@Hannibal_Smith who said Quote:

The silly thing is, from what I've gathered from reading various threads here is that a large proportion of AmigaOne owners (possibly the majority) have winboxes or linuxboxes alongside their A1s anyway.

Yes, that kind of puts a sock in Hyperion's argument that we shouldn't go x86 because we'd be (directly) competing with Windows: News flash people, we are *already* competing with Windows!

These days Windows computers are so cheap (and ubiquitous) that it is impossible to avoid competing with them within the same household, or even the same room. And for the few who *do* still manage to only use Amigas at home, I think they must be really missing out (poor web browsing, poor exchange of Office documents, old computer games, ...).

That's not a defeatist's argument, it's simply a statement of fact - and one that OS4 will have to live with & overcome if it is to succeed beyond a hobbyists niche.

_________________
Author of the PortablE programming language.
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue...

@saimo

If OS4 ran under x86, this would be possible, but only on something like VMware for Windows or MacOSX, or even for VMWare ESX Server which provide the ability to limit how many CPUs a virtual machine sees, but with ESX Server, this also means the ability to specify CPU affinity, so that you can specify on which CPUs a VM can run on. Perhaps XEN on Linux platforms might be able provide something similar at the kernel level if it is ever included future Linux kernels.

_________________
When swimming with sharks, make sure to bring lots of band-aids...

@Carl

Can you share with us your thoughts, or are they secret plans?

At least this is my position about it all:


1) We have official (OFFICIAL) support of AmigaOS 4 on PPC AmigaONE machine.

OS 4 is continuing developing even if not supported by hardware.


2) There are at least one or two PPC hardware platforms from third party, still in development that OS 4 could be adapted to run on.


3) New PPC processors are about to enter the market next year.


4) There is also another third party option and it is Genesi/Pegasos Efika.

Last struggles between Genesi and Amiga Inc. it is nothing that could be foget and stay.

(a very big bunch of moneybucks will calm all people and let forget any past injuries and bad words.

At least "Money wash it all!", Machiavelli, the most unprejudiced politician of all times, said that-)


5) We have NO NEED to port AmigaOS 4 on X86 at this very moment.

AROS is Open Source and aimed at X86.

64 bit version of it it is on the road.

It could be changed to support SMP, Fork(), and other thingies that let Amiga be not compatible with X86.

(Even if it is needed to deprecate original Amiga heritage. At least there is nothing that it could not be emulated by E-UAE or WIN-UAE.

A port of WINUAE in AROS will give us all the power of JIT machine of this beautyful emulator.

If well supported by community, developers and Amiga firms, with a minimum (LITTLE) donation, but steady, AROS then it could be our siege hammer to penetrate X86 market and being a really alternative to both Windows and LInux.


7)PPC software amaze us all, but there is no software that could is impossible be ported, and it is extremely true if we consider that almost all programmers made use of GCC.


Situation so it is for me very liquid and the stream it is fluent.

We have some points of strenght, that we can use for our success:

A) There is no competitor in the PPC market.

B) Good hardware PPC could break the market of AUTOMOTIVE, NAUTICAL, AERNOAUTIC, SET-TOP-BOX furnishing... ...and it is important to nothe that AmigaOS 4 or MorphOS, [if developed well] could be used as support OS (togheter with Linux as main OS in these markets).

C) New PPC hardware it is at a glance

D) Nobody prevents Amiga to enter X86 market as a bonus. At least we have AROS.



What we need at this very moment:

I) Good browser support. Sputinik it is about to be released on MorphOS. AmigaOS4 version requires only a little work (6 months at least) to be realized.

II) We have Rebol WE STRONGLY NEED JAVA and Flash programming.

Java it is on development by Jamiga and by the makers of Cacao Java for Amiga

III) Flash it is a problem. We could barely read it, but we can't program or run Flash applets.

IV) Improve 3D with full OpenGL port

V) Improve AHI sound to match all Dolby 3D sound, 3.1, 5.1, 7.1, and ubiquitous versions of surround enhancements.

VI) Good Office program. We could port Open Office, but at least we need to solve Fork() problem which prevents us a more easy "translation" of code into Amiga.

VII) There are some sparse secondary things we need, as more protection when navigating internet, by issuing good firewall, and control of data streaming EXITING from Amiga, because if the platform will increase userbase (I hope strongly userbase will grew up), then there will be crackers discovering and making use of exploits, or developing malware.

Strange to know it, but Data traffic which enters, fortunately it is less dangerous, than data traffic exiting from Amiga.

Last edited by Raffaele on 28-Oct-2006 at 08:46 AM.
Last edited by Raffaele on 28-Oct-2006 at 08:44 AM.
Last edited by Raffaele on 28-Oct-2006 at 08:41 AM.

_________________
"When the Amiga came out, everyone [at Apple] was scared as hell." (J.L. Gassée, former CEO of Apple France and chief of devs of Mac II-fx, interviewed by Amazing Computing, Nov 1996).

@ChrisH

Quote:

old computer games

What´s wrong with old computer games? NEW FLASH!!! there are millions of people running old games through emulation, making remakes of the old 8 bit titles and buying and using old computers and even in 2006 making revision of old computers (commodore one, msx on a chip........) and programing and making new games for old 8 bit computes.Why? Because computing is no more fun, and there are more fun in the old ones when all was more easy, more understandable and games were playable, today games are too much eyecandy but the gameplay shines by its absence

_________________
No PowerPC, No Fun
Make Amiga Great Again

@Raffaele

Quote:

We check all underground messages that the Samantha team launch on italian site ikir sector http://www.ikirsector.it They give us some sparse info, cryptic and hidden which need to be interpretate, and they do it with pure sadism...

The problem is that your way of "interpreting" those messages is frequently to add exaggeration, winking smilies, but filtering out the snippets that don't comply with your agenda (e.g. that "Sam" still refuses to properly boot OS4). That's why I just ignore your and AmigaBlitter's messages ("Moana is magic!1!! *winky* *winky*") on that and only stick to posts of the developers behind that project.

@AmigAlex

Quote:

AmigAlex wrote: Guys. IMHO the conversation is getting too focused on the x86 vs PPC CPUs. No need to pick a side, it doesn't have to be "either or" you know? Assuming both x86 and PPC versions of the OS existed, if someone wanted to buy a machine with a PPC or x86 (or even Transmeta chip, now there's an idea), it's their choice, computing needs, and especially their money, not yours.......

I remember Transmeta being touted as the possible target processor for a future Amiga, back in the day - However, I'm not sure if it was before QNX was being touted as a future "exec".

Crusoe iirc was to be compatable with every processor out there due to code morphing - but looking at their website it appears that Crusoe is only compatable with X86.

On another note:

There are very few native Amiga OS 4PPC apps out there - and most of these apps are very light weight. If they were to be run under some kind of "Rosetta" like emulation, I doubt we'd see much of a performance hit. Plus we know full well that we can emulate classic apps hundreds of times faster on our x86 PC's..

PPC from a desktop stand point really makes no sense at all..

@hatschi

Quote:

e.g. that "Sam" still refuses to properly boot OS4

Can you point us to the source of this information, please?

saimo

_________________
RETREAM - retro dreams for Amiga, Commodore 64 and PC

@Raffaele

Quote:

AROS is Open Source and aimed at X86.

That's not quite correct.

AROS is Open Source, yes, but it's also portable and x86 isn't the only target. In fact, there's been for some time also a port to PPC, and a few days ago an automated building machine has been setup so that it would produce PPC binaries ready to be downloaded from here.

_________________
“It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary
system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning.”
~~ Henry Ford

@hatschi

Aw... come on.

Now we have new hardware, and any further problem it is just a matter of technicians.

Let us be a little more relaxed.

_________________
"When the Amiga came out, everyone [at Apple] was scared as hell." (J.L. Gassée, former CEO of Apple France and chief of devs of Mac II-fx, interviewed by Amazing Computing, Nov 1996).

@falemagn

Quote:

falemagn wrote: @Raffaele Quote: AROS is Open Source and aimed at X86. That's not quite correct. AROS is Open Source, yes, but it's also portable and x86 isn't the only target. In fact, there's been for some time also a port to PPC,

Sorry. I forgot a "MAINLY" word in my statement.

But can you deny the fact that the mainstream development of AROS it is for X86?

Last edited by Raffaele on 28-Oct-2006 at 09:57 AM.

_________________
"When the Amiga came out, everyone [at Apple] was scared as hell." (J.L. Gassée, former CEO of Apple France and chief of devs of Mac II-fx, interviewed by Amazing Computing, Nov 1996).

@Raffaele

Quote:

But can you deny the fact that the mainstream development of AROS it is for X86?

Actually, yes, I can sort of deny it. Most of the development being done on AROS is platform-agnostic, the only platform-specific bits of AROS are practically device drivers and a few asm instructions in the scheduler (not even that, in the case of the hosted version).

_________________
“It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary
system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning.”
~~ Henry Ford

@falemagn

I'm curious, I've been playing around with platform-agnostic ways of implementing threads and I was wondering: does the hosted version of AROS use setjmp+longjmp for its scheduler?

@falemagn & Raffaele

A bit off topic me thinks ?

Perhaps you two can start a new thread on Aros.

_________________
~
Everything you say will be misquoted and used against you..
~

@CodeSmith

Nope, not currently at least. The current method is to copy the state saved in the signal handler somewhere safe, and replace it with the state of another task, which itself was the copy of the state of another signal handler. The signal handler is the one that handles the task switching on the basis of a timer.

This approach works, but needs inner knowledge of the structure used to save the state on the signal handler stack by the underlying OS, and not all OS's expose this information.

The sjlj approach kind of works, but it's not guaranteed to: implementations aren't forced to also save the floating point state, for instance, nor any other registers than the stack pointer and program counter itself, although most of the implementations do both things.

Another approach is to use the make/set/get/swapcontext() primitives: this approach depends on the signal-safety of those functions, though, which isn't guaranteed by the standard and is left to the implementation.

This is some proof-of-concept code I've written eons ago, it might be useful to you: ctx functions approach and sjlj approach.

-- edit --

Forgot to say that the above code was inspired to this paper.

If you want, we can discuss all this in another thread.

Last edited by falemagn on 28-Oct-2006 at 10:50 AM.

_________________
“It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary
system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning.”
~~ Henry Ford

@Seer

Quote:

A bit off topic me thinks ?

I just felt the need to correct some not quite correct information. Don't need or want to discuss AROS unless asked to.

_________________
“It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary
system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning.”
~~ Henry Ford

I posted this in this thread, but since it is kind of off-topic there, and more on-topic here, I copied it here.

(First some quotes for the context:)

Quote:

Quote: @takemehomegrandma Quote (Edit:)from this post(/Edit): What makes AmigaOS less competitive compared to Windows on the desktop market, has *nothing* to do with CPU. It has *everything* to do with the lack of MS Office, Photoshop, InDesign, Dreamweaver, Flash, Adobe Acrobat, decent Internet applications (browser mostly), Java, and tons and tons of other creativity apps, recreational apps, games, multimedia tools and drivers, etc, etc. What makes AmigaOS less competitive compared to Linux on the server market, has *nothing* to do with CPU. It has *everything* to do with the lack of memory protection, multi-user support, suitable file system, SMP support, etc, etc. Well said. However, where I disagree with you, is in your belief that also having an x86 would not help the Amiga market open up and pick up, if only the hobby market in the short to mid term. I won't again get into it why I think this, except to say that running only on overpriced, custom hardware that is always in danger of going extinct is not a sane option IMHO. When people can pick up something new and get it to run on stock hardware that they either already have or can buy at their local retailer without having to justify to themselves, their partners, or their companies to shell out a mint to get toying with it or have to dig it up from half way accross the globe from some unknown retailer, assuming it is even available or in stock, then you greatly increase the chances that this type of exposure of your product (AOS4) to possible developers or even manufacturers will even happen. And even in order for the embedded market to pick up, this will take time for an unproven OS like AOS4 is in that market, for which people will undoubtedly have to have a hardware platform to code for these on, and the revenue for this embedded venture has to come from somewhere, and so does the developer base, which would be greater if also available to x86 developers and computer hobbyists.

@elatour

I hear you.

I'm not against x86 in any way. I am totally dependant on x86 computers myself, both for professional and recreational things (or perhaps more correct - I'm dependant of the *desktop applications* that Windows offers, and I don't really care about the underlying CPU architecture). I think the x86 is a great desktop/server architecture. And while Amiga definitely can't compete in neither desktop nor server market, I do see the hypothetical point you outline in having the OS running on the x86 architecture. Sure, it wouldn't do any harm, rather the opposite.

However, IMHO:

1. The cost (in time, money, effort) makes it *impossible*, and it would be completely un-necessary, since the PPC is very well suited for what OS4 is and can be (that is - *not* a competitive desktop/server OS).

2. The technological issues (endians and whatever) makes it, if not impossible, then at least very difficult. Would it break important things, like backwards compatibility?

3. The contractual/licensing issue also makes it impossible/very difficult. Hyperion has its mandate, and that specifies PPC alone. There seems to be several entities claiming ownership over OS4, including AmigaInc (whoever they are this month) and Hyperion. Then we have the Friedens, suddenly saying in public that *they* own ExecSG, and talks about 30+ people owning the OS4 components (smells like people not getting paid or something). So who will give the order, and who will do the work? Carl Sassenrath?

OS4 hasn't completely landed on PPC yet, and the important thing right now seems to be to get it to land there, and that it lands *in one piece*. So IMHO, all time, money and effort is better needed where it can make a *quick* difference. A lot of things has been invested in the PPC move (which can be considered good or bad - but doesn't matter at this point). There needs to be some harvesting of the current crop before another sawing can be done. And we need something *now*, if we doesn't want the rest of the community to go away as well. We don't need another long-haul, we couldn't take it.

Sometimes I wonder if Amigans will never stop chasing what's constantly is out of reach? And I also wonder if Amigans will ever sort out to themselves exactly *what* they are chasing? Many seems to be totally indoctrinated by the MHz-race, and today's desktop OS's with all their applications, and they seem to apply their vague and highly individual Amiga nostalgia on top of that, and the result seems to be what they *really* want is Windows on x86, only that it should be the Amiga as they remember it from "the peak of the glory days". If need/want Windows/MacOS with their great desktop applications, then why don't you use it? But Amiga isn't that ...

Many people here on this forum use Amiga as desktops, and some also for server purposes. Fine. But realisticly, the Amiga can't ever compete as a desktop OS, and neither can it compete as a server OS. When you successfully have established *this fact* in your head, then (and only then) you may be ready to think about what the Amiga *can* be. And then you will come to the conclusion that x86 is not necessary, and for the reasons outlined above, probably not even wanted. Which is fine, since x86 will never happen. These are the prerequisites, and all creative discussions about the future should be based on these facts. Otherwise it's kind of pointless.

Last edited by takemehomegrandma on 28-Oct-2006 at 11:05 AM.

@ChrisH

Quote:

ChrisH wrote: @Hannibal_Smith who said Quote: The silly thing is, from what I've gathered from reading various threads here is that a large proportion of AmigaOne owners (possibly the majority) have winboxes or linuxboxes alongside their A1s anyway.

Well of course! If you have a need for *real* desktop usage (with *the real* desktop apps), then you will use the desktop systems that's there! Why would that be strange in any way?

You should look at this as a *guidance*, instead of getting horrified about it. Amiga is not a serious desktop alternative for the serious desktop users. If you cannot live without a serious desktop system, then you can't live without either Windows or MacOS.

Quote:

Yes, that kind of puts a sock in Hyperion's argument that we shouldn't go x86 because we'd be (directly) competing with Windows

No. They more said that it's not possible to compete with windows, and since desktop (and server) is out of reach they will aim for "embedded" instead (which can be anything at all really). Also - a lot of work has been put down in the PPC, and PPC is what they have mandate from Amiga Inc to do.

Quote:

News flash people, we are *already* competing with Windows!

You mean that people (general desktop consumers) considers and choose between Windows/Mac and *AMIGA*?! News flash: THEY DON'T! News flash 2: They will never do, since Amiga (and more importantly its application base) can *never reach* that level where the Amiga would become a serious option on the desktop market. Same for server market BTW.

@Carl-S

I sure would, I don't have any problem with what hardware its running on as long as it is native and not running over another OS.
Lets face it the only solution we have a present is just a slow PC with a different processor and though OS4 is fast on it I can't help thinking it could be so mush better if it wasn't so held back by such primitive hardware, so the thought of OS4 on fast modern boards with a high end graphics and sound cards would make me very happy.

@takemehomegrandma

Quote:

Quote: News flash people, we are *already* competing with Windows! You mean that people (general desktop consumers) considers and choose between Windows/Mac and *AMIGA*?! News flash: THEY DON'T! News flash 2: They will never do, since Amiga (and more importantly its application base) can *never reach* that level where the Amiga would become a serious option on the desktop market. Same for server market BTW.

Came on! Don't start jumping from a discussion to another discussion like a maple jumps from a tree to another.

The fact it is YES.

We are competing ALREADY with windows. He who wrote this assumption, then he is good.

For the fact Amiga IS on the market...

For the fact that if asked, EVEN AN OLD AMIGA user should choose WHAT to buy... And old Amigans far prefer to buy Windows and Macintosh, and NOT Amiga anymore.

For the fact that if requested what they want, people ASK for the features of other OSes.

For example: Until last year some Amigans made the choice to buy Pegasos. Now with the same price they choosen to buy Macintoshes that offers double core, stable OS and full of widgets, COMPLETE SUPPORT TO CUSTOMER.

Could we bias them for this choice?

Another example: When people ask me for AmigaOS characteristics, they are interested, but they wild retreat for the fact it:

A) it runs on PPC

B) There is no more AmigaONEs on the market.

(and these people who asked, me wanted to do some 3D rendering, because they remember how much Amiga was powerful in this niche... And they couldn't have it, when they discovered processor it is too slow - and for the lack of Blender.

So I suggested them Pegasos, but even if Imagine68K, Lightwave 5.1 with a minimal adjust, and Blender were one year ago already available on MOS, then they decided not to buy it, becuse the processor PPC it is too slow and for the internal fight of MorphOS, that now it seems fortunately to be ceased.)

But, to be honest, at least facts stated that we must compete with big boss Windoze and Macholic!

We are on the market, even if we want it or not.

Last edited by Raffaele on 28-Oct-2006 at 11:49 AM.
Last edited by Raffaele on 28-Oct-2006 at 11:47 AM.
Last edited by Raffaele on 28-Oct-2006 at 11:45 AM.

_________________
"When the Amiga came out, everyone [at Apple] was scared as hell." (J.L. Gassée, former CEO of Apple France and chief of devs of Mac II-fx, interviewed by Amazing Computing, Nov 1996).

@hatschi

I really think your statements is as your avatar.

_________________
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