Dear Hyperion:

After waiting around a decade, and now as OS 4 gets closer to completion, and the pre-release getting to be on the verge of being released very soon, it is obvious that the suspense has now built up to the point where some have begun to suffer the loss of proper etiquette in these forums. We have all waited a very long time for this, and over the past several years, your hard work has been making OS4.0 evolve from the original OS3.9 68k emulation/PPC port to what is becoming the most astronomical leap in Amiga OS design in history (well worth the wait)! Jay Miner would be proud!

We all know it will be ready , but it would make the wait a whole lot easier if we knew the current state of the OS development at regular intervals. Things such as what (or how much %) is left to do, or is already done so far, in what remaining parts of the operating system, with legally appropriate vagueness for stuff that can't be fully disclosed at this time.

It is currently analagous to being on a countrywide roadtrip, where us passengers are blindfolded most of the time, with the blindfolds removed occasionally, allowing us to catch a glimpse of the scenery and the odd sign with the remaining distance to the destination, before being blindfolded again and not seeing most of the other signs and not knowing where we are now. What I am asking for is a chance to see a lot more signs that give the ever-shortening distance to the destination, NOT the ETA, which is affected by slowdowns/temporary road closures due to road construction, accidents or for avalanche control, and stops for meals, nature breaks and rest.

Please, Hyperion, we would be extremely grateful for any information that you could supply us, since that would be our best measure of how much more waiting we have before the time arrives . And, it should help satisfy even the most impatient of us here, to some extent!


Kind Regards,

Blaine

@Blaine

Im with you Blaine.
Are you a diplomatist?

_________________
Sam440ep-flex 800MHz 1GB RAM R9250 128MB SB Live!

@Blaine

Wow ... Nice said.

/shoe

Hi,
A bit of news wouldn't hurt at all now, to satisfy the animal part of us.
ARRG. I'm ordering my A1 on next business day. I will be ready.

Chris

Guys, give it a rest. Nothing they can say will satisfy you, anyway. You don't want more words, and they don't want to repeat them.

You know in general terms what the status is: a beta version has been released to the betatesters to have a play with and check out hardware configurations before it's released to the Earlybirds. That was only three weeks ago.

Now what do you suppose has been happening since then? Use your imagination. When will it be ready for the next stage - release to Earlybirds? When it's ready.

tony

_________________
cheers
tony

Hyperion Support Forum: http://forum.hyperion-entertainment.biz/index.php

@tonyw


tonyw wrote:
Guys, give it a rest. Nothing they can say will satisfy you, anyway. You don't want more words, and they don't want to repeat them.

You know in general terms what the status is: a beta version has been released to the betatesters to have a play with and check out hardware configurations before it's released to the Earlybirds. That was only three weeks ago.

Now what do you suppose has been happening since then? Use your imagination. When will it be ready for the next stage - release to Earlybirds? When it's ready.

tony
Well said

I am keen as mustard to get OS4 as is everyone else but hasteling the developers only upsets them and we dont need them upset !




ITLL be ready when its ready and not B4

@Blaine

OK, here's the basic:

There where of course a few minor issues to take care after the CD went into beta. The only two major issues where a few troubles with the CD-Rom detection by the A1 device, and a few issues with the Radeon drivers.

The CD-ROM issues have been resolved in the meantime, and we're working full steam on the radeon issues. It basically evolves around an effect that we call the "hot air effect" - on some limited number of configurations, when you select certain resolutions, you get an effect that somewhat reminds you of looking through hot air rising from a tarmac road (hard to explain, really). (Note that the drivers *do* work on these cards, it's just that the picture is a bit unstable). We do have a good lead as to what is causing this, and we hope to have it resolved soonish. "Unfortunately" the Radeon chips are used on a wide variety of cards, both manufactured by ATI themselves and by other third-party vendors. Some of them use reference designs, but some don't, so you see that we're up to quite a number of different card configurations, and a lot of different chips, some of which we never had any documentation on. AmigaOne users tend to have all of them

On the brighter side of things, the Radeon 9800 is now confirmed to be working as well, so it seems that Forefront's drivers are pretty complete now in the range of Radeon cards they cover. I can only again stress the point that Forefront have done a remarkable job at this, without them we wouldn't be able to offer Radeon support at this point at all.

As you can see, there isn't much that is keeping us from releasing the Developer Pre-Release. Please have a bit of patience. I know it's been rather streched, but everyone involved is doing the best he can to get this resolved. We're really almost there.

_________________
Seriously, if you want to contact me do not bother sending me a PM here. Write me a mail

@Rogue

Thanks, this is excellent news.

Best of luck, and get a proper break as soon as possible.

_________________
Greg Schofield, Perth Australia

@Rogue

You are very helpfull, as always.
Public Relations is your second job

_________________
Sam440ep-flex 800MHz 1GB RAM R9250 128MB SB Live!

@Rogue

Thanks for the OS4 update its much appreciated.

_________________

@Rogue

Quote:

On the brighter side of things, the Radeon 9800 is now confirmed to be working as well

Great timing. I'm just about to order a new graphic card for the PC. Well it looks like the 7500 from the Amiga could well be replacing the old Gforce 2 in the PC and the Amiga1 could well be being upgraded as well. Great news and keep up the brillent work.

@the-elf

Be careful now: why buy such an expensive top of the line card unless you want it for 3D purposes?

In that case, I need to disappoint you: we don't have the documentation of anything which doesn't use the R2xx chipset.

We won't be able to do a 3D driver for this card for the foreseaable future so you're better of for now to go with a Radeon 8500.

Cheaper too.

_________________

@the-elf

When choosing a graphics card always keep in mind that 3D drivers for anything but the 7500 cards is still a good deal away! The Radeon 8xxx and 9xxx may be supported by the 2D drivers, but for 3D it's limited to the 7xxx series.

_________________
Seriously, if you want to contact me do not bother sending me a PM here. Write me a mail

@Hyperionmp

Ha, you beat me to it

_________________
Seriously, if you want to contact me do not bother sending me a PM here. Write me a mail

@Rogue

Big ups for that status report! I really really needed it!
I am as desperate as everyone else here, but i have managed
to restrain myself most of the time! =)
As said in another thread, don't let us get to you! We are
just desperate! =)

_________________
AOS4 Betatester, Peg2, G4@1ghz, Radeon 9250 256mb, 1gb RAM.

http://www.asciiarena.com
http://www.uprough.net

@Rogue

Quote:

When choosing a graphics card always keep in mind that 3D drivers for anything but the 7500 cards is still a good deal away!

Ok thanks for that info. I remeber reading that some of the 8ooo series use the same chip. I'm going to have to go and find that list of chip numbers I found the other day and check which cards can be used for 3d.

Many Thanks for the info.

@the-elf

Just checked the forefront site and the 2xx chip is used on all cards upto the 9200. Humm now I've got to chose one

@Rogue
Will it be possible to have 2 different gfx-cards working at the same time?
I was thinking of using Radeon for 2D and Voodoo 3 for 3D.

_________________
Site admins are people too..pooff!

@Rogue

Thanks for that good news :)

Only one thing...
I've got a VooDoo3 3000 because it seems the best choise (for 2D & 3D support) at the the time I've bought my A1SE (last december), now you tell me about I've to buy a radeon 7500 to get 3D support???
Last weeks it semms that Warp3D v4 drivers for VooDoo3 3000 card was just realised and the only full working... in acording to some screenshots released on the net...

Good Bye and VERY GOOD work!!!!!!

_________________
Simone"Tuxedo"Monsignori, Perugia, ITALY.

@Rogue and Hyperionmp

Could you be more precise and say which cards will have 3D support: only Radeon7500 or all with R2xx chipset? (Roque said "anything but R7500 cards is still a good deal away!")

Thanks.

_________________
Sam440ep-flex 800MHz 1GB RAM R9250 128MB SB Live!