@Kronos

Quote:

@number6 The aim of the Draco was to give MacroSystems a way to sell video-HW without having to do a mayor redisgn, and without having to rely on discontinued C=-HW. As such it reached it goal, atleast for some time. One might also argue that it helped slowing down the decay of the Amiga-community. But it never was suitable way of getting Amiga back into full life.

Thank you for your well thought out reply.
Your original list of projects pretty much demanded a post on my part to indicate
that "Draco" did NOT belong on that list, due to your reasoning behind your
submission of "the list":

Quote:

Well lets look at other attempts to do lifesupport for dying OSes by HW.

You clarified above the aim of the Draco, which was -not- to do life support for
any OS. I think you described it well more as a "byproduct" of the system's creation,
and not as a reasoning -for- its creation. I have frankly seen this similar list many
times, and I don't think it is accurate to include Macrosystems U.S. or Macrosystems
GMBH A/V products on such a list.
Thank you for amending your original statement.

#6

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@DoodooHead

Quote:

Amiga will be dead. Oh Joy. You will have sucess.

Do you happen to know that BB was to acquire Amiga, namely for the OS itself sometime ago didn't you? You know that MorphOS has lots of Amiga feelings embedded to it, and that they helped AROS to come across Pegasos either... I would say that he had done more for the Amiga then most around here...

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@DoodooHead

Quote:

DoodooHead wrote: @Seehund Quote: If anyone indeed believes that totally irrelevant, pointless, unneeded, unwanted and not to mention inexistent so-called "Amiga hardware" would scare any hardware producer worth his salt, then I think that's scary! ;) Perhaps to you Amiga Hardware is irrelevant and pointless. It is needed and wanted by anyone here who want to run Amiga OS4.

"Amiga Hardware", and the artificially created dependency on such, is what makes the number of people that will ever run AOS4 so small that it's irrelevant and pointless.

"Anyone" wanting to run AmigaOS 4 will want to be able to buy and run AmigaOS for hardware, period. That's the thing all us "anyones" have in common. Only a subset of us specifically need(!?) and want so-called "Amiga Hardware". Others simply want good-value-for-money and easily available hardware, pointless labels and licences be damned.

Quote:

As far as inexistent, it will be shown on the 23rd and 24th of this month in Italy and probably already exists today, on the 5th.

Note the difference between "now" and "in Two More Weeks, maybe, just like with everything else the last 6 years or so".

But so what if it will be sold... oops, sorry... a prototype be displayed? IMO it's still irrelevant and pointless in the grand scheme of things.

Quote:

BB was the only one with OS4 capable hardware for sale. He never got a license for OS4. Now his sales opportunities are slipping away as other hardware becomes available. Maybe he's not scared, but saddened at his lost opportunity.

A hardware vendor who already has an OS "of their own" don't want to pay AInc money to be allowed to market, fund development of and provide user support for AInc's niche software on an isolated and already saturated micro-market, competing with an "AmigaOne Partner" who also had set the rules?
Ah, THAT lost opportunity! :D

Funny how the entire world choses to lose such a fabulous opportunity. Oh wait, a few did apply for licences, a few who even fulfilled at least some of the licencing requirements (as opposed to the "AmigaOne Partner" Eyetech). AInc/Eyetech chose to deny them that opportunity.

BTW, I used to think of Apple before Genesi or others when it came to desktop PPC hardware. Neither BB/Genesi nor Mai/Tratech/Terrasoft/Inguard/Eyetech were the only ones with OS4 capable hardware.

Anyway, the PegII is as old news today as the "AmigaOnes" were in 2002. PPC on the whole isn't exactly hot in 2006 either. Especially not when marketed to an "Amiga market", and with the expected ludicrous prices.

_________________
Oh, bother.

@Snuffy

Quote:

I would like to see a "put-up or shut-up" contest between Amiga OS4 and MOS1.5! There was one a couple years ago that never happened. I don't remember why?

Let me go out on a limb here and suggest that it's because neither of those OS's are finished yet? Having an OS4 vs MOS1.5 contest should be about as productive as those Vista vs Leopard discussions I've been seeing lately (ie not very much...)

@saimo

Quote:

saimo wrote: @Seehund Quote: BBRV/Genesi or any other remotely relevant hardware producer don't "want" AOS4. It never crossed my mind that one could go badly after something he/she does not want. I feel enlightened

Who's going after AOS4?
If you're referring to the Genesi vs AInc lawsuit, there was barely any effort to try to get the court to interpret the contract broken by AInc to include AOS instead of the inexistent "AmigaDE Operating System". It looked like a hip-shot in the dark to me, it missed, and the issue wasn't pursuited further.

Quote:

Quote: They want to sell hardware, and AOS doesn't help sell hardware any more than the other OSs which already run on their hardware. Let me get it straight - English is not my native language, so I'd like to make sure I'm not misinterpreting you.

Neither is it my native language, so I'm always prepared to misunderstand and be misunderstood. :)

Quote:

Are you saying that AOS4 would not help selling the HW because there are already other OSes doing the job? Fine. What is BB doing here, then?

I keep asking myself that. :) But believe it or not, I think it IS entirely possible that a vendor of an Amiga-like system would be likely to hang out in various fora for Amiga-like stuff, and this without being specifically interested in becoming the owner of AOS4 - or even a licensed reseller of hardware bundled with it.

It doesn't seem like bigger opportunities are neglected just because they occasionally post here. Otherwise he needs a slap on his head! :)


Quote:

Or - as it seems to me - are you saying that AOS4 *would* help (although not more than the other OSes) selling the HW and thus, obviously, a welcome addition to the collection of OSes? Fine. Then I don't get how it can be that he wants to sell HW, he realizes AOS4 can help and still he does not want AOS.

There's a difference between entering a licensing agreement with people like AInc to sell hardware bundled with AOS and all which that entails, and simply selling hardware that AOS can be bought for. Return On Investment, and all that.

This goes for all hardware vendors, not just Genesi. Well, OK, now that Apple's rethinking killed PPC on the desktop there's not many to choose from...

Quote:

And, on top of that, there's the fact that he's been after AOS4 ever since. I kinda feel short-circuited.

What fact? Been after how? Since when?

Quote:

Quote: Rather the opposite, I'd think. Either way it's worth neither money nor time to try to get permission, a licence, to be allowed to try to sell AOS bundled with and dongled to their hardware BB has invested and keeps investing time and money to get AOS4 (and this very thread is just the last example). The license may not be worth it, but AOS4 is In practice, he's just trying to dodge the license. Whether because he just cannot get it or does not want it is unknown and, after all, irrelevant: in both cases he is playing questionable games.

Dodge, questionable... Sounds like you think he's doing something illegit!

Quote:

Quote: For their sake I hope BBRV are only wooing AmigaOS loci in their spare time when they have nothing better to do... I'll be very worried the day I can't find anything better than investing my time, energies and money to go after something I don't need (or even don't want at all).

What's with this "going after" rhetoric? You, me, BBRV and a few hundred others are merely participating in discussions here (and marketing, as it were, when it comes to the various commercial entitites posting here). If anyone's going after immaterai properties, they'd probably have better luck employing other methods than posting messages on a community forum.

Quote:

Quote: None of whatever pointless projects which have gotten their pre-progress reports pre-pre-pre-announced are commercially attractive. Unless you mean something else - in which case I'd ask you to elaborate -, you are saying the projects being discussed these days are commercially pointless, right? So, what facts can back up this statement? You know, without them, this is spreading FUD.

No, it's not FUD! It's my certain and undoubtful opinion as a participant in this forum. I'm not selling any competing hardware.

Fact: People generally don't prefer to buy outdated, underperforming, slowly if at all developed, overpriced and poorly marketed computer hardware. Not when there's contemporary, well-performing, continuously developed, competitively priced and heavily marketed computer hardware available.
Case in point: AInc's compulsory hardware licencing scheme and the "AmigaOne" failure. Heck, make that every failure in history of technology that didn't evolve fast enough, cost little enough, perform well enough, and thus didn't sell enough, which in turn led to slow evolution, high prices...

Now AmigaOS has for IMO no good reason been locked in that vicious circle again. I don't think AmigaOS per se is enough incentive to lure any significant number of new users to pay a premium for pretending that there still are "Amigas" and for running around in a vicious circle that's deliberately been made as small as possible.

Last edited by Seehund on 07-Sep-2006 at 04:54 AM.

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Oh, bother.

@saimo

Quote:

Here you list some reasons why AOS4 would be good for the PPC-oriented efforts of Mr. Buck (and why he would want AOS4)... ... and here you say that AOS4 is not worth the effort.

Just so there is no confusion about what might seem to be a contradiction, my first comments were possible reasons why bbrv might think having the Amiga platform onboard at power.org would be good. Actually this is based on things they did tell me. The second comments were my personal opinion. Ideally, it makes sense for the parties involved with AmigaOS4 -- a PowerPC OS -- to participate in the PowerPC industry group. In general, companies join industry associations because they and the association both benefit by working together. But in this case, with people so fragmented and companies (especially Amiga, Inc.) apparently not functioning in a normal way, I wonder if it's possible or even worth the effort to try building bridges.

Some people here have said things like why bother joining power.org, we just want to be independent. I think this illustrates the same narrow vision that the hardware-making groups might have if they think they can survive as a business by selling only to AmigaOS users. This is one thing that Alan Redhouse did understand: it's not possible to profitably manufacture motherboards/systems for such a small market only. And I think once it is realized that other markets need to be targetted, it makes sense to gain credibility and build bridges to those markets such as through power.org.

Quote:

Bad or good, pretty or ugly, like it or not, there *are* rules.

Of course, but complaining about rules we think are wrong is human nature. It really is the right thing to do IMHO.

Quote:

If somebody does not like them, then the only way to try to change them is getting privately and professionally in touch with AInc and proposing them a valid alternative.

None of us knows what has already happened in the background. I assume Genesi has already communicated with Amiga, Inc. (or tried to) about this. It is easy to see from their many other business dealings that Genesi is not averse to going through proper channels. I don't know if bbrv going direct to the users here is a result of attempted communication with Amiga, Inc. or in parallel to that or what. I hope the answer will come out in the Q&A session ahead.

-- gary_c

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@Dirk-B

Quote:

Dirk-B wrote: Remember, one of the most importend things to choose Eyetech over phase5/bplan was the user-support.

:D
War is Peace. Eyetech's User Support For "AmigaOnes" Was Remotely Satisfactory.

Quote:

Well, its up to the people themself to choose the path they want to go and everybody is free to make there own decisions. But you can not force them, that will not work.

Right.
People made their own decisions, voted with their wallets, and consequently the "AmigaOnes" and the hardware licensing scheme failed as predicted. You can not force everyone wanting to buy AmigaOS into buying "Amiga" hardware. You can not force hardware vendors into buying a licence. It is up to the Seller (AInc/Hyperion) to try to please as many Buyers (us) as possible. Only being able to please the few who will swallow a bitter pill without being forced will never suffice.

_________________
Oh, bother.

@Seehund

Quote:

People made their own decisions, voted with their wallets, and consequently the "AmigaOnes" and the hardware licensing scheme failed as predicted.

Riiight. That would explain why whenever uA1s go on sale, they get sold within a couple of days. Sorry, you can say whatever you want about the quality of the SE and the XE, but one thing you can't deny is that all models were on demand. Eyetech dropped the ball on availability. People were voting with their wallets, it's just that the election got cancelled.

Last edited by CodeSmith on 07-Sep-2006 at 06:32 AM.

@CodeSmith

Quote:

Riiight. That would explain why whenever uA1s go on sale, they get sold within a couple of days.

Of course, because of the very limited number of uA1s available and the long waits between production runs. The number available never did rise to the level of waiting buyers but even in this seller's dream situation the project couldn't become self-sustaining. According to Alan Redhouse himself, the A1 project wasn't financially viable (I guess he was including uA1s in this statement), and the "Amiga enthusiast" market is too small to support the project alone, and production wouldn't continue unless a large bulk order was placed, presumeably to finance production. Given all this, I'm not sure how the scheme could be considered a success. Whether the few hundred or thousand or whatever remaining, waiting "enthusiasts" were able to buy theirs doesn't seem to be the issue so much as the fundamental underlying problems Eyetech had to face and finally give in to.

Since it was the licensing arrangement that this project was built on, and that essentially prevented alternative supply sources -- again Alan himself said this market was too small to support competing suppliers -- I think it's reasonable to say the licensing scheme was a failure.

I suppose the rationale for the scheme was reasonable enough at the beginning in that it offerred a guaranteed monopoly to the parties willing to risk the initial investments, but, as we have seen, that was a two-edged sword, and the absense of hardware for AOS4 for many months now is the other edge of that sword.

-- gary_c

Last edited by gary_c on 07-Sep-2006 at 07:14 AM.

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@Samwel

hello sammy :P

I really need to troll here. maybe the new mystery device from ACK will blow the pegasos2 way off with the 7448 cpu. But the OSW will blow the capacitors off that ack-board with the Dual core,Dual CPU G5 board. Come back when you can show hardware like that, that AOS4 works on...

But I have to say that Genesi/bPlan is a better and relaiable hardware partner then ack. What have ACK showed? Genesi/bPlan has showed atleast a working EFIKA.

the last weeks Genesi even sold ODW:s to Microsoft. If a refer to bbrv:s blog.

Last edited by mr.calibra on 07-Sep-2006 at 09:28 AM.

@gary_c

The amiga enthusiast market is definitely too small to sustain anything serious, but I was responding to Seehund's assertion that the reason why there are no more A1s was because Amigans were so disgusted with the design/manufacture/whatever that they stopped buying them. My post was simply to highlight that Amigans can't have been too disgusted, when they snatch these machines up as soon as they become available.

@CodeSmith

Quote:

My post was simply to highlight that Amigans can't have been too disgusted, when they snatch these machines up as soon as they become available.

They snatched them up just like old Edsels. The combination of odd+weird+exotic+rare _can_ draw interest. And if you offer just a very limited number of boards, nobody can tell you that your project was a failure.

In that respect the "OS4-partners" have done well.

Last edited by polka. on 07-Sep-2006 at 09:51 AM.

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@mr.calibra

Quote:

the last weeks Genesi even sold ODW:s to Microsoft. If a refer to bbrv:s blog.

Seriously? boy, that just raises so many questions. Clearly an ODW isn't powerful enough to run Vista, so maybe they're going into media center boxes running a similar build of windows to the XBox360's?

I'm reminded of the time Amiga Inc got pelted for siding with the dark side when they sold their little pocket pc games. Now Genesi-made hardware is going to help Microsoft extend their reach into the living room. I love the smell of irony in the morning...

Last edited by CodeSmith on 07-Sep-2006 at 09:46 AM.

@mr.calibra

Sammy? My name is Harry not Sammy.. You must have me confused with someone else.

Troll why? No need to troll. I now about BPlan's G5 project. It's nice but I see no relevance
here because if dual core and/or dual CPU can't be used by MOS or OS4 the Pegasos3 will
be slower than ACK's 7448 board running these OS'es.

It has been tested elsewhere that G4's running at the same frequency as single core G5's
are about the same speed (running 32bit code). Why buy a 4 core board when the OS only
can use 1 core? Which infact run about 500MHz slower than ACK's offer.

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@Samwel

Quote:

Sammy? My name is Harry not Sammy.. You must have me confused with someone else. Troll why? No need to troll. I now about BPlan's G5 project. It's nice but I see no relevance here because if dual core and/or dual CPU can't be used by MOS or OS4 the Pegasos3 will be slower than ACK's 7448 board running these OS'es. It has been tested elsewhere that G4's running at the same frequency as single core G5's are about the same speed (running 32bit code). Why buy a 4 core board when the OS only can use 1 core? Which infact run about 500MHz slower than ACK's offer.

Someone on here posted a list of PPC prices the other day, and IIRC the G5's were cheaper than the 7448! I wonder if theres someone who's got time on their hands and is interested enough to want to research this.

From the OS4.0 feature list released years ago:
Quote:

Planned and already partially implemented functionality: - Symmetric Multi-Processing (SMP): support for multiple CPUs. - Multithreading: Tasks can consist of multiple threads of execution which are scheduled individually on a higher frequency.

I wonder how much progress Hyperion have made so far, and if their implementation will be compatible with existing stuff. They've stated for months that they're just doing boring bugfixing, and implementing the virtual memory pager, but I'm sure they're beavering away on something cool as well. :)

@bbrv

Hey Bill, there's one question that they forgot to ask.

Q. Why does MorphOS have a GUI that's crappier than Workbench 1.3?


I want an Amiga. Sorry. MorphOS doesn't even come close.

@saimo

Quote:

saimo wrote: @Zylesea Quote: Well, still the Pegasos is the only available maschine. Which is an advantage that has been wasted. Quote: This may change soon (2 weeks) or it may not. For the latter case the Peg would still be an alternative. That's what you want to believe and what you (and others, with BB in first place) want to make us believe (in order to force AInc/Hyperion using the community as a lever, which is something I find really disgusting) by repeating it over and over again. Instead, the Pegasos is *not* an option. It stopped being an option a long time ago, and the chance has been missed forever.

No this not what I believe it is the palin simple truth: there are exactly two options for teh future. Either we will see some new board or we will not. For the *latter* case, the Peg would still be an alternative.
This is abolutely independent from what I think/whish/dream.

Quote:

Can you live with it, please? It is not that hard, after all, especially considering that we're not talking about the most important thing in life and also that, as you say, "time has moved on and I gave up bothering about OS4 on the Peg long ago. Personally I was never intersted in it". But let's look at your statement closer:

I was personally never intersted in OS4 *for myself*, nevertheless I was engaged in some OS4 benefiting attempts. You know why? Because I wanted to stabilize the amigaish ppc market (which includes MOS *and* OS4).

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@Samwel

"tested elsewhere" is a nice term, and if you just search hard enough
you'll find test results that back up pretty much everything.

It might be that a G4 running at 1.7GHz (I'll just assume thats the
one you are refering to) will outperform a single core G5 running at
1.2GHz when doing CPU-intensive task.

But will that still be true when one factors in RAM-performance and
such ? And what about the price of the fish ?

Btw. all is pretty mucht theoretical, since noone has yet seen any
ACK-boards or on G5 from Genesi/bPlan, and I seriously doubt thats
gonna change anytime soon.

But let us not get to much down into the real world ....

I think noone would doubt that a 2xG5-dual-core will easily outperform
any single G4 on an HW-basis.

Now both Amigaoid-PPC-OSes can't make use of more than a single core
atm, but I see no problem letting them grow into it, just like they
have grown into 3D on the Radeons. Cos following your logic and
looking what both offered at the time of initial release every A1 and
Peg should have come with something between an S3 or Permedia instead
...

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@Samwel

The 7448 is not the very best choice for desktop usage. Its L2 cache is double sized, which is quite good, but the overall performance is somehow a bit crippled (crippled is a bit too harsh, more precise: It does not fullfill the expectations). Theory is nice, practise is another issue.
The 7447A indeed has a better price/power ratio, also the 7448 at high frequencies is quite expensive.
Ever wondered why Apple skipped the 7448? Well they *had* reasons (no, I do not mean the x86 switch...).
The 7448 is more suited for classic embedded solutions. Also it is more a strategic step during the evolution towards the 8641 (which performs very, very good according to first tests). It was the provement of the new e600 core.
Not a bad processor at all, but also not the holy grail.

edit: was in a hurry while typing...

Last edited by Zylesea on 07-Sep-2006 at 12:09 PM.

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MorphOS user since V0.4 (2001)

@all

I see a lot of people saying "if you want to run OS4 on the hardware, buy a license". Fact is, the Pegasos (and EFIKA) boards run other software. The list is getting quite impressive now - Linux aside, it runs OpenSolaris PPC, FreeBSD, NetBSD and MorphOS.

The moment you talk about buying an OS4 license so it can run on the hardware, you start delving into the regions of putting additional cost on the hardware to offset the cost of the license. What if you don't want to run OS4? Tough.

Stop for a moment and check out a few PC vendor sites. HP, Dell, Lenovo, etc. All of those prices come burdened with the cost of a Windows license. So what happens if you want to run something else on the hardware? Tough.

The fact is the OS4 licensing requirements are geared up towards having the board and OS tied together so that you pay for the OS when you buy the board.

With the Pegasos/EFIKA boards being of interest outside of the Amiga community (particularly to people who are buying them as testbeds for embedded PPC development), you can guess that some of these people aren't going to want to pay for that OS4 license.

The fact is that the license model that is being touted by Amiga Inc. is unworkable. They'd sell more copies if they sold the OS with a dongle to run on a variety of PPC platforms (no, I'm not talking about Mac).

From what I can see, bbrv is talking sense.
It's all about choice, and having the freedom to choose what you want to run.

And yes, I did buy a Pegasos 2 with the express intention of running Linux on it. My purchase does not affect my impartiality.

Last edited by nine on 07-Sep-2006 at 12:25 PM.