Quote:

"A Hyperion developer told me that not only has the OS been run on a PS3, but they have even tested support for the seven SPU units in the Cell processor."

This would convince me to put my hand in my pocket.

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[quote]Amiga were also offered Amithlon before anyone else. I was the first to run it. It ROCKED HARD. I begged them to use it, we had a WINNER and could sell a bajillion of them. We owned all the rights to it! But sadly, Bill and Fleecy didn't want peopl

Read this.

I have my doubts that a PS 3 port would be a good idea at this point. The hypervisor prevents anyone form accessing the graphics chip, so what you have is a dumb framebuffer that will make any OS quite sluggish to use (I hear Linux is struggling with this as well), more so since you cannot even access video ram directly but need to copy a main memory framebuffer into the graphics card memory.

Other CELL systems would be a different story. I'd be interested to work on the PS 3 for the sole purpose of playing around with SPE optimizations, but the environment is quite limited.

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It is a great review!

Q!

"aLL RoAds LeAd ToO HoMe"

Rogue, I have dreamt of a PS3 version of AmigaOS. I think it would be great, but as you stated current limitations would not do the OS justice. I just salivate at the kind of demos some of these creative types would make with the hardware should it be running AmigaOS and if it were an open system...

Anyway, just thought I should mention that Terrasoft (which is supported by Sony) have released CELL + RSX media rack mounted server hardware for video based work and 3D rendering. Essentially it is a CELL + RSX system, however this time, for this particular hardware range there are no limitations. I could buy one of these servers and run Terrasoft's distro of Linux and have full accelerated RSX acceleration. Instead of buying an Apple Mac or PC, if I wanted CELL and RSX usability, play LINUX games or run demos, I can get one of those machines... sad to think the PS3 could do just as well, but as you stated, because of the hypervisor it is a no go...

Maybe Sony would make an exception for AmigaOS!

Q!

"aLL RoAdS LeAd toO HoMe"

Last edited by QuBe on 24-Sep-2008 at 02:28 PM.
Last edited by QuBe on 24-Sep-2008 at 02:27 PM.

@ Moxee

Resource tracking got the axe when they ran out of time and replaced CAOS with AmigaDOS.

http://www.thule.no/haynie/caos.html

BTW, what happened to the quote button? I logged out and back in, it's still not there...

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

A Wii version would be pretty spiffy...and more powerful than SAM (though less main RAM)...but still quasi-portable and cool to navigate using the Wii-Mote...

Rogue said: Quote:

I have my doubts that a PS 3 port would be a good idea at this point.

When the initial speculation was around, maybe two years ago, I thought it would be an excellent idea to get it on a PS3 because the installed hardware base would be huge. I no longer feel quite the same as this because I would not really want to have some hobbled system I have to sit in my living room to use with limited drive space and connectivity. A games console doesn't make a particularly good desktop computer.

However, if it is possible to get it to work (and it is said that it already does), having a PS3 version (or an XB360 or Wii or whatever) wouldn't hurt because some people would just buy OS4 because they can, then. More money for you, more exposure for your product. And hey, maybe it wouldn't be all that painful to use once in a while.

What is really hurting OS4 now, IMO, is the barely-available hardware is too expensive and exotic, and much of the inertia of the Amiga scene has been lost. A few people bickering on internet forums can't replace the army of developers and users from before. I don't pretend to have a solution to that but, given how polished it is, I certainly don't see the features of the OS or its performance to be the sticking point. Even as someone who has developed under AmigaOS and used it extensively well beyond its sell-by date, I can no longer really dig up the enthusiasm to shell out several hundred pounds for a machine that has no better future or development than the little my existing classic hardware does.

@Rogue:

The "Cell == PS3" confusion is why companies have PR peeps and generally don't let us engineering types talk to the unwashed masses

@Tomppeli
Quote:

Quote: OS 4.1 adds resource tracking ... This means that the OS can clean up resources used by an application that has quit and doesn't need them any more. Yes it's true. Resource tracking is already in 4.0. But unfortunately it's not everywhere.

Sorry? The original quote implies that OS4.1 it has complete resource tracking (since it is not qualified). At the very least, he indicates that it had been greatly improved over OS4.0 . Is that true?

If resource tracking has been improved in OS4.1, then it would be great to know what those improvements are, and what is still missing (if anything)...

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Author of the PortablE programming language.
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue...

Quote:

Sorry? The original quote implies that OS4.1 it has complete resource tracking (since it is not qualified). At the very least, he indicates that it had been greatly improved over OS4.0 . Is that true?

Actually, yes, as it was in 4.0 already, but it is disabled since some programs simply assume that their resources stay when they quit. Or, they spawn subprocesses which inherit resources from the parent task and the parent task quits. Those things make resource tracking pretty much useless, so the current default is to NOT track, and you need to give an explicit tag to AllocSysObject to make it trackable.

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@Tomppeli

Quote:

Resource tracking was originally planned for the Amiga OS 1.0.

Kickstart 1.0 implements resource tracking for allocated memory. Virtually nobody ever used it.

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Amiga Developer
Amiga 500, Efika, Mac Mini and PowerBook

@Rogue

Quote:

Those things make resource tracking pretty much useless, so the current default is to NOT track, and you need to give an explicit tag to AllocSysObject to make it trackable.

Here lies fundamental problem with Amiga API: resource tracking is co-operative. Applications must explicitly support resource tracking and there is no guarantee that they use it properly (i.e. killing dead task may kill entire system).

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Amiga Developer
Amiga 500, Efika, Mac Mini and PowerBook

Good article and interview. Thanks very much.

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@Rogue

You could always talk with RJ Mical at Sony about supporting PS3 and getting developer support and better access to their gfx chips directly.

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@DiscreetFX

Didn't know he (RJ) ended up at Sony :)

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www.amiga4ever.de

@ bison

Quote:

BTW, what happened to the quote button? I logged out and back in, it's still not there...

I cannot tell you why, but there is not one in the news items. One has to copy & paste and quote/quote in brackets.

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Moxee
AmigaOne X1000
AmigaOne XE G4
I'd agree with you, but then we'd both be wrong.

@Giovann


For a while now.


http://www.mical.org/

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Sent from my Quantum Computer.

Very nice article, well worth the read.

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Hate tends to make you look stupid...

As usual, excellent article Jeremy. Many Thanks.

Kind Regards,
Kay

I showed the review to one of my colleagues who read it.

Then he said: "It hasn't got Memory Protection...that is bad, it is because it must be very buggy..."

I have never used OS4 so I don't know what to say...

Any advice?

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