Sam460ex is a line of modular

motherboard A motherboard (also called mainboard, main circuit board, mb, mboard, backplane board, base board, system board, logic board (only in Apple computers) or mobo) is the main printed circuit board (PCB) in general-purpose computers and other expand ...

s produced by the Italian company

ACube Systems Srl ACube Systems Srl is a company that started in January 2007 from the synergy of the Italian companies Alternative Holding Group Srl, Soft3 and Virtual Works. The three companies have been engaged in the areas of sale, distribution and engineering ...

. The machine was released in October 2010 and can run

AmigaOS 4 AmigaOS 4 (abbreviated as OS4 or AOS4) is a line of Amiga operating systems which runs on PowerPC microprocessors. It is mainly based on AmigaOS 3.1 source code developed by Commodore, and partially on version 3.9 developed by Haage & Partner. "T ...

MorphOS MorphOS is an AmigaOS-like computer operating system (OS). It is a mixed Proprietary software, proprietary and Open-source software, open source OS produced for the Pegasos PowerPC (PPC) processor based computer, PowerUP accelerator equipped Amig ...

, or

Debian GNU/Linux Debian (), also known as Debian GNU/Linux, is a Linux distribution composed of free and open-source software, developed by the community-supported Debian Project, which was established by Ian Murdock on August 16, 1993. The first version of Deb ...

(indeed only CRUX PPC Linux is available because there is neither a Debian official support nor a Debian install ISO). The Sam460ex made its debut at the

Vintage Computer Festival The Vintage Computer Festival (VCF) is an international event celebrating the history of computing. It is held annually in various locations around the United States and various countries internationally. It was founded by Sellam Ismail in 1997 ...

Bletchley Park Bletchley Park is an English country house and estate in Bletchley, Milton Keynes ( Buckinghamshire) that became the principal centre of Allied code-breaking during the Second World War. The mansion was constructed during the years following ...

in the UK on 19 June 2010, where it was demonstrated to the public running AmigaOS 4.1 along with the Timberwolf web browser, a port of the

Mozilla Firefox Mozilla Firefox, or simply Firefox, is a free and open-source web browser developed by the Mozilla Foundation and its subsidiary, the Mozilla Corporation. It uses the Gecko rendering engine to display web pages, which implements current and a ...

for the AmigaOS 4. Its hardware features were also showcased, with its SIM card slot and aerial, its ability to boot AmigaOS from SD card. In September 2011, Acube Systems introduced AmigaOne 500 based on Sam460ex mainboard.

Versions

Sam460ex

FlexATX FlexATX is a motherboard form factor derived from ATX. The specification was released in 1999 by Intel as an addendum to the microATX specification. It uses a subset of the motherboard mounting holes required for microATX and the same I/O plate ...

form factor (21.6 × 17 cm) * AMCC 460ex SoC – passively cooled PowerPC 440 core up to 1.15 GHz and including a double precision

floating point unit Floating may refer to: * a type of dental work performed on horse teeth * use of an isolation tank * the guitar-playing technique where chords are sustained rather than scratched * ''Floating'' (play), by Hugh Hughes * Floating (psychological phe ...

(FPU) * Cache L1/L2: 32KB/256KB * max 2 GB

DDR2 SDRAM Double Data Rate 2 Synchronous Dynamic Random-Access Memory (DDR2 SDRAM) is a double data rate (DDR) synchronous dynamic random-access memory (SDRAM) interface. It superseded the original DDR SDRAM specification, and was itself superseded by DDR3 ...

– 200-pin SODIMM up to 533 MHz *

Silicon Motion Silicon Motion Technology Corporation, stylized as SiliconMotion is an American -Taiwanese company involved in developing NAND flash controller integrated circuits (ICs) for solid-state storage devices. The company said it supplies more NAND ...

SM502 embedded MoC (audio/video) max 64MB video memory * Audio 5.1 Realtek ALC655 codec *

PCI-express PCI Express (Peripheral Component Interconnect Express), officially abbreviated as PCIe or PCI-e, is a high-speed serial computer expansion bus standard, designed to replace the older PCI, PCI-X and AGP bus standards. It is the common mot ...

4× lanes slot (v1.1, 16× mechanical connector) * PCI-express 1× lane slot (mutually exclusive with the SATA2 port) * PCI slot, 32 bit, 66/33 MHz, 3.3V * 1× SATA2 port (mutually exclusive with the PCI-e 1× slot) * 6× USB2 EHCI/OHCI ports * 2× 10/100/1000 Ethernet ports * SD card reader * Serial port The SATA2 port and the PCI-e 1× slot are mutually exclusive, only one of them can be used at a time.

Sam460ex Lite

The specifications are the same as for the Sam460ex, except for: * AMCC 460ex SoC clocked at 1 GHz * Cache L1/L2: 32KB/256KB * 512 MB DDR2 RAM

Sam460cr

The specifications are the same as for the Sam460ex, except for:
Absence of * Silicon Motion SM502 embedded MoC * Audio 5.1 Realtek ALC655 codec * Mutually exclusive 1× SATA2 port Users are expected to use graphics, sound and Sata interface cards with this model.

Reception

''Amiga Power'' magazine saw PCIe expansion for modern graphics cards, silent fan-less CPU operation, plenty of RAM and USB 2.0 as main advantages of the new Sam460ex board. However, the same review mentioned among weak points CPU speed, problems with audio on some motherboards and lack of 3D drivers for Radeon HD cards under AmigaOS. Reviewing AmigaOne 500, ''Amiga Future'' magazine highlighted supplied 2 GB RAM and overall system performance comparable to older Pegasos II computer, but criticized weak built in graphics chip recommending customers to buy dedicated graphics card.

References

External links

Sam4x0 Home page

ACube Systems Srl
Motherboard PowerPC mainboards Amiga {{compu-hardware-stub