@The_Editor

Quote:

The_Editor wrote: @TrebleSix ok ...Where'd you dig that photo up of me ?

I've been searching through your bins

_________________
Dark Lord Design Wicked Solutions For Damned Problems

@falemagn

So now I'm a "fanboy"? I've rolled up my sleeves, meet me outside on the parking lot after work.

I just hinted to hatschi that we're not going there. The Friedens have gone to university, they are qualified for this job. You have NO idea how well I know them. No ####ing idea.

I am in no way having this discussion with you. End of story.

_________________
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.

@olegil

No, the fact that they've gone to university doesn't prove that they are fit for the job, the fact that they DID the job does.

_________________

@olegil

Quote:

You have NO idea how well I know them

Please enlighten us.

_________________
...

Quote:

Is it that hard to imagine what would happen the day Amiga inc decide Hyperion has to switch to x86?

No one would be waiting for hardware. And no release of the OS could be delayed because of lack of hardware.

Leo.

_________________
http://www.warpdesign.fr/

@olegil

Quote:

olegil wrote: @hazydave Yeah, we agree the XBox looses money on every unit, but I'm saying the XBox GAME sales aren't even bringing in the money lost. It's not 5-6 games sold per unit to make up the loss, it's a lot more.

Yeah, I agree.. I think the _plan_ was, eventually, that you would need to buy 5-6 games to make up the losses. I'm not sure they ever hit that cost... if Microsoft is still losing money, it tells you they aren't selling enough games per unit, no matter what that number should be.

Quote:

For the 360 they're talking $300 sales price and $720 cost. That's $420 to be split up over 5-6 games at $50. How would you do that? Interesting math

That's roughly the numbers I've seen, too. The "math" I saw was based on the cost of the chips (estimated, based on chip size and commodity pricing), typical consumer industry markups, and advertising costs. But I don't recally anything specific about amortizing development costs, unless it was rolled into the chip costs.

Also, keep in mind, while Microsoft is taking all of the profit on something done in-house, like Halo II, they're only getting a royalty on anyone else's games. That was something like $5.00 per game back in the CDTV or 3DO days; I can't imagine it's all that much more today. This suggests that game royalties can never offset this loss.

Which is certainly why MS is trying to get money from other things. They control the peripherals for the XBox360 -- that's a high-markup market. They're trying to get you on-line, at a steady flow of $10 or $20 per month, to a service that's probably close to free for them (some PC-based on-line game companies manage to support free on-line servers for multiplayer, others focus on the monthly fees.
Quote:

So Microsoft would be rather silly for bringing up this with the Customs Office

Actually, no -- that's a protectionist thing; Microsoft can sell anything they want at a loss, domestically, and, well, other than being potentially stupid, it's not going to be a problem. Of course, they're made under contract in China, but as long as it's Microsoft selling, it's a different situation, customs-wise, than Sony selling below cost. Of course, these days, I would assume if Sony USA (a US incorporated division of Sony Japan) got shipments directly from their Chinese CM, they'd be in precisely the same boat as Microsoft. And I bet they do, given how much hardware they sell here.

Quote:

The Playstation 2 is a pitiful machine, hardware wise. So the cost per unit really isn't high. It's comparable to any DVD player, actually. I can buy a DVD player for 499NOK, I doubt Phillips are loosing money on that, so why would Sony be loosing money on a slightly beefed up DVD player for 1200NOK? No, I think Sony are thruthful and they really do not loose any money on the units (they might not bring in much when R&D is taken into account, but they need that R&D just as much to sell the game licenses as they need to sell the hardware. So it makes sense to subtract the R&D cost from the total sum, rather than as a percentage from each unit). I do not know right now how much R&D is calculated into that $720 number I came across for the Xbox360, might be interesting to find out, though. Edit: ok, might not be that good a number, other sources claim it's loosing 120 or so USD per unit. And Sony DID loose money on each unit until rather recently. The difference is that Microsoft NEVER got out of that situation. Nintendo are just way too good at making money, and have never sold at a loss, from what I gather.

Last edited by _Steve_ on 19-Jan-2006 at 08:07 PM.

@afxgroup
Quote:

The only market that attract now are Phone cell and Console. But try to fight with Symbian and Sony is to difficult.. so what we can do?

Cell phones are really hard to break into. Symbian has lots of investment from Nokia and the others, thus, they get an easy "in". Palm and Microsoft have both tried to break into the market, with marginal success.

Quote:

Quote: The DVD player has a Sigma Designs EM8620 video processor, which plays MPEG-4/DivX, Windows Media 9, and MPEG-2 in high definition. That's the way you get such players cheap enough -- throwing general purpose computing at a relative simple display device would be overkill. That is surely less powerful than a dual x86 athlon or p4

DVD players do their stuff via dedicated hardware, which, like the dedicated hardware on 3D cards, can very easily be more powerful at a specific job than a general purpose processor. You can't sell a dual x86 system just to play audio/video in the livingroom; it's way too expensive. People who set up PCs in the livingroom can play multimedia stuff, but they're after other things, too: games, internet, etc.

@hazydave

Quote:

it tells you they aren't selling enough games per unit, no matter what that number should be.

I'm not surprised.
The last place I worked decided they could no longer afford leased lines to their 4 remote offices.
As the network skivvie I was tasked with hooking these offices up using broadband. Unfortunately I didn't have enough money for Cisco.
I bought a couple of high end netgear 'vpn firewall' routers - but these would not configure properly and the vpn itself was not stable. I had to send them back.
I ended up using Linux and Vtun - this was solid as a rock! I was going to buy some proliants on Ebay to do this but they were still too expensive!

I mulled and mulled - and then I remembered Xbox Linux!
I rushed out to Game and bought a second hand copy of 'Mech assault' - ironic that a Microsoft published game allowed the malformed gamesave to pervert the xbox to the ways of Linux!
I ran with a proliant at the HQ and my x-box at home - even managed to tweak vtun (Traffic shaping, MTU's and throttled back to broadband upload speeds) to run the 7940 phones for the central callmanager! Vtun was rock solid - in 1 year the only outage we had was when one of the offices didn't pay their broadband bill!


So that's 5 X-boxes sold and 1 second hand game bought! Thanks BillG!

bty: If anyone wants to hook up over the internet, vtun is the dogs b&*llocks!

@hazydave

System on a chip (f.ex 5200),256mb ram, HD,gfx and dedicated hardware for dec/enc video, AmigaOS/MOS/AROS with streaming datatypes (raggie) and you would have a cheap, fully functional desktop with video streaming in whatever program (that supports datatypes) you want. Or am I wrong? 466 mhz 603 is enough for a nice looking easy to use, configerable and responsive AmigaOS(or similar). And most apps written for it is very optimized to run on limited hardware aswell due to AmigaOS tendenses to allways end up on low end stuff.

@hazydave


I do not believe that the desktop is dead. I think that what would be the best sales point would be ease of use.

The only reason for XBox or any other consoles existence is because they are easier to use then a PC. PCs can be a real pain to set up, maintain, turn on and of course turn off. That is why people are willing to buy into XBox. A PC really blows away an XBox as far as graphics, sound and in every catagory except ease of use.

Amiga needs to get away from PC hand me downs as quickly as possible. I say as soon as possible, because we actually need to catch up at the moment. However, the Amiga needs to take a lead here. We do not gain much by porting old PC games, old PC applications and using old PC hardware including the x86. We need to start having our own identity and start blazing our own trails. If we keep following what the PC is doing then we will never do anything any better than a PC.

The Amiga could easily boot with the same ease as an XBox and still retain all the power of a full multimedia computer. Just look at the CD-32. Its only down side was that it had inferior hardware. Other than that it was a great idea. Put in a game it boots into a game. Put in a CD it boots into a player. Add DVD support, a large memory stick and a keyboard and that would be a marketable item. I mean, I can switch the thing off when I am ready, not have to wait for the computer to tell me it is ready. What a concept!

@dolen

Quote:

System on a chip (f.ex 5200),256mb ram, HD,gfx and dedicated hardware for dec/enc video, AmigaOS/MOS/AROS with streaming datatypes (raggie) and you would have a cheap, fully functional desktop with video streaming in whatever program (that supports datatypes) you want. Or am I wrong? 466 mhz 603 is enough for a nice looking easy to use, configerable and responsive AmigaOS(or similar).

Leaving the dedicated acceleration out for a moment, you can buy machines of a similar class (Mac G3s... PPC750 machines) on Retrobox for about $100-$150. So new, I'd say that's a fine price point for a "C64 of the 21rst century" -- sell it in a box for $200, with AmigaOS, and you may have something. Compare it to entry level Semperon machines at $300, and it's going to have issue of acceptance.

Now, the hardware video support would make lots of sense if this is targeted more like an Advanced STB. For those who don't know, an STB is certainly any old "set top box" that hooks onto your TV: DVD player, Cable/Satellite Box, etc. Making an "Advanced" one is what we were doing at Metabox: basically a stealth personal computer, it does a bunch of different things. Today, this might be a networked DVD player, the cable/satellite box with games and PVR, etc.

You're probably talking about a $250-$350 unit for something like this, to have a shot commercially. For example, my networked DVD player (http:///www.iodata.com) runs around $250 (JVC is selling an OEMed version, soon, for $300). This doesn't do personal computer stuff per se, but it plays a wide variety of media types, from DVD or network, including High Definition video in various forms. Now, that stuff has to work, you'll get all kinds of flack. I suspect they could have easily put a computerish front-end on these if they felt like it, but that wasn't their goal. This does start to encroach on the low-end PC, but you can't currently get HD video playback as a built-in on a low-end PC... but wait a few years.

And I'm not suggesting this is the only place you could apply this kind of idea, either. "Pocket Devices" have generally been an option, too, but there are also some issues there. The biggest issue is simply that such pocket devices are either serious gaming machines (Nintendo, Sony), real PDAs used by businessfolk, or cell phones. Cell phone technology is difficult to design, and you can't usually sell direct to end-users, you have to sell to cellphone companies, at least at the moment, and support their particular standards (GSM, CDMA, TDMA, IDEN, EDGE, EV-DO, etc)... different ones for different networks. PDAs need business apps. Game machines need a dozen new games every month. So you need to find a model in this market that'll sell, perhaps different than these, if you can't equal them.

Quote:

And most apps written for it is very optimized to run on limited hardware aswell due to AmigaOS tendenses to allways end up on low end stuff.

I think the aforementioned embedded processor is fine for running AmigaOS. But really, you could run Windows XP on a similar machine (think Pentium II/600-700MHz) just dandy. It's not the OS, it's the applications. Games, primarily -- they've been the primary engines of change for home computing and much of personal computer nearly forever, and even dominating the PC industry since the early 90s.

@hazydave

Quote:

For example, my networked DVD player (http:///www.iodata.com) runs around $250 (JVC is selling an OEMed version, soon, for $300)

Glad too see networked DVD players from others than http://www.kiss-technology.com/ too.
I've had my KISS-500 for 3 years now, and I'm very happy with it, just surprised to see that no other vendor has picked the idea up untill now.

*edit checked what they cost atm. A KISS-1500 cost about $178 in Sweden atm.

Last edited by tomazkid on 19-Jan-2006 at 09:58 PM.

_________________
Site admins are people too..pooff!

@hazydave

Quote:

DVD players do their stuff via dedicated hardware, which, like the dedicated hardware on 3D cards, can very easily be more powerful at a specific job than a general purpose processor. You can't sell a dual x86 system just to play audio/video in the livingroom; it's way too expensive. People who set up PCs in the livingroom can play multimedia stuff, but they're after other things, too: games, internet, etc.

ATI implements it's WMV acceleration via it's pixel shaders reasource. Refer to www.gpgpu.org for other uses for GpGPUs e.g. particle/liquid
simulators, RT Raytrace, DSP and 'etc'. NVIDIA's PureVideo is an array of SIMD based pipelines i.e. this adds to shaders reasource (MIMD/SIMD based for NV4x/G7x, VLIW based for NV3X).

Last edited by Hammer on 19-Jan-2006 at 10:01 PM.

_________________
Ryzen 9 7900X, DDR5-6000 64 GB RAM, GeForce RTX 4080 16 GB
Amiga 1200 (Rev 1D1, KS 3.2, PiStorm32lite/RPi 4B 4GB/Emu68)
Amiga 500 (Rev 6A, KS 3.2, PiStorm/RPi 3a/Emu68)

@nzv58l

Quote:

PCs can be a real pain to set up, maintain, turn on and of course turn off

Not quite true for current laptops (in regards to PC hardware setup and turn on/off**). **Hibernate or Suspend-to-RAM.

Last edited by Hammer on 19-Jan-2006 at 10:11 PM.

_________________
Ryzen 9 7900X, DDR5-6000 64 GB RAM, GeForce RTX 4080 16 GB
Amiga 1200 (Rev 1D1, KS 3.2, PiStorm32lite/RPi 4B 4GB/Emu68)
Amiga 500 (Rev 6A, KS 3.2, PiStorm/RPi 3a/Emu68)

@hazydave

Quote:

This does start to encroach on the low-end PC, but you can't currently get HD video playback as a built-in on a low-end PC... but wait a few years.

Already here i.e. from NVIDIA's 6150 IGP to 7800 GPU. Refer tohttp://www.nvidia.com/page/purevideo_support.html

Last edited by Hammer on 19-Jan-2006 at 10:07 PM.

_________________
Ryzen 9 7900X, DDR5-6000 64 GB RAM, GeForce RTX 4080 16 GB
Amiga 1200 (Rev 1D1, KS 3.2, PiStorm32lite/RPi 4B 4GB/Emu68)
Amiga 500 (Rev 6A, KS 3.2, PiStorm/RPi 3a/Emu68)

@hazydave

The way I look at it. I see the Amiga One as a development system. As such it gives a few people something to develop applications on while we wait for the real killer hardware. I do not think we will see the killer hardware untill something like the Cell or perhaps beyond that. We are a small community making due with what we have, but at least we have some interest for a few bit heads to toy with.

To be honest, I am a little dissapointed with the level of technology we have so far been able to do, and this is in general terms and not Amiga specific. Where is the Virtual Reality, voice recognition as well as a few other things that have been dreams for quite a few years? Yes, they are there, but they are not that advanced and not very common in the least.

Believe it or not, games are not the only thing computers are used for. For some people, just surfing the web without having their computer hijacked would be just what they want.

@nzv58l

Quote:

Amiga needs to get away from PC hand me downs as quickly as possible. I say as soon as possible, because we actually need to catch up at the moment. However, the Amiga needs to take a lead here. We do not gain much by porting old PC games, old PC applications and using old PC hardware including the x86. We need to start having our own identity and start blazing our own trails. If we keep following what the PC is doing then we will never do anything any better than a PC.

One problem, X86 PC world assimilates technologies that are desirable e.g. RISC cores techniques, Rambus, DEC’s Alpha EV6 bus, NUMA, processor arrays (e.g. Clearspeed add-on card), massively paralleled vector co-processors (GpGPU), horizontal instructions (e.g. SSE3) and ‘etc’.

_________________
Ryzen 9 7900X, DDR5-6000 64 GB RAM, GeForce RTX 4080 16 GB
Amiga 1200 (Rev 1D1, KS 3.2, PiStorm32lite/RPi 4B 4GB/Emu68)
Amiga 500 (Rev 6A, KS 3.2, PiStorm/RPi 3a/Emu68)

@hazydave

Genesi is talking about theire EFIKA based 4U2 as the sub 100$ computer. I don´t know if thats any revolutionary at all but it sounds interesting.
WinXP can run on an equal specced computer but it would not give a good computer experience.
I´d say those OSs that was designed to be small and efficiant have a benefit to gain some popularity when the "phonebox" towers and desktops are replaced by smaller units. If there is a time to act its definately now. (my speculations ofcourse)

I think open source OS like linux has a greater potential though. No complicated market decisions, just geeks who dont give up until it runs on the target device, and thus working for free. Gaining popularity by free downloads on everything from desktops to palmtops. Gaining the geeks seems to be a winner concept! How can anyone compete in the long run except for MS.

I´d say that it´s just a matter of time before AROS gets a better foothold than both MorphOS and OS4. It´s moving at an increasing rate! No obsticles, if you want it on your device, port it! Crosscompiler already exists and tools for porting from posix are developed. It runs as hosted on linux/windows and x86 (soon x86-64).
And it has the amiga feeling all over it! (despite X86 )
If it can get "geeky" enough, it might attract some amiga brains from the old time and who knows what can evolve from that.

I had discussions with you 10 years ago about amiga related stuff! I´ve moved to Windows since then. It does what I want it to do. I also have Linux as a second choice, use a palm Tungsten at work. But despite all those possibilities with those OSs I just cant stay away from the Amiga stuff. And you can´t eather I´ve noticed! But after all, its your babe!

Hey! I know what this thread needs.. HELGIS!!!
His input on Cell and arguments against Dave would be a blast..

Btw Dave must be really pissed now because Helgis is soon the most
famous Amiga celebrity living..
They even write stories about him! Isn't that amazing?!


Hey so where are you Helgis???

Last edited by Samwel on 20-Jan-2006 at 01:29 AM.

_________________
/Harry

[SOLD] µA1-C - 750GX 800MHz - 512MB - Antec Aria case

Avatar by HNL_DK!

@Hammer

Quote:

@syrtran Quote: --snipped for readability-- NT came from Microsoft and DEC (and IBM, to some extent) OS/2 1.x ecosystem is implemented in user land. Windows NT(1) kernel shares more with VMS; hence the settlement between DEC and Microsoft. OS/2 1.x support has been dropped in NT 5.1(Windows XP).

My reference to IBM was about them working side-by-side with MS on OS/2. I was implying that some of the IBMer's vast systems knowledge (I believe they did one or two OSes -before- OS/2) rubbed off onto the MS guys that ended up on the NT team.

_________________
Tony T.

People who generalize are always wrong.


1989 - 500 / 1991 - 3000 / 1997 - Genesis Flyer 1200T / 2003 - A1XE