I love this video!!
http://www.bplan-gmbh.de/news/efika_de.mp4

It looks like the Efika was handling Tux Racer pretty well.

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Pegasos-II board G3/600 MHz CPU
Flex Micro ATX tower/ 256 MB DDR ram
32 MB ATI Radeon /DVD Sony DDU-161216speed/40speed
Harddisk AT/IDE 3.5\\\", 60 GB

Coming in English soon...

http://www.bplan-gmbh.de/news/efika_info.pdf

R&B

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http://bbrv.blogspot.com

Nice doc on the EFIKA. One thing I didn't see mentioned is a case. Are there plans for some type of case to be sold with the board, or will there be recommendations on other resellers to buy a case from? From the looks of it, it would fit well in this type of case:



EFIKA Dimensions: 118mm X 153mm X 38mm
Kurobox Dimensions: 177.8mm X 187.96mm X 60.96mm

The Kurobox is neat and all, but the EFIKA has much more to offer. I'll take out the current stuff in the Kurobox and put an EFIKA inside if it comes to that, depending on what else is available .

EDIT: Just found this old blog post from Neko which is somewhat related to this:
http://likerabbits.blogspot.com/2005/11 ... -mood.html

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Joshua Purcell

The EFIKA board looks much better (400MHz PPC, only 266MHz PPC for Kurobox), but I like the Kurobox case too.

See the specs here :
http://www.kurobox.com/downloads/kuroboxspecs.pdf

True, the specs on the kurobox are way below the EFIKA, and it would be silly to purchase a Kurobox just for the case . What types of cases will be available for the EFIKA?

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Joshua Purcell

Your Kurobox specs are outdated.
Here is the current one.

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http://bbrv.blogspot.com

The EFIKA very alpha book needs an update

BTW, does this still apply : I would like to have a gfx chip and a TV tuner card.
Is that impossible ? (V2-A has no PCI !)

Having both would definitely be a must.
Having a choice of different PCI/AGP adapters would be even better.

In one hand I see the Efika as a very nice little board that could be used for several things but on the other hand there are some limitations:

If like you said you want to use a PCI tuner card you would need a PCI riser card (which seems not to be included with the Ekika).
If you want to use an USB tuner card (and most of these come in USB 2.0 high speed version) you need to use an usb 2.0 PCI card and still have the same riser issue.
If one version of the Efika could ship with the onboard gfx + optional riser cards (with one PCI or even more) it would definitely open many possibilities.

But maybe I am wrong to assume that the Efika should try to do as well as the Peg2 while being smaller and much less expensive.

We agree. As you see we do, include the riser card in the offering:

http://www.genesippc.com/press.php?date=20060929

What we want to do is make a smaller version of this:



R&B

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http://bbrv.blogspot.com

Well I saw the AGB riser card but did not see any PCI one. Are standard riser cards compatible with the Efika ?

With the GFX chip onboard the AGP riser does not make any sense but a PCI would definitely help.

I am sure that an Efika would work well in combination of a Hauppauge PVR 350 / 500 or full featured (with mpeg2 decoder) DVB card for PVR use. I had a celeron 300 Mhz doing it fine.
The only issue may be that these full featured card may be bigger than the efika and that if you want to do more than mpeg2 (mpeg4) you can get in trouble performance wise when using the PVR card video output.

It may be different if your GFX chip has some hw decoding possibilities (as Xvmc for nvidia / unichrome chips). Then a PVR card without mpeg decoder could be used with outputing directly to the gfx chip output.

I really wonder what Apple will throw at us with their ITV next year.

I think standard risers should work. After all, it's just a standard PCI slot. AFAIK this is not possible. MPC5200B has logic for only one PCI slot, so without using a PCI-to-PCI bridge, you can have GFX chip on board or PCI slot, not both. Having both, would require redesign of the board.
Also, correct me if I'm wrong, but I think the unpopulated holes are for future FPGA....

It is NOT possible. The MPC5200B PCI bus only supports a single bus mastering PCI device, and a 3.3V one at that.

The addition of an onboard graphics chip precludes completely any other addon peripheral on the same bus, which is the primary reason that the PCI slot disappears on that version.

Any PCI riser you use MUST be single slot only, or if you must use a larger one, please only connect a single, 3.3V PCI card. 5V ones may destroy the board and the card (please read the MPC5200B manual from the Freescale site for more information)

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Matt Sealey

Well
How can I use a TV tuner with my EFIKA then ?
Could you please tell me what are my options for that ?
I would like to avoid using USB port for that

Well... Maybe All-in-Wonder?