@amigadave

@amigadave

A bit confused as to why you need to blog it on a -mainly NG- Amiga website, but hey ho.

Fwiw I walked away from my digital life (fmdl) last year - in short felt it was becoming an obsessive hobby eating too much time: Email, PM, IRC, forums, etc.. and I was procrastinating over 'real life' stuff.

Hope you find your fun again, as a mere mortal user it's a bit silly to stress over 'commercial success' and 'strategic direction' imho. Instead of worrying where the road leads, enjoy the grass at your feet.

_________________
Troll - n., A disenfranchised former potential customer who remains interested enough to stay informed and express critical opinions.
opp., the vast majority who voted silently with their feet.

@cdimauro

I think people mix two different user target groups: amiga fans and people without any relations/interest to amiga. For the first group you need the typical "amiga experience", for the second group you need a modernized platform and you need new software (like some of the ideas Phoenixkonsole has). The second group is not interested if the old software runs. AmigaOS and MorphOS both have the problem not really satisfying both groups, most amigans preferred to stay 68k (if they had not left anyway) and for users outside AmigaOS or MorphOS are not interesting enough (both OS features and software).

@cdimauro

Quote:

It cannot be done on a little-endian or 64-bit architecture. Forget it.

Really?

Quote:

Unfortunately, chipset emulation takes a big part of the core, and such interleaving process also. I wouldn't have mentioned it otherwise.

How big?

Quote:

It is, because bigfoot:

I know who he is and what he wrote. Still, I don´t read it like you. His opinion is usualy inclined to AMD64, that is nothing new.

Quote:

See my answer.

Ping-pong.

I think the question to Amiga users is what is Failure?

Is failure that Amiga cant compete against the largest company's in the world (apple, microsoft, google/android) ?

Is failure that Amiga went PPC?

Is failure that Amiga cant do some of the modern day computer tasks?

Is failure the community got split up? (MorpthOs/Aros/OS4)

etc

I think at the end of the day the main aim of the amiga community since 1994 has to try and make the Amiga survive and I think given the fact that its 21 years later and there is still an active Amiga community that is about to celebrate its 30th Anniversary I think its a success! may not be in the minds of many, I would also dearly love to see the Amiga main stream again, as I do think there a better way to computing than what the current markets are offering but I'm just pleased that there are other out there that feel the same way and do what they can in supporting the idea of the Amiga in the year 2015.

So let try not to think the glass is half empty, and try to start to see the glass is at least half full!

_________________
AmigaNG, YouTube, LeaveReality Studio

@amigadave

Quote:

Maybe some of you will come to the same conclusion as I have (and many users before me I am sure), that the original Amiga design, even with all of it's faults and problems and short comings, is still the best, for what it was, and continues to be.

The 'Classic' era will always be the best in terms of nostalgia, classic games and the media presence that the Amiga had. However, as demonstrated by countless other retro computer systems the moment that active development of a computer platform ceases is the moment the platform effectively dies and just becomes a homebrew/emulated system/toy. The AmigaOnes are actively developed and the plan is to push new productivity software development as well. It is all heading in the right direction and so it is not the time to just focus on the past and just relegate Amiga use to emulators on PeeCee boxes The moment the AmigaOS/MorphOS supporters do that is the moment we all accept the Amiga has no further part to play in modern 21st century computing and that would be a sad day

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

@Boot_WB

because he is admin here?

BTW he is not the first one realizing for himself that "'NG" has come to a end

But I think there is the problem that there never has been a strategy behind "NG" at all, amiga features were ported to another ISA, partly new features were added but in general there was no real answer why using it. PPC and X86 were always faster of course but with the rise of both modern emulators and FPGAs at least PPC is loosing some advantages.

If someone asks you "What is the advantage of MorphOS?" (or AROS/AmigaOS) and this person is not a active amigan what would you say? If you have no real persuading answer then you have a problem. 68k has some interest because having fun and nostalgy but what is the purpose of "NG"?

@cdimauro

cheap and good intel based system in the price class of Raspberry? Do you have any links?

@BigD

Even you do not buy "Amiga" hardware because the price is not justifyable. Outside the hardcore community people either have never heard of Amiga or they used it a long time ago (mainly A500 for playing). How do you "sell" your preferred platform to this group?

What A-eon and Amigakit are trying at the moment is to keep the existing small userbase, not more and not less. There is no chance to win a subtantial number of new users and epxecially developers, something that would be urgently needed.

@OlafS25

Quote:

What A-eon and Amigakit are trying at the moment is to keep the existing small userbase, not more and not less. There is no chance to win a subtantial number of new users and epxecially developers, something that would be urgently needed.

That's not true. The Amiga has a lot of fun productivity applications that simply have no equivalent on the PC/Mac/Linux platforms. People remember Deluxe Paint/PageStream and see it as a period when computing was more fun. Photoshop by comparison is an absolute joyless pain to use despite investing time in "working out" how to do things, if you don't use it for a couple of months you forget because it's so unintuitive

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

@OlafS25

Following that up I believe if Personal Paint, Octamed, an updated Pagestream and Hollywood amongst others were heavily promoted as part of an AmigaOne bundle pack at a reasonable price there would be a lot of interest from ex-Amigans and new users alike.

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

@OlafS25

Quote:

of both modern emulators and FPGAs at least PPC is loosing some advantages.

Emulators, maybe. FPGA? Only if you compare to good old 603e...

Quote:

purpose of "NG"?

Fun and nostalgy?

Quote:

cheap and good intel based system in the price class of Raspberry? Do you have any links?

Not counting second hand hardware, current intel based portable computers start at 200-300 USD. Their performance is of course muuuuch better than Pi.

@BigD

Quote:

if Personal Paint, Octamed, an updated Pagestream and Hollywood amongst others were heavily promoted as part of an AmigaOne bundle pack at a reasonable price there would be a lot of interest from ex-Amigans and new users alike.

I think that is exactly reason behind latest A-Eon´s announcements: create broader software base for AmigaOne platform.

However, software alone will not attract new users. Price of entry hardware (A1-500) is still too high.

@amigang

Quote:

Is failure the community got split up? (MorpthOs/Aros/OS4)

I think this is main failure of entire Amiga platform. In 2002/2004 combined OS4/MorphOS communities could create viable platform. Lost opportunity.

@BigD

the software you mention is 68k not PPC native (what would be the only reason to use "NG")

@pavlor

for fun and nostalgy 68k is better

@OlafS25

Quote:

OlafS25 wrote: @cdimauro I think people mix two different user target groups: amiga fans and people without any relations/interest to amiga. For the first group you need the typical "amiga experience", for the second group you need a modernized platform and you need new software (like some of the ideas Phoenixkonsole has). The second group is not interested if the old software runs. AmigaOS and MorphOS both have the problem not really satisfying both groups, most amigans preferred to stay 68k (if they had not left anyway) and for users outside AmigaOS or MorphOS are not interesting enough (both OS features and software).

I know it, but the problem is: what hardware/software solution should be used? I think that the PC platform is the best in terms of performance/price ratio.

@OlafS25

Quote:

OlafS25 wrote: @cdimauro cheap and good intel based system in the price class of Raspberry? Do you have any links?

You've written about different hardware solutions, and my reply was general as well.

Focusing only on Raspberry, yes: it's cheaper than any x86 solution. But the performance is also low, so it's NOT feasible for a normal Amiga user experience. You know, amigans like a lot emulation, right?

@pavlor

Quote:

pavlor wrote: @cdimauro Quote: It cannot be done on a little-endian or 64-bit architecture. Forget it. Really?

Please, show me how to use the same approach for an Amiga/like o.s..
Quote:

Quote: Unfortunately, chipset emulation takes a big part of the core, and such interleaving process also. I wouldn't have mentioned it otherwise. How big?

I cannot give a measure here, just some rough estimates.

Emulating a 68000 or 68020 processor doesn't require that much. Suppose that no JIT is used (pure emulation), and that on average 100 cycles are needed to execute one 68K instruction, for a 8Mhz 68000 / 1.4 MIPS it takes 140M cycles, whereas a 14Mhz 68020 / 4.8 MIPS requires 480M cycles.

Regarding the chipset, it performs 3.5M transactions/s, where a lot of things can happen for every single transaction because you have a lot different components that works at the same time. Here is very difficult to make an estimate.

However if you've read some OS4 users comments, low/mid-end machines (like the SAMs) are OK for Amiga 500 emulation, whereas they aren't good for AGA emulation. So, it means more than 600Mcycles aren't enough for a 1.1Ghz SAM to emulate just the chipset.
Quote:

Quote: It is, because bigfoot: I know who he is and what he wrote. Still, I don´t read it like you. His opinion is usualy inclined to AMD64, that is nothing new.

There's no "inclination" neither discussion about what he stated. He reported a clear sentence: the ISA for the next MorphOS port is AMD64.

@BigD

Quote:

BigD wrote: The AmigaOnes are actively developed and the plan is to push new productivity software development as well. It is all heading in the right direction

The right direction? Very expensive machines with an underpowered processor, on a dying platform? Really? So you'll buy one for sure, right?
Quote:

and so it is not the time to just focus on the past and just relegate Amiga use to emulators on PeeCee boxes The moment the AmigaOS/MorphOS supporters do that is the moment we all accept the Amiga has no further part to play in modern 21st century computing and that would be a sad day

Emulation is just an option, since AROS runs natively on x86/x64 hardware and MorphOS will be ported to the latter.

@BigD

Quote:

BigD wrote: @OlafS25 Quote: What A-eon and Amigakit are trying at the moment is to keep the existing small userbase, not more and not less. There is no chance to win a subtantial number of new users and epxecially developers, something that would be urgently needed. That's not true. The Amiga has a lot of fun productivity applications that simply have no equivalent on the PC/Mac/Linux platforms. People remember Deluxe Paint/PageStream and see it as a period when computing was more fun. Photoshop by comparison is an absolute joyless pain to use despite investing time in "working out" how to do things, if you don't use it for a couple of months you forget because it's so unintuitive

Photoshop IS NOT a free-hand painting application...

@cdimauro

Raspberry is not the typical solution for amigans, for that anything available for 68k is better, either emulation on fast hardware or FPGA.

Raspberry is for me typical for reaching non-amiga related users and this group is not as interested in 68k emulation as amigans.

In my view that was the basic concept error in all "NG" platforms. They ported/reimplemented AmigaOS with all limitations to new hardware so they got something that did not offer enough nostalgy (or at least not enough to justify additional expenses) and was not modern enough to win new users or at least to keep the existing base. So in a way you are right a drastical cut would have been necessary, but it would have been necessary many years ago with a different situation and still more users and developers. Today the market left is much smaller and there is only a limited numbers of developers left who do it for fun mainly. If you today make a drastical change who will port the software to the new platforms when it is more than just recompilation? The Raspberry makes sense because it is basically a static hardware and you have much less competition and it is a fun platform and nobody expects to use it as main platform so all limitations and the shortage of modern software is not as relevant as on X64 where people compare it with the big platforms. And they will do that because human mind works that way. That is the same reason why using PPC to avoid competition with Windows was wrong from beginning because people always compare alternatives before they decide to use/buy something.

Last edited by OlafS25 on 30-May-2015 at 01:19 PM.

@cdimauro

Quote:

Please, show me how to use the same approach for an Amiga/like o.s..

You wrote it is impossible, I proved it is possible - at least in theory.

Quote:

Suppose that no JIT is used (pure emulation)

Why not?

Quote:

So, it means more than 600Mcycles aren't enough for a 1.1Ghz SAM to emulate just the chipset.

For SAM, there are other factors: eg. Radeon HD cards don´t support low resolutions (320x256 in this case), their users are forced to use muuuch slower 640x480. Improving UAE to support compositing could be solution there.

Quote:

the ISA for the next MorphOS port is AMD64.

If you thinks so...