@vision

vision wrote:
Quote:

I know we must pay more, I know there aren´t so many choices, and I know it is very hard, slow, and in a very very small scale to produce this new hardware, but if some option is available and affordable. WHY NOT USE IT?

Use what? the Mac mini? MPC8640D? I'm confused.

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And I am not complaining because the most chosen (until now) is already faster and I would want even more, but because we have another (faster) choice, but some (not all) people take slower one, why on earth??? for 100 euro?? sorry but I find it SOO STUPID

I wouldn't become so aggravated. This is a poll, not a vote. People might choose MPC8610, but it might just become possible that Freescale will make us an offer for the MPC8640D that we can't refuse. But it is true that the system has to be around hte psycological barrier of 500¤ (οr $ depends on the wholesale prices). Otherwise the probability of failure becomes too high.

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Now? you really want to know?? I think it is the same like the mayority of people here: Just waiting! Waiting... waiting, WAITING, WAITING !!!! already for years. Waiting and standing this stupid situation to end thanks to someone with clever ideas and a bit (not much is required) of money to understand what is Amiga about and why it still could make sense to relive it.

I disagree on the "not much is required". To do what you would like, to be innovative and relive the Amiga and its thrill, one would have to spend serious cash on both hardware AND software. By modern standards, AmigaOS just won't cut it. Oh, and he would have to forget that stupid notion of closed software. Evolution involves openness.

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Now, sadly I have to stick to Windows Xp (and starting with 7) to do any serious task, and they are on another league not only because of the hardware and the wonderful software and tools they have, but because the OS is already about controlling the computer with voice, multitactile screens and real 3D with or without classes. WITH A COMPUTER THAT SIMPLY COULD PLAY HD VIDEO, WE WILL KEEP BEING AT LEAST 1 GENERATION BEHIND MOST OF THE PEOPLE, EVEN TECHNOLOGICAL NEWBIES, Can you get that??

Yes, I get that and I feel you. My personal favourite is BeOS/Haiku and I'm almost in the same situation, because I like the OS extremely but I can even fewer stuff that you can do with the Amiga. I also *have* to use Linux -which I don't really like, at least not anymore- and even worse, I have had to program in bloated languages like Java enterprise platforms just to make a living. So I feel you. I will also tell you that. We're having older computers and still can do things that many modern PC users can't, why? When you're forced to use older hardware, you find the need for software optimization, where in the case of PCs, the modern OSes like Windows, MacOS and even Linux, STILL cannot manage to boot in less than 10 seconds, or manage low power management and efficiency. Now with ARM picking up speed things, software optimization will again become important, or ARM will fail.

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And let's not talk even about notebooks, which make the experience a lot more enjoyable, but I don´t even dare to ask for mobile Amiga cause nobody seem to find a way to build them.

FWIW, there is already a proposed 8610 laptop design in the works, but I won't even mention that. It won't happen unless the "desktop" board is successful. A laptop is a much harder venture with many more parameters affecting success of failure. A laptop with 8610 or P1022 is possible, one with 8640D is much harder.

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I think you should be the one thinking what is the better choice for your bussines, because if tomorrow Hyperion unveils its secret project and it can do what your system can´t or offfer exciting features that you wont, or simply Morphos can squeeze more power (or equal) from the mac mini than your board will deliver, you will end in the middle of (and paid for) a production that nobody will want. You have been warned.

I'll take that chance. I asked once in some forum or channel don't remember "if someone would want to design and produce a system that would be as novel today as the Amiga was back in 1986, what should it include?" No one could answer that question. There's no telling what the future may bring, perhaps Hyperion will do what you say and 10 years from now we'll all be using the super Amiga, unlikely but noone expected Microsoft to dominate the world and noone expected Linux to become IBM's pet and take on Microsoft directly. Noone even expected Apple to survive.

Last edited by feanor on 27-Sep-2009 at 08:26 AM.

@vision

Quote:

WITH A COMPUTER THAT SIMPLY COULD PLAY HD VIDEO, WE WILL KEEP BEING AT LEAST 1 GENERATION BEHIND MOST OF THE PEOPLE, EVEN TECHNOLOGICAL NEWBIES, Can you get that??

The Amiga is now a hobbiest platform, you are *several* generations behind the latest PCs
without serious volumes or switching CPU platforms, you are never going to catch up with PCs. Do you get it?

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Whyzzat?

@Nibunnoichi

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Also, last year i was at a computer fair (not Amiga related) where i had a brief talk with one of Acube's staff who said that they had a good customer base. Of course he didn't shell any details on the exact figures but i tend to believe it because otherwise with only the Amiga market they won't have enough income to stay alive 4 years and do some R&D (unless they're rich of course )

They won't tell you "we sell so few boards that we have to raise the price of this motherboard with a cpu from 10 years ago and sell it at the same price of a full computer with a tetra core 2 gigahertz cpu" either. They won't tell you "we are broke". They'll always try to give the impression they have some "big customer" (if that's true they'll probably have fun with Amiga users because they don't make prices affordable). If you look at other small hardware producers like Genesi they started selling Efika at 250$ IIRC and when they signed their contract with Directron they sold much more units and could make the prices lower... you can buy new Efikas for 99$ at Directron right now -although a Mac Mini would be a better investment-

@feanor

whatever cpu you choose, be sure it can play Full HD video. It's getting quite normal nowadays.

Last edited by Crumb on 28-Sep-2009 at 12:30 AM.

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@minator

Quote:

The Amiga is now a hobbiest platform, you are *several* generations behind the latest PCs without serious volumes or switching CPU platforms, you are never going to catch up with PCs. Do you get it?

But... does this actually matter?

Unless you actually need a lot of processing power most PCs will actually provide far more power than you actually need. What matters is the software, and from what I've seen of the coverage of the Pianeta Amiga show the software situation is getting better, albeit slowly.

CPU wise you just need something "good enough" and at the right price. It looks like the 8610 might be able to do that quite well, and with new PPCs appearing and on the way, it looks like this could go on for a long time yet.

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Whyzzat?

@feanor

I see you've posted on sites for a few OSs, have you tried Linux or the BSDs yet? They have PPC ports already so you might get some interest there.

BTW someone mentioned Cell in the Morphzone thread, if you were interested in it you might be better off talking to Toshiba.

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Whyzzat?

@Crumb

The CPU has much better things to do than decoding video streams; modern versions of Windows and MacOS push that job to the GPU. In fact, a lot of the work that MS did to Vista to turn it into win7 revolved around making better use of the resources in modern video cards. See eg here. That's something the amiga pioneered years ago, so I don't think that Feanor or Hyperion would be too eager to start using the CPU for something that the hardware is perfectly capable of doing; it would be a gigantic step backwards.

[edit] said Acube, meant Feanor. Doh.

Last edited by CodeSmith on 28-Sep-2009 at 01:31 AM.

@feanor

Regardless of the various whines and assaults on here I think your task is pretty straightforward and you seem to have your wits about you.

Any current-generation PPC chip should be fine for your first design, be it an 8610, 8640, P1022, P2020, or whatever. At least these have L2 cache! There appear to be lots of good reference designs out there for you to start from.

I believe the largest need right now is something able to drive a PCI-Express graphic card (4, 8 or 16x - any one is fine as long as it's in a 16x slot and supports 75W). Throw in some SATA ports, audio chip, USB, networking and RAM expansion and you have made a huge leap forward. Some extra PCI-e x1 or PCI slots would be a bonus. I presume you are thinking Micro ATX.

Once we get a PCI-Express slot the software to leverage the decoding hardware available on the modern cards will come in time. Trying to "brute force" the DVD decoding through the CPU shouldn't be a goal.

Cheers!

I hate it when people say Amiga is a hobbyist platform, for some people its more than that, I hate labels.

Make Amiga what you want it to be.

Some people say CPU power is not important; I say it is.

How long does a typical Linux distro compile ? Why this is important ? Large applications take time to compile, for some companies time is money. Full stop.

Low specced Amiga, effecient programming has NOT brought in hundreds of apps and games, its ONLY proved that large apps and games NEED processing power in their development.

Lets build the most powerful Amiga, with the latest possible technology we can and see where it takes us, you must have faith in your project 110% and stand by it and say I did the best I can, and be proud.

Amiga cannot be second best, it deserves so much more.

Give people a reason to buy an Amiga, what can it do others computers cannot, be creative and build from your heart and you cannot go wrong.

Let the future take care of itself

Last edited by asymetrix on 28-Sep-2009 at 02:37 AM.

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@feanor

Quote:

I asked once in some forum or channel don't remember "if someone would want to design and produce a system that would be as novel today as the Amiga was back in 1986, what should it include?" No one could answer that question.

I could answer that, but it would be pointless without at least $200M to finance the infrastructure required to develop and market it. Only talking about it wouldn't do any good.

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@asymetrix

Quote:

Give people a reason to buy an Amiga, what can it do others computers cannot

We all now that most importand downside of Amiga is the HW & now after 10 or 15 years
later we have gone PPC ?

why?
A.Its not cheap..

B.its Slow

C.No market for it (its dead & taking amiga with it)


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Give people a reason to buy an Amiga

if we did go x86 than we

A.Secure market

B.Fast

C.cheap

D.everyone got one(best way to grow is go x86 & lets steal those windows/mac/linux users to amiga).


Planet Earth uses secure x86 hw thats even amiga /mac/linux/other users also uses windows for professional usage.

I will say lets port AmigaOS4 to x86 & forget the HW for good long time start working on software side of things .

if we stay ppc we wont grow & no pc x86 user will buy ppc hw just to try amigaOS4.

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Ah, another x86 thread... Strange how people forget the practical difficulties into switching to x86 now. I'm sure even Hyperion would *like* to go x86 now (and probably wished Amiga Inc had chosen x86 back in 2001), but it would take so much development effort (and money) that it simply isn't possible (*). So we have to live with PPC, which isn't that bad. End of discussion!

(* = oh, sure OS4 could probably go x86 in a few weeks or months if you don't mind loosing *all* 68k & PPC apps, and basically start again from scratch. But then you'd be in a similar position to AROS.)

Last edited by ChrisH on 28-Sep-2009 at 11:33 AM.

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@serk118

No, we don't "all know that the most important downside of the Amiga is the HW", some may believe it is but that doesn't make it true.

Besides, AmigaOS has been running on x86 for a full decade already (WinUAE, Amithlon, etc) and IMHO it's been hurting the platform more than it has helped and definitely hasn't lead to an increase in the user base.

And let's not forget that Feanor wants to build a PPC board, not port AmigaOS to x86

Most people don't care what CPU and OS they're using as long as it gets the job done, that's why you don't hear 100 million people whinning that their iPhone doesn't run Vista nor use an x86 CPU. Along the same line if we had some "must have" to offer which isn't available on any other HW and OS, people would buy it and use it all the same.

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@AlexC

Quote:

Besides, AmigaOS has been running on x86 for a full decade already (WinUAE, Amithlon, etc) and IMHO it's been hurting the platform more than it has helped and definitely hasn't lead to an increase in the user base.

Couldn't have hurt any worse then the mistake by going with PPC has done to our community. IMO, more people would have long left our community without UAE years ago when they saw PPC was hopeless screwed.

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Update:

http://www.codex.gr/index.php?pageID=&blogItem=62

@minator

Maybe you're not sitting in your living room? Maybe on a train or a plane. Maybe you don't want to buy numerous copies of the same movie, bluray for home, DVD for laptop because you want to be legal in your ways and not download from torrent.

I just bought my first bluray player (new PS3 slim), but do not plan to take it with me on trips, don't think I could use it on a plane anyway.

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@CodeSmith

I don't care which part of the hardware does the decoding, I simply don't want to skip frames. Radeon cards have some kind of video acceleration but it's totally unused on AmigaOSes. I want a solution that can play HD video (that's something more or less basic nowadays, even a 110$ player can do it) and I don't care which part of the hardware does the decoding.

AFAIK most of x86/PPC users decode a big percentage of video streams without video acceleration. At least if you use VLC, MPlayer... WMP doesn't seem to use gfx card GPU to decode video either.

If 90% of Video players on computers aren't using special video acceleration why do you think Amiga video players could support it easily? 3D functions don't work in an optimal way with Picasso96, what makes you think that Hyperion will have an easier task with accelerated video decoding?

Feel free to create an amiga video player that takes advantage of the gfx card GPU. No one has done it yet.

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@asymetrix

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asymetrix wrote: I hate it when people say Amiga is a hobbyist platform, for some people its more than that, I hate labels. Make Amiga what you want it to be.

I think when people call Amiga a hobbyist platform its because the perception is thats how most folks are using it these days, and also some call it that when they look at the cost vs. gained benefit argument. Its a very expensive platform for what it gives you in practical terms.

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Some people say CPU power is not important; I say it is. How long does a typical Linux distro compile ? Why this is important ? Large applications take time to compile, for some companies time is money. Full stop. Low specced Amiga, effecient programming has NOT brought in hundreds of apps and games, its ONLY proved that large apps and games NEED processing power in their development. Lets build the most powerful Amiga, with the latest possible technology we can and see where it takes us, you must have faith in your project 110% and stand by it and say I did the best I can, and be proud.

This would seem to be a good argument for the community as a whole to really get behind AROS' x86 implementation.

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@feanor

Only 61 people voted? :-/

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Dammy

@damocles

so far yes. It's just 3 days, but I do agree, I expected something like 150 or sth like that. OTOH, I do receive mails every few hours, and the 500 threshold holds. From what I saw in other forums, people just think it's vapourware and dont' bother. I can't help in that case.

Another X86 thread....

Could those wanting AROS, OS4, MOS and OS3.x on X86 please use another thread for their discussion and keep this on topic, please.

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