@ferrels

Greece is considered by Europeans as south Europe. Indeed, it's on the east part of Europe but it is not considered as making part of East Europe.

East European countries describe those that were under control of USSR formerly.

It's not insulting your intelligence, it's just that I don't think you really know what you are talking about regarding where WE live.

For the rest, everything is your own opinion and many (yes, many, even a lot BTW) don't share your point of view.

_________________
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AmigaONE X1000, 2GB, Sapphire Radeon HD 7700
FPGA Replay + DB 68060 at 85Mhz

@K-L



Quote:

@ferrels Greece is considered by Europeans as south Europe. Indeed, it's on the east part of Europe but it is not considered as making part of East Europe. East European countries describe those that were under control of USSR formerly. It's not insulting your intelligence, it's just that I don't think you really know what you are talking about regarding where WE live. For the rest, everything is your own opinion and many (yes, many, even a lot BTW) don't share your point of view.

Please don't make the mistake of assuming that I value your opinions or care if you share my viewpoints. I and many of my German colleagues view Greece as eastern and in many ways almost middle-eastern. I was not implying that it was formerly under the control of the USSR or any other former eastern bloc country.

@ferrels

I don't make any mistake. I was just pointing the fact that you can come everyday (ad nauseaum) telling us what you think, you must just be aware that many of us don't care at all (you are just making a lot of noise but well ... freedom of speech).

And the funniest part : you will tell Europeans (from Arizona if you location is right) how they must describe themselves ? You are a funny guy but I think you should stick with America Fisrt for the moment.

BTW, regarding you German colleagues (living in the US ?) I think they are just making fool of you (and I think they are righ to do so since you seem to believe anything people tell you).

_________________
PowerMac G5 2,7Ghz - 2GB - Radeon 9650 - MorphOS 3.14
AmigaONE X1000, 2GB, Sapphire Radeon HD 7700
FPGA Replay + DB 68060 at 85Mhz

@ferrels

Quote:

ferrels wrote: @K-L from post #129 Quote: , so most Germans do consider Greece to be eastern European.....

that is interesting, just out of curiosity I would like to see which poll you do base your hypothesis on..
Quote:

Quote: @ferrels Greece is considered by Europeans as south Europe. Indeed, it's on the east part of Europe but it is not considered as making part of East Europe. East European countries describe those that were under control of USSR formerly. It's not insulting your intelligence, it's just that I don't think you really know what you are talking about regarding where WE live. For the rest, everything is your own opinion and many (yes, many, even a lot BTW) don't share your point of view. Please don't make the mistake of assuming that I value your opinions or care if you share my viewpoints. I and many of my German colleagues view Greece as eastern and in many ways almost middle-eastern. I was not implying that it was formerly under the control of the USSR or any other former eastern bloc country.

I know you probably don't care about my opinion as well, and to clarify I do not feel offended if you don't.
Reading what you wrote I suppose you base what you wrote on post #120 on the opinion of your colleagues.
I just asked around my german colleagues in the office and to them too, as @K-L wrote, Greece is considered south Europe while eastern European countries are those formerly being part of the URSS.

I think we can deduce that we don't know what Germans think.

edit: corrected eastern/western

Last edited by Amigo1 on 06-Feb-2019 at 08:39 AM.

@K-L

Quote:

@ferrels I don't make any mistake. I was just pointing the fact that you can come everyday (ad nauseaum) telling us what you think, you must just be aware that many of us don't care at all (you are just making a lot of noise but well ... freedom of speech). And the funniest part : you will tell Europeans (from Arizona if you location is right) how they must describe themselves ? You are a funny guy but I think you should stick with America Fisrt for the moment. BTW, regarding you German colleagues (living in the US ?) I think they are just making fool of you (and I think they are righ to do so since you seem to believe anything people tell you).

Once again we have someone here who cannot support his position, so he resorts to personal insults and talking about infringement of free speech. Priceless. What do any of your comments have to do with the poll, CPU architecture of interest for AmigaOS, and its future and how you plan to make the Amiga a player once again in the marketplace? All I hear from you are crickets and insults.

I'm not telling anyone living in Europe how to describe themselves. They can do that however they see fit. I'm describing how they appear to me, a German guy who happens to be living in Arizona at the moment. And when I return to Germany they will still appear the same to me....and to many of my German friends and family as well.

@Amigo1


You are correct in that I don't care about your opinion or if you're offended or not. Apparently you aren't capable of adding anything constructive to this thread so I'll continue ignoring you from here on out.


Quote:

while western European countries are those formerly being part of the URSS

You obviously don't even have your east and west figured out either......I don't know of a single western European country that was formerly a part of the URSS or USSR, or whatever you mean.

@ferrels

I answered this poll at the beginning (if your were not so selfish, you would have seen my position regarding POWER architecture). And the only thing I critic is you behaviour (and I did not see any insult in my comments).

And finally, European countries and "how theay appear to you" is the right explanation indeed. And I'm pretty sure I would make some mistakes trying to describe the 51 US countries.

_________________
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AmigaONE X1000, 2GB, Sapphire Radeon HD 7700
FPGA Replay + DB 68060 at 85Mhz

@ferrels

Thanks for caring enough to point out my typo.

Thanks for making it evident that you are in a really bad mood and can not control your temper.

You should not lesson other people about their behaviour if you don't do better.

Trevor Dick by his own admission makes no money selling NG hardware and the Tabor is 3 years behind schedule and will likely never be available.

Hyperion isn't making any money from OS4 or OS3.1.4 sales, and Gunnar, the only other guy who is delivering Amiga related hardware that can run an Amiga OS also admits that the Amiga is a dead platform. See: Link

So I'm waiting to hear from all the collective genius who frequent this thread about their plan to revive the Amiga, bring it to the market place, and turn a profit that will ensure its ability to sustain new hardware and software development. So far, I've only heard from people who want to argue geography, sling personal insults, or that the Amiga isn't really dead.....

Commercial software development stopped years ago.

Not a single person with a real business plan, or any other kind of plan for that matter has shown their face here....And I'm sorry, but hope is not a plan. I'm serious about hearing some real plans, not hopes, wishes, insults, geography lessons, or opinions. I'd like to see some facts, figures, sales research or anything factual that would support the insertion of Amigas (NG or FPGA based) into the current market. A hardware plan would be a good start.

So by market standards, not just MY standards, the Amiga is currently dead. I hear lots of revival talk, but nothing of substance and even more talk about how the Amiga will somehow take the world by storm again if some "small detail" were overcome.

Until there are enough sales of a new system to sustain new hardware and software development, I will continue to assert that the Amiga is a dead platform.

I've been waiting for such a plan since Commodore folded in 1992 and I'm betting that I'll still be waiting in 2032 for a plan if what I see here is any indication of the future.

@ferrels

How would you define "revival" here?

If you define "revival" as revival in real world terms you must get a platform with millions of users, that is completely unrealistic I agree

If you define it as a growing retro platform attracting new users (who are propably mostly former amiga user) then it is possible

For me most promising developments is vampire including standalone devices and Aros port to Raspberry

I cannot say much about MorphOS because we all do not know what is happening there right now and AmigaOS development obviously has stalled

A big business plan for revival? To do that you need real economic interest but then why use amiga for that when there are plenty of modern alternatives today.

Last edited by OlafS25 on 06-Feb-2019 at 09:51 AM.
Last edited by OlafS25 on 06-Feb-2019 at 09:50 AM.

@ferrels

By trying hard to insult me, you also insulted Greeks, Eastern Europeans, Europeans, Germans, Americans, plus a large portion of the Amiga community, users, developers, manufacturers, shops, forums.

I don't see any valid argument that you make; just personal interpretations of terms and wishful thinking that Amiga is/must be/must remain dead (or "retro"). We are talking about the value and importance of ecological niche (at least to us) and you put words in our mouths that we want to compete with Microsoft and Apple in sales figures.

In niche markets and communities, public discussion can be used for brainstorming and even kickstarting or, at worst, for fun. You provide neither, just attacks. We don't need any lessons from you.

@ Tread.

Yawn Yawn and Yawn !

PS: I voted Power.


Wol.

_________________
It is my conviction that killing under the cloak of war is nothing but an act of murder.~Albert Einstein

@Thread

The accusations of manipulation on the poll gave me some good laughs. It must gave many people here (that confuse their oppinions with the ones from the silent community) some punchy reality checks. Cheers!

Quote:

vision wrote: @Thread It must gave many people here (that confuse their oppinions with the ones from the silent community) some punchy reality checks. Cheers!

Yep. A whole 538 votes, over half of which are apparently from people who don't even want an Amiga. On a ****y website with the worst forum software I have used in years.

This poll was never going to represent the opinions of the community - silent or otherwise. Props to matthey for trying though, at least we got to hear some individual opinions - even if they weren't from the 'silent community'.

Guys I don't know what's the matter with you. I've done my share of bashing based on delusional approaches (something no one knows about ) only it had nothing to do with nationalities. Lets leave those out of this seeing as we come from all over. Maybe one day I will convey to you what it means being a lonely Amigan where I come from (which also has a relation to the cpu which became so dominant in consumerist computing).

The talk about efficiency and smartphones pretty much reminds me of other discussions like that here - one sided and one-dimensional. Take Java for instance (and we had that discussion only some, like always, chose not to listen) - its abstraction basis could be considered efficient and inefficient at the same time. If it's abstract then the interface is simple and you don't have to get too many resources in order of communicating and writing drivers. On the other hand, it doesn't "touch metal" and you don't really get an optimized ver of different appliances.

This also reminds of a discussion I had with my dad who is an audiophile and for him you can never get any audio quality out of Apple devices. That might be true, while I explained to him that for those who need those sounds and music while they're on their morning run - that's what's important. That's quality (and my dad exercises and walks athletically on a daily basis).

Saying that Amiga wasn't anything special is ignorant. The thing is, when you look at the history of computing the Amiga revolution was circumvented by various factors. In 2019 one needs to learn those factors.

For instance, in 1982 when everyone was looking for the next power, Amiga downplayed its cpu and introduced its harmonic chips working together in specific tasks while contributing to the system as a whole. Fast forward to 2019 and everything is software and sophisticated algorithms and shaders working on blunt power behind some sort of abstraction. That sophistication may or may not need to "touch metal", aka vulkan and mantle from AMD, depends on various factors.

So the conclusion might be that one needs to go only for a blunt power. That is the moment when you go outside that small thought bubble and look at all of those smart devices - the situation is fundamently different than in 1982 (when I was born). Back then you didn't have cpus anywhere not called an arcade and now you have them everywhere and they don't need to be the end all be all. I once read an urban legend on how the cell processor was so powerful they could join a couple of those and launch rockets or something so they had to change it. Now you have those in tvs and phones and streamers and you know that is only the beginning.

Maybe the thing is tapping into that? Maybe the so called "next cpus" is what's there between the cpus (not to mention knowing what you need something for like a phone doing various tasks fulfilling needs in a naturalistic way and then figuring out the efficiency)?

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@Wol
Yawn indeed, standard crap posting about nothing...

And what's wrong with an 6502 Amiga? Going back to the Atari 8bit roots?!? *quickly runs towards the exit*

Quote:

ferrels wrote: Then I suggest you get started working and quit all the talk. So far the only person who has taken the initiative and created anything of interest in the Amiga community for quite some time is Gunnar with his Vampire/Apollo core, while you and his other detractors continually post comments about how you all can do a better job or that Gunnar needs to make changes to improve his product. I'm weary of all the talk. Put up, or please shut up.

Ever here of Jens Kuenzer, Christopher "ceaich" Hoehne or Shawn Tan Ser Ngiap? Did you think Gunnar created the Apollo core from nothing? Ever here of Thomas Hirsch? Did you think Gunnar created SAGA from nothing?

Are you sure other team members did not help? I have an edited sizedecodes.vhd sitting on my drive with fixes from me. There are likely some design ideas from me which are still in the core as well. For example, I worked very hard to push for fast (implemented in hardware) bitfield instructions where Gunnar wanted to trap them.

Quote:

And again, we're not talking about cars, SUV's or clothing. We're talking about tech and the Amiga offers nothing that current consumers need or want. Classic Amigas, and PPC / NG Amigas, including the Vampire, are nothing more than retro platforms for die-hard hobbyists. When people shop for tech, they don't think Amiga. Amiga has been dead for years and you're as delusional as the rest if you think that someday soon we could see Amigas on retail store shelves once again by migrating to a new CPU architecture.

How about cell phones then? How many brands and models are there? They do mostly have ARM CPUs but that is because x86/x86_64 CPUs are not as energy efficient as 68k CPUs and ARM is very good at marketing and licensing their products.

The Amiga doesn't have any useful or competitive products and has practically no marketing or support. The 68k Amiga is adequate for some embedded use even with an FPGA CPU core today. There are embedded applications where footprint and response time are more important than memory protection and security. The embedded market is so large that a tiny sliver of the pie is enough for a healthy business.

Let's look at the history of ARM.

http://www.reds.ch/share/cours/ReCo/documents/TheHistoryOfTheArmArchitecture.pdf

"However, it’s interesting to note that the ARM’s architectural fate was sealed accidentally. While most of the RISC processor vendors were designing relatively huge chips (SPARC RISC, Intel i860, AMD 29000, etc.), ARM opted to develop a small-scale processor."

ARM/Acorn saw an opportunity to make hardware, went small and they survived. Big RISC architectures like Alpha, PA-RISC, PowerPC, MIPS, SPARC, m88k, Intel i860, AMD 29000 went big and are dead or dieing. I wanted to go small.

"In the 1980s, Silicon Valley spawned some new businesses, christened fab-less companies, which used subcontract manufacturing from Japan and Taiwan. In the 1990s a new model emerged with small, innovative companies creating IP which was then designed into products by other companies, whom subsequently sold and marketed the products – a model that ARM pioneered."

ARM was also an early pioneer in the SoC. I wanted to go fabless and create an SoC.

"Networking within the industry was crucial in infecting enthusiastic support for ARM’s products and in gaining new licensing deals. These licensing deals also led to new opportunities for the development of the RISC architecture. ARM’s relatively small size and dynamic culture gave it a response-time advantage in product development, an important factor in such a fast moving industry."

I "networked" with embedded businesses and found potential "new opportunities".

"As with most start-up’s, ARM’s primary goal was to get the first product out; in this case, it was the ARM610, designed specifically for Apple. This product included full 32-bit addressing and endian-ness support, one of many changes requested by Apple in order to use the ARM processor in its planned products. An improved video controller, VIDC20, was also developed as well as a floating-point processor. Apple’s goal was to use the IP product within a hand-held personal organizer processor. The processor became known as ARM600, from which the 20 MHz ARM610 used in the Newton was later derived."

The Apple Newton wasn't so popular but it led to later SoCs for the iPod, iPad and iPhone. I listened to what other businesses wanted and tried to support their requirements.

The 68k sold over 12 times the number of 32 bit CPUs into the embedded market in 1996 but look what happened when Motorola decided to replace the 68k with PPC in embedded.

Sales of 32 bit embedded CPUs
1996 - ARM 4.2 million, 68k 53.6 million, PPC 0.5 million

Sales of chips containing ARM cores
1997 - ARM 9 million
1998 - ARM 51 million
1999 - ARM 175 million
2000 - ARM 367 million
2001 - ARM 420 million
2002 - ARM 456 million
2003 - ARM 782 million
2004 - ARM 1.3 billion
2005 - ARM 1.7 billion
2006 - ARM 2.4 billion
2007 - ARM 2.9 billion
2008 - ARM 4.0 billion
2009 - ARM 3.9 billion
2010 - ARM 6.1 billion
2011 - ARM 7.9 billion
2012 - ARM 8.7 billion
2013 - ARM 10 billion
2014 - ARM 12 billion
2015 - ARM 15 billion

I know I'm crazy for wanting to emulate what ARM did and compete with the architecture which dominated ARM. I might just be crazy enough to be successful but I'm not delusional. It would take investment, leadership, networking and team work I have not seen in the Amiga market so far.

Quote:

ferrels wrote: Hyperion isn't making any money from OS4 or OS3.1.4 sales, and Gunnar, the only other guy who is delivering Amiga related hardware that can run an Amiga OS also admits that the Amiga is a dead platform.

Timothy de Groote said Hyperion isn't getting rich off AmigaOS 3.1.4 68k. He didn't say they weren't making money off it. I tend to believe the rumor that it has done quite well. Mike Battista could come out well ahead if he is awarded legal costs from Hyperion too.

Quote:

So I'm waiting to hear from all the collective genius who frequent this thread about their plan to revive the Amiga, bring it to the market place, and turn a profit that will ensure its ability to sustain new hardware and software development. So far, I've only heard from people who want to argue geography, sling personal insults, or that the Amiga isn't really dead..... Commercial software development stopped years ago. Not a single person with a real business plan, or any other kind of plan for that matter has shown their face here....And I'm sorry, but hope is not a plan. I'm serious about hearing some real plans, not hopes, wishes, insults, geography lessons, or opinions. I'd like to see some facts, figures, sales research or anything factual that would support the insertion of Amigas (NG or FPGA based) into the current market. A hardware plan would be a good start.

I think hardware has to be part of the plan.

Proposal

Create a 4 to 8 core 68k SoC ASIC 500MHz-1500MHz. Partner with a high production embedded partner to reduce per unit cost to a fraction of that of an FPGA used in the Vampire. Produce with underutilized fabs using older die sizes to reduce cost per unit. Older die size and extra cores in case of defects increases yields.

68k SoC ASIC 500MHz-1500MHz (CPU, Amiga custom chips, RTG, I/O, 3D?)
1 core used for OSD and management
1 or more cores used for AmigaOS (more than one would require a new AmigaOS with SMP)
1 or more cores used for embedded or retro use with a small FPGA
Small FPGA can be reset independently of the CPU cores and new logic loaded. The logic could be a custom chip set for retro use (Atari ST, Sega Genesis, NeoGeo, x68000, etc.), custom FPGA logic for embedded use with IO pins connected externally or a custom codec for an OS.

Memory: 512MiB-1GiB of memory
I/O: HDMI/DVI, USB, ethernet, GPIO, memory card drives, maybe SATA
Markets: retro, toy, hobbyist, embedded, education
Cost: $50-$100 U.S.

The hardware would be somewhat like a Raspberry Pi but would have the huge library of 68k software and especially games from the start. The AmigaOS operating concurrently with another OS (user can switch displays) and/or the FPGA should be easy to use, should feel like virtualization and could take advantage of multiple cores without SMP. I would try to keep the base model price low to get people hooked and expand the user base. Upgraded models would have higher profits margins.

@matthey

Quote:

Mike Battista could come out well ahead if he is awarded legal costs from Hyperion too.

Who is Mike Battista?

Quote:

Rob wrote: Who is Mike Battista?

Mike Battilana of Cloanto. Sorry, I butchered his name. Editing my post doesn't work right either.

@matthey

With respect mate, you're kinda doing the same thing some others here are doing and that (for the sake of the argument) combining tech with biz and markets and creating a mess.

Your figures about sales are impressive in the sense of sustainability (and for that their biz model should be commended). On that same note, you HAVE to know that ARM got its big brake because of developments which didn't stem from ARM. On one hand you can say they made themselves ready like an NBA team is clearing enough space to sign a player (only the opposite - they were available to get picked). You really can't compare ARM prior to smart phones and smart, small and functional devices (DuneHD for instance) to ARM at its current state. 68k and PPC were out there and they got tested as feasible mainstream processors. A whole infrastructure was built there around those cores so in the cultural sense they were the "soc" of an entire habitat. Nowadays that can happen if you get a multinational corp like M$ to decide it no longer wants to be attached to Intel (the sad irony).

If he's in any relation to Dave Batista maybe we can get him as an investor by declaring Amiga is the real life Blade Runner tech

Last edited by Srtest on 06-Feb-2019 at 10:28 PM.
Last edited by Srtest on 06-Feb-2019 at 10:28 PM.