PowerPC Reference Platform: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 14:02, 17 July 2007

Revision as of 19:58, 9 September 2007

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'''PowerPC Reference Platform''' ('''PReP''') was a [[PowerPC]] hardware reference design developed at the same time as the PowerPC architecture itself. It allowed hardware vendors to build a machine that could run various operating systems, especially [[Mac OS]], [[Windows NT]] and various flavors of [[Unix]], notably [[Solaris (operating system)|Solaris]] and [[AIX operating system|AIX]]. PReP systems were never popular, and the only vendors to actually ship PReP hardware were IBM and Motorola.

PReP was, for all intents,essentialy a PC clone with a PowerPC CPU. [[Apple Computer|Apple]], in particular, found the requirement for PC-centric I/O, like a [[Centronics printer port]], particularly odious, and never really followed the standard. As it appeared no one was particularly happy with PReP, a new effort known as [[Common Hardware Reference Platform|CHRP]] was started. Key to CHRP was the use of [[Open Firmware]], which gave vendors greatly improved support during the boot process, allowing the hardware to be far more varied.

Finding current, readily available operating systems for old PReP hardware can be difficult. [[Debian]] and [[NetBSD]] still maintain their respective ports to this architecture, although developer and user activity is extremely low.