@Hammer

Quote:

Until PPC stakeholders fixes it?s fragmented issues, PPC wouldn't pose a serious threat against the X86 Collective/Union/United States/Federation. PPC market mirrors the fragmented 68K based PC market.

What fragmentation issues?

They all use the same base ISA from the mobile phone type processors up to the POWER6.
Yes there are some differences but these are market specific and irrelevant, you wouldn't want a POWER6 in a mobile phone and conversely you wouldn't want the likes of a 460 in a high end server, the changes in the XBox processor are even less relevant as it's customer specific.

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@Raffaele

Quote:

If the rest of the world will poison themselves and suicide you will follow themselves? Freedom has a price to be payed.

You're making an attempt at humour here right?

The only argument to use anything other than an x86-based processor for a desktop platform is this age old mantra that it's "selling out." And yet, a typical computer user doesn't even know the difference between a computer chip and a potato chip.

Somehow people miss the point of Apple's rallying cry: Think Different.

At one point that's what made the Amiga special. It had *nothing* to with the CPU that was selected 20 years ago. It had *everything* to do with providing a low-cost platform that emphasized that computers could be used for more than just crunching numbers on spreadsheets.

After 6 years of folly I'm sure no one gives a rat's rectum what the system runs on. Oh wait, I forgot that the PPC port doesn't run on anything in the first place.

@insiders

one question came to mind. The ported OS4 was running native (G4) or hosted (x86 + Rosetta)?

Thanks.

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@sgm

As we can read in the chatlog of AIncACube it's not emulated. No software layer. It's a real port!

Unfortunately nothing was shown to us (the community) but nevertheless there wasn't any announcement 'til yet.

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Quote:

umisef wrote: Isn't it funny --- all the explanations of how x86 would be the death of things, because people could choose to buy and run a different OS, and now someone apparently went and did (most of) the work for a platform where people must buy a different OS with the hardware...

Terrasoft Solutions has been doing PPC work for years, they're the top PPC Linux company. Guess what they're main platform work was up until now. PPC Macs. There is aboslutely no technical reason that what Terrosoft did for LInux, that the same could not be done for Amiga on Mac.

For that matter since all the Amiga Forever stuff was done on Intel first, there isn't any reason we couldn't just simply ditch the PPC and go Intel.

@LazarX
Quote:

There is aboslutely no technical reason that what Terrosoft did for LInux, that the same could not be done for Amiga on Mac.

I assume you meant to say "for OS4 on Mac".

You must have missed all the posts claiming that the groups who did ports of Linux to the PPC Mac had "inside sources" from Apple helping them out. Hyperion doesn't have the secret handshake, nor do they have the ability to obtain the highly classified Mac motherboard documentation. Read the Linux source or enlist help from the Linux community you say? Infidel!! Don't you know that Linux is open source and therefore evil?!

Any reason you could come up with for porting OS4 to PPC Mac has already been countered. Not sure if you knew this but the PPC Macs are no longer in production either, so therefore there are none available except for a couple dozen used ones for sale and those are all probably broken. Far easier to wait for somebody to make a proprietary motherboard that will only be produced in low quantities, didn't you know that's what makes Amiga so special these days?

Seriously though, it's all academic at this point.

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@jorkany

Complete and utter nonsense.

Yes, the Mac Mini PowerPC is not made anymore but only a couple of dozen available?

The numbers available of the Mac Mini PowerPC by far outnumber the amount of available AmigaOne, BlizzardPPC en CyberstormPPC machines. Also the availability on second hand sites is much higher than any of the other the solutions.

The Mac Mini PowerPC is available in large numbers on second hand sites and it's number is growing because of Mac users switching to the Intel solution. And no, these aren't broken.

We already know because of the E-mail traffic that could be read in the Amiga Inc versus Hyperion lawsuit that OS 4 runs on the Mac mini. So it's not easier to wait for something better.

The easiest solution is too finish the port and make available the tens of thousands Mac Mini PowerPC systems to the OS 4 community. The machine is more powerful than anything we have or the new systems that are possible in the near future. Not to mention cheaper.

The biggest problem is that the people in control of this are too busy acting like complete and utter morons instead of choosing an easy way to make the user/programmer base grow. But making normal and useful decisions is of course hard if you have no clue what you are doing. Now it's more like sabotaging your own market.

Last edited by PulsatingQuasar on 11-Oct-2007 at 06:41 PM.

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@PulsatingQuasar

Quote:

The biggest problem is that the people in control of this are too busy acting like complete and utter morons instead of choosing an easy way to make the user/programmer base grow. But making normal and useful decisions is of course hard if you have no clue what you are doing. Now it's more like sabotaging your own market.

Agreed. I wish Amiga Inc investors actually took notice of the poor job they are doing/have done in promoting the Amiga Desktop. With the demise of Tao, I hope the investors reevaluate what Amiga's value/prospects are and put pressure on them to sort things out or to sell out to someone who cares!

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@PulsatingQuasar

Quote:

Complete and utter nonsense.

Indeed.
After all, the discussions about OS4 on Mac were made more relevant when the warehouse was reported found with -quite- a larger number available.

Same old story really. The closer a project comes to completion proving that something can indeed become a reality...the higher the barricade erected to prevent it from happening.

This is why more and more postings alude to "tax loss" in relation to AI's operations. Regardless of the truth, this serves as an example of what prompts that train of thought in the community. Failure to deliver=breeding ground for rumor/innuendo.

#6

Last edited by number6 on 11-Oct-2007 at 07:24 PM.
Last edited by number6 on 11-Oct-2007 at 07:19 PM.
Last edited by number6 on 11-Oct-2007 at 07:19 PM.

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@all

Thought I should repeat one of my earlier posts in case people think OS4 on mac was Acube's idea or whatever...
Adam has stated that discussions were ongoing even while Mai was still in business, granted during their "end" days.

Quote:

ackcontrls response: Quote:Several solutions based on previously existing Apple hardware were looked at, but the logistics of acquring the hardware for non-DIYers was going to be difficult to manage. Personally, the documentation aspect for driver development wasn't a big issue, but gathering sufficient quantities of motherboards efficiently and cost effectively wasn't going to work

btw-the warehouse #, iirc, was 500, so obviously if all this story holds water, then that number was not deemed sufficient.

My addon in same post:
Quote:

Personal note:there was also the additional issue of dealing with the perception of this hardware as being used/refurbished, even if THAT was not the principal reason for dismissing this as an option.So this would have been more of a "stop gap" measure, not a solution.

Of course if this WAS a stop gap measure, then this conflicts somewhat with the dismissal of using the lot of 500, so...

You can certainly argue both sides here..Heh!

#6

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This posting, in its entirety, represents solely the perspective of the author.
*Secrecy has served us so well*

FRAK this ####..Im buying a MAC

(of course Im still keeping my 1200 )

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@minator
Quote:

What fragmentation issues?

Let's install old Windows NT 4.0 PPC on a 2008 PPC based machine ............. Opps you can't do that.

Where's PPC version of PC AT and PC i386 compatible standard?

Quote:

They all use the same base ISA from the mobile phone type processors up to the POWER6. (SNIP)

Do a diff between PowerPC 4xx vs PowerPC 970 vs PowerPC 750FX/GX. Take a careful note in kernel vs user space ISA. Note that, ISA alone doesn't built a platform.

Quote:

Yes there are some differences but these are market specific and irrelevant, you wouldn't want a POWER6 in a mobile phone

Is there a reason to change the kernal ISA? Why the cut-and-paste with kernel space ISA?

In the smart phone/PDA market, is there a reason why no VMX SIMD with PowerPC 4xx while ARM has Neon SIMD?

Quote:

and conversely you wouldn't want the likes of a 460 in a high end server

It didn't stop Intel Atom and Intel Core 2 sharing the same ISA.

Last edited by Hammer on 17-Jun-2008 at 12:08 PM.

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@jorkany

Quote:

You must have missed all the posts claiming that the groups who did ports of Linux to the PPC Mac had "inside sources" from Apple helping them out. Hyperion doesn't have the secret handshake, nor do they have the ability to obtain the highly classified Mac motherboard documentation. Read the Linux source or enlist help from the Linux community you say? Infidel!! Don't you know that Linux is open source and therefore evil?!

What motherboard documentation did they need? These boxes have OpenFirmware, don't they? Lots of OS ports exist for Mac PPC, especially Linux and BSD (NetBSD and OpenBSD). I'm running OpenBSD on a PPC Mac. Hyperion would only have had to look at the source code of the communication with OpenFirmware. The OpenFirmware on PPC Macs is not too different from the OpenFirmware on the EFIKA 1, BTW. A Mac PPC port of OS4 could also be modified to run on the EFIKA and vice versa. The fun thing about OpenFirmware is that you can easily list the installed hardware (which is the purpose of it).

Seriously, after reading the statements from Hyperion that have been mentioned here and in that document, my respect for them has dropped by 50%. That Q/A session with Bill McEwen was really priceless!! Also, it showed that Bill is quite a smart guy who knows what the community needs.

(BTW, I also wonder why Hyperion chose to create UBoot for the A1 instead of just using OpenFirmware; a lot of coding time wasted ... ; maybe they should've talked to bPlan or another OpenFirmware vendor ...)

Last edited by voyager2007 on 17-Jun-2008 at 01:21 PM.

@Turrican3

Quote:

IMHO the answer is quite simple actually: apart from some technical issues like endianess (but are they really that difficult to circumvent?!) they wanted to keep tight control of the HW.

If that is so then why hasn't AROS got 68k emulation built in? Plenty of x86 68k emulators but AROS, an x86 focused OS, can't run 68k code. And now they taking about integrating UAE into it so that can run Amiga code.

Quote:

In short, AInc's desire to decide on which HW OS4 run is one of the main reasons, apart from highly likely Apple disapproval, that I don't think the MacMini port would have been licensed. Sadly.

What makes you think Amiga choose the hardware? AFAIK they chose the companies. And stayed out of it. Look at the Amiga site. They sell software that works on every Microsoft Windows platform. I betcha the SDK doesn't even work on PPC Linux. I bought the first Amiga SDK, it supported x86 and x86 only. Amiga is an x86 Windows PC company. Do you have any proof of them not being that?

Last edited by Hypex on 17-Jun-2008 at 04:16 PM.
Last edited by Hypex on 17-Jun-2008 at 04:15 PM.

@LazarX

Quote:

Terrasoft Solutions has been doing PPC work for years, they're the top PPC Linux company. Guess what they're main platform work was up until now. PPC Macs. There is aboslutely no technical reason that what Terrosoft did for LInux, that the same could not be done for Amiga on Mac.

Sounds like a perfect AmigaOne replacement, but only worth it if OSX can be made to run out of the box.

Quote:

For that matter since all the Amiga Forever stuff was done on Intel first, there isn't any reason we couldn't just simply ditch the PPC and go Intel.

What and run Amiga Forever? Or do you mean as OS4? Well, if it's an emulator then using Intel is easy. But I don't think AmigaOS4 is the same as a PC optimised Amiga emulator.

@voyager2007

Quote:

(BTW, I also wonder why Hyperion chose to create UBoot for the A1 instead of just using OpenFirmware; a lot of coding time wasted ... ; maybe they should've talked to bPlan or another OpenFirmware vendor ...)

BTW, they didn't create it, UBoot was an open source boot loader. They just used it as a code base, fixed bugs and stuck the OS4 booter in it. I think MAI was using it as a bootloader for the Teron boards so that may have swayed them.

@Hypex

Quote:

BTW, they didn't create it, UBoot was an open source boot loader. They just used it as a code base, fixed bugs and stuck the OS4 booter in it. I think MAI was using it as a bootloader for the Teron boards so that may have swayed them.

Ah, that's why. But why didn't they follow the CHRP standard?? Or is U-Boot CHRP compliant?
(p.s.: I know CHRP has been mothballed in the meantime, but there's really no reason not to use OpenFirmware; especially when you look at bPlan's that can boot from many file systems ... plus initialize PC graphic cards ... with a built-in x86 emulator ... )

Last edited by voyager2007 on 17-Jun-2008 at 04:47 PM.
Last edited by voyager2007 on 17-Jun-2008 at 04:46 PM.

@voyager2007

Quote:

. plus initialize PC graphic cards ... with a built-in x86 emulator ... )

I think UBoot does just that
We are not using Mac-flashed graphics cards in our AmigaOnes.

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@Hypex
Quote:

If that is so then why hasn't AROS got 68k emulation built in? Plenty of x86 68k emulators but AROS, an x86 focused OS, can't run 68k code. And now they taking about integrating UAE into it so that can run Amiga code.

Actually I can hardly qualify as an AROS expert, but I understand their goal was just to implement an Amiga-compatible API in x86, so what's the point of being able to run 68k code? We already have UAE for running native AmigaOS 3.x software...

Quote:

What makes you think Amiga choose the hardware? AFAIK they chose the companies. And stayed out of it.

Well, maybe the actual "final" decision about HW was not made directly by Amiga.

But please, remember they gave a license to a certain company to sell HW (trade)marked "Amiga One": don't you think there was a reason why Eyetech chose a proprietary motherboard instead of licensing an off-the-shelf one, being an hardware manufacturer (actually a reseller, but the point is stil valid).

I mean, there was a partnership: Amiga had the brand, but (IMHO) didn't want to take the risks; Eyetech (and Hyperion) chose to take those risks, but you know, when you take a risk, a financial risk, you surely want to gain some $$$. And going proprietary was the only possible answer, from *their* point of view at least.

Last edited by Turrican3 on 17-Jun-2008 at 06:26 PM.

Hi @number6


Thought I should repeat one of my earlier posts in case people think OS4 on mac was Acube's idea or whatever...

#6

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