@OlafS25

Well, Im sure kolla will point to you the fact that the thread headline deals with an openended 68k development perspective, not exclusively Amiga.

I get your point, but given that Atari people have voiced some intrest in Apollo FPGA, atari development isnt farfetched per see, since the cross compliling should be easier than normal..? (non dev speaking).

@Overflow

I only mentioned it because he started his crusade against gunnar again and I doubt he is expert for aros either.

His "I hate gunnar because of that I do not support this or that" is simply childish and unprofessional. Developers develop software for both getting positive feedback by users and of course expecially becauise of earning money.

Last edited by OlafS25 on 07-Sep-2018 at 01:15 PM.

@OlafS25

Quote:

His "I hate gunnar because of that I do not support this or that" is simply childish and unprofessional.

Dear OlafS25,

thank you so much for your post.

We would like you to consider that kolla is not someone who is trying to sell any goods or services on this website so there is really no need for him to be "professional" whenever he chooses to share his thoughts on a forum for hobbyists.

Sincerely,
ASiegel

@ASiegel

Dear Mr. Siegel,

thanks for your information

if need I will contact you again

Sincerely

OlafS25

@ASiegel

Thats true.

But on a general level, the feedback and approach people take to xyz persons, regardless of professional or not, dictates how people read their posts.

I find kollas nitpicking/lawyerish approach to every post annoying, but I appriciate he got far much more knowledge about Amiga than me, so I actually learn stuff from reading his posts.
And he tests stuff on Vampire too, ref EAB exchange between him and flype a few weeks back.

So its a mixed bag indeed.

It is quite obious that the Amiga NG platform failed.

Amiga is and will always be a retro platform.
I see nothing wrong with that.

Retro with chip music and pixel art is becoming more and more popular.

Even young people start to understand what is so great about it.
Lot's are out now with Pi with Nintendo case running under emulation.

With the standalone Vampire we will have the first computer running AmigaOS 68k
since Amiga 4000.
It is more powerfull than any Amiga with whatever accellerator card released.

It supports 16 bit sound and 24 bit gfx and still compatible with the original Amiga chipsets.

It can connect with hdmi to mothern displays. Have USB and WiFi.

On top of this it is way more cheap that trying to find any used A4000 with accellerator cards and whatever is needed to connect to mothern displays etc.

@nikosidis

a growing retro-platform is much more than what we have now

@OlafS25

Sure is :)

It is not like you can not run whatever under emulation and make chip music on a PC but the Vampire will be like a native thing. No need to start, tweak the emulatior bla bla.
As pointed before I think with the right price it could be sold to the masses as a retro gaming platform.
That would for sure involve some native games only for that system.
Maybe it could also be possible to sell older amiga games under licence like SWOS.
I wonder how many miss that game and the userbase where enormous.

@kolla

Yes, there's an FPGA with dual PPC 400 cores. They clock a bit slow (I think about 600 MHz), but that combo exists.

On the 68020, Rochester Electronics started producing them in 2014 and still has stock.

As to NG and Power, I don't see that having a significant positive effective on gaining new users either.
It's just something I'd like to have.

Probably points to an issue with NG in general in that it's a collection of things we in the current userbase would like to have.
Not a clear cut step forward.

Let's face it, OS4 is OS3.1 retooled for PPC, with very few features added to distinguish it from 3.1.
And MorphOS never went where they originally promised it would, to a second box supporting memory protection and SMP.

Has it "failed"? Well, I'm not the one discussing systems limited to 8 bit sound file, low resolution screens or sub 1 KHz performance.

At every benchmark point, NG thrashes the Vampire, and that's without trying.
Because the Vampire community may aspire to the kind of performance we already have AND consider us competition.
But I can assure you that regard does not flow in reverse.

Vampire is simply a legacy performance enhancement. And that makes it a truly dead end.

Fun to play with, but just another expensive piece of hardware for an impractical hobby.

Then again, who cares? Eh?
We do what we do not because it is practical, but because we can.

Last edited by JimIgou on 07-Sep-2018 at 03:00 PM.

@nikosidis

Vampire is a little like Raspberry but for amiga fans and some nerds

It sells successful in amiga terms (in thousands). What will future bring, who knows...

it is at least interesting and something special

Aros running native on Raspberry might also bring some interest, hopefully people will try it out and some might stay. And those "some" would be a lot more than the remaining community now. Both Vampire and Aros on Raspberry are toys for hobby purpose so I do not understand the comparations with mainstream platforms.

@kolla

I miss the 68K, as a former vendor for 68K systems.
But I agree with you that time has moved on.

What was once quite powerful, simply isn't.

And a hobbyist endeavor isn't going to return the platform to it's former state.

That being said, why can't Vampire users and 68K enthusiasts just have fun with it?

68K was the last platform I used assembly code on, the first platform I wrote C code on.

I have soon very good memories of Motorola and their industry inspiring SixSigma program.

You could actually call the company and talk directly with the engineers.
We are never going to see that kind of support again.

@OlafS25

Hehe yes it is :)

As PPC is dead and no new mashine to buy, this thing can for sure take over for Amiga NG, MorphOS, being compatible with classic Amiga software and games.

What we will have with raspberry is also dedicated 2d and 3d hardware.

Raspberry will also be lot's cheaper than vampire.

Many Raspberry users are looking for something lightweight for use it with. I think
AROS can fit very well inn there. Open source alternative that hopefully could attract
more developers.

This will still be a project that will take time. Drivers etc. is not done over night.

Vampire is here now.

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@nikosidis

At what measure is a hobbyist (level) project dead or alive?

By many measures both PPC and Vampire are "dead", with regards to volume of people.

Or you could flip it around, and say like looking at the C64 community, they might be few people, but they have tons of fun doing what they do.
Im sure there are people that get by just using C64 with their day to day tasks, not to speak of A500's, where you can use text editors etc.

Spending energy on measuring the viability of whatever you find fun/intresting seems like a counterproductive activty, cause its sure to create ill feelings, even if its not intended as such.

@Overflow

I'm not talking about people but technology.

Arm is very much alive 68k and ppc is not.

I agree that it was wrong of me to assume or say that morphos or amiga NG users
should then move to that platform, but at least it would be a more compatible,
and possible more interesting path than i386 or amd64.

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@nikosidis

Quote:

Normal people don't care and don't even know what memory protection is.

Indeed, most people do not know what memory protection is, or care. But they will care very much if personal information is stolen from their computers, which is a very real possibility on systems without memory protection.

The security focus in 2016 has been on Spectre and Meltdown, i.e., side-band attacks on systems that implement out-of-order speculative execution. This is extremely difficult to exploit, yet there are people and organizations who are capable of doing this, hence the continuous stream of OS updates, microcode updates, etc. A system without memory protection is, on the other hand, very easy to exploit. Amateurs can do it.

So AROS running native on Pi, which is very interesting to some of us as hobbyists, can never be a main-stream system unless someone finds a way to solve this problem. In fact, I think there could be liability selling such a system as a consumer device, since systems with memory protection are the de facto standard nowadays.

I'm not trying to be negative, just injecting some reality into the conversation. AROS native on Pi would be a really nice hobbyist system, but probably not much beyond that. I hope it succeeds!

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_________________
"Unix is supposed to fix that." -- Jay Miner

@bison

Yes it would

I see no problem there, as long as people are not dreaming of past glorious times and wanting them back

@bison

Good post.

Ive gotten very security oriented lately, but talking about vunerabilities on even modern and supported systems seems to be a endless discussion. The Qubes OS assumtion is that your computer is already hacked/unsecure, and you compementarize with VMs to ensure that not the whole system gets broken.

Ive seen several speeches given by Joanna Rutkowska, and just how simple it seems to be to get into most peoples systems is scary. Obviously shes one of those computer wizzes that find most things easy technologywise.

But I guess your point is; Amiga OS's are walk in the park for even mildly skilled "hackers".

@OlafS25

The only problem with that is that every 'camp' represented here has it's dreams, it's advocates, it's fanatics...

On ARM, I can buy a truckload of that hardware for peanuts, but it just doesn't spark my interests.

@kolla

Quote:

The sheer number of users is meaningless (unless your business is "support"-) What counts is number of developers. You cannot have a growing user base without a growing developer base, that can support the demands of the users.

I say the opposite, you cannot have a growing developer base without a growing user base that can support the developers. Who will want to develop if there are no users to use what developers develop? Developing for your own personal use gets old fast.

The great thing about Vampire is the product improves the use of existing Amiga systems & software, without the need for development of new software - which is one reason why their sales numbers are high. I haven't done a head count, but I feel there are more software developments for Vampire than there are for NG Amiga so developers are clearly there.

@Kremlar

The biggest problem with that is once software requires a Vampire to run, then the prospective base of users becomes limited to the Vampire community.

Every non-standard feature, or beyond legacy capability provides benefits AND limitations.

Just like other high end accelerators, '040, '060s, PPCs, will software designed to support a limited subset of high end equipped Amigas be able to find a large enough audience to prove successful?

In essence, does everybody have to buy a Vampire?