plus many of the engineers 
involved with the BeBox are no longer with Be.

If it doesn't run BeOS, then it's just a generic PPC box, perhaps akin 
to IBM's stillborn POP design.

>From what I've seen, the BeBox design seems to be "somewhat" 
documented, as opposed to "well" documented.

I must admit to being something of a lurker on this list.  I've never 
actually used BSD on my BeBox - the lack of support for non-BSD 
partitioning kind of put me off, since I still run BeOS.  I don't how 
well SMP is supported in NetBSD-BeBox (or any BSD, for that matter).  I 
know that under Linux, it doesn't work at all.  Of course, the BeLinux 
project is just about dead from lack of interest from knowledgable 
participants.

I do know that the BeBox's multi-processor design was a massive kludge 
for economic reasons, misusing a cache controller to connect the CPU's, 
with one result being that the BeBox has no cache.  This, of course, 
doesn't help performance one whit.  I believe it also is strictly 
limited to the two processors.

Also, the 603 simply wasn't designed with multiprocessing in mind (the 
750 has similar problems).  For SMP, you'd really want to go with the 
604 or 7400 series.