@iggy

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So, outside of the name issue, who owns Amiga community? We do, of course.

No one, any faction that claims speak for let alone 'own' the whole of this fragmented collection of communities is pretty deluded.

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@Signal

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Signal wrote: @cdimauro Quote: cdimauro wrote: ......... AND keep the compatibility with existing 68K and PowerPC applications, which seems to be the most needed thing for OS4 users. Bullshit! Speak only for yourself. You most certainly do not speak for me.

OK, I remove you from the list of retrocompatibility moaners.
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If you want compatibility, need compatibility, absolutely can't live without compatibility, guess what? Compatibility IS available! Yes! Even on a 64bit dual core PPC processor. (OS4.1 FE)

Not in 64-bit mode...
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Now lets move along and let these guys discuss a possible future, and if that means moving away from the past......then lets get on with it.

OK, let's go forward.


@Hypex

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Hypex wrote: @cdimauro Quote: Why adding RS232? It's needed for debugging purposes. If the hardware doesn't boot and looks dead in the water this is the first port of call after basic checks. It's also needed to grab a crash log if there is a system lock up.

Isn't JTAG a better tool for that?

@cdimauro

I think compatibility is something people who never used it worry about.

Speaking just for myself, I do remember some good program, that can't run on AmigaOS4, I hope someday the source code of this program become available. If not a good replica will do nicely.

Now days I have a higher expectation then I did back then, I think if wonted some professional programs I think preferred if they worked with today's resolutions, and supported true color, and alpha blending.

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@broadblues

Quote:

any faction that claims speak for let alone 'own' the whole of this fragmented collection of communities is pretty deluded deluded

God, I love you guys.

Everyone always feels so free to throw around labels.

'factions'? We all have a common history based on OS3.1.

Anyone that wants to claim or belong to a faction is the person that is deluded.

Right now, all three NG OS could be run on the same hardware (although PPC is not the primary target for AROS).

And everyone, in one form or another has some support for 68K.

There aren't factions as much as there are a lot of individuals here trying to stand on a soap box and preach that their point of view is the only right one.

That's not an opinion, its a religion.

Last edited by iggy on 07-Nov-2015 at 11:21 PM.
Last edited by iggy on 07-Nov-2015 at 08:45 PM.

@NutsAboutAmiga

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NutsAboutAmiga wrote: @cdimauro I think compatibility is something people who never used it worry about.

Ask pavlor.
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Speaking just for myself, I do remember some good program, that can't run on AmigaOS4,

But on OS4 you're using Petunia, which allows you to run 68K apps as "first class" apps, like the PowerPC ones, sharing the o.s. resources.

With a sandbox approach you cannot have it: 68K apps run isolated, and only some resources (filesystem, network) can be shared.

The same happens also to the PowerPC apps, when moving to a new architecture (included PPC64).
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I hope someday the source code of this program become available. If not a good replica will do nicely.

Maybe, but it's unlikely that happens in future if it wasn't made 'til now.
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Now days I have a higher expectation then I did back then, I think if wonted some professional programs I think preferred if they worked with today's resolutions, and supported true color, and alpha blending.

That should be already a normal thing from very long time.

How about memory protection, 64-bit, resource tracking, and SMP? Aren't they "the bare minimum" nowadays?

@cdimauro

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Isn't JTAG a better tool for that?

Not if you're a casual user or a beta tester!

JTAG is good to have for hardware debugging. And a must for the designer. But for the rest of us we need a cheap terminal interface.

@cdimauro

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How about memory protection, 64-bit, resource tracking, and SMP? Aren't they "the bare minimum" nowadays?

Yes, which is why legacy 68K/PPC support will have to be boxed (or discarded).

@cdimauro

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The same happens also to the PowerPC apps, when moving to a new architecture (included PPC64).

If you interested in this look it up, lots of info on how this works on Windows. You don't need Windows7 32bit emulator to run a 32bit program in windows7 64bit. At least works transparent too me.

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How about memory protection, 64-bit, resource tracking, and SMP? Aren't they "the bare minimum" nowadays?

You don't need memory protection to use a program, it's not requirement.
64-Bit, is just bigger registers on PowerPC, and larger address space, most programs don't need it.
SMP is transparent to the program, program does not need to know about it, The kernel just schedule programs, and threads on different cores, that’s it. Of cause memory has to be synchronized, but that’s a feature of the OS, not the program.

Colors and resolution is something you see with your eye, the other things you talk about does not affect the picture your trying to draw or music you're playing.

Last edited by NutsAboutAmiga on 08-Nov-2015 at 03:00 PM.

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@NutsAboutAmiga

I occasionally get errors when trying to use 32bit apps under 64bit Windows, but there are some work arounds.

The problem with Amiga related OS' is the 31 bit addressing.
It limits us to 1.5 GB.

@BoingBear

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Also, how do you propose that a community of 1,000 to 3,000 users fund the design cost of tens of thousands of dollars, if not over one hundred thousand dollars, when it will return nothing but a design, and they will then have to pay an additional sum to have the design manufactured?

This idea (bounty) has already been tried for real, where the proposal was that bPlan (very talanted designers, made the Pegasos (and April patches), Pegasos 2 and Efika to name a few projects) should design a community funded motherboard (because Genesi/bPlan did no longer believe in a "G4" Desktop motherboard themselves). This as a response to a desire from community members who came up with the idea.

The bounty/development was to be conducted in six(?) distinctive steps, and the final result would have been an Open Source motherboard with:

- Flex form factor - MPC8610 @ 1Ghz (or faster if it would have turned out economically feasable)
- 4x SATA 2 connectors
- 4x USB2 ports
- 2x Gigabit Ethernet ports
- Sound ports (Audio Out, Mic In)
- 1 PCI slot
- 1 PCI-e slot 1x
- 1 PCI-e slot 8x (for GFX card)

The funding for this entire R&D project would have ended at a cost comparable to only 20 units of "X1000"!

Unfortunately the community obviously didn't look at this as a good idea, so it stranded. A shame, really.



These days I'd say PPC motherboards are not as exciting anymore, and anything from A-eon has turned out to be moving backwards when it comes to performance and not forward (and at shockingly ridiculous prices); the X1000 performed worse than Powerbook G4 laptop, the X5000 will likely be a move sideways rather than the giant leap forward it should have been, and the Tabor will be a giant leap backwards in performance.

The final price of the Pegasos 2 when it was discontinued almost a decade ago was $399 (€370), including the G4 CPU card. This was back when everything was a lot more expensive, since then prices has fallen greatly, and the performance has practically exploded and left anything PPC behind. WAY behind. Not even comparable to todays desktops/laptops (hey, even ARM based stuff has sailed passed PPC a long time ago). The Pegasos was 1GHz G4, Mplayer benchmarks of Tabor show that its performance is comparable to a Pegasos 2 running at 600MHz. And even at that rather useless performance (in 2016-2018 or when it's supposed to be marketed), I doubt it will be priced anywhere near a Raspberry PI (or even an Efika).

So there is no point really.

Move to x86 already!

@TRIPOS

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The funding for this entire R&D project would have ended at a cost comparable to only 20 units of "X1000"!

I may be wrong and the bounties are gone now but I thought the total amounted to more than £42500.

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Unfortunately the community obviously didn't look at this as a good idea, so it stranded. A shame, really.

Not surprising really, considering that once the R&D was done someone would still have to produce the boards and customers have to pay whatever the board cost regardless of how much money they plowed into the bounties.

Also if the bounty fails Paypal have taken fees twice before your money is returned. Not so big a deal with smaller less risky bounties, but the stakes were high with this and some people would have had to offer some serious chunks of cash for it to have got any traction.

For be this would be a secound computer so I'm not talking about something like what A-eon is doing with those prices and specs that is not what most is looking for.

What I want and I think many have the same opinion is to have a fpga amiga but with improved hardware.
Something that everyone can afford but also brings the classic amiga forrward, sounds like something that starts with "N" and ends with a "I". Well thats what I want if not that something close to it.

@Rob

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Rob wrote: I may be wrong and the bounties are gone now but I thought the total amounted to more than £42500.

€65,500

@TRIPOS

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€65,500

Ambitious since less than 1% was donated.
Bounties don't work in our community when they involve such larger amounts.

@TRIPOS

So about £58500 at the time then.

@utri007

Utri like Dell'Utri former Forza Italia Berlusconi party senator who was found guilty of associating with mafia?

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@TRIPOS

There are still 570 € circa on the project... None adviced the guys who still stand, to take back their money?

And perhaps it will be nice if those money could be diverted on a new project if we found it doable...

_________________
"When the Amiga came out, everyone [at Apple] was scared as hell." (J.L. Gassée, former CEO of Apple France and chief of devs of Mac II-fx, interviewed by Amazing Computing, Nov 1996).

@Raffaele

I'm not going to go all through this thread, but I believe using the SB600 was suggested.

AFAIK the SB600 uses 32 bit transfers on its high speed link to the CPU. This may be fine for standard PCI protocals and PATA transfers but not sure if it fits for your design thoughts when it comes to 64 bit.

Just saying.

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@Signal

It was me who harped on and on about that.

I don't think that'll be a problem, the Linux (64b) driver already handles it correctly, and it's used on X1000 so AmigaOS needs to support it for some time anyway

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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.

@Signal

An SB850 would make more sense.
6x SATA3, Lan support that could be common to all processors, PCI support, etc.

Its just SO much more complicated.