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NutsAboutAmiga 
Re: Why i left the Amiga
Posted on 17-Jan-2019 22:00:09
#121 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 9-Jun-2004
Posts: 12795
From: Norway

@wawa

LOL

or maybe "Zombie"

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nikosidis 
Re: Why i left the Amiga
Posted on 17-Jan-2019 22:39:58
#122 ]
Cult Member
Joined: 9-Dec-2008
Posts: 994
From: Norway, Oslo

@wawa

haha :)

Next is Frankenstein ;)

Oh wait. That was my last Amiga. Half 68k and half PPC

Last edited by nikosidis on 17-Jan-2019 at 11:06 PM.

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klx300r 
Re: Why i left the Amiga
Posted on 18-Jan-2019 16:42:59
#123 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 4-Mar-2008
Posts: 3833
From: Toronto, Canada

Quote:

Kicko wrote:

I always thought i would be the last amigan using amigaOS and hoped amiga would rise and me beeing a great known amiga musician. To show the world what amiga is. Nice dream :)

Alot of text from me, alot to tell... beeing away.. Anyway nice to talk to you folks again.


I hear ya and we'll be here when you come back again cause only amigans know to 'never say never' over and over again and to still be here today... still Never Die Never Surrender mentality...

_________________
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X1000 I BELIEVE

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JimIgou 
Re: Why i left the Amiga
Posted on 18-Jan-2019 23:39:29
#124 ]
Regular Member
Joined: 30-May-2018
Posts: 114
From: Unknown

@Lou

Quote:
...The latest AMD gpu contains 5120 ALUs (64 compute units with 80 processing elements each) but someone trying to design a super Amiga thinks a single dual-threaded SIMD unit in the cpu is plenty...


I'm not sure why you are comparing gpus with cpus, but a 16 core/32 thread Ryzen cpu does seem to serious dwarf the P1022, P5020 or P5040.

Now an 8 core/32 thread Power 9 system (or even a four core/16 thread system if you want to save money), THAT would be closer to competitive and could still run our existing PPC OS' and software (with a real upgrade path for SMP and memory protection).

We could remain distinct from X64, and still have something powerful enough to port modern software to.

Compatible AND powerful enough to emulate X64.

No more cpu envy and if I'm going to spend almost $2000....

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Amigo1 
Re: Why i left the Amiga
Posted on 19-Jan-2019 7:44:47
#125 ]
Super Member
Joined: 24-Jun-2004
Posts: 1582
From: the Clouds

@Hypex

Quote:

Hypex wrote:
@Amigo1

Quote:

As a successor of the AmigaOne's, I have a name for it, A2 as in "Adam 2" it would be a new Genesis!


LOL! It would have to fill big shoes. Jesus is said to be the second (or last) Adam. So with that in mind the A2 "Adam 2" would need to cancel out all ther sins of the first AmigaOne models. That's a big job!


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Amigo1 
Re: Why i left the Amiga
Posted on 19-Jan-2019 7:45:48
#126 ]
Super Member
Joined: 24-Jun-2004
Posts: 1582
From: the Clouds

@JimIgou

That would be a nice machine..

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bhabbott 
Re: Why i left the Amiga
Posted on 20-Jan-2019 9:05:09
#127 ]
Regular Member
Joined: 6-Jun-2018
Posts: 330
From: Aotearoa

@Deniil715

Quote:

Deniil715 wrote:
This is in large part what killed C= in the first place. -- No development.

Having made one more major upgrade from AGA+Paula to some chunky gfx format (8,16,24,32) and 16-bit 4-channel audio would have put Amiga waaaay further forward and secured that part of the future.

Sorry, but nothing Commodore put in the Amiga would have helped. Had they produced AGA a year earlier they might have lasted a while longer, but the fix was already in. PCs were already outselling Amigas 20:1 at even the earliest time Commodore could reasonably have been expected to deliver it.

Quote:
Now this had to be invented and made by 3-parties which divided the users and program compatibility - No support in the OS.

Did IBM put sound card support in their BIOS? No. Did they build advanced sound into their motherboards or offer it on an ISA card? No. This had to be invented and made by 3rd parties, which divided the users and program compatibility. Yet by 1992 (year that Creative Technologies introduced the Sound Blaster 16) some Amiga owners were already starting to complain about Commodore not producing a machine with 16 bit sound 'like the PC has'.

Before that PCs had a variety of sound 'standards', ranging from simple beeps to 3 tones and a noise generator (SN76496 in the PCJr) crude 8 bit mono through the printer port (Covox Speech-Thing), basic synthesized music (AdLib), and combinations (Philips SAA1099 + Yamaha YM3812 + 8 mono sample playback in the original Sound Blaster).

Here's what Wikipedia has to say about Sound Blaster 1.0:-
Quote:
In spite of these limitations, in less than a year, the Sound Blaster became the top-selling expansion card for the PC. It achieved this by providing a fully AdLib-compatible product, with additional features, for the same, and often a lower price. The inclusion of the game port, and its importance to its early success, is often forgotten or overlooked. PCs of this era did not include a game port...

When Microsoft announced Multimedia PC (MPC) in November 1990, it suggested to developers that they use the Sound Blaster as it was the only sound card that came close to complying with the MPC standard. The press speculated that Microsoft based the MPC standard on the Sound Blaster's specifications. By 1993 Computer Gaming World wondered "why would a gamer" buy a competing AdLib card that was not Sound Blaster-compatible.

During all this time the Amiga already had better 4 channel channel - and game ports too! But this was a mistake of course. By providing an excellent standard built in to every Amiga and supported by the OS in ROM, it didn't give much incentive for 3rd party development.

In 1987 the A2000 gave users the ability to install 16 bit sound cards just like the PC (only better because the Zorro II bus had autoconfig), but why would they when they already had excellent sound on the motherboard? Combine this with the much smaller market and you can see why 3rd parties didn't 'come to the party' with improved sound cards like they did with the PC.

So your complaint over Commodore not putting 16-bit 4-channel audio in the Amiga, forcing it to be 'invented and made by 3-parties' is completely off the mark. Their real mistake was putting in any sound at all apart from a simple beeper. What Commodore should have done just provide a motherboard full of empty slots that 3rd parties could design boards for, then let the market sort out which one would become a standard and include that in their OS.

As for 'chunky' graphics, the same argument applies. If Commodore had put the graphics chipset on a zorro card it would have been slower and less capable, just like the PC. But then 3rd parties would have had an incentive to develop better cards that could be swapped in, with other 'standards' such as EGA and VGA included. As it was, with all Amigas having a high performance chipset on the motherboard, plug-in cards were at a disadvantage both technically and marketing-wise. Once again, Commodore's mistake was making a chipset that was too good!

Last edited by bhabbott on 20-Jan-2019 at 09:13 AM.
Last edited by bhabbott on 20-Jan-2019 at 09:09 AM.

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cdimauro 
Re: Why i left the Amiga
Posted on 20-Jan-2019 9:12:12
#128 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 29-Oct-2012
Posts: 3621
From: Germany

@bhabbott Quote:
bhabbott wrote:
Quote:
JimIgou said:
VGA graphics were better than AGA,
I think your memory is a bit selective. Yes, PC hardware eventually surpassed the Amiga, but not until several years after the A4000 was released. SVGA was better in some ways, but VGA wasn't. When the A1200 came out, popular 386SX PCs with ISA VGA cards were slow as molassas in Windows 3.1.

You mixed too many things, and hence making wrong comparisons.

VGA arrived on 1987, NOT when the Amiga 1200 came out (1992). And it had a very good bus, the MicroChannel which you already reported, that provided A LOT of bandwidth: around 40MB/s ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micro_Channel_architecture ), included burst-mode and bus mastering which squeazed even more the performance.
So, technically it had absolutely no problem handling games, since to completely redraw a 320x200@256 screen at 60FPS required just 3,66MB/s (1/10 of the total bandwidth). BTW, VGA (like EGA) had the possibility to hardware scroll the video framebuffer inside all his graphical memory (with 256KB you can easily implement double and triple buffering), split screen in 2 parts, and even generate VB IRQs.
The problem with VGA was that it was sold by IBM with its very expensive PS/2 series, which reduced considerably the idea to develop games for this platform, since the market was dominated by PC clones.

However PC clones quicly presented SVGAs cards, which even exceed VGA specs (higher resolutions, 16 bits mode, and then 24 and 32 bit modes), and the EISA bus was introduced just 2 years after ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extended_Industry_Standard_Architecture ), which substantially put such clones on par with IBM's PS2.

This pushed a lot the PC game market, which started ramping-up quickly.
Quote:
Quote:
Paula is only 8 bit while Soundblaster was16 bit
Sound Blaster was crap. Fewer D/A channels, limited DMA capability, couldn't loop samples properly - and that's if you could get it to work with your game at all! (clones were even worse). Most music was synthesized and sounded like a cheap Yamaha keyboard.

Nevertheless, good games were developed for PCs, and that's even before that the Amiga 1200 went out. A couple of notable examples:
https://www.mobygames.com/game/dos/leisure-suit-larry-1-in-the-land-of-the-lounge-lizards/techinfo
You can take a look at the screenshots, while I report the audio specs for that time (1991):
Adlib, Game Blaster (CMS), PC Speaker, Pro Audio Spectrum, PS/1 Audio Card, Roland MT-32 (and LAPC-I), Sound Blaster, Tandy DAC (TL/SL), Tandy / PCjr, Thunderboard.
Now, please tell me how bad sounded the "crappy" Roland MT-32...
And another notable game which appeared just one year after (and well before the Amiga 1200 introduction):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolfenstein_3D
This doesn't deserve comments, right? A great success even in this case, for the "crappy" PC game market...

@bhabbott Quote:
bhabbott wrote:
@Kronos
One argument that some Commodore bashers often make is that the Amiga's chipset was too tightly integrated, which made it harder to advance. IOW, it was too good! From a certain perspective they are right. Early PC chipsets were poor to non-existent, so they had less 'baggage' to carry forward.

From when reporting FACTs classify people as "bashers"?

Yes, it was the too tight chipset integration that crippled the evolution. The Amiga 1000 was presented in 1985, whereas AGA came only after SEVEN YEARS (ECS, released in 1990, was just a cosmetic OCS update), bringing a completely crippled chipset (an HORRIBLE patch over OCS/ECS, with just sprites and display controller updated: everything else UNTOUCHED!).
Quote:
But the lack of a good base standard for PC hardware created massive compatibility issues, made life difficult for developers, and fragmented the market. Remember when PC games started coming out that demanded a fast CPU, VGA graphics and a '100% Sound Blaster compatible' sound card, limiting their sales to a tiny fraction of PC installations? PC developers did that because supporting a miriad of different hardware variations was just too difficult.

The released games for PCs are a clear confutation of your sentences. You cannot rewrite the history.

Yes, it was more difficult to develop PC games due to the hardware variants, but... it was made! As well as standards were developed: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_Electronics_Standards_Association SoundBlaster became the de-fact audio standard, IDE too, and DOS games used DOS-Extenders. BTW, BIOS also provided a standard interface to several peripherals, and the introduction of Windows 3.0 brought to new standards which made order (standard APIs and ABI/drivers. Anyone remembers the GDI/GDI+ hardware acceleration standard?).
Quote:
They got away with it because the PC market was so huge, but this would never have worked for the Amiga. Having a constantly changing hardware spec would have fragmented the (already much smaller) market too much, as well as upsetting users.

While sticking with the same hardware brought to what? A console-like market. And you know what happens to console? They become obsolete after some years, and being replaced by completely new hardware. It happened to Commodore, except for the last part (because being too late in the market is NOT a good thing).
Quote:
I am glad that Commodore didn't keep bringing out new models with more advanced chipsets, because it means there are now only a few different hardware variations to cater for, and compatibility between chipsets is very good.

It's not difficult to understand it, since you change so little things compared to what competition did. But competition advanced and supplanted Commodore machines. If you like it...
Quote:
Had they kept going we probably would have seen the Amiga go the way of PCs, with new 'Amigas' bearing little resemblance to the original design.

Well, PCs defined several standards, as I said before, which even Amigas borrowed when Commodore was alive.

BTW, another big problem for Amiga was its o.s.: due to the so many bad design decisions (included being so much tied to the chipset), it had (and has) several issues which cripple, and still cripples, its future.

@AmigaBlitter: I don't think that amigans leave the Amiga. Maybe many left the Amiga machines, but they are still using the software and/or the o.s..

That's because the Amiga became a retro gaming platform, but... long time ago. It was a matter to accept it, which many fan(atic)s didn't. Now it's simply your turn...

EDIT. Just saw that @bhabbott replied a few minutes ago.

I only reply to some part, since for the rest I've already written.
Quote:
bhabbott wrote:
As for 'chunky' graphics, the same argument applies. If Commodore had put the graphics chipset on a zorro card it would have been slower and less capable, just like the PC. But then 3rd parties would have had an incentive to develop better cards that could be swapped in, with other 'standards' such as EGA and VGA included. As it was, with all Amigas having a high performance chipset on the motherboard, plug-in cards were at a disadvantage both technically and marketing-wise. Once again, Commodore's mistake was making a chipset that was too good!

Actually it was very bad chipset if you consider that it used bitplanes and not packed/chunky graphics from the very beginning.

Bitplanes are a complete waste of both space and (especially) bandwidth in almost all operations (the ONLY advantage: accessing to sigle bitplanes/bits).

And the o.s. has the same issues: completely tied to bitplanes (even directly embedding Bitmap structures inside others: no pointers!!!)

Last edited by cdimauro on 20-Jan-2019 at 09:18 AM.

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Kronos 
Re: Why i left the Amiga
Posted on 20-Jan-2019 9:21:26
#129 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 8-Mar-2003
Posts: 2553
From: Unknown

@cdimauro

Quote:

cdimauro wrote:

BTW, another big problem for Amiga was its o.s.: due to the so many bad design decisions (included being so much tied to the chipset), it had (and has) several issues which cripple, and still cripples, its future..


Not really "design decisions" but more like never being finished.

As in there never been a sensible API to do audio, GFX.library just being stubs for the underlying HW, having to poke around in the system just to get basic things done.

I'm quite sure all that would have been fixed with an AmigaOS2.0 in 87 if C= hadn't fired all HiTorro/Amiga guys.

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cdimauro 
Re: Why i left the Amiga
Posted on 20-Jan-2019 10:20:54
#130 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 29-Oct-2012
Posts: 3621
From: Germany

@Kronos: IMO making o.s. structures public (even writing on them!), using pointers instead of "opaque" data structures, allowing to start/stop multitasking (providing also assembly MACROs which directly accessed the nested task fields on ExecLib!) and even disable/enable interrupts, acquiring hardware resources, changing o.s. resources (e.g. signals, for example), etc. are clear signs of bad design decisions. Not even talking the absolutely crap which AmigaDOS was with its BPTRs and BSTRs (shifting... pointers! WHAT THE HELL!!!!!!).

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Kronos 
Re: Why i left the Amiga
Posted on 20-Jan-2019 11:04:41
#131 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 8-Mar-2003
Posts: 2553
From: Unknown

@cdimauro

- exposed structures: not much you can do when you target HW only has 128k (updated to 256k at release) RAM and about the same in ROM (which wasn't really ROM on the A1000).

- DOS, yep as I said never really finished or to be precise bolted one as an afterthought when the original design just wasn't ready. Had work continued at a decent speed after 85 these would have been replaced by the time the A500/2000 came out and the old API removed a few years later without pain.

_________________
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- blame Canada

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bhabbott 
Re: Why i left the Amiga
Posted on 20-Jan-2019 11:22:22
#132 ]
Regular Member
Joined: 6-Jun-2018
Posts: 330
From: Aotearoa

Quote:

cdimauro wrote:
[quote]The problem with VGA was that it was sold by IBM with its very expensive PS/2 series, which reduced considerably the idea to develop games for this platform, since the market was dominated by PC clones.
It wasn't the expense that was the real killer, but having to pay IBM a royalty to use it. Thus clone manufacturers said 'no thanks' and stuck with the crappy PC-AT bus which they renamed 'ISA'.

Quote:
However PC clones quicly presented SVGAs cards, which even exceed VGA specs (higher resolutions, 16 bits mode, and then 24 and 32 bit modes), and the EISA bus was introduced just 2 years after ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extended_Industry_Standard_Architecture ), which substantially put such clones on par with IBM's PS2.
But EISA only appeared in a few high-end models. Until the VESA Local bus came out almost all clones used ISA bus cards, and the majority of those were crappy. How crappy? I just received a Trident TVGA9000A (manufactured in October 1992), which was a popular card back when I was doing PC support. When the 386SX motherboard that I bought off eBay arrives, I will be able to compare its performance to my A1200. Watch this space!

Quote:
BTW, another big problem for Amiga was its o.s.: due to the so many bad design decisions (included being so much tied to the chipset), it had (and has) several issues which cripple, and still cripples, its future.
The Amiga's 'future'? Sure, if that is to compete against PCs - which it will never do no matter how advanced its hardware or software. The only way the Amiga can really compete against modern PCs is to be a PC.

But if by 'future' you mean survive in a form that echos its original design concept and implementation, then that is easily achievable. I popped a Vampire into my A600 and ran all my applications from 1993 no problem, just 4 times faster than the maxed out A3000-060 I used to have for 1/10th the price. Workbench in 800x600 24 bit works perfectly on my 32" LED TV, and the 68080 even dramatically speeds up standard ECS screens (I had no idea just how much the A600's CPU was holding it back). It will never run the latest Firefox, or play HD movies, or run the fancy3D games, but it does AMIGA stuff better than ever.

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cdimauro 
Re: Why i left the Amiga
Posted on 20-Jan-2019 16:15:08
#133 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 29-Oct-2012
Posts: 3621
From: Germany

@Kronos Quote:
Kronos wrote:
@cdimauro

- exposed structures: not much you can do when you target HW only has 128k (updated to 256k at release) RAM and about the same in ROM (which wasn't really ROM on the A1000).

Well, it can seem really weird, but even Windows 1.0 was in the same situation (memory & disk space contraints) but didn't suffered of the same bad design decisions.

BTW, some Amiga o.s. libraries could have been put on disk to gain some ROM space, allowing to introduce proper get/setters to access critical data (like Windows and many other o.ses did).
Quote:
- DOS, yep as I said never really finished or to be precise bolted one as an afterthought when the original design just wasn't ready. Had work continued at a decent speed after 85 these would have been replaced by the time the A500/2000 came out and the old API removed a few years later without pain.

Unfortunately too much software was developed with/for the old APIs.

@bhabbott Quote:
bhabbott wrote:
Quote:
cdimauro wrote:
[quote]The problem with VGA was that it was sold by IBM with its very expensive PS/2 series, which reduced considerably the idea to develop games for this platform, since the market was dominated by PC clones.
It wasn't the expense that was the real killer, but having to pay IBM a royalty to use it. Thus clone manufacturers said 'no thanks' and stuck with the crappy PC-AT bus which they renamed 'ISA'.

I know it, but at end if customers wanted to have a PC with the very good new bus ( MicroChannel), the only way was to buy and IBM one. That's why it was expensive.
Quote:
Quote:
However PC clones quicly presented SVGAs cards, which even exceed VGA specs (higher resolutions, 16 bits mode, and then 24 and 32 bit modes), and the EISA bus was introduced just 2 years after ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extended_Industry_Standard_Architecture ), which substantially put such clones on par with IBM's PS2.
But EISA only appeared in a few high-end models.

Which were much less expensive compared to PS/2s.
Quote:
Until the VESA Local bus came out almost all clones used ISA bus cards, and the majority of those were crappy. How crappy? I just received a Trident TVGA9000A (manufactured in October 1992), which was a popular card back when I was doing PC support. When the 386SX motherboard that I bought off eBay arrives, I will be able to compare its performance to my A1200. Watch this space!

You got one of the crappiest! From your link (but comments were also an interesting read):

"Seeing how awful the performance of these cards is compared to the good ones (1.3 vs. 5.5 MB/s bandwidth)"

So, there were much better cards. But even taking this crappy card, take a look at the results when configured as 8-bit and 16-bit ISA:

3DBench : 21.2 FPS # 8-bit ISA
3DBench : 34.4 FPS # 16-bit ISA

So, it was possible to achieve good results (remember that Amiga o.s. games were usually running at 25 or 30 FPS) even with such very slow cards.
Quote:
Quote:
BTW, another big problem for Amiga was its o.s.: due to the so many bad design decisions (included being so much tied to the chipset), it had (and has) several issues which cripple, and still cripples, its future.

The Amiga's 'future'? Sure, if that is to compete against PCs - which it will never do no matter how advanced its hardware or software. The only way the Amiga can really compete against modern PCs is to be a PC.

No, it wasn't required: take a look at Apple's Macintosh. They preserved their identity, while providing new hardware (even completely new when Apple switched to PowerPCs).

BTW, Commodore was also doing the same, with PA-RISCs as possible candidate to replace 68Ks and hardware backward-compatibility limited to only ECS (like it was the almost finished AAA), with the o.s. which would have been used even for games (with RTG & RTA APIs).
Quote:
But if by 'future' you mean survive in a form that echos its original design concept and implementation, then that is easily achievable. I popped a Vampire into my A600 and ran all my applications from 1993 no problem, just 4 times faster than the maxed out A3000-060 I used to have for 1/10th the price. Workbench in 800x600 24 bit works perfectly on my 32" LED TV, and the 68080 even dramatically speeds up standard ECS screens (I had no idea just how much the A600's CPU was holding it back). It will never run the latest Firefox, or play HD movies, or run the fancy3D games, but it does AMIGA stuff better than ever.

Well, I can do the same with my MiniPC running WinUAE, at a fraction of the cost (around 150€, all included: 4GB RAM and 64GB of eMMC).
With much better compatibility (thanks to WinUAE).
And way much better performances when I enable the JIT (using FullHD resolutions with 32-bit depth and 128MB VRAM).

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Kronos 
Re: Why i left the Amiga
Posted on 20-Jan-2019 16:39:54
#134 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 8-Mar-2003
Posts: 2553
From: Unknown

@cdimauro

Quote:

cdimauro wrote:
Well, it can seem really weird, but even Windows 1.0 was in the same situation


Windows/DOS had far worse design issues (being 16Bit for starters) that dragged it down, but 30 years of constant investment and development changed it into ....

..... a different pile of c###

Quote:

cdimauro wrote:
BTW, some Amiga o.s. libraries could have been put on disk to gain some ROM space,


Super limited RAM and no HD as standard put a stop to that idea.

Amiga was supposed to be a home-computer that doubled as a games-console (or the other way round depending who asked) and AmigaOS was just the best that could be done with the limits that put on.

_________________
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cdimauro 
Re: Why i left the Amiga
Posted on 20-Jan-2019 21:48:11
#135 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 29-Oct-2012
Posts: 3621
From: Germany

@Kronos Quote:
Kronos wrote:
@cdimauro
Quote:
cdimauro wrote:
Well, it can seem really weird, but even Windows 1.0 was in the same situation

Windows/DOS had far worse design issues (being 16Bit for starters) that dragged it down,

Being a 16-bit o.s. doesn't imply that it's bad designed. In fact, Windows hadn't the bad design decisions which I previously reported for the Amiga o.s..

Of course, running on 8086/88 machines, which had no kernel & user-mode separation, it was possible to take full control of the machine, but that was related to this specific hardware platform. But just moving to 80286 and beyond, and things radically changed. With the APIs which essentially were the same.
Quote:
but 30 years of constant investment and development changed it into ....

..... a different pile of c###

Well, implementations changed a lot, but the previously defined APIs put a strong basis from which build the subsequent o.s. versions.

The interesting thing is that, even using the very old Win32 APIs as the basis, Microsoft had the chance to almost completely rewrite the o.s. implementation, starting with the NT family, and the (goodly written, following Microsoft development guidelines) applications... worked fine.
Quote:
Quote:

cdimauro wrote:
BTW, some Amiga o.s. libraries could have been put on disk to gain some ROM space,

Super limited RAM and no HD as standard put a stop to that idea.

Then imagine Windows 1.0, which ran on much lower specs: PCs with 256KB minimum of RAM were required, and there you had DOS + Windows (plus 8KB of ROM for the BIOS).
Quote:
Amiga was supposed to be a home-computer that doubled as a games-console (or the other way round depending who asked) and AmigaOS was just the best that could be done with the limits that put on.

Yes in terms of performances, but they traded security and abstraction for speed (and memory saving. No resource tracking at all implemented, for example), as I said before.

Maybe it was also a consequence of having little time to develop the o.s.. But whatever was the decision, they crippled the o.s..

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hth313 
Re: Why i left the Amiga
Posted on 21-Jan-2019 0:02:41
#136 ]
Regular Member
Joined: 29-May-2018
Posts: 159
From: Delta, Canada

@cdimauro

Quote:

cdimauro wrote:

Yes in terms of performances, but they traded security and abstraction for speed (and memory saving. No resource tracking at all implemented, for example), as I said before.

Maybe it was also a consequence of having little time to develop the o.s.. But whatever was the decision, they crippled the o.s..


It was a combination I believe. The initial DOS design had resource tracking, but lack of time and progress on that project made them go for that BCPL DOS.

Apart from that, the overall design traded a lot of things for performance. It was never meant to be a serious OS, it was essentially a home appliance.

While it is nice to have all the abstractions, I cannot help thinking about UNIX and its variants which despite having an appropriate OS interface, essentially had source level compatibility as you basically had to recompile everything for every new machine. While I severely dislike Windows (though Windows 8 has some real merits), it has always impressed me the level of binary compatibility Microsoft managed (ignoring dll hells and such, but that was later solved with assemblies).

One can always turn it around and say that by having source level compatibility more than binary, it does foster open source which is a big reason why UNIX (especially Linux) is so popular today.

(I am pulling the point here a bit. It is really not that bad for UNIX, as a major part of the reason is that it runs on basically anything and it is not possible to have binary compatibility in such situation.)

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bison 
Re: Why i left the Amiga
Posted on 21-Jan-2019 3:17:08
#137 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 18-Dec-2007
Posts: 2112
From: N-Space

@hth313

Quote:
One can always turn it around and say that by having source level compatibility more than binary, it does foster open source which is a big reason why UNIX (especially Linux) is so popular today.

I've thought about this in the past: I wonder if Amiga would have done better if they had had something like DOS's interrupt 0x21 interface in addition to the C interface that it has. It wouldn't have had to been an exact implementation, which would rule out simple recompilation, but if it was close it would have made it a lot easier to port software from DOS to AmigaOS. The way it was, porting from DOS to AmigaOS was close to starting from scratch, so a lot of software was never ported.

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

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cdimauro 
Re: Why i left the Amiga
Posted on 21-Jan-2019 6:05:53
#138 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 29-Oct-2012
Posts: 3621
From: Germany

@hth313 Quote:
hth313 wrote:
@cdimauro
Quote:
cdimauro wrote:

Yes in terms of performances, but they traded security and abstraction for speed (and memory saving. No resource tracking at all implemented, for example), as I said before.

Maybe it was also a consequence of having little time to develop the o.s.. But whatever was the decision, they crippled the o.s..

It was a combination I believe. The initial DOS design had resource tracking, but lack of time and progress on that project made them go for that BCPL DOS.

Unfortunately it wasn't a DOS/AmigaDOS-only issue: the Amiga o.s. lacks resource tracking everywhere.
Quote:
Apart from that, the overall design traded a lot of things for performance. It was never meant to be a serious OS, it was essentially a home appliance.

Right. And that's why I (and many people) ve appreciated it.
Quote:
While it is nice to have all the abstractions, I cannot help thinking about UNIX and its variants which despite having an appropriate OS interface, essentially had source level compatibility as you basically had to recompile everything for every new machine. While I severely dislike Windows (though Windows 8 has some real merits), it has always impressed me the level of binary compatibility Microsoft managed (ignoring dll hells and such, but that was later solved with assemblies).

Yup, and I've to say that I greatly prefer it: stable API/ABIs are a welcome feature for developers.

Another thing which I appreciate from Microsoft work, is the innovation that it brought in terms of API and ABIs. While Unix systems are essentially bound to the very old POSIX standard for the "common roots" and straggling reinventing the wheel for the non-common ones (audio, 2d graphic, 3d graphic, debugging, etc.), Microsoft had the chance to make research and introduce interesting novelties.

Just to give an example, think about threads: they came very late on Unixes, because they were strictly bound to the "process" concept ("processes everywhere"), and pthreads look like an horrible patch on top. On the contrary, Microsoft introduced processes, threads, and even fibers in a very simple and smart way, which for me resemble the way that Amiga o.s. innovated on this field.

I hope that I've transmitted the idea.
Quote:
One can always turn it around and say that by having source level compatibility more than binary, it does foster open source which is a big reason why UNIX (especially Linux) is so popular today.

Source level compatibility is *required* on Linux, because they like to change APIs/ABIs. That's really discouraging and disappointing for developers, that have to keep an eye not only to their work, but also how the kernel and other important components evolve during the time.
Quote:
(I am pulling the point here a bit. It is really not that bad for UNIX, as a major part of the reason is that it runs on basically anything and it is not possible to have binary compatibility in such situation.)

IMO source-level compatibility isn't required for Unixes: that's something which is absolutely needed for Linux, as they started and continued developing such o.s..

You can also have binary-compatibility (except for different CPUs, of course) on o.ses. which aren't Unix: Windows NT (and successors) is a clear example of an o.s. which ran/run on very different platforms while keeping overall API compatibility, and per-platform ABI compatibility.

As you said, not without issues: the DLL hell that you mentioned is a clear example. Yes, assemblies have solved it, but introduced another problem: the system is polluted with different versions for the same assembly.
Here I really like the Amiga o.s. concept / strong basis (which pervades the whole o.s.): one library (and ONE interface) to dominate them all.

@bison Quote:
bison wrote:
@hth313

Quote:
One can always turn it around and say that by having source level compatibility more than binary, it does foster open source which is a big reason why UNIX (especially Linux) is so popular today.

I've thought about this in the past: I wonder if Amiga would have done better if they had had something like DOS's interrupt 0x21 interface in addition to the C interface that it has. It wouldn't have had to been an exact implementation, which would rule out simple recompilation, but if it was close it would have made it a lot easier to port software from DOS to AmigaOS. The way it was, porting from DOS to AmigaOS was close to starting from scratch, so a lot of software was never ported.

IMO it was better to delegate it to an external library/lib, like it happened (unfortunately too late) with POSIX.

The Amiga o.s. was good as it was defined with its novel APIs and concepts. Some new, fresh air in the o.ses panorama.

Except for the bad design decision, which unfortunately crippled it.

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