@cdimauro

Quote:

@BigD: the world also doesn't need a $/€ 3000 (or more) machine. Especially talking about mainstream market.

... and yet people bought the X1000 enough to warrant the design and manufacture if the X5000

There's no guarantee that an AmigaOS phone or tablet would sell anything close to mainstream figures. It is fairly obvious that an investment to move into the mobile and tablet markets at this point in the market maturity would be suicide for a company like Hyperion with suspected money problems and no venture capitalist or rich group of dentists lined up to bankroll such a punt

Last edited by BigD on 16-May-2015 at 10:34 PM.

_________________
"Art challenges technology. Technology inspires the art."
John Lasseter, Co-Founder of Pixar Animation Studios

@BigD

Quote:

If the X1000 could be the hub and I'd prefer that than all this guff about using your smart phone to turn on your central heating. An X1000 running a surveillance system or sprinkle system or climate control for a greenhouse or in charge of streaming video to the fridge or messaging your smart phone when the fridge has run low on a commodity etc. Security wise I'm sure the X1000 would make a lot of sense. How many people would know how to hack an AmigaOne?

There's already Amiga 68k home automation software out there so it's not bring something new. X1000 or X5000 would be very expensive and power hungry home hub compared to the alternatives. To carve out a niche or hit the mainstream you have to bring something new or make something existing cheaper and easier to use.

@BigD

you are the best proof that the concept of expensive custom hardware do not work, at least not if you want to grow the user base. You wrote that you do not own any SAM or hardware from a-eon because you cannot justify the expense. That is understandable and reasonable and you have that view even though being a hardcore fan (you can protest if you want ). So if even hardcore fans cannot justify the expense how can anyone expect to convince people who have no connections to amiga at all or perhaps owned a A500 a long time ago and are now used to standard hardware. I see X1000 as a expensive hobby and personal toy of Trevor D. and could understand the project to a certain degree even though I personal would not buy it. But what was really strange to me were the new models like the X5000. I do not know how many sales are calculated but I would very much assume that most people who can afford and are willing to have bought X1000 already. There might be some who buy a new model additionally or sell the X1000 to buy a newer one but I cannot imagine a high number. Fortunately not my problem . Regarding Xena, you can easily add that to a PC for a fraction of the price and you have there the development tools so I cannot imagine that Xena in X1000 really gives any advantages. But perhaps Trevor D. proofs us all wrong there. Other than that it is for pure nostalgia but that is of course nothing that helps you to sell outside the community.

@OlafS25

Quote:

But what was really strange to me were the new models like the X5000

Some people are willing to pay such money for their dream. As X1000 is now 3 years old, I understand need for more powerful replacement.

@pavlor

"Some people" as you wrote

Have most of the "some people" not already bought a X1000?

And producing custom boards is expensive and have to be covered by the sales

To me it makes no real sense. But not my problem

@pavlor

BTW as far as I understand it the new systems are not more powerful but based on processors still in production and thus cheaper. But not more powerful.

@pavlor

with cheaper I mean price for the processor

@OlafS25

Quote:

with cheaper I mean price for the processor

P5020 has higher performance specifications than PA6T (except AltiVec). 3.0 DMIPS/MHz vs 2.2 DMPIS/MHz should be noticeable improvement. However, only application benchmarks will show real performance.

@pavlor

On paper that 1.5x faster than X1000 and we already have seen that Freescales cores are faster clock for clock from the various benchmarks done on X1000 and various G4 based systems. P5020 lacks the Altivec units but being 1.5x faster may well negate that and performance will be better in every other task too.

If that turns out to be the case and I'm in the position to get and X5000 I'll happily sell the X1000 motherboard on so that someone else can use it.

@OlafS25

Quote:

But what was really strange to me were the new models like the X5000. I do not know how many sales are calculated but I would very much assume that most people who can afford and are willing to have bought X1000 already.

That's what happens when a computer system hits the developers sales targets, there is a further development and a replacement model is created. Therefore, the very fact that a X5000 got green lit indicates that Trevor and A-EON were encouraged by the sales figures of the X1000. By learning from their experience with the process of bringing the X1000 to market they will undoubtedly repeat their cautious one batch at a time pre-order model that served them so well with the X1000. Simply put if there wasn't a demand there would have been no X5000 and no future Amiga NG successor.

I hardly count emulation of the classic version of AmigaOS as an long term alternative to buying an AmigaOne machine. Emulation is for dead retro platforms which is fine for the 68k Amiga but since the AmigaOne platform is still alive I think it is too early to be emulating it rather than buying the hardware as well. I have every intention of buying 'cheaper' X1000 spec hardware eventually and the X5000 might fit the bill. If A-EON, Hyperion and AmigaKit go bust in the interim then I will take some of the collective responsibility due to me holding off buying the hardware I guess, but hey at least I didn't torrent AmigaOS classic as some have done and I support AmigaKit by buying classic stuff in the meantime. I'm still entitled to my opinion as I am a potential customer. However, the X1000 was targeted at developers primarily rather than consumers so it's not surprising a lot of us 'consumers' gave it a miss at £2,200

_________________
"Art challenges technology. Technology inspires the art."
John Lasseter, Co-Founder of Pixar Animation Studios

@Rob

Agreed, using something as expensive and power-hungry as the X1000 as a dedicated home automation system is pretty silly. Especially when a cheap £25 Raspberry Pi can do (and already is) the job just fine, and already has the required software available, plus draws very little power making it ideal.

@bison

1. Unfortunately you have this backwards. The laws of physics and economics also apply to operating systems, so if it is going to do a lot of user friendly and magic things it's going to be large and complicated, at least initially. There's no such thing as a free lunch.

2. It doesn't need to be open source. What it does need to be is open and transparent; Well documented and have accessible development tools. Developers and tinkerers should be able to "open the hood" and fix things, but that can be done without having access to the source.

There is of course 3, and 4 and 5.

The operating system should be extensible and have rich APIs. This is somewhat an extension of 2.

The operating system should be able to adapt to different classes of hardware without compromising the UX paradigms.

The operating system should be able to adapt to different people's work styles and offer multiple ways to complete the same tasks. And I'm not just talking about CLI and GUI.

The operating system should fit well into the existing ecosystem of computing devices and peripherals. And it should enhance the experience when present in the ecosystem.

Taking AmigaOS 4.x and creating an operating system that does these things is not only possible, but it is highly suited to the task. Of course, there is a lot of work to do to get it there, but it would actually be harder with Linux/BSD, Morphos, AROS, and Haiku.

Most people look at AmigaOS 4.x lacking multicore/SMP, virtual/protected memory, security framework, etc. as major hurdles. In the scheme of things these are minor hurdles as there is no lack of examples on how to do this. Give it some skills and money and it can be done. The other stuff is a hurdle for all other systems because of the legacy they are dealing with in their OS code.

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@BigD

Quote:

The AmigaOne machines have to do one niche thing well.

Exactly. There is no doubt about it, if A-Eon want to grow the market for AmigaOne hardware they have to do what you stated.

Unfortunately the only niche they are focused on is Amiga hobbyists. Sure, some PPC Linux enthusiasts may show some interest, but the company's publicly stated raison d'être is to provide the Amiga community with modern hardware to run AmigaOS 4.x on it. In this they have succeeded and will soon have Morphos on the hardware as well.

Undoubtedly you have seen the recent trend in software acquisitions by A-Eon. They are working diligently on making the AmigaOne hardware platform more useful to their primary goal audience.

What you are taking about is valid, it just isn't anyone's goal at the moment. Of course, there is nothing stoping someone like yourself to go and find that niche and open up a new market for AmigaOne hardware. You'd be doing everyone a massive favour.

_________________
All the way, with 68k

@cdimauro

I'll agree that _4_ out of those 5 ethernet ports are useless for a laptop, but wifi CAN NOT compete with a gigabit link. Sorry, not gonna happen. It's NOT just a matter of datarate, it's a matter of ether (shared vs ptp medium)

And no CPU on the market has wifi-support, it takes a USB or a PCIe port to support it. Which the T1042 has. So an mPCIe connector is all it takes. Hardly complicated.

As for multicore support, how come when _I_ say none of the AOS derivatives have it, people pop out of the woodwork to say I'm wrong, yet _YOU_ get to say it without being questioned? Link: damocles replying to me

_________________
This weeks pet peeve:
Using "voltage" instead of "potential", which leads to inventing new words like "amperage" instead of "current" (I, measured in A) or possible "charge" (amperehours, Ah or Coulomb, C). Sometimes I don't even know what people mean.

@pavlor

Quote:

pavlor wrote: @OlafS25 Quote: with cheaper I mean price for the processor P5020 has higher performance specifications than PA6T (except AltiVec). 3.0 DMIPS/MHz vs 2.2 DMPIS/MHz should be noticeable improvement. However, only application benchmarks will show real performance.

Let's see real-world performance first, but if there are some advanteges (which I personally doubt), you will not see a big difference with the current post-Amiga PowerPC hardware. Especially lacking Altivec.

Anyway, wait and see real numbers.

@olegil

Quote:

olegil wrote: @cdimauro I'll agree that _4_ out of those 5 ethernet ports are useless for a laptop, but wifi CAN NOT compete with a gigabit link. Sorry, not gonna happen. It's NOT just a matter of datarate, it's a matter of ether (shared vs ptp medium) And no CPU on the market has wifi-support, it takes a USB or a PCIe port to support it. Which the T1042 has. So an mPCIe connector is all it takes. Hardly complicated.

We were talking about a laptop -> mobile PowerPC computer, not a desktop one. All laptops have at least Wi-Fi, and many of them have no Ethernet anymore.
Quote:

As for multicore support, how come when _I_ say none of the AOS derivatives have it, people pop out of the woodwork to say I'm wrong, yet _YOU_ get to say it without being questioned? Link: damocles replying to me

Only AROS has some EXPERIMENTS with multicore. So, not real, usable things (unfortunately).

@BigD

one correction... the X1000 is for end-users and not for developers. Of course developers have bought it too. Where did you get that X1000 is for developers mainly? From the high price? The price is related to covering high development expenses by low sales. BTW normally developer boards are even cheaper than end-user boards in normal world.

@OlafS25

Quote:

OlafS25 wrote: @BigD The price is related to covering high development expenses by low sales. BTW normally developer boards are even cheaper than end-user boards in normal world.

Agreed. To me it seems that the X1000 is cheap when you consider that development costs will have been pretty high and projected sales low. Any one who has worked in the electronics industry, and has a feel for the costs involved, will surely agree. It's a credit to the people involved that they were able to make it happen in the first place.

I don't have an X1000 because I cannot justify the cost in my current circumstances. But that doesn't mean I think it's overpriced, it just means I can't afford it as things stand right now.

It's overpriced if I compare it to standard x64 solutions of course, but that isn't a fair comparison.

Another idea, port it to a Power8 system that costs almost as much as the X1000 and get the multicore support right from the start. That would get some attention.

_________________

José

I paid less for my Phase5 card including the graphics card and some RAM when it was new around 98 than a standard Pentium II PC costed at that time. On the PC you got the case and a HD and CD I think plus windows, but as a consumer I can remember I thought the price was fair then.

Last edited by Hillbillylitre on 17-May-2015 at 03:33 PM.

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Using: One Commodore C64 - One Commodore Amiga 500 - One Commodore Amiga 1200 with BVision and Blizzard 68060 with PPC coprocessor running Amiga DOS - One Hellbillylitre Amigatwox86x64x6000x running Windows7