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o you despise one another so much that you'd rather your own decline than to see them jointly share a success with yourselves?

Yes. Guess we wouldn't have 3 incompatible OS implementing the very same API working on 3 different incompatible machines (well, this changed a little since OS4 is available for Pegasos). Don't you think ?

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@Hyperionmp
While I still assume that your sticking to PPC is based on better information than us lot have (such as your financial state), I would like to correct some IMHO wrong things you stated:

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subsequently nearly all development time would be spent on dealing with the wide variety of x86 based hardware.

You only need to pick ONE x86 mobo, and support only that. So people would still have to buy a special box to run OS4. The benefit is that the mobo would cost £50-£100 instead of £400-500, saving the buyer £350 to £400, while giving them a system whose CPU is 3-4x faster (GHz wize & ignoring extra cores). I think you'd get a *lot* of extra OS4 sales for such a system.

OTOH, by the time OS4.1 was ported to x86 (say 1-2 years), PPC would likely have caught up to x86 in GHz terms, and would likely only lag behind x86 in the number of cores. Cores which the current OS4.1 cannot use (due to AmigaOS's design). This means that in the short term you'd loose the GHz advantage of x86, and only gain it's cheapness (which is still a big advantage).


Quote:

the fairly far-fetched notion that tens of thousands of existing x86 owners would be willing to pay for a copy of OS 4.1 rather than just downloading a copy somewhere.

Yes, piracy is a big worry. But if OS4.1 is limited to one or two special x86 mobos, then they still have to buy the hardware to run it, at which point the additional cost of OS4.1 isn't that much extra.

It is also a fact that other companies manage to make money despite piracy. If you have potential sales of say 100,000 (over some period), even in the unlikely even of loosing 90% of sales to piracy would still leave you 10,000 sales - far more than Sam440 seems likely to sell. These figures are made-up, but I am just trying to show that a small slice of a big market (even one damaged by piracy) is still probably better than a large slice of a tiny market (what we currently have).


The only major legitimate reason I can see for staying with PPC is that writing & integrating a PPC JIT would be a costly expense (something which you may not be able to afford).

P.S. I agree with everything else you said. e.g. I have not yet seen any evidence that PPC is a dead-end - that just sounds like Intel FUD to me.

Last edited by ChrisH on 07-Jun-2009 at 01:09 PM.
Last edited by ChrisH on 07-Jun-2009 at 01:00 PM.

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@Leo

Quote:

Yes. Guess we wouldn't have 3 incompatible OS implementing the very same API working on 3 different incompatible machines (well, this changed a little since OS4 is available for Pegasos). Don't you think ?

Well the point of coalition with very clear ground rules would avoid that and instead the OS's would be competing on features and usability. I have only seen video clips of MorphOS Aros and AmigaOS rather than first hand usage, but the latter seems to come out with flying colours on both counts.


@ChrisH

Everything you said about the x86 marketplace, I agree with. Piracy has always been overstated as a sales loss by the big companies. The only published figures by anyone on how sales increased by eliminating piracy gave only one sale for every thousand pirates eliminated. Still a lot of ouch, but hardly the giant crippling that is claimed. And there exists piracy still in Amiga land as anyone that knows how to use a search engine and torrents could tell you. OS4 has already been pirated here and now. Piracy becomes less of a problem the more potential sales you have. ie; the larger the sea you are fishing in.

There are some genuine reasons given for a port not being an easy choice, but hardware choice and piracy are not them.

To use my Aral Sea analogy again, whilst its true that the Hyperion fishing boat has a larger share of a shrinking sea to itself, whats the point when nobody wants to buy the fish you catch?

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@ChrisH

Quote:

You only need to pick ONE x86 mobo, and support only that. So people would still have to buy a special box to run OS4.

Btw, while in PPC land there might be this 1:1 mapping (port to one, and that port will run on this one only) in x86 land even if you just port to one specifc x86 mobo, the port will end up running on tons of other mobos, too, because for just about every one there are many others which are very similiar.

@SpaceDruid

Quote:

SpaceDruid wrote: @ChrisH I'm not talking about what we should have done given hindsight, I'm talking about what should happen NOW. Yes, a seaschange in any direction is going to cost money, but then so is continuing on a doomed path. If Hyperion doesn't have the funding then perhaps its about time we looked at new ways of going forward. Since every company or business involved in any large or small way in Amiga development is reliant on there being hardware of some form and an OS to run on it, perhaps its time for every company or business involved in any large or small way in Amiga development to stop acting on their own and form a coalition?

That's all nice said, but would you figure out a way to get every part to agree upon the path to go?
There is money and work of years involved, and possibly one should throw its lifework away
for another solution.

I can't see this happening.

Each has an own opinion, most of us are not willing to pay 500 euros for a Sam which will possible fund the future developing of Amiga related stuff. I for my side did it. I'm not rolling in money but I bought both an A1 and a SAM. I like the people behind morphos and the aros guys too they did a brave job and are very capable coders. But I made my decision to stik with the official "Amiga" long time ago.
It's a waste of resources going on with 3 different OSes. Besides that, I really don't think x86 is the answer to the question "How can we make AmigaOS mainstream again".

regards :)

@ChrisH

Quote:

You only need to pick ONE x86 mobo, and support only that.

And that is what they did with PPC, picked Teron and rebadged it as A1s. I think it's pretty clear they (AI/EyeTech/Hyperion) had a personal bias and did not want to go with x86. That ill fated decision bit them at a time when such bites are considered fatal. Had AI had a clue management wise on how to run a company, they would have directed OS4 towards ARM since their clear target was cellphones Amiga Everwhere scheme and could have a future merger down the road.

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@ChrisH

Quote:

Yes, piracy is a big worry

No it's not, M$ leveraged piracy to dominate the desktop OS world. People are going to steal, that's a given. Offering support, just like the open source guys do, is where the money is at for a tiny closed sourced OS.

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@SpaceDruid

And I like the low power consumption of the PowerPC chips. You know how it's going to look like in the future. We do not want x86 to become the monopolist of CPUs!! The market-place will get saturated soon hopefully.

@thread

Are Morphos orientated sites plagued with these tedious go x86 threads too? Or is just OS4 that people want to ruin.

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@Amigo1

Quote:

That's all nice said, but would you figure out a way to get every part to agree upon the path to go? There is money and work of years involved, and possibly one should throw its lifework away for another solution. I can't see this happening.

It depends how much strongly you want to live. Its happened many times in other industries between companies with much longer histories of animosity between one another. Its not easy to take the first step and finding a common ground is hard, hence the reason for an outsider being the best option to lead (so decisions are taken on directions most likely resulting in success, rather than the most heartfelt).

Quote:

It's a waste of resources going on with 3 different OSes. Besides that, I really don't think x86 is the answer to the question "How can we make AmigaOS mainstream again".

I wouldn't say its a waste going with multiple OS's since its the only possible way any agreement could be realisticaly reached. The point isn't to make one uber OS, but to spread development costs so that all parties can have a wider choice of hardware and therefore a larger potential userbase which means a much stronger chance of long term success.

Its not about making it mainstream either, its simply about trying to increase the userbase which I believe currently is far too small considering not all are willing to pay high prices for hardware and even if the performance of the hardware is improved, the high cost will always remain.

Without increasing the userbase significantly, I don't understand how any developer can feel confident in the long term survival of the platform and as an investor, I don't see what would entice me into funding further development, unless the intended destination was the embedded market and not the desktop, but even then I don't really see the returns being remotely worth the risk given the current climate.

That leaves me with the rather worrying conclusion that future development costs will be entirely funded by sales. Hyperion have said many times that they are financialy secure. Not having debts isn't the same thing as having a solid foundation for future development. Unless somebody won the lottery or has an eccentric millionaire tied up in the basement, I can't see how Hyperions confidence in the future is anything other than window dressing. But then again they've managed to keep funding an never ending legal case so what do I know?

I shall wait and see as I have been told to. I will note that this is the same line Amiga Inc have been spouting for years, so my expectations are low. I don't want to appear to be being too harsh with this post, there has already been a black president of the USA so I shall never rule anything out as a posibility again.

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@Amigo1

Quote:

And I like the low power consumption of the PowerPC chips. You know how it's going to look like in the future. We do not want x86 to become the monopolist of CPUs!! The market-place will get saturated soon hopefully.

I'm no fan of intel, but are we really in a position to be fussy? They offer the best cost/performance ratio by a huge margin.

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@broadblues

They tend to quieter, MorphZone dosn't even seem to have started talking about the non-PPC so presumably non-MorphOS Efica 2.

But you get the odd person saying the blommin' obvious. I'm with SpaceDruid on this one, but I've sorta lost the will to argue these days...

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'm no fan of intel, but are we really in a position to be fussy? They offer the best cost/performance ratio by a huge margin.

(Nitpicking:) I thought it was AMD who has the best cost/performance ratio.

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Are Morphos orientated sites plagued with these tedious go x86 threads too? Or is just OS4 that people want to ruin.

Very good question.

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And that is what they did with PPC, picked Teron and rebadged it as A1s. I think it's pretty clear they (AI/EyeTech/Hyperion) had a personal bias and did not want to go with x86.

When AROS was started some 10-15 years ago x86 was so evil and this community was crying after PPC. AI/EyeTech/Hyperion offered what their potential customer base wanted. And of course there was PPC software for Amiga already. PPC has same endianess as 68k...

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It's a waste of resources going on with 3 different OSes.

Yes, it might be and might be not. But what can you do with big egos, passed years, different opinions and personal tastes and all bickering. It's too late to change anything IMHO.

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we have taken a look at the PowerPC roadmap and there is plenty of life in it including 8 core designs under 30 W

I think this comment might contain a hint.

@Hyperionmp
But what I want to know is where ? Who ? And when ? (Apple bought PA Semi, AMCC hasn't released Titan, Freescale has something in their roadmap but will all those things ever happen and when and are there any other PPC makers ? IBM not developing PPC's further any more ?)

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@Tomppeli

"8 core designs under 30 W" is the QorIQ P4080 from Freescale, obviously.

It's honestly a bit difficult not to get excited about a chip using 30W and having a grand total of 24000 MIPS, 2MB L3, 1MB L2 and 256+256kB L1 cache. Oh, and a couple of 10GigE doesn't hurt either.

Wooot

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@olegil

That would rock big time :)

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@Tomppeli

Quote:

(Nitpicking:) I thought it was AMD who has the best cost/performance ratio.

You are right to nitpick, for some bizzare reason I thought the Sempron was an intel chip. I really need to lay off the homemade wine before posting...

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@olegil

Quote:

"8 core designs under 30 W" is the QorIQ P4080 from Freescale, obviously.

I checked Freescale's website last night. I checked some PowerQuicc chips but I didn't check these QorIQ's.

Quote:

It's honestly a bit difficult not to get excited about a chip using 30W and having a grand total of 24000 MIPS, 2MB L3, 1MB L2 and 256+256kB L1 cache. Oh, and a couple of 10GigE doesn't hurt either.

That sounds really cool ! I watched a couple of Youtube videos of these 8 core QorIQ's and there's some nice/impressive opportunities. (Like system partitioning/virtualizing.) What interests me also in those PPC SOC's is security accelerators. ([Dreaming mode on]Think AmigaOS shocking and rocking the whole IT industry with the most secure OS. [Dreaming off])

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@SpaceDruid Quote:

I really need to lay off the homemade wine before posting...

Naaah, we need more of SpaceDruid's Drunken Rants (*)

(* with apologies for ripping-off the title of Stevey's Drunken Blog Rants)

Last edited by ChrisH on 07-Jun-2009 at 10:21 PM.

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@all

Quote:

So far OS 4.x has cost well over 2 M euro to develop. That's 2.75 million USD.A move to x86 would halt all existing OS 4 development (i.e. complete feature freeze) and subsequently nearly all development time would be spent on dealing with the wide variety of x86 based hardware.In essence, Amiga OS 4.x development would grind to a complete halt and all this on the fairly far-fetched notion that tens of thousands of existing x86 owners would be willing to pay for a copy of OS 4.1 rather than just download

Wow, reading comprehension has hit an all time low here it seems.

I guess money grows on trees for everyone but me & Hyperion. How about you x86 port fans donate a million euros each so Hyperion can hire more coders to do the port? Even if a port was done, you would claim a copy costs too much & no office apps exist for it. Seems the ones wanting an x86 port are the ppl that have not yet support the OS4 project in any way.

How about we all STFU & support Hyperion for once!


@broadblues

Quote:

Are Morphos orientated sites plagued with these tedious go x86 threads too? Or is just OS4 that people want to ruin.

Sure seems that way.

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@sundown

Quote:

Wow, reading comprehension has hit an all time low here it seems.

Only if the costs are news to you. The figures have already been known for some years to those paying attention to the legal case.

Quote:

I guess money grows on trees for everyone but me & Hyperion. How about you x86 port fans donate a million euros each so Hyperion can hire more coders to do the port?

Have you been paying attention to what I've been saying about a coalition? I'm suggesting it because of the costs involved, not in spite of them.

Quote:

Even if a port was done, you would claim a copy costs too much & no office apps exist for it. Seems the ones wanting an x86 port are the ppl that have not yet support the OS4 project in any way.

Again this is something I address regarding the coalition. Shared development means less duplication of effort and more software options. And sorry but I'm not contracted to buy anything in this marketplace. As far as I'm aware this is a commercial marketplace not a charity. As soon as a product is on sale that appeals to me, I'll buy it. Although the OS appeals, the current hardware does not. When that changes I will buy.

Quote:

How about we all STFU & support Hyperion for once!

How about you stop insulting those of us who don't feel the need to buy an inferior product because of some misplaced sense of loyalty. Hyperion didn't choose the path they did because it was in the best interests of the community, they chose it because they are a business. Unnecessary hurdles have been put in place and decisions made (not singly by Hyperion, but they played a major part) have meant we are far from where we could have been.

It is NOT up to me to prove my loyalty to the community, it is up to Hyperion to prove theirs. So far they have delivered an OS that for a variety of reasons took them far longer to develop than the origional agreement, that (currently) only runs on a very limited selection of hardware that falls short of the standard now expected in the desktop marketplace.

I don't mean to be so harsh about Hyperion because all things considered, they have eventually managed to pull something special out of the hat, but this idea we should all be silent and offer no critisims stinks of the worst kind of fanboyism that I can't help but react angrily to.

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