Kai Staats, co-founder & CEO of Terra Soft Solutions states, “This is an exciting engagement for Terra Soft, perfectly timed given recent shifts in the market place. What’s more, the Open Desktop Workstation is small in size, inexpensive, and can be used with existing monitors, keyboards, mice, even external storage devices. Designed by Genesi to offer tight Linux integration, we are thrilled to ship a system that just works.”
A well rounded, expertly designed product, the Open Desktop Workstation introduces a choice in PowerPC Linux workstations. The fully configured ODW with Yellow Dog Linux pre-installed offers a complete home/office workstation, code development platform for embedded, server, and end-user applications, as well as the traditional Linux offering of a full featured email, web, ftp, and database server.
Bill Buck, president of Genesi states, “We are pleased to have Terra Soft on-board as an official Value Added Reseller for the Open Desktop Workstation. Their Yellow Dog Linux operating system lends a level of recognized integrity, enabling the ODW to move into the hands of end-users in a more diverse market place.”
The Open Desktop Workstation is based upon the Pegasos II motherboard featuring the Marvell Discovery II Northbridge and a high-performance PowerPC(R) processor from Freescale Semiconductor of the same G4 family that ships in several Apple systems. This PowerPC processor boasts a 128-bit wide AltiVec(TM) vector processing engine that can more than double processing performance for many applications while maintaining low power consumption and heat dissipation.
“When we worked with Terra Soft last fall to produce a Yellow Dog Linux Board Support Package, it set in motion what is launched today, a flexible, powerful workstation with support by an industry-leading Linux distribution,” said Chuck Corley, Applications Engineering Manager at Freescale Semiconductor. “The Open Desktop Workstation from Genesi represents an established platform for Linux application development, as well as a proving ground for a variety of end-user solutions on the PowerPC architecture, such as home media centers, web servers, and self-serve kiosks. Freescale is pleased to see this platform available to our customers.”
The base ODW configuration is as follows:
# Low Profile Small Footprint Case – Tower or Desktop Orientation.
# Pegasos II with 1GHz G4 processor.
# 512MB DDR RAM.
# 80GB ATA100 Hard Disk.
# Dual-Layer DVD±RW Drive
# ATI Radeon 9250 graphics card.
# Micro ATX form factor (236mm x 172mm).
# OpenFirmware (IEEE1275) boot interface.
# Marvell Discovery II (MV64361) System Controller.
# Freescale G4 PowerPC CPU.
# 184-pin 266MHz DDR RAM sockets.
# 1x AGP slot.
# 3x PCI slots with riser connector.
# 2x ATA100 IDE Channels.
# 3x IEEE1394 ports (400Mbit).
# 3x USB 1.1 ports (12Mbit).
# Gigabit and 10/100 Ethernet.
# AC97 Audio Subsystem.
# IrDA, Serial, Parallel, and PS/2.
# Floppy drive connector.
The Open Desktop Workstation grants PowerPC what has been common place in the Lintel market for years: an inexpensive Linux platform built upon industry standards that meets the price-point and needs of a diverse set of end users.
Available with Yellow Dog Linux pre-installed exclusively from Terra Soft Solutions.
About Terra Soft Solutions, Inc.
Terra Soft is a leading Integrated Solutions Provider with proven expertise in the Power architecture and Linux OS platform. As an Apple, Mercury, and Genesi VAR and IBM Business Partner, Terra Soft provides turnkey and build-to-order portables, desktop workstations, HA servers, and HPC clusters. Terra Soft’s Yellow Dog Linux OS and Y-HPC 64-bit cluster construction suite are widely accepted as a preferred platforms for systems world-wide.
For more information, visit www.terrasoftsolutions.com
About Genesi.
Genesi is a leading provider of PowerPCâ„¢ based computing products. Genesi’s OpenFirmware (IEEE1275) compliant PegasosPPC family is designed to bring PowerPC technology, flexibility, and efficiency to the desktop, home entertainment, netcom, low-end server and pervasive market segments at an affordable price.
For more information, visit genesi.pegasosppc.com
Pegasos is a registered trademark of Genesi. All other trademarks or registered trademarks are property of their respective owners.”
Link: terrasoftsolutions.com
