@Rob

the guess was that Xena chip was only integrated because of Varisys had the design ready. Reference designs are certainly not uncommon as reference design are widely used in software development also.

But with or without reference design...

The assumption that Trevor calculated huge losses without any chance to regain the money (wordly throwing lots of money out of the windows just for fun) is also rumour. Any evidence for such a claim? Anyone has the calculation anywhere? If yes please share it.

Just to throw my two cents into the ring...

I think it's a pretty safe assumption that Trevor's throwing money away as the Amiga market hasn't really be profitable for decades. It has nothing to offer your average computer person these days and lost all advantages it did have even while Commodore was still alive. And the more Trevor "invests" the smaller his chances for any kind of profit become...

@OlafS25

IIRC, originally it was meant that x1000 sales would pay back development but not make profit. (at that time USD100 000 was planned to be put in R&D, later it seems that more than USD200 000 went there, no reference, sorry)

I'm sure Varisys had done designs with xcore.
They surely had done with PA6T and had access to PA6T parts.
But I'm sure they did not have design that had xcore connected to PA6T.
Or design that had SB600 connected to PA6T.
(I remember reading that interfacing PowerPC to SB600 via AMD HyperTransport bus was not easy thing to do, but it was possible via configuring the flexible PA6T.)

X1000 was totally grazy project, so, it was perfect for Amigans.
It's disturbing that X5000 is a half sane project.

(as long as X5000 does not have audio, someone might mistakenly buy it for server use, instead some OpenPower server )

Last edited by KimmoK on 04-Jun-2015 at 03:14 PM.
Last edited by KimmoK on 04-Jun-2015 at 03:14 PM.
Last edited by KimmoK on 04-Jun-2015 at 03:12 PM.
Last edited by KimmoK on 04-Jun-2015 at 03:10 PM.

_________________
- KimmoK
// For freedom, for honor, for AMIGA
//
// Thing that I should find more time for: CC64 - 64bit Community Computer?

@All

I don't think there's any Amigans out there that can teach Trevor how to do business, but many try and try over & over that's boring. Remember Nike "Just Do It!"...

Kamelito

@KimmoK

200.000$ instead of calculated 100.000$ for R&D? That sounds like a public project here

if that would be true he might not have regained his money despite higher sales

but then starting another hardware project?

then he must truly be "grazy"

@cdimauro

Quote:

Especially for an Amiga-like o.s., were no MMU is usually used and memory is not allocated on a page basis, memory fragmentation increases and makes things even worse.

Amiga has shared address space and although you could and can avoid memory fragmentation with MMU you can not avoid address space fragmentation.

Quote:

Anyway, AROS x64 is already available, and it's clearly the future mainstream platform such o.s., so more and more software will arrive (AROS, as you stated, is based on source-level compatibility, so what's already compiling for the 32-bit versions of the o.s. should compile also for x64, unless for badly written code).

I am sure there are still many developers who are trying to stuff APTR to ULONG. Especially when it is non-AROS code it is even more likely, although I am trying to not write such code anymore.

Luckily it is not difficult to fix such code, though.

_________________
Amiga Developer
Amiga 500, Efika, Mac Mini and PowerBook

@thread

Regarding investments made and poor returns, I think there's something we should all be able to agree on:

Without the significant investment in both time and money, made by key individuals and groups, the Amiga community wouldn't have had *any* interesting new developments to speak about at all within the last decade.


And now something I don't imagine we will all agree on:

Investing in something isn't always about making money. When you budget for a wedding or to start a family, you don't do it because you think it's going to make you a million dollars. If you did, you'd have to be pretty stupid.
People invest in things they know won't pay them back (in coins) all the time! People return old decrepit cars to their former glory, just because it was the first car they ever drove. People make home improvements which they know won't add any value to a property sale. People spend a lot of time and money on personal projects, just for the fun of it, without any prospect of getting rich from it. I could go on.

My point is, people usually invest in something with their eyes wide open. The people involved here are not stupid; I am sure they did the same. Perhaps they are getting all the return on their investment they could ever have dreamed of! Just because you did some back of the envelope calculations and determined that they haven't made a monetary profit, it doesn't mean they didn't get what they wanted from their investment.

If something makes someone happy, then it was worth it. If it makes other people happy along the way, then even better.

That's really all there is to it.

I've said this before in a few threads, and I'll say it again: long may it continue. I will support it for as long as it does.

@OlafS25

Quote:

200.000$ instead of calculated 100.000$ for R&D?

The x1000 took longer then expected to get ready for beta testing, so development costs doubled. To make things worse, the cost of the cpu doubled to $1000 each from $500 & Trevor decided to eat the difference. He has not & never will recoupe the money spent out of pocket for the x1000.

_________________
Hate tends to make you look stupid...

@wawa

Quote:

people make assumptions all the time especially around here where there is so little open and dependable information.

The problam is most ppl make the wrong assumtions, & most of the time, a negative assumtion. Over time these negative assumtions get converted to fact. Thats the danger & sadly a human trait.

_________________
Hate tends to make you look stupid...

I agree on that but what makes one happy can
make other camp struggle or cause divide effect
that is rampant here.

Trevor Dickinson paid for x1000 CPUs out of his
own pocket (difference when price went up which
is something that nobody producing hardware would
do).

Now A-Eon is charging for drivers (okay , you can't
compare tens and hundreds of $$$) which is also
something someone producing hardware would
never do.

Which wasn't what I wanted to post actually :

https://twitter.com/commodoresmart

http://thegg.net/mobile/
commodore-takes-on-the-smartphone-market-a-new-beginning/

I expect this to be funny (but if the company is registered in
the UK as they claim then they pulled it off , they can even
use the "modified" logo).

@itix

Quote:

itix wrote: @cdimauro Quote: Especially for an Amiga-like o.s., were no MMU is usually used and memory is not allocated on a page basis, memory fragmentation increases and makes things even worse. Amiga has shared address space and although you could and can avoid memory fragmentation with MMU you can not avoid address space fragmentation.

Indeed, and that's why I said that the situation is even worse on an Amiga-like o.s..
Quote:

Quote: Anyway, AROS x64 is already available, and it's clearly the future mainstream platform such o.s., so more and more software will arrive (AROS, as you stated, is based on source-level compatibility, so what's already compiling for the 32-bit versions of the o.s. should compile also for x64, unless for badly written code). I am sure there are still many developers who are trying to stuff APTR to ULONG. Especially when it is non-AROS code it is even more likely, although I am trying to not write such code anymore.

Yup. Pointers and "integers" aren't the same thing, and that's one common source of nasty bugs. Another common is making assumptions about their sizes...
Quote:

Luckily it is not difficult to fix such code, though.

It depends on the amount of code which makes such assumptions.

@BrianHoskins

I had to reread the thread to find why it went offtopic...

it was me because someone talked about ISA shift and i wrote no chance because the only one able to finance will not do that because then all investments in PPC would be spoiled.

But that is not important. Topic is Amigadave wants to have his fun with 68k platforms in future and not waiting till one of the "NG" platforms will take over the world. He is not the first one coming to this conclusion and he will be not the last one.

I know that some people are happy with their PPC machines running AmigaOS and/or MorphOS. That will stay that way as long the machines run, the licenses will not expire and both will be updated.

The thread is called: "The Future for Amiga users"

so we talk not about current users but hopefully winning new users in future. My personal view is that Amigans mostly are interested in running something that either is one of the old Amigas or looks like Amiga or at least easily runs Amiga-Software. I know that MorphOS looks a little different but that is a matter of taste.

Outside we have a huge crowd of people that either never heard of Amiga or used Amigas in their childhood.

So you have three groups now:
active amigans
people that used Amigas a long time ago but have at least memories
people that never heard of Amiga at all and look at it as a exotic platform

you need different concepts and even different OS implementations because expectations are different

the first group is mainly interested in 68k related things and partly uses what we now call NG
the second group can be propably by attracted with updated 68k hardware and NG
the third group is absolutely the by far biggest group but needs both modern OS and new software and services

I think we should try to reach first and expecially the second group

@OlafS25

with modern here I mean features like MP that will heavily break compatibility

Quote:

BrianHoskins wrote: @thread Regarding investments made and poor returns, I think there's something we should all be able to agree on: Without the significant investment in both time and money, made by key individuals and groups, the Amiga community wouldn't have had *any* interesting new developments to speak about at all within the last decade. And now something I don't imagine we will all agree on: Investing in something isn't always about making money. When you budget for a wedding or to start a family, you don't do it because you think it's going to make you a million dollars. If you did, you'd have to be pretty stupid. People invest in things they know won't pay them back (in coins) all the time! People return old decrepit cars to their former glory, just because it was the first car they ever drove. People make home improvements which they know won't add any value to a property sale. People spend a lot of time and money on personal projects, just for the fun of it, without any prospect of getting rich from it. I could go on. My point is, people usually invest in something with their eyes wide open. The people involved here are not stupid; I am sure they did the same. Perhaps they are getting all the return on their investment they could ever have dreamed of! Just because you did some back of the envelope calculations and determined that they haven't made a monetary profit, it doesn't mean they didn't get what they wanted from their investment. If something makes someone happy, then it was worth it. If it makes other people happy along the way, then even better. That's really all there is to it. I've said this before in a few threads, and I'll say it again: long may it continue. I will support it for as long as it does.

well said, +1 We're still here because of the 'doers' in all camps so congrats to all who do

_________________
____________________________
c64-2sids, A1000, A1200T-060@50(finally working!),A4000-CSMKIII
! My Master Miggies- Amiga 1000 & AmigaOne X1000 !
mancave-ramblings
X1000 I BELIEVE

@BrianHoskins

Long may it continue, indeed. Very, very well said, sir.

_________________

@OlafS25

Quote:

OlafS25 wrote: Topic is Amigadave wants to have his fun with 68k platforms in future and not waiting till one of the "NG" platforms will take over the world. He is not the first one coming to this conclusion and he will be not the last one.......... So you have three groups now: active amigans people that used Amigas a long time ago but have at least memories people that never heard of Amiga at all and look at it as a exotic platform you need different concepts and even different OS implementations because expectations are different the first group is mainly interested in 68k related things and partly uses what we now call NG the second group can be propably by attracted with updated 68k hardware and NG the third group is absolutely the by far biggest group but needs both modern OS and new software and services I think we should try to reach first and expecially the second group

I deleted parts of your post from the quote above, just so this post would not be so long, but thanks for your summary of what has happened in this thread. It certainly has turned into something much more volatile than I had intended, and also branched off in a strange direction for some users, but I am not complaining about that.

I agree with your statement that there are three groups of people, as you described them, or put another way:

Current AmigaOS/MorphOS/AROS users
Former Amiga users who left the community, or just stopped using any Amiga alternative
People who have never used an Amiga, and many who have never even heard of the Amiga

It is hard to tell what would bring Former Amiga users back, but improvements to any of the NG Amiga systems that would allow most users to do 99% of what they already use computers for, and do it just as well as the Windows/Mac/Linux systems they are using now, might bring some of those former Amiga users back, but we can't expect them to give up using their Windows/Mac/Linux systems any time in the future, as no Amiga inspired system will ever be able to offer the amount and quality of software that already exists for those other platforms. I think it is just as likely to bring back former Amiga users by offering them new and improved Amiga 68k systems and/or software, which the former users would only use part time for fun, while keeping their Windows/Mac/Linux systems for everything else. Any Amiga inspired alternative would have to be completely stable, and do some things better, or easier than emulation on modern hardware, to get some of these former Amiga users to come back to the community.

Getting any of the third group to be interested is the hard part, but it is also the group where we could make the biggest gain in users and new programmers. About the only way I see us making any progress in getting outside users and programmers to join us, is by making it fun and easy to use and to program for. There aren't many development tools, or software games/applications for any Amiga system that make outside people come to this community, but Hollywood is a good attempt at such a tool. We just need more of those kind of tools and more great software created on, and made for, the Amiga and Amiga inspired systems (A-Eon and AmigaKit got this part 100% right, content, content, content).

I also think that someone will eventually do the "Amiga-In-A-Joystick" someday, and that it will be a commercial success, if marketed the right way. That won't affect the community too much, but it might raise awareness a little bit, and get more people thinking about the Amiga again, if 100,000 to 200,000 of those joystick computers that can be connected to any TV get manufactured and sold.

About the comments about how much money has been spent by Trevor, I only got involved in that discussion because there are some people who make untrue statements about him being a greedy person who only wants to make money from the remaining Amiga community, and that is so far from the truth, I just can't let any comments even close to those go unchallenged. I am not saying Trevor is a Saint, and like I wrote before, I don't always agree with all of his decisions, but he is not doing any of this for the money. He is trying to make some return on his huge investment, by generating a little profit on different Amiga related projects, but this is not so he can put the money back into his pocket. It is so he can continue to put money into future Amiga projects, without it being such a drain on his personal finances.

@cdimauro, I never stated an exact amount of what Trevor has spent on any particular project, only that it was many thousands of dollars, or tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars. As Rob pointed out and I think Sundown confirmed, the amount that Trevor admitted in public was $200,000 for the R&D of the X1000, which was about double of what Trevor had originally thought it would be. Hopefully the X5000 won't cost that much, but if it has any problems during it's design, it could easily match or exceed that amount. I think there have been 3 revisions to the Cyrus motherboard design already. I know that Trevor stated that the price of the X1000 did not include money to repay him for that R&D amount, and he seems to have actually lost money on any X1000's that were produced during the time when the price of the PA6T went up, but A-Eon and AmigaKit kept the price of the X1000 the same for the 2nd or 3rd production run of X1000's.

I just don't see how any Amiga users can make Trevor out to be the bad guy in any of this, just because he did not produce what THEY wanted. There is no way to make all of the Amiga users happy all the time, and there are just too many different Amiga inspired choices for any one product to satisfy all of the users. My philosophy is to use what makes me happy, but to support all Amiga inspired projects, both with my words, and with money, by purchasing products, or software, and by contributing to bounties. None of my comments were meant as a criticism of how Trevor chooses to spend his own money. In fact, my intention has been the complete opposite, and to support his freedom to choose what he decides to spend money on, or what to produce or support, even when I don't agree with his decisions.

@wawa, Yes, I do think that you spread rumors and false information. I also think that you attack (in many different ways) Amiga inspired choices and decisions that you don't agree with, instead of allowing others to enjoy the choices they have made.

To all, I have asked for my moderator status to be removed, both here and at Amiga.org, many weeks/months ago, but it does not seem to be high on any administrator's "To Do List". After this little fiasco of a thread, which was really just to let some of you know what I had decided for myself, in case anyone cared or was wondering why I had not been active here lately. I now plan to go back to lurking mode and stop posting to any Amiga forums for as long as I can. I am not saying that I won't post here anymore, just that my time would be better spent concentrating on learning to program for the Amiga using Hollywood, and/or the "C" programming language, or maybe even AmigaE, which I have been wanting to do for a long time.

I am busy at the moment packing up a large part of my Amiga collection to take to the Bay Area in preparation for displaying many of them at the 30th Anniversary of Amiga event, and I hope to see many of you there. Getting all of it packed into different boxes makes me want to set every one of them up and use them again. I hope that all of you will find a way to enjoy the Amiga (what ever that is for you now) during this 30th Anniversary of Amiga year. Please try to make these forums fun and productive and helpful to others, without so much fighting or negativity. Be kind to each other!

Last edited by amigadave on 05-Jun-2015 at 05:56 AM.

_________________
Amiga! The computer that inspired so many, to accomplish so much, but has ended up in the hands of . . . . . . . . . .

@amigadave

OK, take it easy, Dave. Enjoy the hobby however you may choose. Let's just all have some fun and forget the angst.

_________________

What may work is a PCI-E and USB Amiga, so you continue to use LINUX/windows or Mac and you can play, use Amiga applications and program the Amiga with source level debugger integrated into visual studio directly from you PC.
It should a cheap alternative to second hands Amiga while being 100% compatible with the targeted Amiga version. I don't quite like using an emulator it feel Alien...
Kamelito

Ps if there is only a bounty to do it is that one to me.

Last edited by kamelit0 on 05-Jun-2015 at 06:57 AM.

@OlafS25

>then he must truly be "grazy"

Like a true Amigan.

When our days end at the top of this planet, we can not take anything with us, so better spend possible extra money on something fun during lifetime.

If I had a few hundred thousands extra, also I would use significant amount on Amiga development, because I truly think Amiga is different in a good way and should live to next generation.
IMO: World with only Microsoft offering is almost like "hell on top of earth", for (nerdy) people that try to have fun with IT (beside games).

Yep, I'm too.

Last edited by KimmoK on 05-Jun-2015 at 07:44 AM.

_________________
- KimmoK
// For freedom, for honor, for AMIGA
//
// Thing that I should find more time for: CC64 - 64bit Community Computer?

@KimmoK

Quote:

When our days end at the top of this planet, we can not take anything with us, so better spend possible extra money on something fun during lifetime.

+1

_________________
X1000|II/G4|440ep|2000/060|2000/040|1000