I'm just wondering... AOS 4.0 tried to be something with lots of will and money, new look, ported to PPC, new hardware and what not. I haven't bought any new hardware because I don't care enough and I can't afford it. But the A1 XE is still going.

When I turn on my PC things just works. It's not heaven at all but neither is AOS. It got less and less to offer. When I run MOS on my PowerMac it can play youtube movies and so can the X1000. Well... my PC does it better.

Now I have hopes for the Amiga but I just can't see how they can survive. Maybe by slowly growing thanks to the current Amiga community but I fear that it will come to an end. Commodore saw it, Apple didn't but eventually saw it too. Now the x64-market rules the world. It's amazing to be using AOS 4.1 these days but also very sad.

@hotrod

I guess PPC was choosen because it's a niche market, and it seemed safer to stay in a niche architecture (PPC for desktop, PPC usualy is in weapons/network/industry not desktops).

That way, "they" preserve the harware market in this niche market.

It has served rather well in the short/middle term (Hyperion still there, as acube and others), and helps little dealers to survive (you can't find a sam460ex in a PC resseler next door, so you MUST order to Amiga dealers instead).

Anyway, nowadays it costs so much to have some computing power in Amiga (all) markets, and even MOS will have difficlties....when MAC PPC machines will start to die one after the other.

Maybe the plan for AmigaOS and MOS will be to move sooner or later to x86/x64, but it will require a lot of time/money/goodwill and so on, and I don't care/know/bother.

And finally, remember that when Hyperion took the development, WE users, were asking in majority a PPC architecture because "Intel is evil" for years.

Now that the worlwide economic situation is bad, and certainly for a long while, lots of amigans thinks it would have been better to move arm/intel.....

If only we asked for x86 at that time.....but maybe Hyperion would have closed it's door due to piracy who knows....

Maybe sometime in the future there will be as an alternative AROS and...AROS or....AROS....

@DC_Edge

You can use AmigaOS4 on PC/x86 right now... in WinUAE.

@hotrod

Let's put few facts straight.

- PowerPC was chosen most likely because there was Phase5 turbo cards already and because it was suppose to be closer to 68k than any other CPU achitecture

- PowerPC and Power were different systems in the beginning, like the name says, PowerPC was for PC's and Power for higher end systems but nowadays they are more the same

- PA6T in my AmigaOne X1000 is *Power*, *not PowerPC*

- even if there's a lot of Intel fans and supporters on this very discussion forum, at least IBM has confident to say their Power8 chip is two times faster than any coming Intel chip in next couple of years

- it's not your PC doing videos better it's your Windows doing it better. Intel chips are not doing the job but the video decoder chip in the graphics cards is. Microsoft has money to pay 100000 EUR for a CRM license to be able to write device drivers for such decoder chips. If AmigaOS was running on an Intel chip today you wouldn't see your videos any better

- I could continue how an Intel PC motherboard running AmigaOS built in small quantities wouldn't be any cheaper in price than current "powerpc" boards

...

Answering to the question of Amiga's future. I think Amiga lives as long as *we* all let it live !

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@hotrod: the question is not well formed. The Amiga has not future, because it's a dead platform by very long time (20 years now).

What has survived is only the o.s. PART, which was adapted to run on a PC which has a PowerPC CPU instead of an x86, and the chipset has nothing custom like our beloved Amiga.

Not even the name is the same...

@hotrod

Quote:

Well... my PC does it better.

True enough. The PC has more programs, more drivers, and a much bigger market.
I don't expect that to change.

Quote:

... I just can't see how they can survive. Maybe by slowly growing thanks to the current Amiga community but I fear that it will come to an end.

It may come to an end one day. But it hasn't yet.

Quote:

Commodore saw it

I am no expert, but wasn't Commodore selling Amigas as fast as they could make them at the time of their demise? I think that points towards mismanagement more than impending doom due to processor choices.

Quote:

It's amazing to be using AOS 4.1 these days but also very sad.

I'll agree with the amazing part.
The computer I am sitting in front of now is hands down the most powerful Amiga I have owned yet.
OS4 may not be as "developed" as Windows, but it's just plain fun to use. I occasionally have to use a windows machine for some reason or another, but it just doesn't feel comfortable to me.
AmigaOS has the "feel" of the classic Amigas, but with much more modern (and powerful) hardware driving it.
I think many that are upset about "specialized" hardware requirements may have forgotten how expensive it was to build up a classic Amiga. After the Amiga itself, there were Amiga-specific SCSI or IDE interfaces, if you wanted to use a common monitor you needed a "flicker fixer", then Processor upgrades, RAM expansion, USB interfaces, keyboard/mouse adapters, ethernet ports, kickstart switches, sound and video digitizers.. the list goes on. All of that was specific to the Amiga, with prices that reflect that.

Take a well built A4000, or any model really, and add up what the finished cost is. Then compare that to _any_ of the currently available NG Amigas. I think you'll find the current Amigas are quite a bargain.

Just my opinion of course. If you're comparing our cost with Windows machines, we will lose.
This was true then, it's still true now, and will continue to be.

But I'm not interested in WIndows machines, simply because they don't offer the "Amiga" experience. And as Amiga systems go, you can get more computer for less money right now than we ever have been able to before.That's good news in my book.

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@lylehaze

In my view missing drivers, limited hardware and so on is only one small part of the picture. In normal life I earn my money with application development using RAD tools based on huge class libraries. I think there is the biggest problem, you have no integrated environments, no RAD tools and you need a lot of special knowledge about hardware and OS to program something for Amiga. The problem is, there are only few left with that knowledge and most are of course old now. We have only few experienced younger programmers today. To attract more we would need better tools and then we would have more software again.

@lylehaze

Commodore was borrowing too much for R&D. They didn't make a loan payment.

I think if you read past issues of Amigaworld, or .info magazine, the story was all there.


Look at it from a different perspective. When you are trying to compete against companies like Intel, IBM, and AMD, they have deep pockets, the business sector, government contracts and money. These companies can afford to lose lots of money.

At that time, Commodore faced competition against Atari, Apple, IBM, and others. Even Chuck Peddle was still empowering other computer companies to start a business with the 6502 chip. Why is Apple still alive? They charged 3 times as much for things and kept the profits which means they had more resources unlike Commodore which didn't generate enough of a profit for being the low price leader. Apple took over schools and the Commodore Pet didn't stay in schools.

Commodore got hit with a $1 million dollar EPA fine for a tank that was leaking and had to be remediated.

Even though Commodore fought the computer wars and won for a while, the market was heavily crowded. They also did things which were totally stupid like put less memory in some of their computers and put CPM in the Commodore 128 which no one really used which drove up the cost of the C-128. What they should have done is come out with a 512 MB Commodore 64 and possibly one with 80 columns which they didn't do because they really didn't want the Commodore 64 to compete with the Amiga line which is why I think they started killing the Commodore 64 line.

Look at companies like Amazon. How successful is the Kindle and what if Commodore was more like Amazon? They could have done more but IBM, Intel, AMD, had scientists hired to do development and while you were on that 7 Mhz Amiga 500, they were breaking the 33 MHZ speed barrier so while you thought that graphics, sound and multitasking were important, users wanted something that had speed. Besides, most people single task.

So anyway, these companies are all competing and unless you have billions of dollars, it is hard to keep up. They didn't generate enough of a profit and if they did, Jack Tramiel would have been running Commodore instead of Irving Gould. They should have kept Jack because he had another successful run at Atari but in the end, it is the computer company that has scientists and patents to create stuff that is faster and more powerful than your 7 MHZ computer.

@lylehaze

Quote:

Quote: Commodore saw it I am no expert, but wasn't Commodore selling Amigas as fast as they could make them at the time of their demise? I think that points towards mismanagement more than impending doom due to processor choices.

Yes, and weren't Commodore intending to go either PowerPC or PA-RISC? I don't recall any mention of them heading towards x86 - at the time RISC was the future (even Intel saw that, but because of their dominent position ditching the old x86 CISC architecture and making a clean break with a RISC chip wasn't an option).

hotrod may be thinking of Commodore's plans to run Windows NT PPC, but thankfully that never happened.

Last edited by Chris_Y on 23-Sep-2014 at 11:19 PM.

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I think we have to accept that Amiga fans who frequent AmigaWorld and other forums are the only people who care about future Amiga hardware and that this figure will dwindle over time. Most of us here are in our 30s or 40s at the moment. In 20 years, we'll be in our 50s or 60s, planning retirement and how we will spend the final years of our life. Will we care about new Amiga hardware at this stage, 40 years after the demise of Commodore? Probably, but there will be much fewer of us left.

What about the generation that followed us - those people born after Commodore's demise? They may play Shadow of the Beast and Kid Chaos in WinUAE and there are a large number of retro hardware enthusiasts, but have any of them invested in PPC AmigaOne hardware? Few, if any.

I purchased a Mac Mini G4 and MorphOS last year, believing it to be the most advanced Amiga-like system I could afford. It addresses my remaining Amiga needs, allowing me to finally play the Amiga Wipeout 2097 CD I bought in 2000, as well as a few high-end games & applications I struggled to run on my accelerated A1200. Any new Amiga H/W purchase will have to offer a new experience or be sufficiently cheap that it's easy to justify the expenditure.

@Chris_Y

I do not know if the people that were still using Amiga at that time would have accepted X86 as the new hardware, PPC was easier to sell to them. And of course it has some advantages compared to X86 when you migrate from 68k.

I do not know what Commodore really planned. I have old amiga magazines where they seriously discuss about AAA and Pa-Risc. If it was more than talk is out of my knowledge. When first accellerators with PPC were sold it was mid 90s. At that time Risc was perhaps even a feeled safe bet. AmigaOS and MorphOS were ready around 2001, at that time it was obvious that Risc will stay in a niche.

Hi Everyone!

The first thing I want to say is that I am grateful for where we are at. Let's be honest, the Amiga almost did not make it. I am thankful to Hyperion/Acube/A-Eon and Eyetech when they were around.

I am a bit frustrated with the current situation though. Myself and Graffias have been programming for AmigaOs 4 and needless to say, the documentation and examples is lacking. I had to teach myself from an Amiga C book published in 1986. I have gotten some help from the people here and I am thankful, but we should be making development easier for a new programmer. I feel we need a complete guide (like the Amiga C book from 1986) for the current system, with chapter by chapter explaining everything. As a side note, I would find an new example of something, but it was changed in the SDK and then I have to figure out what the change was (crazy), but I got good looking at library header files .

My second frustration is with AmigaOs 4. The Os needs some work now. AHI needs to be replaced. We need 3d support and better integration into the Os with the new Radeon cards (Maybe the underline graphic system needs to be updated/replaced). Our file system needs work. SFS has barely any repair tools. And if you use FFS, partition wizard is broke now for some reason on the new AmigaOne models. I am unhappy with the massstorage device version 53.37. It broke my external DVD drive when using the DVD+RW system. I have been using the old one. I almost forgot the printing situation (OMG). I have two printers (Hp 810c and Hp 420) connected to a printer server that I use netprinter on the Amiga.

Basically what I am saying here, it is time for a full update (update 7?) or AmigaOs 4.2. I know the situation and to do these things cost money and time and people willing to do them. (I think it is time to buy another version of AmigaOs say 4.2 to raise some money). I am planning in the future to release my own set of example programs that I learned how to program on AmigaOs 4 an I hope that will help anyone who is getting into programming. So, I hope I am part of the solution.

I am not trying to complain, understand I am grateful for all the hard work everyone has done and I love my AmigaOne 500, I am just trying to share my point of view. As far as the processor thing, I think that is irrelevant. PowerPc is fine, we should stick with it. We are a niche system after all.

Yogi

@Yogi27

Regarding development it is like a big time jump in the past (that is true for all platforms). Nothing is more frustrating when you want to solve a problem but cannot find a solution in online help or web. Then you need integrated environments with class libraries hiding the complexity and (if possible) RAD. It makes you a lot more productive compared to working with a text editor, Nothing to do with OS.

@hotrod

I decided long ago to use AmigaOS no matter how well it survives. That's why I used OS 3.9 until the year 2009, after the platform was "dead" in the 1990s. I'm happy I could move on to OS 4.

I want to escape Microsoft products some day because there is so much counter-intuitive architecture causing daily operations to be confusing and sometimes slow even on a quad-core processor. The only reason it has some speed is because there is direct custom coding for the O.S. and hardware. It would take more programmers and hardware vendor cooperation for that to happen with OS 4, but if it happens, it can be faster than Windows.

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@OlafS25

RISC CPUs, such as the PowerPC, were seen as key for improving performance during the mid-to-late 90s. CISC design was considered to have too much baggage and near the end of its life. However, huge improvements were made in CISC design during the 98-2000(ish) period, so the benefits of switching to RISC weren't quite as great as had been promised.

It's also worth remembering the influence that the PReP and CHRP specifications had on the post-Commodore market. It was envisaged that companies would build off-the-shelf PPC systems, in the same way that x86 machines had been sold during the previous decade. Dave Haynie and others often spoke of the Phase5 PPC cards as a stepping stone that would eventually lead to the AmigaOS being ported to these inexpensive PPC machines. Unfortunately, a lot of the impetus for selling PPC desktop machines was based upon Apple's decision to allow Mac clones, a decision that Steve Jobs when he rejoined the company.

Last edited by gareth_k on 24-Sep-2014 at 12:14 AM.

@hotrod

[QUOTE]Now the x64-market rules the world.[/QUOTE]

Surely you must mean x86 instead...

@hotrod

In my opinion PPC was a sensible choice at the time, there were PPC accelerators and many Amiga developers had experience with PPC processors. The userbase was also very pro-PPC and anti-x86, and, at least for some time, the PPC architecture had an advantage compared to x86 when it came to efficiency (e.g. performance-per-watt), we all remember the extreme cooling solutions used on x86 machines. But technology changes rapidly and if they were making that decision today, it would be very different. Today's x86 chips have become much more power-efficient due to the growth of the portable computer market where battery life is very important. But the ARM architecture is even more power-efficient, and it is also very cost-efficient, which is why it's the number one choice for portable consumer products where windows/x86 compatibility is not important.

Now we have several different hardware choices and thanks to that the platform survived (just barely) but it needs more momentum. If it's to be a viable alternative in the computing world, we'll need cheaper hardware (and by that I mean up-to-date hardware, not used 7+ year old PPC Macs) and that will require a CPU architecture change. The high prices are limiting the user base and if the user base is too small, developers are not motivated to make new software.

@Yogi27

This SDK Browser may be useful to you.

I would appreciate any programming example you can make available.

@hotrod

Amiga OS4 and every other Amigish OS are HOBBY OSs and they will never be mainstream again. You choose what you excpect from them. Amiga OS4 year budget is about 100k€ per year, so lots of money is not a true.

A1 XE can also play you tube movies, because weaker machines can do it nicely, like my Sam Flex.

Quote:

Chris_Y wrote: Yes, and weren't Commodore intending to go either PowerPC or PA-RISC? I don't recall any mention of them heading towards x86 - at the time RISC was the future (even Intel saw that, but because of their dominent position ditching the old x86 CISC architecture and making a clean break with a RISC chip wasn't an option).

Intel created the 80860, and then the Itanium. The latter was intended to be the future of PCs. But AMD had a great success with x86-64, and the story changed...

Quote:

OlafS25 wrote: I do not know what Commodore really planned. I have old amiga magazines where they seriously discuss about AAA and Pa-Risc. If it was more than talk is out of my knowledge. When first accellerators with PPC were sold it was mid 90s. At that time Risc was perhaps even a feeled safe bet.

No. At the end of the 90s x86 reached very good performance, comparable or even better to competing RISCs. That's why even Apple decided to move from PowerPC to x86 (so the upcoming MacOS X might had the chance to directly debut on x86!), but it was a manager at IBM that stopped her promising the G5. Anyway, the transition was just put behind of some years...

Quote:

AmigaOS and MorphOS were ready around 2001, at that time it was obvious that Risc will stay in a niche.

MorphOS was. AmigaOS wasn't.

Quote:

gareth_k wrote: @OlafS25 RISC CPUs, such as the PowerPC, were seen as key for improving performance during the mid-to-late 90s. CISC design was considered to have too much baggage and near the end of its life. However, huge improvements were made in CISC design during the 98-2000(ish) period, so the benefits of switching to RISC weren't quite as great as had been promised.

Exactly.