@AmigaHeretic

Quote:

@Hans Quote: Hyperion does have a roadmap. Never seen one.

Do you really find yourself THAT much important, that a company like Hyperion is to contact, to seek advice from YOU about their course of business? Who or what do you think you are? Some superduper business guru?
More and more I find you show an apalling attitude, as if YOU are the one with all the knowledge, but no one is listening to!

Kris Kristofferson write a song about this: To Beat the Devill.

Part of it goes like this:

"If you waste your time a-talkin' to the people who don't listen,
"To the things that you are sayin', who do you think's gonna hear.
"And if you should die explainin' how the things that they complain about,
"Are things they could be changin', who do you think's gonna care?"

_________________
More then three levels of indigestion and you're scroomed!

@OldFart

Quote:

X-mas is only a mere 20 weeks away.

eek!! man, X-mas is too far away, they said Q4,2009 ;)

/joking.

_________________
Cuida tus piedras gordas.

A1200/030 32Mb
A4000D
A1-X1000.

@Leo

Quote:

Leo wrote: Quote: Have a look at the Titan processors that I mentioned above. I can already watch movies on my A1 without frameskipping On current hardware offering, you can't. Period.

I was under the impression that the frameskipping wasn't noticeable, but I've never had the opportunity to see it for myself. Like I said, Stephen is fairly confident that he can boost the performance of DvPlayer on the SAM boards. But hey, I know that won't stop people like you from scoffing at it.

Quote:

Who will build motherboards with these processors if they ever get released ? Hyperion is no hardware manufcaturer (unless their secret project has something to do with hardware ;)), ACube targets the embbed market, so I doubt they ever build such board... So: who will make it ?

IMHO ACube would be interested in making such a board. There are embedded applications that require higher powered processors, and the impression that I get is that the Titan processors are made with embedded systems in mind.

Hans

_________________
http://hdrlab.org.nz/ - Amiga OS 4 projects, programming articles and more. Home of the RadeonHD driver for Amiga OS 4.x project.
https://keasigmadelta.com/ - More of my work.

@Hans

Quote:

No, it cannot. Only part of the kernel can be portable over all CPUs. There's always a part that is specific to the particular processor. That's why the kernel has a hardware abstraction layer.

I think You are replying to different question. Should we care about low-level details? Just answer please in general - could OS be ported to different CPU in 2-3 year timeframe? Yes or no? I think - yes, it could.

Look, ppl are not dumb, right? We know, that we can choose between 2 plans:

1) short term - improve the OS, try to find new niche, support existing userbase, let it grow a bit with new oportunities you try to identify during that time. Define long term plan upon how situation evolves.

2) long term - stop depending upon mostly 1 HW developer!!!! This is the curse of the Amiga platform since the days of Commodore went bancrupt. Choose a port - ARM or x86, because then you will make your OS accessible to much wider audience. This kind of aproach however means, that you have to have money to finance the porting period.

Quote:

Quote: The low level stuff can be a little bit of work but a group of 20-30 programmers should be able to nail that in 9 months for one specific motherboard with everything needed to get things running. Then the next layers up can be worked on with a crew of say 100 coming on board. This is where the drivers team begins the big work. Throwing in cards and writing drivers and getting them to work. If the API mechanism is logically compatible from an application interface to the driver file which is just a sub program which talks to the "Hardware Mapping Database". (whatever it is inside AmigaOS 4.x ). Where are you going to get the money from to pay these programmers?

I think that what Wildstar is trying to say here is, that new devs will come back to platform, he is talking imo about volunteer/community job. You know, once ppl can see the light at the end of the tunnel, they will join. But - with whatever one-man-HW-guy show, there is no such light, just a big risk, that if such a company goes under, you are once again stuck with no HW option for your OS

Quote:

Quote: Think about it. If you spend time complaining why you can't do it or why it can't be done then you ain't getting it done. The "you" isn't explicitly referring only to you but to everyone and all devs. It was a port to move from 68K to PPC. Work hard. Get 'er Done. And now you've just insulted everyone that is developing Amiga OS4. Do you really think that the OS4 devs sit around and moan about how it can't be done? Do you really think that they're lazy? They're all hard at work improving the OS, so give them a break will you. Hans

... and I think you are reading a bit too much into what he said. I see no insults in Wildstar's arguments. I am sure he does not think OS4 devs are stupid, lazy, anything like that. OTOH it is absolutly OK to have different point of view to the matter of porting-or-not topic ...

Cheers,
-pekr-

@AmigaHeretic

> We are running on 700mhz hardware we can't even play DVDs on.


Just what is this obsession about playing DVDs ? If I want to play a DVD I use a real DVD player with a real large screen TV - using a computer to do the same thing but not as well, just seems plain daft.

Anyway DVPlayer can play DVDs on the few occasions I do play one on the A1.

If more people used their Amigas for coding instead of wanting to watch DVDs on them, we may have had a software base which lets face it [the lack of] is the real problem with the Amiga isn't it.

@QuikSanz

Don't tell admins to lock a thread just because you think your opinion is final.

Chris

The real problem is not the hardware, or the OS, it's really the lack of applications available.

If the applications people wanted/used regularly were available on the Amiga it's demand would be greater, and then things such as advantages/disadvantages could be discussed.
The most common uses IMHO are photos, slideshows and video editing. These are very big programming tasks, and until they are available the Amiga will be only a hobby project, and not a viable alternative for the majority of computer users.

Hyperion and Acube's role(s) are to provide the hardware and the OS, which are only the tools of the application programmer. OK, the better the hardware and the OS, the better tools the programmer has, but without applications there is no way to generate interest outside of the community.

As for getting back on Topic.
I will find out what the secret project is, when it is announced and until that time I shall enjoy using my A1 and OS4.1 just as I have for the last five years. Oh! and have faith that Hyperion and ACube know what they are doing.

_________________
Peter Swallow.
A1XEG3-800 [IBM 750FX PowerPC], running OS4.1FE, using ac97 onboard sound.

"There are 10 types of people in the world: those who understand binary, and those who don't."

@BillE

Perhaps it isn't but it's a pretty good illustration of the lack of power in current hardware.

@Hans

You complain that someone asks for costs/specs of hardware 2-3 years in the future, but it was you who raised the possibility of dual-core 2ghz CPUs in that timeframe. You'd like that to be an positive argument for the future of PPC, but you seem to think it's unfair that the lack of certainty in your statement and impossibility of putting a price on these chips are used as a counter-argument. Meanwhile, I've been using a machine at work for 2 years with better specs. My home laptop and work laptop have better specs than that too. I think that's a perfectly valid counter-argument to what you said.

You seem to suggest that further development of the OS and an x86 port are mutually exclusive. What did Hyperion have to say about timescales for a port? I seem to remember - and someone can confirm or deny this - that it wasn't such a huge undertaking and that wasn't the reason for not wanting to go to x86.

There's also the argument that this will result in more sales, allowing what Hyperion said on that Amigans link to come to fruition - ie. that if you want faster development, buy Hyperion products so that we can assign more resources to it.

Finally, as I said before, you're building an OS for really expensive and old-fashioned hardware that will ultimately result in fewer and fewer people interested in playing with it or developing for it. I don't think that'll be sustainable for that long.

As for the secret project, it might as well not exist or I will assume that I don't want or need it. Larger companies have prototypes and proofs of concept. You said "Maybe they don't want competitors to know what's coming." So not only have they not even hinted as to what this thing is or why you might want it, they can't even tell you why they can't tell you. In these days of blogs, twitter feeds, get satisfaction type sites, wikis and open-source, the latter is way less than you'd expect elsewhere. Way less than in a cosy, tight-knit one-company-led community.

Chris

@Swoop

I'm not sure of your point exactly. You start off by saying that the problem is not hardware or OS but applications. This sort of contradicts what you say later, which is that hardware and OS are the key to the development of applications. You then say that you can't generate interest without applicaitons, presumably meaning that the developers don't arrive. You seem to be describing a catch-22 situation.

Chris

@Hans

Quote:

Both MorphOS and AROS are competing products. Letting them know exactly what's planned for the next 2-3 years would give them ample time to decide how to counter.

I hope your just being sarcastic? There is no market for MOS, they would have hit critical mass long ago if there was. They consider it a hobby OS and chosen to live off of out of production, second or third hand hardware. AROS which has both OS4 and MOS devs, has it's own share of development issues with zero management to guide them. There is no phantom competitor lurking in the dark ready to leap ahead of Evert and Ben's subcontractors.

_________________
Dammy

Quote:

Like I said, Stephen is fairly confident that he can boost the performance of DvPlayer on the SAM boards. But hey, I know that won't stop people like you from scoffing at it.

I don't care if he's confident or not: so many things (be it software, or hardware), have been announced, or said possible, because x, or y was *confident*... and were actually simple words and never made it that I don't care about that.

If it's possible, then just do it. And... "peole like me", and all other will be proven wrong. And I'd be happy to be proven wrong. Until then, I'd think it's not possible. And I guess that's better than waiting for something that may never come to life...

The dragon was only waiting for OS4 to be released: remember ? :) Guess they were quite confident as well...

_________________
http://www.warpdesign.fr/

@everybody

I think we are stuck in a singularity. There seems to be a massive problem with the space time continuum.

For me it seems like page 5 - 48 are containing more or less the same information with slight differences.

There seems to be only one solution.

@moderators

please lock the thread so we can get out of the singularity. It is getting soooo boring around here.


thx

brotsalami

Last edited by brotsalami on 03-Aug-2009 at 01:27 PM.

_________________
Bite Me!

@BillE

Are things that bad that Os4.x users cannot play a standard DvD

If that is the case, that is really, quite sad!

I thought Os4.x and the Sam permitted a descent multi-media experience. Are we talking the hardware here, or the fact that the software is not optimised to be able to use the hardware correctly?

Q!

"i am home"

@QuBe

beta software, to little cpu horse power and windows users that have been to used to get the latest, fastes hw and a os(linux/winxp) that works straigth out of the box, so you dont have to be an magical wizard... a combination of does and you get the problems we have in this thread....

_________________
I was a ZX Spectrum owner....

@Leo

i give the sam and the hyperion os 5 years, if we dont see any new modern hw with at least 2ghz or more and a os that have come out of the beta stage, with a modern web browser that can compete with firefox... its pretty much over...

_________________
I was a ZX Spectrum owner....

@clebin

Quote:

You start off by saying that the problem is not hardware or OS but applications. This sort of contradicts what you say later, which is that hardware and OS are the key to the development of applications. You then say that you can't generate interest without applicaitons, presumably meaning that the developers don't arrive

I don't see what's contradictory - the hardware and OS are needed before apps can be developed. We have hardware, we have an OS. We now need apps.

The problem is that the apps developers we do have are all very busy, and have "real" lives to sort out as well. Furthermore, in the whole Amiga community, apps developers are split between OS4, MOS, AROS and 3.x. While some try to target more than one "flavour", not all can, for whatever reasons. We have a very limited pool of coders, with limited time to spend on part-time coding.

_________________
Happiness is mandatory.
MindSpace: MindMaps and UML diagrams for OS4

We ran 5 Recursion Computer Fairs before hitting the exit condition

@brotsalami

Quote:

please lock the thread so we can get out of the singularity. It is getting soooo boring around here.

For such a long thread, I think it's mostly been quite civilised and it's easy enough to ignore threads that aren't personally interesting.

Whether or not most of the discussions are actually relevant to the thread title is another matter of course

_________________
Happiness is mandatory.
MindSpace: MindMaps and UML diagrams for OS4

We ran 5 Recursion Computer Fairs before hitting the exit condition

@d0c

Damn... Maybe Hyperion and ACube have something special under their magic hats... they may be creating a powerful hardware software combination that we have no idea about yet; good enough to make most people happy...

But as I have said before... even if a new hardware software package does deliver a decent multimedia experience... what about the web technologies that are so desperately needed for most of todays tasks... I do everything online; but would far prefer to do it from an Amiga than a Windows or Linux box!

Is the current Os4.x browser up to the tasks, I have no clue about its true capabilities... I am assuming that simple websites without to much fancy stuff going on should be ok for Os4.x to handle, am I right? Can you use Google services at the moment like Google Docs, Gmail, Google Maps etc?

Q!

"i am home"

Last edited by QuBe on 03-Aug-2009 at 04:19 PM.

@d0c

Quote:

i give the sam and the hyperion os 5 years, if we dont see any new modern hw with at least 2ghz or more and a os that have come out of the beta stage, with a modern web browser that can compete with firefox... its pretty much over...

Another 5 years of my favorite hobby. Cool.

Still don't know what we need 2ghz for, unless those app developers start developing some very demanding software for us to play with.

_________________
Happiness is mandatory.
MindSpace: MindMaps and UML diagrams for OS4

We ran 5 Recursion Computer Fairs before hitting the exit condition

@yoodoo2

Quote:

Still don't know what we need 2ghz for, unless those app developers start developing some very demanding software for us to play with.

Decent 3D software package! Currently, is there one comparable to the former Lightwave? At the moment I play around with 3D Studio Max quite a bit; but don't know how well 3D packages are generally represented in Os4.x!

Surely there must be some demanding 3D type applications that would require a decent CPU and GPU combination? What about the games... very important aspect to computing and generating some moment for any platform, including the Amiga. Maybe Hyperion will look at supporting the games side more too in the future...

Q!

"i am home"

Last edited by QuBe on 03-Aug-2009 at 04:24 PM.