[The Godfather]

So IBM and Motorola designed the PPC for embedded applications, while Apple wants it for personal computing. What are the embedded applications the chip makers consider? I have heard PPC's are used in regulatory system of some automobiles, anybody has more info?

[Evangellydonut]

who knows...my EE prof said that things are moving more towards the embedded market...
Anyway, here's a thought...with more and more talks of home appliance going "online," anyone care to surf the web with your home toaster, using a G3 chip?

[The Godfather]

The G4 Cube could also be modified to toast bread on the side opposite to the DVD

P.S. I had no idea you were on an EE program too, what year are you? I will be a senior this fall.


[This message has been edited by The Godfather (edited 08-02-2000).]

[Evangellydonut]

lol I stand corrected...G4 toaster! hmm...think of the endless possibilities with a G4 Microwave, with all that alti-vec to cook your food...nm...

I'm a smorph (as they call it in the South Houses of Caltech). Since I survived the first year, looks like I'll graduate! hurray! (89% frosh retention rate is low...)

[The Godfather]

I am looking to buy an Athlon(TM) powered BBQ grill.

Congrats for your 1st year in real school.

I know that McLaren are using 4 PowerPC chips for their car control systems. I read that on TheRegister a while ago. The article also mentionned that the PowerPC was the only chip capable of sustaining the vibrations inherent to F1 racing, and the only chips producing low enough heat levels to work at full bore in a SEALED box (well, mostly..) for hours on end! Man, why are those PowerPC's so great outside Macs?

Flipper

[Herr Newton]

IIRC, one of the recent Mars missions used PPC chips for its onboard computing.

And IBM manufactures AIX servers based on the chip. I know that NDSU in Fargo, ND has a few PPC 620 boxes running around.

AND the TiVO boxes apparently use a 50MHz PPC of some sort. Not sure as to what model number.

[This message has been edited by Herr Newton (edited 08-04-2000).]

[The Godfather]

Very interesting, very interesting.

I have just read that those TiVo boxes can be hacked to run Linux on them. The HD can be upgraded, could the CPU be upgraded too?

To bad that is a expensive machine: $300 for a 50MHz computer.

[denim]

Originally posted by Evangellydonut:
anyone care to surf the web with your home toaster, using a G3 chip?

I'm unable to find it now, but I could swear I saw something recently about a web-enabled refridgerator with a display on the front and camera inside.

[This message has been edited by denim (edited 08-07-2000).]

[blizaine]

I don't know about you guys, but I would love to have this:

[Evangellydonut]

um, you can already do that with an Athlon 1Ghz if you replace the heat-sink 'n fan with the pizza!

A lot of assembly control systems run on PPC chips. I used to work at a factory that manufactured corrogated paper-making machines and all of the control systems were VME's, some with PPC and 68k chips.

These run various RTOS (real-time operating system--very tiny system kernel with a very small memory footprint--such as OS-9 (not Apple's OS), Linux, and stripped-down DOS), depending on the system application.

As a matter of fact, the 68k series of chips Apple used previously were originally designed by Moto for embedded apps as well. This is why they (and PPC) have always been so efficient (heatwise, etc.) when compared to their Intel counterparts.

[MacOS761]

I thought the PPC was developed for the Mac, and later used for embedded stuff Anyway, my DSL modem (they call it a gateway) has a 40 MHz PPC in it... and interestingly enough, my ISP is based in Cupertino! (it's Telocity, FYI... yes, www.telocity.com. I feel like I'm advertising, eew). Anyway...

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We're supposed to sing about piraty things!