@AmigAlex

Quote:

Don't extrapolate too much from the low turnout, IMO there's no shortage of artists and talent but a shortage of spare time for most of us. I considered your request too but had to ask myself "where would I find the time?".

Time was the #1 reason (impediment) expressed in the responses to a survey that
we conducted here on AW.
Quote:

With enough $$$ you'd find someone in no time, I'm sure most people would rather get paid to work on some Amiga gfx project than what might be their regular daytime job...

Yes. That represents a common response from the "power" developers that were not
included in the AW survey.

#6

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@falemagn

Quote:

falemagn wrote: Quote: 1. A cool demo would be nice (there could be one on the disk, but finding it in that drawer of all of those not-so-interesting demos is problematic). I believe there's a "Demo" directory right in the root dir.

Yes, and that's what I said above. (But, perhaps it did not translate well.)

I should be more clear... I ran several demos from that directory. But, they were all very basic (not interesting). Things like printing "button up" and "button down" are not demos. They are more like tests.

So, is there a cool demo or app? I did not see any. But, I did not run every one. I gave up after just a few.

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@Carl-S

Open shell (In WB Menu or LWIN + W)

gfx demos:

cd sys:extras/demos
execute startsomedemos /* or execute startsomedemos2 */

XaoS (realtime fractal viewer):

cd sys:extras/gfx/xaos
xaos

AmiChess (chess game):

cd sys:extras/aminet/amichess
amichess

Soliton (solitaire game):

cd sys:extras/aminet/solition
soliton

Doom:

won't work because you would need some wad (game) file, but if you had you could see a special feature which allows running it in multiplayer mode by starting the exe multiple times and run it with networking code which uses Exec msgport for communication between the different players (tasks). (screenshot)

Directory Opus:

cd sys:extras/dopus
directoryopus

Term (famous terminal prog by Olaf Barthel):

cd sys:extras/aminet
term

@Carl-S

Ah, another newbie tries out AROS and is disappointed by the lack of "cool stuff"...

AROS right now is roughly where Linux was 10-12 years ago. Really cool if you're into kernel, driver or low level window system development, sortof cool if you want to be the first to write/port an app to a completely new platform, not so cool if you just want to run it as an end user.

@CodeSmith

Well, you can hardly call Carl a newbie by any reasonable measure...

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@Carl-S

Nice to have you here Carl, your work and its direct and indirect derivatives has brought us all a great deal enjoyment. I wouldn't have had even a tiny fraction of my computer experience had it not been for the AmigaOS. I'm probably one of the youngest users here, at 20, having used the OS and its compatibles for the last 14 years.

_________________

What if...

You could use a standard PC motherboard with PowerPC processors?

It's a few years away yet but IBM have have said as much will happen, looks like it'll happen with a low cost variant of the POWER7 - i.e. a successor to the 970.

The 970 CPUs are not that expensive so if you could use a standard cheap PC motherboard with something similar there'd be no problem with hardware.

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Whyzzat?

@AMiGR

He is an AROS newbie...

@minator

Quote:

minator wrote: What if... You could use a standard PC motherboard with PowerPC processors? It's a few years away yet but IBM have have said as much will happen, looks like it'll happen with a low cost variant of the POWER7 - i.e. a successor to the 970. The 970 CPUs are not that expensive so if you could use a standard cheap PC motherboard with something similar there'd be no problem with hardware.

A salomonic solution

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Make Amiga Great Again

@minator

That would be pretty cool, yes. In fact, I think I remember reading about this - wasn't it Opterons that IBM was making their new CPUs electrically and mechanically compatible with? It would be pretty awesome to buy any socket 939 mobo and stick in a PPC chip.

@Carl-S

There should be a few graphical demos like fireworks, metaballs and tunnel they should all run multiple instances so you can see how much it takes to throttle your system. There is also Lunapaint a Deluxe Paint clone.

@aahuse

Quote:

aahuse wrote: @AmigaHeretic Quote: If someone took a Core 2 duo laptop removed the sticker and put a "PPC" sticker next to the touchpad instead and then handed you a laptop running Amiga OS 4, how could you possible know the difference of what cpu is below the keyboard? I would know within about 5 minutes because it would be so hot it would burn the hair right off my legs. Then I could just use it as a waffle iron, I suppose. Assuming the battery doesn't explode first.

What rubbish! I'm using a 1.25Ghz PPC powerbook, and that also burns the hair off my legs as well.

The battery problem was something to do with Sony's manufacturing, as my PPC Powerbook also was in the range of batteries that were recalled by Apple.

I bet if you had a PPC Mac and an Intel Mac side by side, running a Universal binary app, you would not know the difference. I have both style macs, and other than the Intel iMac running a lot quicker and quieter, there is no difference.

I'm guessing most of this x86 bashing is due to Windows, rather than actual CPU design (although the Pent 4 did suck).

@minator

Quote:

minator wrote: What if... You could use a standard PC motherboard with PowerPC processors?

That would be the ideal solution. But...

Quote:

It's a few years away yet but IBM have have said as much will happen, looks like it'll happen with a low cost variant of the POWER7 - i.e. a successor to the 970.

The same guff was said just after the G5 came out, and that was three years ago. PPC has been nothing but empty promises as far as Desktop is concerned. The reason why there is such a strong x86 sentiment is that we're sick of promises of this spectacular breakthrough that has yet to materialise.

Quote:

The 970 CPUs are not that expensive so if you could use a standard cheap PC motherboard with something similar there'd be no problem with hardware.

Well except for the licence issue... But otherwise, yeah, it would be perfect. but it isn't going to happen in any acceptable time frame (I have my doubts if ever)

@Hannibal_Smith

Quote:

The same guff was said just after the G5 came out, and that was three years ago. PPC has been nothing but empty promises as far as Desktop is concerned. The reason why there is such a strong x86 sentiment is that we're sick of promises of this spectacular breakthrough that has yet to materialise.

Nobody ever announced they were going to do anything like this with the G5.
In this case IBM have announced a version* of the POWER7 will plug into a future Opteron socket.

This is at least 2 - 3 years away though. However I don't think an x86 version of AmigaOS is likely to come any sooner.

*Not the big one in servers.

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Whyzzat?

@billt

I have no problems running Amithlon on my AMD 64 Sempron 2800+

i'm using it now as i'm typing this

Works great,Fast!

Syperhawk

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@minator

While nothing official ever came out, it was well known that IBM had approached several motherboard manufacturers about making 970 based motherboards (for linux IIRC). This was used by the pro-PPC crowd to prove that we should all rejoice for the future would be bright.

The biggest problem with this latest thing is you’re looking at 2 years away for a start, not particularly helpful when your platform is bleeding users like it was going out of fashion. There is mention of a ‘slight modification’ but no mention of what it is. Would we be relying on tin-pot companies to do said modification? I can’t find any specific mention of what Power7 chip will be used in this so I don’t see how you can say that it is ‘Not the big one in servers’, unless you’re either assuming it isn’t, or you’ve made that up.

I’ll repeat again, for the millionth time. I want to buy a box that enables me to do stuff. I’m not here to wave a flag for a particular ISA because it’s ‘better’ and some day it might deliver something that may or (most likely) may not allow me to buy a box that enables me to do stuff.

With focused effort I believe that an x86 AmigaOS could be done in 2 years. Not that it would matter because I think that there is a good chance of this latest ‘wait and see - PPC will deliver!’ will not be a suitable solution anyway.

@lavo

Quote:

lavo wrote: @TheDaddy ... I'm not sure what Carl's motives are with diving back in to the Amiga again. Its funny that he has resurfaced at the same time as DiscreetFX making an announcement on Amiga's future as well. Who knows......

Hey - exactly my thoughts!

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Dandy
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He got his brain accidently - the bone marrow in his back would have been sufficient for him!
(Albert Einstein)

@Hannibal_Smith

Quote:

While nothing official ever came out, it was well known that IBM had approached several motherboard manufacturers about making 970 based motherboards (for linux IIRC). This was used by the pro-PPC crowd to prove that we should all rejoice for the future would be bright.

Yes, but that's completely different from being able to use a chip in a PC motherboard.

Quote:

There is mention of a ?slight modification? but no mention of what it is. Would we be relying on tin-pot companies to do said modification?

it'll won't be able to use a standard PC BIOS so that'll need to be modified.

Quote:

I can?t find any specific mention of what Power7 chip will be used in this so I don?t see how you can say that it is ?Not the big one in servers?, unless you?re either assuming it isn?t, or you?ve made that up.

Second link down on Google news:

Quote:

He confirmed rumours that IBM was looking at using the AMD Opteron Hypertransport Bus as one of the platform options for Power 7. "We think it has a role to play, but not for the entire family and not in the [high-end] P595. It's designed for a three or four chip solution. But it's just too early to say anything now," he said.

It was pretty obvious it wouldn't be the top end part because the I/O demands are way higher than anything in the x86 world.

Quote:

With focused effort I believe that an x86 AmigaOS could be done in 2 years.

I think that's somewhat debatable but even if it could be done you're looking at 8 core processors by then and AmigaOS will be able to use at most 1 core.

AmigaOS would have much better opportunities if it ran on x86 but it's not just a simple port. It means a major rewrite of the OS if it's to run at any speed. Even then you still don't have multiprocessor support or memory protection meaning you'll be 12 years behind the rest of the industry rather than 10. There's also the slight problem that you'll have *zero* software.

They could do a port to the PS3 a *lot* faster, it could then be sold while they work on the bigger problems.

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Whyzzat?

@Carl-S

look here please,and don't forget to read the full website,i'm sure you will like the content
reziztanzia
reziztenzia homepage
mosaic blog
lunapaint
web browser mosaic for aros
hollywood on aros
hollywood is an equal of scala and you know about scala.

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@Carl-S

"To me, that is the critical factor. Is that "workforce" still around? Are programmers, doc writers, and artists still willing to help with Amiga, or have they all moved on."

I think many are "dormant."

I'm not a professional dev, I'm a filmmaker and a once-fanatical Amiga user. I was a continual platform evangelist for the Amiga, and convinced many other filmmakers and artists over the years to try out the power of Amiga. The last two folks I convinced were a painter, who purchased a 4000 in 1993, and a filmmaker who purchased a 4000T Toaster/Flyer in 1994. But now, I can't bring myself to talk much about the Amiga. It's a point of embarassment. The last time I told anyone else about "new Amigas on the way" was... 2002?

If there was shipping hardware, official gold-master OS, and a cool program or two, I would be happy to spread the news again. If the price is right, a new Amiga would be part of my toolset as a filmmaker.