Quote:

Not an organized conspiracy but I can remember Apple hiding various benchmark results to let it pass concept "PPC is bad, Intel is better" along with vaste mass of Apple evangelists and journalists who spreaded this idea on dozillions media.

I don't remember apple calling ppc "bad". I remember apple saying Intel had better performance per watt than ppc.

And seeing the latest Intel developments vs latest ppc developments it should be even more the case today. There's nothing to discuss here.

Funny though that power consumption was one of the reason why Amiga argued ppc was better more than a decade ago. And now we don't here it anymore. I'm wondering: what's in favor of ppc today ?

_________________
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@Leo

Quote:

what's in favor of ppc today ?

Hey, it can run OS4 and MorphOS!
That count nothing?

I don't understand the purpose of saying PPC is dead (unless there is short-sighted malicious intent behind it). You might as well say that 68k is dead, but that doesn't stop people using Classic Amigas.

And I don't see demands to port OS3 to x86 or ARM. It could undoubtably be done, but you'd loose all compatibility with the original software (due to endian issues), so there's really no point. OS4 is in exactly the same situation - it *could* be ported to x86 or ARM (and it is probably easier to do so than OS3), but it would (still) be hugely expensive to do so, and most software wouldn't work (inc. 68k stuff) due to endian issues.

And as others have implied, AROS demonstrates that an Amiga-like OS with little Amiga software is of little interest to people, even if it runs on cheap commodity hardware & has no license cost barrier.

So basically, unless someone can magically solve the endian issue (*) we're stuck on 68k & PPC, and so we might as well make the best of what we have. PPC cpus will still continue to be available, it's just they either won't be any faster than today (for embedded usage), or they'll be hugely expensive server CPUs. Luckily most (but not all) Amiga software is frugal with the CPU. (* = I still think it might be technically possible - just rather complex. Will be interesting to see if the MorphOS guys try.)

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_________________
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@tlosm

Quote:

tlosm wrote: @Raffaele im sure one thing 10 years are passed since amigaos 4 was released and 15 for os3.9 ... can i say the lastest os are only big patch of 3.1?.... no, the guys made a good job in years, and years was need because there are not many devs in the scene. in any way i dont see much difference from os4,aros and mos .... and aros is on x86

Once I interviewed an AROS developer, Fabio Alemagna, for italian magazine Bitplane.

He told ke that the Amiga kernel and method it implements multitasking it is one of the easiest existing, so it is quite trivial to expand it and add new features.

The problem is that nor Hyperion neither AROS developers had the courage of get rid of all legacy and giving us a decent modern OS, so we got stuck in actual stagnant situation.

MorphOS is in the same situation despite of their moden kernel as they never had courage of developing a complete functioning Q-Box machine and refusing sandboxing once and for all that darn A-Box, full of legacies, in order continuing using elder Amiga Classic software.

That we need is a complete rewriting of actual Amiga-Like Operating Systems and a sponsor who will gladly finance us with at least 500.000 euro, hiring a team of at least 12 developers to work almost full time for six months...

All we need is to choose for the OS to benefit the money (AmigaOS or AROS or MorphOS) and the fabulous charming prince rich sponsor...

Do you have one in sight?

_________________
"When the Amiga came out, everyone [at Apple] was scared as hell." (J.L. Gassée, former CEO of Apple France and chief of devs of Mac II-fx, interviewed by Amazing Computing, Nov 1996).

@Leo

Quote:

Leo wrote: Quote: Not an organized conspiracy but I can remember Apple hiding various benchmark results to let it pass concept "PPC is bad, Intel is better" along with vaste mass of Apple evangelists and journalists who spreaded this idea on dozillions media. I don't remember apple calling ppc "bad". I remember apple saying Intel had better performance per watt than ppc.

Come on... "PPC is bad" it is just the short of it and Apple was more subtle and insinuating,

I remember clearly disussions on Apple forums in 2005 where Apple users themselves posted good performance PPC benchmarks missing from Apple comparison charts saying they agree Apple with switching to Intel, but they had prefereed a bit more honesty from the firm.

But hey... I can barely simpathize with Apple at least. They are a firm on the market that need money to survive, and just minor cheating some performance charts in order to persuade their userbase to switch and buy new machines (that were fu*#ing expensive machines, but sure cheaper considering their PPC counterparts), that's only a venial sin, not a mortal sin.

_________________
"When the Amiga came out, everyone [at Apple] was scared as hell." (J.L. Gassée, former CEO of Apple France and chief of devs of Mac II-fx, interviewed by Amazing Computing, Nov 1996).

@Raffaele

Quote:

[...]that's only a venial sin, not a mortal sin.

But that persuaded decision badly affected the position of the ppc line. So what is venial is depends of the point of view.

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@Hypex

I know the whole thing isn't quite true, but one more point...

Quote:

AEON will buy Hyperion up and after investing money in PowerPC machines will then abandon it and stop producing hardware. And to then contact Microsoft and common CPU manufacturers with a view to bring the old Amiga Inc. OS5 idea to common x86 PC hardware.

The PowerPC dependency has never been the reason, why the hardware for AmigaOS4 has been (and is) so expensive.

IIRC, the original deal between Hyperion and Amiga inc. clearly states, OS4 would only be available on specific "AmigaOne" hardware, which I'd say has definitely raised prices, compared to f.ex. PPC Macs, or Pegasos 1 & 2 (I know Pegasos 2 is supported, but the support was published long after the production had stopped & stocks sold)

So, if X86 was allowed by the deal (or is it actually? Hyperion seems to be againist it anyway), I don't think some dedicated "X86 AmigaOne" would be that close to cheapest X86 hardware on the market. Cheaper than PPC? Probably. Significantly so? Not likely.

Of course someone might just do a simple & cheap rebrand operation (like EyeTech did), but that might still need some modifications (custom ROM to prevent "normal" version from working), and would definitely raise the prices from original anyway.

@Jupp3

Quote:

Jupp3 wrote: @Hypex I know the whole thing isn't quite true, but one more point... [quote]The PowerPC dependency has never been the reason, why the hardware for AmigaOS4 has been (and is) so expensive. [CUT]

As long as AmigaOnes, Pegasos Machines, and ACube's Samanthas are produced in little batches of almost 300 motherboards (AmigaOnes and Pegasoses are also discontinued) then the price for manufacturing Amiga motherboards will remain ever ridicolusly high, and manufacturers also couldn't ask PPC CPU factories to apply a discount to so miserable batches of processors.
Remember that Apple when it produced PPC machines made batches of hundreds thousands motherboards with scale economy savings and could keep prices reasonable.

Quote:

So, if X86 was allowed by the deal (or is it actually? Hyperion seems to be againist it anyway), I don't think some dedicated "X86 AmigaOne" would be that close to cheapest X86 hardware on the market. Cheaper than PPC? Probably. Significantly so? Not likely.

You can see here on Ebay a full assembled AMD64 quad core desktop in sale for 369 euro...

http://www.ebay.it/itm/PC-Computer-Gaming-AMD-FX-4300-Quad-Core-Ram-8-GB-DDR3-SSD-120-GB-HD-1-TB/271547741107?_trksid=p2047675.c100010.m2109&_trkparms=aid%3D555012%26algo%3DPW.MBE%26ao%3D2%26asc%3D20140620091727%26meid%3Dc4570b57d3914de9a71a0f3ffbe91626%26pid%3D100010%26rk%3D5%26rkt%3D16%26sd%3D381567939210

[Price, model of computer and processor are purely indicative. Please don't start usual off-topic drift so common in Amigaland. This is just an example and you can obtain better X86, X64 assembled machines for cheaper, at local stores nearest you]

If we Amigans could switch to Intel or X64, prices will drop to an almost normal expenses ratio and purchase an Amiga machine will be no more an expensive hobby for some eliteist gang of amateurs.

Quote:

Of course someone might just do a simple & cheap rebrand operation (like EyeTech did), but that might still need some modifications (custom ROM to prevent "normal" version from working), and would definitely raise the prices from original anyway.

You can use standard motherboards with no need of dedicated ROM dongles to prevent piracy, by just registering licence online and storing serial number encrypted into Bios EFI ROM, that is directly and deeply tied with that single unit of motherboard, with no need of additional hardware rom for piracy protection, that could justify a raise of motherboard price that will range in the order of some dozens euro.

_________________
"When the Amiga came out, everyone [at Apple] was scared as hell." (J.L. Gassée, former CEO of Apple France and chief of devs of Mac II-fx, interviewed by Amazing Computing, Nov 1996).

@Raffaele

Quote:

This is just an example and you can obtain better X86, X64 assembled machines for cheaper, at local stores nearest you]

How long such boards stay in production, if you you are not the owner of the project?

_________________
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@ne_one

Quote:

Hyperion had the opportunity to future-proof the OS years ago and they chose not to. They knew the writing was on the wall for PPC and chose to do nothing.

The thing here is that there is a shoestring budget. Apart from that at what point could they future proof it? Given they were commissioned to port it to PowerPC we could say after they won the case against Amiga. Yes from the get-go for OS4 you could say to stick to the original in-between x86 plan.

So, post the OS3.9 era, Amiga already had PowerPC hardware and software. OS4 followed that trend. We could also say Amiga was touched by x86 with Amithlon with it's native x86 Amiga apps runnning on an AmigaOS emulator.

So then. We have OS4 on PowerPC. With support for 68K. To go to x86 before x64 took over, resources would have to be put into rewriting OS4 to be endian agnostic. It would then need a transparent PPC emulator as well as a transparent 68K emulator. Reasons for this are support for current apps, support for past apps and for AmigaOS legacy code that needs to be executed because it is still 68K.

As you can see there are lots of levels here. And after all this work, it's still likely possible OS4-x86 would end up being a 32-bit OS running on a dead obsolete 32-bit architecture, lacking multicore support and 64-bit support. That is unless x64 was the target back then.

On top of this, OS4 would have ended being an OS that eventually ran on a popular CPU, but one that still had no printer drivers nor normal web browser. Infact I think it would look like OS4.0, ten years out of date by even OS4 standards, because features and updates had to be put back until the OS was ported working to x86 thus taking all resources.

Quote:

No one is claiming that transitioning to x86 would have or would solve the world's problems. But decoupling the OS from the hardware was workable and would have provided options.

They did. It was called the AmigaOne. They ditched the Amiga chipset and machine in favor of PC hardware. They just used a Mac CPU.

Quote:

That we need is a complete rewriting of actual Amiga-Like Operating Systems and a sponsor who will gladly finance us with at least 500.000 euro, hiring a team of at least 12 developers to work almost full time for six months...

Something like http://friendos.com?

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@Jupp3

Quote:

The PowerPC dependency has never been the reason, why the hardware for AmigaOS4 has been (and is) so expensive.

That's what everybody has been blaming for years.

But I do blame Apple for the loss of AltiVec since now we rely on embedded PowerPC chips.

Quote:

IIRC, the original deal between Hyperion and Amiga inc. clearly states, OS4 would only be available on specific "AmigaOne" hardware, which I'd say has definitely raised prices, compared to f.ex. PPC Macs, or Pegasos 1 & 2 (I know Pegasos 2 is supported, but the support was published long after the production had stopped & stocks sold)

Sounds about right. IIRC an eMAc was about $1,500. A1XE-G4 mobo $1,400. Pegasos 1 $600. Pegasos2 $1,000. I'm quoting Aussie prices here.

I considered and compared an A1 with a ready built Mac. It didn't look to be much more to build a system and even without OSX I thought could be more expandable. So went with that choice. Of course running AmigaOS was hi pri.

Pegasos 2 is a good point. Superior hardware. Inferior firmware perhaps. Official Debian support. And it was cheaper. A dollar per Mhz for both models. And yes a bit of a cheat they ported OS4 to it after production had finished.

Quote:

So, if X86 was allowed by the deal (or is it actually? Hyperion seems to be againist it anyway), I don't think some dedicated "X86 AmigaOne" would be that close to cheapest X86 hardware on the market. Cheaper than PPC? Probably. Significantly so? Not likely.

I agree there. We only have to look at the Mac. A customed PC with custom firmware in a custom case.

Quote:

Of course someone might just do a simple & cheap rebrand operation (like EyeTech did), but that might still need some modifications (custom ROM to prevent "normal" version from working), and would definitely raise the prices from original anyway.

That's also what I had in mind. And I think this idea would be possible. An AmigaOne X8600. Another Amiga inspired machine but with an x86 CPU that lacks drivers someway or another and still can't boot a Linux CD.

@Jupp3 Quote:

IIRC, the original deal between Hyperion and Amiga inc. clearly states, OS4 would only be available on specific "AmigaOne" hardware, which I'd say has definitely raised prices, compared to f.ex. PPC Macs, or Pegasos 1 & 2

I continue to be amazed at some of the ridiculous things claimed in this thread. Limiting OS4 to specifically sanctioned hardware has almost NOTHING to do with the high price of said hardware, and in fact it has arguably kept the price of such hardware as low as it can be.

Why? Because the high price of our custom-designed & manufactured hardware is due almost entirely to the very limited number of boards that are sold (i.e. a small market). For example, if designing a board & writing software drivers costs (say) £200,000 (it's probably higher in reality), and they expect to sell (for the sake of argument) 1000 boards, then you are already looking at £200 per board before you even look at manufacturing cost. Similar issues when manufacturing & testing boards in small batches will add a lot more to the overall cost of one board. And then they need to add more to provide warranty & maybe even make a small profit...

If OS4 was allowed to run on any old PPC board, you'd see more competing boards, leading to far fewer sales of each specific board, and that means (as I explained above) a HIGHER cost per board (if they don't want to risk going bust by not recouping their design cost & software driver cost).

Pegasos 1 & 2 were sold when they thought they could recoup their costs by selling to non-Amiga markets (i.e. much bigger markets), and therefore the cost was lower. These days there is little interest in desktop-like PPC computers outside of Amiga markets, so that's not viable.

Alternatively, if OS4 was allowed to run on second-hand PPC Macs, that would reduce the market for new boards, which would result in much higher price for new boards. Would you buy an OS4 machine at 2 or 3 times their current prices? Probably not, so there would likely be NO new boards at all. Not a desirable situation IMHO.

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_________________
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@ChrisH

One thing that could have been done from the beginning is to choose HW that are compatibles from a CPU to another that way you end up writing the drivers only once or at least a lot less than now and so deliver faster too.
Kamelito

@thread

seeing as the thread had headed in this direction I'll add my 2 cents.....

Perhaps the biggest oversight made when people try to analyze the situation is the simple fact that the mainstream world simply doesn't need another choice, more so a choice that is only half baked.
Amiga OS, and its derivatives, regardless of the flavor, simply dont offer a product Joe Public would accept. OS4 hardware is very expensive, and even the top models are very modest compared to the pc world. MOS is in a similar boat when x5000 is released, but up until then you're mostly limited to buying 2nd hand outdated machines, and AROS, while being better off hardware wise, being an open source OS, is always going to have a limited audience. While some like to dismiss it's success I actually think it's quite impressive that it's still active after all this time. Very few open source projects, let alone something like an OS are still actively developed and used after 20 years.

On top of this though there's basic, core technologies still missing from all 3, and core technologies that will likely never be able to be properly addressed. Hardware will always evolve and we'll always be playing catch up, and even then we're limited in what we can even catch up on.

End of the day, there's simply no room, en mass for a half baked computer product in todays world, so these discussions are pretty pointless. We're all in the same boat, and enjoy the same hobby, may as well just enjoy it (whichever flavor you decide is for you).

About the only exception to large adaption numbers I can think of is if someone leverages the popularity of something like a raspberry pi. We do have nice, friendly, responsive systems, which is something a lot of people in communities like that of the rpi are still wanting. Linux is very prominent there, but there's a lot of rpi users who would be happy to have a decent alternative or 2 (having been a rpi user for a few years I used that as an example because Im familar with the scene).

@pavlor
in any way i did many experiments with my powerpc hardware in this last years for touch with hands the real power of machine.
i can say for sure the p5020 kill the 970MP 2.5ghz in integer
970MP kill the p5020 in math raytrace instructions p5020 is like a g5 2.0 ghz there.
970MP 2.5 kill xbox 360 in single thread in integer , fpu is not too much different from both
xbox 360 kill the 970MP in multi threading 6 thread 3 core vs 4 thread 4 cores and fastest cache and ram bus make the 360 better performing here and there.
now i need to make some test on my ps3

Last edited by tlosm on 06-Aug-2016 at 06:53 PM.
Last edited by tlosm on 06-Aug-2016 at 06:53 PM.

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@Raffaele

Quote:

Raffaele wrote: MorphOS is in the same situation despite of their moden kernel as they never had courage of developing a complete functioning Q-Box machine and refusing sandboxing once and for all that darn A-Box, full of legacies, in order continuing using elder Amiga Classic software.

So you say, but many are the MorphOS key developers who said (and continue to say every now and then) that they are doing exactly this. An upcoming CPU migration was announced in 2011 already. And already back then it had been clear for years that it would be either a migration, or pulling the plug on development. There is no future for PPC. And yes, compatibility will be sacrificed for the benefit of modern CPU architectures (x64) and modern features (like 64-bit). It is happening. How didn't you know this?

@Hypex

Quote:

Hypex wrote: But I do blame Apple for the loss of AltiVec since now we rely on embedded PowerPC chips.

Well, if the lack of Altivec was the only downside...


Quote:

Pegasos 2 is a good point. Superior hardware. Inferior firmware perhaps.

Inferior to what, and in what way? One of the Friedens praised it on this very forum and said that it was the Pegasos 2 firmware that made bringing OS4 to the machine so easy.

@TRIPOS

Quote:

Inferior to what, and in what way?

A1-XE can use Radeon HD cards, Pegasos 2 not. Only downside probably.