Availability of P9 hardware post-ISA 3.1 HW launch

[lepidotos]

As far as I know, the plan for the Solid Silicon hardware is to release late this year. Will there be a period where you can buy either a Blackbird or the new offering, or will it directly replace it? I assume Vikings keeps a couple in stock at any one time so they'll wait until they run out to discontinue their listing, but I'm not in Europe.

Thanks.

[MPC7500]

Vikings doesn't sell RaptorCS products anymore.

[power9mm]

who knows, there's some cheaper surplus offerings on ebay and the like. maybe they'll do a liquidation sale on the older boards whenever the new stuff rolls out

[vikings.thum]

You can find some POWER9 CPUs on ebay but I've never seen a Raptor mainboard there.

[lepidotos]

I've seen one once, but haven't since. I'm thinking there might be a handful showing up there when the S1-based boards come out.

[Borley]

FWIW, I do not plan to sell my current RCS boards once the new ones are available. They will become relegated to the roles currently filled by some older x86 systems that I have.

[Hasturtium]

I've seen one or two motherboard/CPU combos pop up on eBay, never for more than a few days at a time. The CPUs are readily available, frequently for rates that make me seriously contemplate snagging another motherboard... until I look back and see how high the prices have risen. Oi. I love my Blackbird and use it every day, to the point that it's become my main machine unless I run into something it literally can't do, but I couldn't rationalize getting another one now.

It would not be surprising to see Blackbirds and Talos boards become more available with time - ARM workstation motherboards are becoming more abundant and performant, the platform is aging, RISC-V keeps threatening to grow into more than a cargo cult that'll re-order the embedded market. But nobody's getting mine.

[lepidotos]

Yep. I snagged a 231 for $175, probably the greatest deal I've ever gotten. 32 GB memory, too; really all I need is the Blackbird itself, some sort of cooling (I really want to see about getting that SecuFirm 2 mount fabricated but without a way to open up the files to confirm stuff like measurements for a quote; that's something for later), and a bunch of storage. POWER9 might be aging but it'd still be the fastest computer I ever owned, so I can't imagine I won't be perfectly happy with it for a decade or so from now if I'm still even happy with a Power Mac G4.