@matthey @kolla

The development of the commands was borne from commercial necessity.

As you may know we have sold for nearly two decades our prepped and formatted A4000, A1200 and A600 hard drives to Classic customers. They contain our OS-Install program which when booted for the first time prompts customers to insert their OS floppy disks in. It then proceeds to setup the hard drive for the customer taking the sting out of installing a hard drive for the first time.

Many customers have lost or have damaged OS disks after so many years. It is much nicer to have a self booting hard drive so over the years we have developed from scratch the commands we required.

The commands are written in VBCC for both Next Gen and Classic. The Next Gen commands therefore share the same code base as the Classic commands so they share economies of scale in development cost. They may well vary from other commands of the same name but we are adding as much compatibility as possible and enriching the functionality.

One major advantage of having the same code base is that they behave the same way and have the same feature set across platforms from the lowly Commodore-Amiga 600 to A-EON's X5000.

Going forward in the longer term we believe this give better customer service because we are free to quickly update the system software whenever bug fixes or features are required. It will make us more agile to our customers needs.


Quote:

ridiculous that they cannot just join the “official” developer effort

It is not possible to invest and give free development to a third-party product . This is problematic when there will be no share of the commercial return for us to mitigate the development costs. This is our primary source of employment: would you work for free? Of course when you work on someone else code it is also likely that your code will become part of their wider work. Then there is a need to pay a licence fee when it is time to sell it to a customer. There are also problems with ongoing court cases where parties are legally debating software ownership rights.

Given those problems it is best to work on an independent code base.

Last edited by amigakit on 12-May-2021 at 12:53 PM.
Last edited by amigakit on 12-May-2021 at 12:31 PM.

_________________
Amiga Kit Amiga Store
Links: www.amigakit.com | New Products | A600GS

IIRC ARP the AmigaDOS Replacement Project was integrated in AmigaOS 2.0. I was using it before it was integrated in the OS I don’t remember it being a problem back then.

@amigakit

Thank you for your explanations and all that you do for the community

_________________
Tygre
Scientific Progress Goes Boing!

So glad I don't use OS4 and the like. Doesn't have the same spirit as the Commodore OS and hardware. Just a cheap imitation on newer overpriced machines. No thanks. Imagine an OS "owner" and a 3rd party developer jossling to write the same file to a mutual customer's hard drive and the customer experience will differ depending on who's update they installed last? All is normal in Amiga land. I will stick with OS3.1 and largely software written in the 80s and 90s for the most part. If I need anything modern I will use a PC.

_________________
Amiga A1200, 3.1 ROMs, Blizzard 1230 MKIV 64MB & FPU, 4GB DoM SSD, Workbench 3.1

amigakit Quote:

The development of the commands was borne from commercial necessity.

Hyperion interpreted the 2009 settlement agreement to mean they can develop and sell AmigaOS 3.1 for any Amiga. They also had to acquire the source code to AmigaOS 3.1 as Amiga Inc. did not provide it. Assuming A-Eon was given the same sub-licensed rights as Hyperion has and that AmigaKit could obtain them being friendly to A-Eon, are you sure you can't acquire AmigaOS 3.1 sources and use them for the boot installer? Does AmigaKit have a different interpretation than Hyperion of the rights granted by the 2009 Settlement Agreement that would not allow this?

CBM licensed boot and installer modules for a nominal fee back in the day. It is a large effort and expense to develop duplicate modules? Did AmigaKit try to license these modules from Amiga Inc., Cloanto or Hyperion? Were AROS 68k modules not compatible enough to work?

amigakit Quote:

As you may know we have sold for nearly two decades our prepped and formatted A4000, A1200 and A600 hard drives to Classic customers. They contain our OS-Install program which when booted for the first time prompts customers to insert their OS floppy disks in. It then proceeds to setup the hard drive for the customer taking the sting out of installing a hard drive for the first time. Many customers have lost or have damaged OS disks after so many years. It is much nicer to have a self booting hard drive so over the years we have developed from scratch the commands we required.

It is a nice service to provide prepped drives for Amiga users. If so many customers have lost or damaged disks then they still may not be able to install the full AmigaOS. It would be possible to install the whole AmigaOS for registered users with better cooperation and organization.

amigakit Quote:

The commands are written in VBCC for both Next Gen and Classic. The Next Gen commands therefore share the same code base as the Classic commands so they share economies of scale in development cost. They may well vary from other commands of the same name but we are adding as much compatibility as possible and enriching the functionality. One major advantage of having the same code base is that they behave the same way and have the same feature set across platforms from the lowly Commodore-Amiga 600 to A-EON's X5000. Going forward in the longer term we believe this give better customer service because we are free to quickly update the system software whenever bug fixes or features are required. It will make us more agile to our customers needs.

It is interesting that AmigaOS 3 developers are using SAS/C, AmigaOS 4 developers are using GCC and the Enhancer Software developers are using VBCC. VBCC does bridge some of the gap between the Amiga flavors but needs some work to reach the potential it has and become the preferred Amiga compiler like SAS/C was. It is difficult to mature in such a small market with little motivation for what is seen as a dying target. Dr. Barthelmann has done a good job of fixing bugs thanks to Frank Wille but the 68k backend code generation quality is disappointing and hasn't improved in many years.

Developing for both the 68k AmigaOS 3 and PPC AmigaOS 4 at the same time where possible does seem smart financially. I bet Hyperion wishes they had developed AmigaOS 4 for both instead of abandoning the AmigaOS 68k. A larger Amiga market may have allowed AmigaOS 4 development to continue. There are areas where sharing development targets may not be good. For example, the AmigaOS 4 SLAB memory allocator is very wasteful of memory (not just the poor PPC code density) and not appropriate for low memory systems.

amigakit Quote:

It is not possible to invest and give free development to a third-party product . This is problematic when there will be no share of the commercial return for us to mitigate the development costs. This is our primary source of employment: would you work for free? Of course when you work on someone else code it is also likely that your code will become part of their wider work. Then there is a need to pay a licence fee when it is time to sell it to a customer. There are also problems with ongoing court cases where parties are legally debating software ownership rights. Given those problems it is best to work on an independent code base.

Businesses do contribute for free to open source development because they can benefit financially from the improved software and expanded market in related sales and services. Think of the OS development as a loss leader for other products and services. Some estimates of Linux related markets are in the billions of U.S. dollars depending on what is included. There is a development cost savings too. The Debian 4.0 distribution contained close to 283 million source lines of code, and a study estimated that it would have required about seventy three thousand man-years and cost US $8.84 billion (in 2021 dollars) to develop by conventional means. That is the competition that is taking out small niche OSs and Linux can't even compete with Windows on the desktop where AmigaOS 4 is trying to compete with vastly inferior features. Amiga businesses are going to have to think outside the box if the Amiga is going to survive.

@matthey Quote:

matthey wrote: I don't understand why AmigaKit is so eager to enter the AmigaOS 4 development market. Hyperion exited AmigaOS 4 development because it was not profitable and AmigaOS 4 is only available for the poorly selling and no longer developed PPC architecture. If $50 U.S. in profit per non-Amiga labeled PPC hardware could be made from AmigaOS related development and there are only 1000 non-Amiga labeled PPC hardwares sold per year then this would be at most $50,000 which is only enough to pay one developer.

Maybe not even a junior engineer (e.g.: fresh from university) can be payed like that.
Quote:

In reality, not even 1000 non-Amiga PPC hardwares are being sold per year. Considering how poorly AmigaOS 4 competes on the desktop and the decline of PPC, expect the situation to get worse. Why Hyperion is not eager to unload AmigaOS 4 to an over eager AmigaKit I don't know. AmigaOS 3 68k is a better situation. It starts out as a bigger market, lower end hardware can be made cheaper for it and AmigaOS 3 68k is more competitive for retro gaming, hobbyist and embedded markets.

That's why AmigaOS 3.1.4 sold so much, and Vampire is selling well too.

AFAIR also AmigaKit said here some time ago that they are getting salaries only thanks to "classic", because "NG" isn't profitable.
Quote:

Despite this, AmigaOS 4 PPC is the great hope and focus when there is practically zero chance of success on the desktop.

Well, people still likes to move the windows on Workbench.
PowerPC machines are the biggest hardware dongle to run a software that I remember since the time of the VideoToaster for running Lightwave... But at least Lightwave was useful.

@amigakit: I agree with Matt. Why haven't you explored AROS instead of reinventing the wheel? It's open, it's free, the license isn't even viral like GPL (with APL you just give back the changes you made: nothing else is affected).

However if the situation is like what you described, where you had to rewrite part of the system software because Hyperion can't/won't do it, then you should seriously think about changing your business to pay the bills, because the boat is sinking...

I really don’t see what selling prepared hard drives have to do with replacing OS components - you can easily prefix your command names with ak_ or whatever and avoid collision with existing OS commands… but whatever, I will not stand in the way if you insist on shooting yourself in the feet.

_________________
B5D6A1D019D5D45BCC56F4782AC220D8B3E2A6CC

@kolla

Indeed there's no reason to name them as same present in OS components.
Anyway I appreciate Amigakit reply tryng to explain their point of view, sadly it's like climbing on the mirrors.

Some other thinks OS3 is better way to pursuit than OS4, some other call PowerPC cpu as a 'dongle'.
It's incredible how my vison is completely different from others.
IMHO OS4 is one of best way to evolve basic functions, the same is for MOS or AROS.
While PowerPC is many times faster than any 68k and let us to use AmigaNG systems in something useful for today standards.

My2cents.

_________________
Pegasos II G4@1GHz 2GB Radeon 9250 256MB
AmigaOS4.1 fe - MorphOS - Debian 9 Jessie

@Fl@sh

Quote:

While PowerPC is many times faster than any 68k and let us to use AmigaNG systems in something useful for today standards.

And yet the PPC hardware is harder to get hold of than the in itself rare 68060 CPU!

Last edited by BigD on 13-May-2021 at 10:46 AM.

_________________
"Art challenges technology. Technology inspires the art."
John Lasseter, Co-Founder of Pixar Animation Studios

@BigD

I see no difference there, you stand in queue to get Vampire, you stand in queue to get Sam460, I’m sure if there is queue for AmigaONE-X5000 they will build more, the money drain A1222 might be bad idea, but there are options, at least.

I agree that 68060 Is stupid, to build anything around, its also silly to expect market to grow if you’re making an accelerator for limited supply of working Amiga computers. The complicated design of the Amiga makes only FPGA bases system economical.

but even if you had super-fast compatible Amiga, at good price point, you have a problem convince anyone to replace the super safe Linux / Windows OS, with hackable OS with no security, beyond trust. There are not really good options if you like to scale this up. Maybe there is marked int in embedded space, but you already have Linux, do you need AmigaOS?

_________________
http://lifeofliveforit.blogspot.no/
Facebook::LiveForIt Software for AmigaOS

cdimauro Quote:

@amigakit: I agree with Matt. Why haven't you explored AROS instead of reinventing the wheel? It's open, it's free, the license isn't even viral like GPL (with APL you just give back the changes you made: nothing else is affected).

Maybe AmigaKit did explore AROS and it didn't meet their requirements for some reason like lack of compatibility? Maybe AmigaKit using and supporting open source AROS would have given some motivation to Hyperion to develop their closed source AmigaOS 4 before it is replaced. Is it ironic that the GCC and VBCC compilers used for AmigaOS 4 and the Enhancer Software are open source yet Hyperion and AmigaKit do not seem to understand the advantages of open source? VBCC has the sources available which has been beneficial to that project yet the copyrights remain in place and distribution rights are specified making it difficult to fork and allowing Dr. Volker Barthelmann to retain control of the project. It is free to use for the Amiga due to Frank Wille providing vasm and vlink for the project. An OS being open source is very important in some markets like embedded markets. Windows breaks all the rules on the desktop remaining closed source and making money from selling new OS versions but it has a monopoly. Most of the competition is open source and giving away the OS yet can't gain market share. The way for an OS to gain market share is to be installed on hardware and there needs to be enough hardware sold to spread out development costs and attract developers.

cdimauro Quote:

However if the situation is like what you described, where you had to rewrite part of the system software because Hyperion can't/won't do it, then you should seriously think about changing your business to pay the bills, because the boat is sinking...

AmigaKit has revenue from their shop as well as their software development. They could break even on software development and still make money on product sales which may increase due to the software development (similar to the benefit to sales from open source software). It looks like they are working to become less dependent on Hyperion or PPC Amiga related sales too. The Amiga boat is still sinking because of lack of new hardware with a good price performance ratio but AmigaKit could still have a profitable business for now.

Last edited by matthey on 13-May-2021 at 08:50 PM.

NutsAboutAmiga Quote:

I agree that 68060 Is stupid, to build anything around, its also silly to expect market to grow if you’re making an accelerator for limited supply of working Amiga computers. The complicated design of the Amiga makes only FPGA bases system economical.

The "complicated design of the Amiga" is actually simple and minimal logic by today's computing standards. The original Amiga 68k and custom chip logic would fit in something like a $10 U.S. FPGA today. The same logic in a mass produced ASIC would cost less than $1 to produce. Even a 68060 equivalent CPU with AGA, RTG and other enhancements wouldn't be much more than that in a mass produced ASIC and could be higher performance due to process improvements.

NutsAboutAmiga Quote:

but even if you had super-fast compatible Amiga, at good price point, you have a problem convince anyone to replace the super safe Linux / Windows OS, with hackable OS with no security, beyond trust. There are not really good options if you like to scale this up. Maybe there is marked int in embedded space, but you already have Linux, do you need AmigaOS?

Is Linux that great for embedded use?

http://freesoftwaremagazine.com/articles/linux_performance_linux_slow_bloated/

The most popular embedded alternative OS to Linux is FreeRTOS.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FreeRTOS

The following features resemble the AmigaOS.

microkernel
preemptive multitasking
modular
customizable
written mostly in C

It is open source and supports many architectures but the latter is not a problem if cheap hardware which defines an embedded form factor like the Raspberry Pi and Arduino did is available. The 68k AmigaOS would be nice because it provides a standard system with a lot of software available by embedded market standards, especially for such a small memory footprint. As a bonus, the 68k AmigaOS has hobbyist and retro appeal, especially with games which the Raspberry Pi and Arduino never had when introduced.

Every thread mentioning Hyperion, the same discussion from the same group of people rehashing the same arguments over and over and over and over and over and over and over....

Every. Single. Time.

-- eliyahu

_________________
"Physical reality is consistent with universal laws. When the laws do not operate, there is no reality. All of this is unreal."

Here's a little mini update. I set the timezone and correct clock time to the millisecond on the OS 4.1 clock app. Stay tuned tomorrow for another exciting mini update.

_________________
Sent from my Quantum Computer.

@BigD

PPC hardware is super easy to get hold of, but it has been decided that OS4 shall not be allowed to run on such easily available hardware.

_________________
B5D6A1D019D5D45BCC56F4782AC220D8B3E2A6CC

@matthey

Which OS that is most useful for an embedded device depends entirely on what task that device is supposed to do - RT is certainly not always a must and Linux more often than not is the OS that runs best and is most featured. Btw, you keep bringing up real-time capabilities, but… why? AmigaOs is nowhere near being an RTOS.

_________________
B5D6A1D019D5D45BCC56F4782AC220D8B3E2A6CC

@kas1e

Updated timesync.library using AmiUpdate.



---
redfox

kolla Quote:

Which OS that is most useful for an embedded device depends entirely on what task that device is supposed to do - RT is certainly not always a must and Linux more often than not is the OS that runs best and is most featured. Btw, you keep bringing up real-time capabilities, but… why? AmigaOs is nowhere near being an RTOS.

The RTOS can be slimmed down more than the AmigaOS but the AmigaOS has most of the same basic features when a robust but minimal system is configured. The RTOS is more configurable for lower end hardware while the AmigaOS has more standard features which makes a better software development target. Linux lacked the features of RTOS wanted for embedded use but was heavily patched to better support them. Linux doing embedded is like the AmigaOS doing desktop. It can be done with enough effort but is still not optimal. Embedded Linux is more about the software and support rather than being a perfect OS for embedded use.

wiki Quote:

The advantages of embedded Linux over proprietary embedded operating systems include multiple suppliers for software, development and support; no royalties or licensing fees; a stable kernel; the ability to read, modify and redistribute the source code. The technical disadvantages include a comparatively large memory footprint (kernel and root filesystem); complexities of user mode and kernel mode memory access, and a complex device drivers framework.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_on_embedded_systems

The AmigaOS was a good enough embedded OS going back to CBM days. The Amiga hardware and AmigaOS together were used for several embedded systems from medical devices to Toasters even though the embedded market was much smaller then. The AmigaOS was real time enough for the Toaster. Instead of a drop in Toaster card for other desktop computers, an Amiga computer was attached. If CBM had been able to license the 68k and do more cost reduction to a single chip Amiga, the hardware would have become more appealing for embedded use even if the desktop performance was not competitive. Instead, Amiga hardware and the AmigaOS disappeared for decades after CBM management blundered technology upgrades and eventually went bankrupt.

Last edited by matthey on 14-May-2021 at 02:12 AM.
Last edited by matthey on 14-May-2021 at 01:48 AM.

@Fl@sh Quote:

Fl@sh wrote: @kolla Indeed there's no reason to name them as same present in OS components. Anyway I appreciate Amigakit reply tryng to explain their point of view, sadly it's like climbing on the mirrors.

I don't see any mirror-climbing. It's evident that Amigakit want's to continue OS4 development (which is stagnant), but it isn't possible from Hyperion, so it's trying with its own resources.
Quote:

Some other thinks OS3 is better way to pursuit than OS4, some other call PowerPC cpu as a 'dongle'. It's incredible how my vison is completely different from others.

Everybody has its own vision. Facts are a different thing, and my definition of dongle in this context perfectly applies.
Quote:

IMHO OS4 is one of best way to evolve basic functions, the same is for MOS or AROS.

All of them are just rewriting of the original o.s., so carrying all bad design decisions.

There was and there is nothing "NG". In fact, there was no problem of the original o.s. which was fixed.
Quote:

While PowerPC is many times faster than any 68k

Who cares: 68K code can be executed fast, without having a 68K processor neither requiring a PowerPC one.
Quote:

and let us to use AmigaNG systems in something useful for today standards. My2cents.

ROTFL. "Today standards"? You don't even have a modern browser with "today standards".

@BigD Quote:

BigD wrote: @Fl@sh Quote: While PowerPC is many times faster than any 68k and let us to use AmigaNG systems in something useful for today standards. And yet the PPC hardware is harder to get hold of than the in itself rare 68060 CPU!

And you don't need a 68060 anyway: see PiStorm and Buffee.

@matthey Quote:

matthey wrote: cdimauro Quote: @amigakit: I agree with Matt. Why haven't you explored AROS instead of reinventing the wheel? It's open, it's free, the license isn't even viral like GPL (with APL you just give back the changes you made: nothing else is affected). Maybe AmigaKit did explore AROS and it didn't meet their requirements for some reason like lack of compatibility? Maybe AmigaKit using and supporting open source AROS would have given some motivation to Hyperion to develop their closed source AmigaOS 4 before it is replaced.

This is my idea as well.
Quote:

Is it ironic that the GCC and VBCC compilers used for AmigaOS 4 and the Enhancer Software are open source yet Hyperion and AmigaKit do not seem to understand the advantages of open source? VBCC has the sources available which has been beneficial to that project yet the copyrights remain in place and distribution rights are specified making it difficult to fork and allowing Dr. Volker Barthelmann to retain control of the project. It is free to use for the Amiga due to Frank Wille providing vasm and vlink for the project.

Unfortunately VBCC generates poor code. The core is small and very simple, so easy to update (albeit I don't like how it was written), but it needs MANY improvements.

GCC... no comment. It's a monster...

I prefer LLVM: take a lot of resources for compiling, but it's very well structured.
Quote:

An OS being open source is very important in some markets like embedded markets. Windows breaks all the rules on the desktop remaining closed source and making money from selling new OS versions but it has a monopoly. Most of the competition is open source and giving away the OS yet can't gain market share. The way for an OS to gain market share is to be installed on hardware and there needs to be enough hardware sold to spread out development costs and attract developers.

Unfortunately AROS hadn't so much success even being open source AND multi-platform...
Quote:

cdimauro Quote: However if the situation is like what you described, where you had to rewrite part of the system software because Hyperion can't/won't do it, then you should seriously think about changing your business to pay the bills, because the boat is sinking... AmigaKit has revenue from their shop as well as their software development. They could break even on software development and still make money on product sales which may increase due to the software development (similar to the benefit to sales from open source software). It looks like they are working to become less dependent on Hyperion or PPC Amiga related sales too. The Amiga boat is still sinking because of lack of new hardware with a good price performance ratio but AmigaKit could still have a profitable business for now.

Yes, but they already said that the core business is sustained by "classic" activities.

Then why don't spend resources in that direction, since the situation with Hyperion isn't good. How many years they promised SMP, 64-bit, and the new graphic subsystem (which I currently don't get the name?).

@eliyahu Quote:

eliyahu wrote: Every thread mentioning Hyperion, the same discussion from the same group of people rehashing the same arguments over and over and over and over and over and over and over.... Every. Single. Time. -- eliyahu

Maybe you can better spend your time trying to hack other people's emails...

@matthey Quote:

matthey wrote: kolla Quote: Which OS that is most useful for an embedded device depends entirely on what task that device is supposed to do - RT is certainly not always a must and Linux more often than not is the OS that runs best and is most featured. Btw, you keep bringing up real-time capabilities, but… why? AmigaOs is nowhere near being an RTOS. The RTOS can be slimmed down more than the AmigaOS but the AmigaOS has most of the same basic features when a robust but minimal system is configured. The RTOS is more configurable for lower end hardware while the AmigaOS has more standard features which makes a better software development target. Linux lacked the features of RTOS wanted for embedded use but was heavily patched to better support them. Linux doing embedded is like the AmigaOS doing desktop. It can be done with enough effort but is still not optimal. Embedded Linux is more about the software and support rather than being a perfect OS for embedded use. wiki Quote: The advantages of embedded Linux over proprietary embedded operating systems include multiple suppliers for software, development and support; no royalties or licensing fees; a stable kernel; the ability to read, modify and redistribute the source code. The technical disadvantages include a comparatively large memory footprint (kernel and root filesystem); complexities of user mode and kernel mode memory access, and a complex device drivers framework. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_on_embedded_systems The AmigaOS was a good enough embedded OS going back to CBM days. The Amiga hardware and AmigaOS together were used for several embedded systems from medical devices to Toasters even though the embedded market was much smaller then. The AmigaOS was real time enough for the Toaster. Instead of a drop in Toaster card for other desktop computers, an Amiga computer was attached. If CBM had been able to license the 68k and do more cost reduction to a single chip Amiga, the hardware would have become more appealing for embedded use even if the desktop performance was not competitive. Instead, Amiga hardware and the AmigaOS disappeared for decades after CBM management blundered technology upgrades and eventually went bankrupt.

I see two problems with the Amiga o.s.: it's not really (!) real-time, and the worst is that it's too much tailored to the Amiga hardware.
BTW, even Commodore wanted to get rid of the Amiga hardware, for good reasons (too much obsolete).

IMO AROS is what the Amiga o.s. should have been: multi-platform, and not bounded to the Amiga hardware.

@kas1e
Thanks for the info!

@Hyperion devs
Thanks for the update!

@eliyahu
+1